Abstract
In discussions about what it means to be human, concepts of the soul play a significant role. In European tradition, understandings of the soul and of consciousness have often been used to differentiate the human being from other animals and from the natural world. European philosophy and religion deemed nonhuman others “inanimate” (derived from the Latin word for soul, anima) and claimed that only the human being was endowed with a fully developed soul. The chapter reconstructs the genealogy of these demarcations from ancient, medieval, and early modern discussions to their new arrangements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While philosophical speciesism has been a central characteristic of these demarcations, the chapter shows that discourses on the soul and consciousness have also generated alternatives to these hegemonic orders of knowledge. Particularly the “undisciplining” of the soul in the twentieth century – along with a reassessment of animism and other-than-human agency – has opened up new avenues for critical posthumanist thinking. It turns out that concepts of the soul are multifaceted figurations of the posthuman.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aristotle. (1952). De anima. Trans. A. Smith. In The works of Aristotle. William Benton.
Asprem, E. (2014). The problem of disenchantment: Scientific naturalism and esoteric discourse 1900–1939. Brill.
Bird-David, N. (1999). ‘Animism’ revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40, 67–79.
Braidotti, R. (2015). The posthuman in feminist theory. In L. Disch & M. Hawkesworth (Eds.), Oxford handbook of feminist theory. Oxford University Press. Online Publication Date: August 2015. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.35.
Braidotti, R. (2019). A theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31–61.
Brooks Pribac, T. (2021). Enter the animal: Cross-species perspectives on grief and spirituality. Sydney University Press.
Cohen, E. (1992). The crossroads of justice: Law and culture in late medieval France. Brill.
Corcilius, K., & Perler, D. (Eds.). (2014). Partitioning the soul: Debates from Plato to Leibniz. De Gruyter.
Danziger, K. (1982). Mid-nineteenth-century British psycho-physiology: A neglected chapter in the history of psychology. In W. R. Woodward & M. G. Ash (Eds.), The problematic science: Psychology in nineteenth-century thought (pp. 119–146). Praeger.
Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge University Press.
Daston, L. (1982). The theory of will versus the science of mind. In W. R. Woodward & M. G. Ash (Eds.), The problematic science: Psychology in nineteenth-century thought (pp. 88–115). Praeger.
Descartes, R. (1985 [1637]). Discourse on the method (1637). In J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, & D. Murdoch (Eds.), The philosophical writings of Rene Descartes. Cambridge University Press.
Driesch, H. (1923a). Leib und Seele: Eine Untersuchung über das psychophysische Grundproblem (3rd ed., based on the second and partly revised ed.). Emmanuel Reinicke.
Driesch, H. (1923b). Ordnungslehre: Ein System des nichtmetaphysischen Teiles der Philosophie (New, improved and revised ed.). Eugen Diederichs.
Driesch, H. (1932). Parapsychologie: Die Wissenschaft von den “okkulten” Erscheinungen. F. Bruckmann.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2007 [1903]). The souls of black folk (first edition 1903, edited with an introduction and notes by B. H. Edwards). Oxford University Press.
Duchesneau, F. (2013). The monadology after Leibniz. Studia Leibnitiana, 45(2), 131–134.
Eder, F. X. (2006). Historische Diskurse und ihre Analyse – eine Einleitung. In F. X. Eder (Ed.), Historische Diskursanalysen: Genealogie, Theorien, Anwendungen (pp. 9–23). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft.
Ellis, C. (2018). Antebellum posthuman: Race and materiality in the mid-nineteenth century. Fordham University Press.
Foucault, M. (2010). The archaeology of knowledge. And the discourse on language (Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith). Vintage Books (first English edition 1972).
Fudge, E. (2006). Brutal reasoning: Animals, rationality, and humanity in early modern England. Cornell University Press.
Gladigow, B. (1993). ‘Tiefe der Seele’ und ‘inner space’. Zur Geschichte eines Topos von Heraklit bis zur Science Fiction. In J. Assmann (Ed.), Die Erfindung des inneren Menschen: Studien zur religiösen Anthropologie (pp. 114–132). Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn.
Goethe, J. W. von (1965). Goethes Briefe, vol. III, 1805–1821 (Hamburger Ausgabe) (Ed. K. R. Mandelkow & B. Morawe). C. H. Beck.
Goodall, J. (2005). Primate spirituality. In B. Taylor (Ed.), Encyclopedia of religion and nature (2 vols., pp. 1303–1306). Continuum International.
Goodall, J. W. von (1965). Goethes Briefe, vol. III, 1805–1821 (Hamburger Ausgabe) (Ed. K. R. Mandelkow & B. Morawe). C. H. Beck.
Haeckel, E. (1903). Die Welträthsel: Gemeinverständliche Studien über Monistische Philosophie. Volksausgabe. First ed. 1899. Kröner.
Haeckel, E. (1917). Kristallseelen: Studien über das anorganische Leben. Kröner.
Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Wakefield Press.
Herbrechter, S. (2013). Posthumanism: A critical analysis. Bloomsbury.
Hickman, L. (2014). The nature of the self and the contemplation of nature: Ecotheology and the history of the soul. In M. Fuller (Ed.), The concept of the soul: Scientific and religious perspectives (pp. 5–28). Cambridge Scholars.
Holsinger, B. (2009). Of pigs and parchment: medieval studies and the coming of the animal. PMLA, 124(2), 616–623.
Hornborg, A.-C. (2016). Objects as subjects: Agency and performativity in rituals. In P. Ingman, M. Broo, T. Hovi & T. Utriainen (Eds.), The relational dynamics of enchantment and sacralization (pp. 27–43). Equinox.
James, W. (1890). The hidden self. Scribner’s Magazine, 7, 361–373.
James, W. (1950 [1890]). The principles of psychology, two volumes, first edition 1890. Dover.
Josephson-Storm, J. Ā. (2017). The myth of disenchantment: Magic, modernity, and the birth of the human sciences. The University of Chicago Press.
Lloyd, G. (1984). The man of reason: ‘Male’ and ‘female’ in western philosophy. Methuen.
Nixon, A. [A. N.]. (1616). The dignitie of man, both in the perfections of his Sovle and Bodie. Joseph Barnes.
Oken, L. (1991 [1843]). Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie (3rd, revised ed., first ed. 1809). Friedrich Schultheß, 1843; reprint Hildesheim etc.: Georg Olm, 1991.
Rosenfield, L. C. (1940). From beast-machine to man-machine: The theme of animal soul in French letters from Descartes to La Mettrie. Oxford University Press.
Rubenstein, M.-J. (2014). Worlds without end: The many lives of the multiverse. Columbia University Press.
Schubert, G. H. von (1850). Die Geschichte der Seele (4th ed., first ed. 1830). J. G. Cotta.
Shamdasani, S. (2003). Jung and the making of modern psychology: The dream of a science. Cambridge University Press.
Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation: A new ethics for our treatment of animals. New York Review/Random House.
Sommer, A. (2013). Crossing the boundaries of mind and body: Psychical research and the origins of modern psychology. PhD Dissertation, Science and Technology Studies, University College London.
Stuckrad, K. von (2014). The scientification of religion: An historical study of discursive change, 1800–2000. De Gruyter.
Stuckrad, K. von (2021). Historical discourse analysis: The entanglement of past and present. In J. Johnston & K. von Stuckrad (Eds.), Religion and discourse research: Disciplinary use and interdisciplinary dialogues (pp. 77–87). De Gruyter.
Stuckrad, K. von (2022). A cultural history of the soul: Europe and North America from 1870 to the present. Columbia University Press.
Taylor, A. L. (2018). Where are the wild things? Animals in western medieval European history. History Compass, 16(3), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12443
Taylor, B. (2010). Dark green religion: Nature spirituality and the planetary future. University of California Press.
Treitel, C. (2004). A science for the soul: Occultism and the genesis of the German modern. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wohlleben, P. (2016). Das Seelenleben der Tiere: Liebe, Trauer, Mitgefühl – erstaunliche Einblicke in eine verborgene Welt. Ludwig.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
von Stuckrad, K. (2022). Troubled Distinctions: The Soul in Posthumanist Perspective. In: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M., John Müller, C. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_51-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_51-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42681-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42681-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities