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Dislocating the Soul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

D. Z. Phillips
D. Z. Phillips
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Wales, Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP and Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California91711
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Abstract

Many analyses of belief in the soul ignore the soul in the words. Dislocations of concepts occur when words are divorced from their normal implications. The ‘soul’ is sometimes the dislocated utterer of such words. Pictures, including pictures of the soul leaving the body, may mislead us by suggesting applications which they, in fact, do not have. But pictures of the soul may enter people's lives as desires for a temporal eternity. Contrasting conceptions of immortality and eternal life depend on a willingness to say farewell to life. Atheistic denials of temporal eternities, do not appreciate these other possibilities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 447 - 462
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 See Bouwsma, O. K., ‘Anselm's Argument’ in Without Proof or Evidence (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 47.Google Scholar

2 See Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture (London: Murray), pp. 429–33.Google Scholar

3 Rhees, Rush, ‘Natural Theology’ in Without Answers (London: Routledge, 1969), p. 113.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of some of these implications see my ‘Scripture, Speech and Sin’ in Religione, Parola, Scrittura (Religion, Spoken and Written Word), ed. M. M. Olivetti, Archivio di Filosofia (Padova: Cedam, 1992).Google Scholar

5 Weil, Simone, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge, 1952).Google Scholar

6 For a further discussion see my ‘Emptying Heaven’ in From Fantasy to Faith (London: Macmillan, 1991).Google Scholar

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8 Kierkegaard, Søren, Purity of Heart (Harper Torchbooks, 1956), pp. 190–1.Google Scholar