Immortality of the Soul

Immortality of the soul is a common concept in both religion and philosophy. The
concept of immortality of the soul is closely related with beliefs about life after death (Van,
2020). Even though the two concepts have close relationship, there are slight differences
between them. Immortality of the soul does not simply mean that the soul continues existing
after the physical body stops existing; it means that the soul continues existing indefinitely
after a person’s death. This paper seeks to answer the question: does the soul survive
indefinitely or is it mortal. To answer this question, it will examine various viewpoints on the
subject. In particular, it will examine the question of immortality of the soul from the
perspective of theists and atheists.

Beliefs in immortality of the soul are widespread across the world. Some of the
beliefs are direct while others are indirect. For instance, many African cultures believe in the
concepts of the living dead and the ancestral world (Chukwuedo, 2019). Such concepts only
make sense when one assumes that the soul or the immaterial part of human beings continues
existing long after a person’s death. Among Hindus, one of their core religious tenets is
reincarnation, a belief that one continues living after death but in a form that is different from
their previous existence (Chukwuedo, 2019). A more direct explanation of the immortality of
the soul is provided in the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In
these religions, which have followings in almost all parts of the world, the soul is considered
to be immortal. For instance, Christians believe that the soul continues existing after one’s
physical death and its fate in heaven or hell is either a reward or punishment for one’s
conduct on earth.

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Since a majority of religions teach about the existence and the immortality of the soul,
most theists also believe in the immortality of the soul. As noted earlier, in some religions the
immortality of the soul is linked to ethics while in others there is no such linkage. Religions
where the immortality of the soul is linked to ethics include Christianity, Islam, and Ancient
Egyptian religions. For instance, Christians believe that the souls of people whose earthly
conduct is in accordance with the will of God go to heaven in the after-life while the souls of
people whose conduct is against the will of God end up in heaven where they are subjected
eternal fires. For religions such as Christianity, it would be inconceivable for people to
conduct themselves morally or ethically, if the soul was not immortal because the whole idea
of ethical conduct is to avoid terrible punishment in the afterlife. This is a view that has been
supported by philosophers and writers, such as Immanuel Kant and Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Przebinda, 2017). Since the body decomposes after death, it only makes sense that the part
of the human being that gets rewarded or punished in the afterlife is the immaterial part or the
soul.

The idea of the immortality of the soul is, therefore, anchored in the dualist view of
human beings. This is the view that human beings are composed of two substances. The
substances are the body and the soul. The body is material while the soul is immaterial. Being
a material substance, the body decomposes upon death and completely ceases to exist.
However, as the soul is immaterial, it cannot decompose after death. Thus, it continues
existing. This dualist view of the human body is widely held by Abrahamic religions. For
instance, Catholics believe that the human being that God created has two components. These
two are the physical body and the soul. The main difference between these two components is
that the human body is mortal while the soul is immortal. Thus, it is the soul, rather than the
physical body that continues existing in the after-life.

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It is not religions that support the dualist conception of human beings. Philosophers,
such as Plato and Rene Descartes also supported such a view. In fact, Plato took for granted
that the soul existed alongside the human body during one’s lifetime. His philosophical
efforts in books, such as Phaedo, were focused on proving that the soul is immortal. In
Phaedo, Socrates makes his last teachings to his disciples before drinking hemlock. He
explains why he is not worried about his coming death by presenting the argument of
opposites and cycles. In this argument, Socrates claims that everything has an opposite which
relates to it in the form of a cycle (Miura, 2019). For instance, hot water is the opposite of
cold water but it was also previously cold water. In the same vein, life being the opposite of
death should have a circular relationship. In other words, after one dies a new life begins.
Thus, there is a part of human beings that continues to live after the physical death – the soul.
In Plato’s view, the soul exists prior to the existence of the human body. When the body
comes to life it exists alongside it. At the body’s death and decomposition, the soul moves to
another body (Spruit, 2017). Apart from Plato, Rene Descartes was another philosopher that
was a strong supporter of the immortality of the soul. His famous statement, “I think,
therefore, I am” not only summarized his belief in the existence of the soul but also directly
linked it to the brain’s activity of thinking. His writings solidified the belief that the soul was
the mind.

The dualist view makes it easy to explain the immortality of the soul. However, this
view of human beings is challenged by atheists. The defining characteristic of atheists is their
non-belief in deities, such as God. They also do not believe in other immaterial beings, such
as spirits and souls. Therefore, atheists reject the notion that there is a soul created by God (as
they do not believe that God exist) or even that the soul exists independently (as they do not
believe in existence of immaterial beings). Moreover, from the standpoint of atheists, even if
the soul existed, it would be impossible for it to be immortal. Atheists are generally

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materialists. As such, they believe that human beings are an aggregate of elements that are
purely material (Spruit, 2017). When the elements dissolve the human being also completely
ceases to exist. Since the elements dissolve after one’s death, human existence completely
ends after their death. Thus, there is nothing in the human body that continues to exist after
physical death.

It is because of their strong opposition to dualism that makes atheists to also reject
some of the philosophical grounds for the immortality of the soul such as the one advanced
by Rene Descartes. To accept such philosophies, one has to accept that the mind and the soul
are one and the same thing. A famous atheist, Bertrand Russell, contends that the mind or
mental activity is a function of brain structure and bodily energy (Sait, 2021). As such, it does
not have an existence that is independent of the human body. When a person dies, they lose
their bodily energy and the brain decomposes, they cease to think or have any form of mental
activity. Thus, if the soul is the mind or the thinking aspect of human beings, then it cannot
be immortal as human beings cease to think when they die.

As the analysis of the different viewpoints regarding the concept of immortality of the
soul shows, the issue remains a controversial. In general, belief or non-belief in the
immortality of the soul seems to be closely associated with belief or non-belief in the dualist
view of human beings. Those who believe that the human body is composed of a physical
body and an immaterial soul are likely to believe in the immortality of the soul while those
who take a purely materialist view of the human body are unlikely to believe in the
immortality of the human soul.

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References

Chukwuedo, M. U. (2019). A comparative study of immortality of the soul in Christianity
and African traditional religion. OGIRISI: a New Journal of African Studies, 15, 52-
63.

Miura, T. (2019, January). Immortality and imperishability of the soul in the final argument
of Plato’s Phaedo. In Plato’s Phaedo (pp. 193-198). Academia-Verlag.

Przebinda, G. (2018). Dostoevsky on immortality of the soul and unearthly Paradise. Studia
Pigoniana, 1(1), 75-90.

Sait, K. A. R. (2021). A Religious and Philosophical Evaluation of the Concept of
Immortality. Ordu Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Sosyal Bilimler
Araştırmaları Dergisi, 11(1), 280-286.

Spruit, L. (2017). The Pomponazzi affair: The controversy over the immortality of the soul.
In Routledge Companion to Sixteenth Century Philosophy (pp. 239-260). Routledge.

Van, V. H. (2020). From the belief of the immortality of the soul, the blessing or the
harassing of the soul towards people to the worship of the souls of Vietnamese
people. Asian Social Science, 16(3), 1-11.