TABLE OF CONTENT

Table of Content....................................................................................................................i
1.1 Introduction......................................................................................................................1
2.1 Views for the Immortality of the Soul.............................................................................1
2.1.1 Plato’s View..................................................................................................................1
2.1.2. Pythagoras’ View.........................................................................................................4
2.1.3. Empedocles’ View.......................................................................................................5
2.1.4. The Dualist’s View......................................................................................................5
2.1.5. Origen’s View..............................................................................................................6
2.1.6. Augustine’s View.........................................................................................................6
2.1.7. Thomas Aquinas’ View...............................................................................................6
2.1.8 Traditional Africa..........................................................................................................7
2.2 Views Against the Immortality of the Soul.....................................................................7
2.2.1 Aristotle’s View............................................................................................................7
2.2.2. The Hellenistic View...................................................................................................8
3.1 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................9
Bibliography..........................................................................................................................10
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The concept of the immortality of the soul was introduced into man’s thinking at the earliest
beginnings of human history. God told the first human beings, Adam and Eve, that if they sinned
they would die and return to the dust from which He had created them (Genesis 2:17; Genesis
3:19). Thus, the issue of the immortality of the soul is indeed an ancient one and features
prominently in the study fields of philosophy and spirituality. Philosophers have attempted to
prove that immortality of the soul does or does not exist, with divergent results. From this point,
it will be illogical to proceed without first getting a clue of what the term immortality of the soul
means. Immortality is the indefinite continuation of a person’s existence, even after death. In
common parlance, immortality is virtually indistinguishable from afterlife, but philosophically
speaking, they are not identical. Afterlife is the continuation of existence after death, regardless
of whether or not that continuation is indefinite. Immortality implies a never-ending existence.
On the other hand, a soul, Aristotle says, is “the actuality of a body that has life,” where life
means the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and reproduction. Or simply the spiritual or
immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal 1. Therefore the concept of the
immortality of the soul simply connotes the never-ending or indefinite existence of the
immaterial or spiritual part of a human person. This therefore leads me to the focus or aim of this
work which is to develop the concept of the immortality of the soul and their various world
views.

2.1 VIEWS FOR THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Belief in the immortality of the soul was an important aspect of ancient thought espoused by the
Greek philosophers. We then turn to various Pre-Socratic thinkers like Plato (in the Phaedo2),
Pythagoreans, Empedocles, and equally to Descartes, as well as the Church Fathers.
2.1.1 PLATO’S VIEW
The Phaedo is Plato’s attempt to convince us of the immortality of the soul by using several main
arguments. Phaedo, also known to ancient readers as On the Soul, is one of greatest dialogues of
Plato’s period. Phaedo centers itself around the death of Socrates. Through Plato, Socrates lived on

1
Oxford advanced learners dictionary.
2
Phaedo is an account written by Plato of the last conversation of Socrates’ before he will be put to death
by the state of Athens by drinking hemlock.

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generations after his time. Phaedo begins with Socrates addressing his death and stating that a true
philosopher should look forward to death. He asserts that the soul is immortal and the philosopher
spends his life training and detaching itself from the needs of the body. Plato’s spokesperson,
Socrates, believes in the eternal life of the soul. However, this topic, of “an immortal soul”, has
continued to be discussed. There are various works and dialogues about this topic, but the Phaedo
explains it best. Plato in this dialogue (phaedo) addresses the question of immortality directly and
attempts to prove that immortality is a truth that has to be accepted by reasoning human beings.
Plato (428-348 B.C.) saw man’s existence as divided into the material and spiritual, or “Ideal,”
realms. “Plato reasoned that the soul, being eternal, must have had a pre-existence in the ideal
world where it learned about the eternal Ideals” (William S. Sahakian, History of
Philosophy, 1968, p. 56). In Plato’s reasoning, man is meant to attain goodness and return to the
Ideal through the experiences of the transmigration of the soul.
As earlier mentioned, Phaedo is a dramatic representation of Socrates’ final discussion with his
disciples, just before drinking the hemlock. In the phaedo, Plato makes us to understand that
Socrates shows no sign of fear or concern, for he is certain that he will survive the death of his
body. Socrates explained that the immortal soul, once freed from the body, is rewarded
according to good deeds or punished for evil.
The thoughts of Plato in the Phaedo are classified as follows;
The Cyclical or Opposites Argument 69e–72d. This argument is introduced by Socrates
as his first argument for the immortality of the soul in order to alleviate Cebes 3’ worry that the
soul might perish at death. It supposes that the soul must be immortal since the living come from
the dead. Plato first lays out the argument when he says: “Now if this is true, if the living are
born again from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other world, for if not, how could they
have been born again?”4 He goes on to show, using examples of relationships, such as asleep-
wake and hot-cold, that things that have opposites come to be from their opposite. One falls
asleep after having been awake. And after being asleep, he wakes up. Things that are hot can
become cold and vice versa. In this way between every pair of opposites there must always be
two processes of transformation, e.g. cooling down and warming up, falling asleep and waking
up. Living and dead are evidently opposites, and one of the processes between them, namely
dying, is evident to us. Plato then gets Cebes to conclude that the dead are generated from the
3
An interlocutor in phaedo
4
Phaedo, 70c9

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living, through death, and that the living are generated from the dead, through birth. Thus it is
reasonable to suppose that this applies to the case of dying and coming to life, so that the dead
return to life, just as the living die. If this were not so, if the process of dying were not reversible,
life would ultimately vanish from the universe. Summarily, we had a life before being born, and
we shall have a life after we die.
Recollection Argument 73a–77e. According to this argument we may appeal to the
doctrine that what we call “learning” is really “recollection”, being reminded of something. This
certainly seems to be the case, for in all our science we are perpetually being put in mind of
precise ideal standards, mathematical or moral, with which sense or experience never presents
us. We must therefore have become acquainted with them before we were confined to our
bodies, and therefore must have existed before our birth. These two considerations together
would prove what we want to prove, the soul’s survival at death. Our ability to give the right
answers in abstract discussions shows that we possess a kind of knowledge (evidently of the
Forms) that we must have acquired before birth. It means that our souls existed apart from the
body before they took on human form. That they continue to exist after we die is said to follow
by combining this proof with the “opposites argument” outlined above. The theory of
recollection runs basically as it has been shown, that it is possible to draw a true answer out of a
person who seems to not have any knowledge of the subject prior to his questioning, as this
person must have gained this knowledge in a previous life, and now merely recalls it. Plato states
it as follows: “We agree, I suppose, that if anyone is to remember anything, he must know it at
some previous time”5 He follows this statement with a longer one, defining recollection: “If a
man, when he has heard or seen or in any other way perceived a thing, knows not only that thing,
but also has a perception of some other thing, the knowledge of which is not the same, but
different, are we not right in saying that he recollects the things of which he has the perception?”
Indeed, as he has now been able to answer correctly, it must be the case that his answer arose
from recollection of knowledge gained during a previous life. Plato presents this argument also
in Meno6 and concludes it as follows: “The soul, then, as being immortal and having been born

5
Phaedo, 73c1-2
6
Meno is a Socratic dialogue scripted by Plato. It appears to attempt to determine the definition
of virtue, or arete, meaning virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or
temperance.

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again many times and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world
below, has knowledge of them all....all inquiry and all learning is but recollection.”7
Affinity Argument 78b–84b. This argument actually sheds more light on Plato’s view
on the nature of the soul. This argument confronts the widespread worry that the soul, at or soon
after death, is destroyed by being dispersed. It begins by distinguishing between two kinds of
things: on the one hand, things that are perceptible, composed of parts, and subject to dissolution
and destruction; on the other hand, things that are not perceptible, but intelligible (grasped by
thought), not composed of parts, and exempt from dissolution and destruction. Intelligible being
evidently includes what Socrates calls the divine, whose nature it is to rule and to lead 8 and there
is no indication that the forms exhaust the divine, or even include the divine, so understood. Thus
the argument leaves room for the idea that souls are not forms, but are nevertheless intelligible,
partless and imperishable (contra Robinson 1995, 29). In fact, in framing the argument in the
way he does Plato furnishes the conceptual framework needed for saying that body and soul
differ in kind, the one being perceptible and perishable, the other being intelligible and exempt
from destruction. And so, Plato in presenting the affinity argument for the immortality of the
soul shows that the soul most resembles that which is invisible and divine, and the body that
which is visible and mortal. From this, it is concluded that while the body may be seen to exist
after death in the form of a corpse, as the body is the mortal of the two and the soul is the more
divine, the soul must outlast the body.9
2.1.2. PYTHAGORAS’ VIEW
Another school on this issue is Pythagoreans. Pythagoras, a pre-Socratic philosopher strongly
believed in the immortality of the soul and preached that the soul goes through several
reincarnations. Pythagoras had not only promoted the concept of immortality of the soul but he
equally promoted transmigration of the soul between various species of living beings. Pythagoras
believed in reincarnation as well and that a soul occupies a different body soon after death. In
fact, each time a body dies, the soul discards the body to occupy another body. He further
explained that the human soul does not necessarily occupy the body of a human being after
death; rather it occupies the body of any type of living beings including plants. The type of body

7
Meno, section 81d
8
Phaedo section 80a
9
Phaedo, 84d

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that a soul will occupy once it discards a mortal body depends on the action performed by the
soul in its previous life.
2.1.3. EMPEDOCLES’ VIEW
Empedocles (of Acagras in Sicily) was a philosopher and poet: one of the most important of the
philosophers working before Socrates (the Pre-Socratic), and a poet of outstanding ability and of
great influence upon later poets such as Lucretius. In fragment 115, Empedocles describes
himself as a 'daimôn10', a being to whom long life has been granted, but who has committed the
sin of meat-eating and bloodshed and consequently is punished by banishment from the company
of the immortal gods. The banishment lasts three myriads of years, either 'three-times countless
years' or thirty thousand years. In either case he must atone for his sin by being repeatedly
reincarnated into all the different living forms of the different orders of nature. Elsewhere he
says: 'For before now I have been at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the
sea' (fr. B 117). Empedocles then, has already suffered this nearly endless cycle of reincarnations
having been seemingly hurled down to the lowest rung of the scale of nature but has worked his
way up, has been purified at last and, as he tells us in fr. B. 112, is himself now an immortal god.
2.1.4. THE DUALIST’S VIEW
Another school of thought that holds to the fact that the soul is immortal is the dualist. The
dualist believe that human beings are made up of two substances: body and soul. Arguments in
favor of dualism are indirectly arguments in favor of immortality, or at least in favor of the
possibility of survival of death. For, if the soul exists, it is an immaterial substance. And, in as
much as it is an immaterial substance, it is not subject to the decomposition of material things;
hence, it is immortal. René Descartes is usually considered the father of dualism, as he presents
some very ingenuous arguments in favor of the existence of the soul as a separate substance.
Descartes states: “There is a great difference between a mind and a body, because the body, by
its very nature, is something divisible, whereas the mind is plainly indivisible. . . insofar as I am
only a thing that thinks, I cannot distinguish any parts in me. . . . Although the whole mind seems
to be united to the whole body, nevertheless, were a foot or an arm or any other bodily part
amputated, I know that nothing would be taken away from the mind” (Descartes, 1980: 97).
Descartes believed, then, that mind and body cannot be the same substance. Descartes put forth
another similar argument: the body has extension in space, and as such, it can be attributed

10
Ancient Greek word meaning ("god", "godlike", "power", "fate"), refers to a lesser deity.

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physical properties. We may ask, for instance, what the weight of a hand is, or what the
longitude of a leg is. But the mind has no extension, and therefore, it has no physical properties.
It makes no sense to ask what the color of the desire to eat strawberries is, or what the weight of
Communist ideology is. If the body has extension, and the mind has no extension, then the mind
can be considered a separate substance. And so what perishes is the body because it is material
but the soul is imperishable because of its immaterial nature.
2.1.5. ORIGEN’S VIEW
Origen (ca. 185-254) was an admirer of Plato and believed in the immortality of the soul and that
it would depart to an everlasting reward or everlasting punishment at death.
In Origen De Principiis he wrote: “… The soul, having a substance and life of its own, shall after
its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being destined to obtain either
an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its actions shall have procured this for it, or to be
delivered up to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt of its crimes shall have brought it down
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to this …” Origen taught that human souls existed before the body but are imprisoned in the
physical world as a form of punishment. Physical life, he reasoned, is a purification process to
return humans to a spiritual state or to a state of the immortality of the soul.
2.1.6. AUGUSTINE’S VIEW
Furthermore, Augustine (354-430) tackled the problem of the immortality of the soul and death.
For Augustine death meant the destruction of the body, but the conscious soul would continue to
live in either a blissful state with God or an agonizing state of separation from God. In The City
of God he wrote that the soul “is therefore called immortal, because in a sense, it does not cease
to live and to feel; while the body is called mortal because it can be forsaken of all life, and
cannot by itself live at all. The death, then, of the soul, takes place when God forsakes it, as the
death of the body when the soul forsakes it.” 12
2.1.7. THOMAS AQUINAS’ VIEW
More so, centuries later Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274) crystallized the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul in  (The Summa Theologica). He taught that the soul is a conscious
intellect and will and cannot be destroyed. In other words, he said that the soul is immortal.

11
 Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, 1995, p. 240
12
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2, 1995, p. 245.

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Therefore, the concept of the immortality of the soul is foundational in Western thought, both
philosophical and religious.
2.1.8 TRADITIONAL AFRICA
According to me, it will be unthinkable to end this discourse without pointing out a few aspects
in my world view (Nkwen) which supports the fact of the immortality of the soul. However,
though not documented, it stems from a wide range of experiences.
In this light, the very first point I will raise is the fact that when someone dies in my
culture, the person is being buried with certain items like dresses and money with the simple
explanation that the person will use the money for any transactions as he/she journeys to his/her
new world whereas for the dresses, the person will wear them in that new world.
Furthermore, people in my world view, construct the tombs with the aim of granting a
befitting house for the death person because they believe he/she still lives.
Also, there is the aspect of giving the full names of the death person to a new born child
with the belief that the death person has come back to life in the new born baby. This ties with
the theory of reincarnation postulated by Plato.
More so, the constant visits made to the tomb of the death person in the name of
memorial services is an indication that the soul still lives on though the body is no more.
Conclusively, in my world view (Nkwen) there is the belief that the soul is immortal as proven by
the points above.

2.2 VIEWS AGAINST THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

2.2.1 ARISTOTLE’S VIEW

However, some philosophers dispute on the immortality of the soul. One of such is Aristotle.
Aristotle's view on the immortality of the soul, as it is presented primarily in the De
Anima13 comes very close to providing a comprehensive, fully developed account of the soul in
all its aspects and functions, an account that articulates the ways in which all of the vital
functions of all animate organisms are related to the soul. Aristotle holds that the soul (psyche) is
the form, or essence of any living thing; it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in. It
is the possession of a soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and
thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply

13
De Anima means ‘On the Soul’ a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC.

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unintelligible. In other words, according to Aristotle's theory, a soul is a particular kind of nature,
a principle that accounts for change and rest in the particular case of living bodies, i.e. plants,
nonhuman animals and human beings and for him the soul can only survive if connected with the
body. Aristotle completely rejected the mythical thinking of his precursors about the original
divinity of the soul, its preexistence, immortality and the imprisonment in the body.
2.2.2. THE HELLENISTIC VIEW
The Hellenistic school of thought predominantly composed of Epicurus 14 and the Stoa15. They
both shared that the soul is corporeal.
Epicurus is an atomist, and in accordance with his atomism he takes the soul, like
everything else that there is except for the void, to be ultimately composed of atoms. One of the
greatest fears that Epicurus tries to combat is the fear of death. Epicurus thinks that this fear is
often based upon anxiety about having an unpleasant afterlife; this anxiety, he thinks, should be
dispelled once one realizes that death is annihilation, because the soul is a group of atoms that
disperses upon death. If death is annihilation, says Epicurus, then it is 'nothing to us.' Epicurus'
main argument for why death is not bad is contained in the letter to Menoeceus 16 and can be
dubbed the 'no subject of harm' argument. If death is bad, for whom is it bad? Not for the living,
since they're not dead, and not for the dead, since they don't exist. In other words, death does not
concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer
exist. So, according to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore
should not be feared, thereby stipulating that the soul is mortal
The Stoics on the other hand hold that the soul is a particularly fine kind of body,
diffused all the way through the perceptible (flesh-and-blood) body of the animate organism. The
Stoics rejected the idea that the mind is an incorporeal entity. Instead they argued that the mind
(or soul) must be something corporeal and something that obeys the laws of physics. Moreover,
they held that all mental states and acts were states of the corporeal soul. The soul (a concept
broader than the modern concept of mind) was believed to be a hot, fiery breath (pneuma) that
infused the physical body.  The doctrine of pneuma and total blending allowed the Stoics to

14
Epicurus (341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded a highly influential
school of philosophy now called Epicureanism.
15
The Stoa Poecile or "Painted Stoa" was a building in Athens where Zeno of Citium met his followers
and taught. Later adherents of this philosophical tradition were given the name "Stoic" from their
association with this place.
16
Epicurus' Epistle to Menoeceus is a summary of the ethical teachings of Epicurean philosophy. 

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adopt Plato's definition of death as "the separation of the soul from the body." The Stoics,
however, used this definition against Plato, arguing that since only physical things can separate
from physical things, the soul must be corporeal. Since the soul pervades the body as a crasis17
type mixture, separation is possible. Once the soul has separated from the body it maintains its
own cohesion for a period of time. For them, the soul will exist for a limited time before they are
destroyed or reabsorbed into the cosmic pneuma. There is no heaven or hell in Stoicism; the time
to live one's life and to perfect one's virtues is in the present. Thus, the stoics do not believe in
the immortality of the soul.

3.1 CONCLUSION
From the foregoing facts we can see that the widespread concept of the immortality of the human
soul as taught by the ancient pagan philosophers and even by some Christian philosophers varied
considerably according to the particular era and philosophical school. For the Platonists, the soul
was an immaterial and incorporeal substance, akin to the gods yet part of the world of
change. The Pythagoreans believed in reincarnation as well and that a soul occupies a different
body soon after death. Empedocles also believed in the reincarnation of the soul. To René
Descartes, man was a union of the body and the soul, each a distinct substance acting on the
other; the soul was equivalent to the mind. In Christian theology St. Augustine spoke of the soul
as a “rider” on the body, making clear the split between the material and the immaterial, with the
soul representing the “true” person. Origen also shares that the soul, having a substance and life
of its own, shall after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being
destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness or to be delivered up to
eternal fire and punishments. In the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas returned to the Greek
philosophers’ concept of the soul as a motivating principle of the body, independent but
requiring the substance of the body to make an individual.
Aristotle’s conception of the soul was obscure, though he did state that it was inseparable from
the body. The Epicureans considered the soul to be made up of atoms like the rest of the body.
The Stoics rejected the idea that the soul is an incorporeal entity. Instead they argued that the
mind (or soul) must be something corporeal. From the Middle Ages onward, the existence and
nature of the soul and its relationship to the body continued to be disputed in Western philosophy

17
Crasis from the Greek κρᾶσις, "mixing", "blending"

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and even to our times and our various world views. However, judging from the aforementioned
arguments, I strongly agree and believe in the immortality of the soul.

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