Immortality of the Human Soul

IMMORTALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL. - It is the property of the human soul to survive the death of the body.

I. IMMORTALITY IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.

Of immortality in the philosophical-theological sense treated below there is no trace in non-Christian religions, whether primitive or national or ethnic, ancient and modern.

Among all these religions, however, there exists a most firm belief in the survival of the soul, a belief that makes itself felt as a natural instinct for the permanence of the individual and for his continuation beyond life. This idea of permanence beyond the tomb is also a consequence of the social structure bound to the person of the head of the group, considered as always present and operative for its benefit. Such a concept of the perpetuity of the head is found, in the domestic cult of the Romans, in the figure of the genius of the paterfamilias, and, during the Hellenistic era, in the concept of the "great souls" for whom an immortal life is destined.

Concerning the survival of the soul and the manner in which it is depicted in its condition of separation from the body (bird, butterfly, scarab, winged being), v. ANIMA. Metempsychosis or reincarnation cannot be considered as an equivalent of immortality because it excludes the permanence of the consciousness of the individual ego.

Among the Semites the abyss that separates the world of men from that of the gods is impassable. And even when benevolent deities would wish to make men the gift of immortality, this is not realized through the fault of men; thus in Babylonia, the sage Adapa, to whom Anū would wish to offer the "food and water of life," refuses them on the advice of Ea; and Gilgamesh, who would wish like his ancestor Utnapishtim to be admitted into the company of the gods, lets slip from his hand the herb of youth that would have given him immortality.

In Egypt the popular belief concerning the survival of the soul was sublimated into the vision of immortality through the myth of Osiris, primordial king of Egypt who, killed by his brother Sēt, rises again to reign immortal over the kingdom of the dead and thus to become the prototype of his faithful who, through the Osirian funerary rite performed on their corpse, can attain immortality (v. MISTERI: OSIRIDE).

Among the Indo-Europeans (India, pre-Zoroastrian Persia, Greece, Rome, Celts, Germans, Slavs) immortality is the exclusive privilege of the gods. In Vedic India only the gods are immortal (a-martja), not men, who nevertheless knew that not everything ends with death and therefore scrupulously practiced toward their ancestors (pīdrāb) the due funerary rites.

Brahmanism, given its pantheistic vision of the cosmos, with the same word ātman (= breath, wind) designates the personal ego and the universal ego, that is, the animating principle of the universe: it is therefore a question of an immortality or impersonal perpetuity that has nothing to do with the genuine concept of immortality.

Buddhism denied the identification of the personal ego with the universal ego, maintained that the soul is not a permanent spiritual substance, but is the result of a series of states of consciousness detached from one another, though associated in series.

The goal to be reached is to annul individual existence in nirvāṇa (= extinguished, quenched), already in life through the stilling of every passion (nirvāṇa) which prepares the way for complete extinction (second nirvāṇa, parinirvāṇa), that is, for the impossibility of a new birth.

But the doctrinal development of Buddhism led to overcoming this too agnostic vision of original Buddhism (called the Little Vehicle), incapable of giving vent to individual mysticism, and introduced (Great Vehicle) the transcendent and permanent concept of divinity in the figure of the cosmic Buddha, revealed one day in the person of the historical Buddha. Every individual can become a Buddha, provided he makes the merit of his personal sacrifice redound to the benefit of others, consisting in renouncing, for the advantage of others, the attainment of liberation that would lead him to enjoy beatitude in Buddha's paradise; which is equivalent to an implicit but real affirmation of immortality. Mazdeism, preached by Zarathustra, places among the holy immortals who surround the throne of Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord," Ahura Mazda, Ameretat, immortality, the reward of a life conducted according to justice. The Fravashi (who in the pre-Zoroastrian era were the souls of the deceased) are placed, almost as guardian angels, over the protection of individuals and with their assistance guarantee their immortality.

In Greece the survival of the soul is documented, from the Minoan era onward, by funerary furnishings (especially the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada), but not even in Homer is there found the affirmation of immortality, which is the exclusive privilege of the gods, thanks to the ambrosia and nectar of which they make use.

The evolution of the concept of survival into that of immortality occurred in Greece thanks to the mysteries (v.), particularly those of Dionysus (v.), with its orgiasticism that gave initiates the sense of having attained a supranormal state; to the Orphic ones, which are its theological sublimation, and to the Eleusinian ones (v.).

For the philosophical-religious development of the concept of immortality in Greece during the Hellenistic era, v. below.

Islam, which drew its doctrinal elements from Jewish and Christian sources, affirms the immortality of the soul where it speaks both of the particular judgment (Qur'an, 7, 35; 50, 16) and of the universal one that Allāh will make of the good and the wicked (Qur'an, 21, 48). The further theological development of Islam has kept this faith firm while orienting it with Avicenna in an Aristotelian sense and with al-Ghazālī in a mystical sense.

Nicola Turchi

II. IMMORTALITY IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The belief in a survival of the soul after death seems to belong to the original patrimony of human consciousness and constitutes, together with the existence of the divinity, the other pole of religious consciousness: this persuasion manifests itself in the popular consciousness especially through the cult of the dead, through the practices of divination (μαντική) and of catharsis, and above all through the practices of religious exaltation (ἐνθουσιασμός, μανία).

According to Rohde, it is above all to the cult of Dionysus, which came from Thrace, that credit is due for having nourished in the popular consciousness the hope of immortality, so that man, after the hardships of life, may through death lead a happy life similar to that of the divinity.

In the Homeric poems man appears as purely mortal, and only the heroes are taken up to immortality, but their life in the underworld, rather than rejoicing in the happiness of the gods, still feels the needs and the cares of the earthly life to which they remain bound. Even in the Orphic poems immortality is considered the attribute of the divinity, whereas men are called mortal: ἀθάνατοι τε θεοί, θνητοί τε ἀνθρώποι (Orphicorum fragmenta, ed. O. Kern, Berlin 1922, frg. 169, 8). After death, the souls are led by Hermes into a "subterranean place," as Proclus declares (εἰς τὸν ὑποχθύνων τόπων: In Rempuhl. Plat., ed. W. Kroll, Leipzig 1901, p. 340, 2; cf. p. 339, 20 ff. and the Orphic frg. 244) in order to be purged or punished. A lengthy fragment presents a doctrine that presupposes an advanced philosophical elaboration of the popular belief, inasmuch as it asserts outright the immortality of the human soul because it is made by Jupiter and derives from the incorruptible element of the ether and therefore has a divine nature: ψυχή δ'ἀνθρωποίον ἀπ'ἀθέρος ἐρρίζωται, καὶ ἄλλως — ἀέρα δ'ἐλκόντες ψυχὴν θείαν ὄρεπόμεσθα — ψυχή δ'ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγέρας ἐκ Διός ἄστιν (Orphicorum frāgm., ed. cit., frg. 228). Here is clearly delineated the so to speak cosmo-ontological character of immortality that is characteristic of all Greek thought: the soul is immortal because it results from, or because it belongs to, the indestructible substance of the gods, or because it is more akin to their nature. Immortality therefore does not yet spring from a metaphysics of the spirit in the modern sense, but is bound to attributes of perpetuity, indestructibility, subtlety, simplicity, etc., which are proper to the most perfect body, the ether, which is also the substance of the celestial bodies: called for that reason the "fifth body," "celestial body" (τέμπτου σῶμα, θεῖον σῶμα). Cumont has sought to show the Oriental, and more particularly Persian, origin of the Greek belief in immortality: what is certain is that down to Plato and Aristotle the superiority of the nature of the human soul is referred not to spirituality, but to its incorruptibility (ἀφθαρσία), deriving from the ethereal nature of the soul, which obtains for it "the affinity with the gods" (συγγένεια πρὸς θεοῦς). Thus it should not be surprising that already in Thales the soul is called ἀκτικίνητος and αὐτοκίνητος (H. Diels, Dox. gr., 2nd ed., Berlin 1929, p. 386 a 10) and even "immortal" (H. Diels, Die Fragm. der Vorsokratiker, I, 5th ed., ibid. 1937, fr. A. 1, p. 68, 4); Alcmaeon would have expressly called it endowed with sempiternal motion and therefore immortal like the gods (H. Diels, Dox. gr., p. 386 b, 12). Explicit affirmations of immortality are found in Anaximander and Anaximenes, as an attribute of the First Principle: uncreated, incorruptible... immortal, imperishable ('Ἐτι δὲ καὶ ἀγένητον καὶ ἀφθάρτον ὡς ἀρχὴ τις οὖσα... καὶ τοὺς εἶναι τὸ θεῖον ἀθάνατον γὰρ καὶ ἀνώλεθρον, ὡς φησὶν ὁ Ἀναξιμάνδρος καὶ οἱ πλείστοι τῶν φωσιόλογων (H. Diels, Die Fragm. d. Vorsokratiker, I, frg. A 15, p. 85, 16 ff.). It is therefore important to note that the corporeality of the soul constituted by no means an obstacle to affirming its immortality, but rather this was safeguarded and affirmed with particular energy by attributing to the soul an incorruptible corporeality.

The defense of immortality became easier when, with Pythagoreanism, people began to affirm the "incorporeal" (ἀσώματος) nature of the soul. From the Pythagorean position derived the Platonic doctrine, whose definitive cornerstones are: 1) "that which moves itself" (ἀντοκίνητος) is of itself in act and cannot perish; 2) that which moves itself is not moved by another, but is itself the principle of motion for other movable things, and such is the soul; 3) now every such principle is by its nature "unbegotten" (ἀγένετος) and eternal (cf. Phaed., 245 c e); 4) the perhaps most substantial argument is the one taken from the ἀνάμνησις of the Phaedo, inasmuch as it appeals to pure intellectual knowing, which demands an ontological order superior to that of sensations (Phaed., 73 c-77 d). Immortality in Plato is expressly conceived with an individual character, but then remains hampered, among other things, by the theory of pre-existence and by metempsychosis, which divert it into myth, in a contrast between making it "unbegotten and eternal" like that of the divinity and abandoning it to the continuous passage from body to body in order to purify itself. Aristotle deepens the argument from knowledge, but seems to affirm immortality as a property of the νοῦς ποιητικός alone, which (unlike the νοῦς παθητικός φθαρτός) is called τοῦτο μόνον ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀξίδιον (De an., III, 5, 430 a 24 ff.) precisely because by its nature it is impassible and simple (ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἀμυγὲς καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνεργεῖς ibid., 16). Probably Aristotle did not reach a clear consciousness of personal immortality, as seems indicated by the affirmation that the desire for immortality remains within the realm of impossible things: βούλησις ἀθανάτων οὖον ἀθανασίας (Eth. Nic., III, 4, 1111 b 23). Thus also when in the De gen. anim., II, 3, 736 a 15 Aristotle speaks of the νοῦς that comes "from outside" (θῆραθεν), he seems to mean the activity of the generator that transmits life with the seed and not a creative act of God who infuses the spirit.

The explicit negation of immortality appears with Democritus, who considers the soul a substance "composed" of atoms and therefore dissolved in death like the other bodies, and in this he is followed by Epicurus (H. Diels, Dov. gr., p. 393 a 8). The Stoics, while holding the soul to be ἀποσπάσμα τοῦ θεοῦ, remained hesitant between the moral exigency of a perfect justice and happiness of the better spirits, which demands individual immortality, and the logic of their own materialist metaphysics, which excluded it; they affirm immortality, for example Chrysippus and Seneca himself, who make souls migrate into the stars; they deny it — Panaetius, Posidonius, Epictetus, M. Aurelius, etc. — for whom the sage, free from the disturbances of the passions, can enjoy on this earth the perfect happiness of his virtue (ἀταραξία, ἀπάθεια). Plotinus, in the special treatise dedicated to immortality (Enn., IV, 7), after a close criticism of the Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines, accused of materialism, but whose positive elements he uses, returns to the Platonic doctrine, reserving absolute immortality however to the principal soul or anima mundi, into which the individual souls are reabsorbed. The cosmic character of immortality is abundantly developed in the system of Proclus in the various grades of θεία σώματα (the heaven and the stars: cf. Arist., De coelo, II, 1, 284 a 1): μερικαὶ ψυχαί, δαίμονες, θεῖαι ψυχαί, holding firm the equivalence of immortality and eternity (τῶν τὸ ἀθάνατον ἀξίδιον) and accepting in substance also for the human soul an incorruptible material vehicle (ἔχημα) of celestial origin (Proclus, Elementa theologiae, ed. E. R. Dodds, Oxford 1932, propp. 105-107; cf. especially Exorens, p. 315 ff.).

One may therefore conclude that, if the absolute denial of immortality in Greek philosophy is rare and sporadic, its demonstration in the sense of a rigorous spiritualism and personalism was not clearly achieved: immortality is affirmed by some as a function of an incorruptible, simple corporeality (the celestial ether), etc., from which the stars and divinity itself result; by others the soul is called "incorporeal" (ἀσώματος) as number, harmony, first act, etc.: it is therefore destined to vanish with the dissolution of the body, at death. In both currents the soul has a cosmic nature and becomes a cosmic function, and does not fulfill the desire that stirs every man for survival. The last Greek conception, that of the Neoplatonists, seeks to fuse the principles of the various schools into a more awkward synthesis. Traces of this metaphysical conception of an immortality founded on bodily incorruptibility return in Macrobius (In somn. Scipionis, I, 12, 13) and in Boethius himself (Cons. philos., III, 9); in the 17th century it makes its appearance among the Cambridge Neoplatonists (cf. R. Cudworth, Systema intellectuale, II, Jena 1733, p. 1903 ff.).

II. PATRISTICS, SCHOLASTICISM, RENAISSANCE

The tangle of the philosophers' doctrines on immortality was bound to make Christians circumspect in having recourse to philosophy. In the earliest writers, who display this distrust of reason, there goes hand in hand the conviction that the soul at birth and by its own nature is mortal, but then becomes immortal by grace and through good works. Tatian (Oratio adversus Graecos, 13) declares expressly: οὐκ ἔστιν ἀθάνατος καθ' αὐτὴν ἡ ψυχή... ὄνῃτ' δὲ (PG 6, 833; cf. 15, 837). The Latin writers are no less resolute. Lactantius makes clear the difficulty the philosophers experienced over the problem of immortality: the Pythagoreans and the Stoics, in order to affirm it, must deny creation and feign metempsychosis (Div. inst., III, 13). Treating expressly of immortality (ibid., VII, 5-8), Lactantius admits that man at birth enjoys only animal life, whereas immortality is an ethical task: «Homo rectus in coelum spectat, quia proposita est illi immortalitas, nec tamen venit nisi tribuatur homini a Deo. Nam nihil interest iustum et iniustum, siquidem omnis homo natus immortalis fieret. Ergo immortalitas non est sequela naturae sed merces praemiumque virtutis est... Quae ratio docet mortalem nasci hominem, postea vero immortalem fieri, cum coeperit ex Deo vivere, id est iustitiam sequi» (ibid., VII, 5, 753-54). And earlier he distinguishes two lives in man, earthly and heavenly: «Illam nascendo accipimus, hanc assequimur laborando ne immortalitas homini sine ulla difficultare constaret. Illam primam nescientes accipimus, hanc secundam scientes, virtuti enim non datur» (ibid., 752 f.). This agnosticism is perhaps more apparent than real: these writers wish to bring out the so to speak existential aspect of blessed immortality, which is a personal goal to be attained, and not a destiny that concerns the soul as a cosmic principle. Among the Greeks, St. Justin, more deeply versed in the knowledge of classical philosophy, knows how to sift the positive from the negative. In the Cohortatio ad Graecos he affirms that Plato read Moses and that he defended immortality even though he obscured it by affirming in the Phaedrus (245 C) that every soul is immortal: πᾶσα ψυχή ἀθάνατος. But Aristotle, by making the soul an "act" of the body (ἐντελέχεια), rendered it mortal (PG 6, 253). What strikes one in these writers is the serenity and the certainty of possessing revealed truth, which enables them to judge at once the value of classical culture and to discover its gaps. Characteristic is the position of Tertullian, who, despite attributing materiality to the soul, resolutely defends its immortality and then appeals expressly to Scripture to reject the Platonic theory of pre-existence. His definition of the soul reflects this strange syncretism: «Definimus animam, Dei flatu natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantia simplicem, de suo patientem, varie procedentem, liberam arbitrii, accidentis obnoxiam, per ingenia mutabilem, rationalem, dominatricem, ex una redundantem» (De anima, 22). The great Alexandrian school and the Fathers of the 4th-5th centuries, knowing Greek philosophy thoroughly, can incorporate it into the elaboration of revealed truth, and it is to Plato and the Neoplatonists that they turn by preference; whereas Aristotle, probably because of the materialist degenerations of his school, remains a suspect source. Yet this harmed the progress of doctrine, both because of the dangers intrinsic to Platonism, from whose abuse almost all the Trinitarian and Christological heresies germinated, and because Aristotle, who had affirmed the immortality of the human νοῦς even more energetically than Plato, had also elaborated, with his doctrine of the emergence of act and with his theory of knowledge — in function of absolute immateriality — the most proper concept of spirit as an absolutely original sphere of being. Nevertheless the Fathers, when they take the terms of the problem from Plato, develop the concepts in the spiritual climate of Christianity; just as some of them (e.g., the Alexandrian school) made ample use also of doctrinal elements of the Stoic philosophy then dominant. The most distinguished example of this higher syncretism is the work of St. Augustine (cf. Soliloquia, I, II, and De immortalitate animae).

The Christian Middle Ages up to the 13th century live on the patristic heritage (especially that of Augustine and of Pseudo-Dionysius) and therefore incline to Platonism with strong accents on Neoplatonic doctrines (school of Chartres, Scotus Eriugena). In the second half of the 13th century the unusual aporia of classical philosophy reappears in the controversy over Averroism (v.), which, by proclaiming the unity of the intellect for the whole human species, annihilated personal immortality and the entire Christian moral edifice, according to the forceful accusation of St. Thomas: «Subtracta enim ab hominibus diversitate intellectus, qui solus inter animae partes incorruptibilis et immortalis apparet, sequitur post mortem nihil de animabus hominum remanere nisi unicam intellectus substantiam; et sic tollitur retributio praemiorum et poenarum et diversitas eorumdem» (De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, ed. J. L. Perrier, in Opuscula omnia, I, Paris 1949, p. 72). As for the demonstrability of immortality, while St. Thomas finds the arguments of reason sufficient, most of the Scholastics, especially of the Augustinian tendency (and later Scotus and the Scotists), deny their probative value and cling to faith as the sole support against the corrosive action of philosophical reason (cf. R. Messner, Schaenedes und begriffliches Erkennen nach Duns Scotus, Freiburg im Br. 1944, p. 334). This dualism burst forth in the Renaissance, giving occasion for bitter struggles between Averroists and Alexandrists and for endless discussions, of which the immense literature that lies for the most part unpublished in libraries bears witness: an eloquent document of profound spiritual interest, but also a sign of unskilled method. Suffice it to mention the most clamorous episode, that of Pomponazzi: his aim in the De immortalitate animae (1516) as in the Apologia (1517) and the Defensorium (1519) is to "

Aristotle and to show that it is faith and not reason that teaches the truth of immortality. Therefore in the conclusion of the Defensorium Pomponazzi protests: "Primo quia vere mentem Aristotelis exposimus ut credimus. Secundo, quoniam in omnibus nostris tractatibus damnamus blasphemiam et detestamur animae mortalitatem: non quidem ex aliqua ratione naturali movemur ad hoc, sed tantum quoniam sacri canones sic determinant. Evangelio namque credo quoniam Ecclesia credit...: ideo solum ex simplici sincera fide credendum est animam esse immortalem" (Opera, Venice 1525, fol. 108 r). Porzio too was no less explicit: "Animam igitur principium ortus habuisse et non deficere non est physicum decretum nec a philosopho peripathetico probatum" (Simone Porzio, Disp. de mente humana, Florence 1551, p. 90; cf. p. 94 ff.). The Latin Averroists (Siger, G. of Jandun, etc.) likewise hold that individual immortality is a doctrine of faith and not of reason: both positions are backward, Alexandrism as much as Averroism, because they have immobilized the life of thought at one of its historical moments, albeit among the most distinguished, such as the one attributed to Aristotle. Cardinal Cajetan too stumbled on this rock; when already old, he wrote: "Sicut nescio misterium Trinitatis, sicut nescio animam immortalem, sicut nescio Verbum caro factum est, et similia quae tamen credo... sicut et reliqua fidei mysteria. Haec ignorantia quietat intellectum meum" (Comm. in ep. 1. Pauli, Paris 1542, pp. 66-67). It is known that at the Fifth Lateran Council (1513) Cajetan had shown himself opposed to the condemnation of Averroism and Alexandrism on this point. The Dominican B. Spina therefore did not scruple in his Propugnaculum Aristotelis de immortalitate animae contra Thomam Caietanum (Venice 1519) to accuse his illustrious confrere of having prepared the way for Pomponazzi (cf. E. Cassirer-P. O. Kristeller-J. H. Randall, The Renaissance philosophy of man, Chicago 1948, p. 271). The most distinguished monument of the defense of immortality is Ficino's Theologia platonica, de immortalitate animarum, composed barely half a century before these heated controversies; in it Christian philosophy, by the light of faith, knows how to draw the partial sparks of truth from the whole body of knowledge of classical and Christian antiquity; among the demonstrative rationes adduced by Ficino, certainly of Thomist inspiration are the 7th ("quia esse suum habet a sua essentia"), the 8th ("quia esse proprium habet et numquam a sua forma discedit"), the 9th ("quia sibi per se convenit esse") and also the 13th ("quia esse a Deo accipit sine medio"), where Ficino departs from Plotinus, Proclus and other Neoplatonic supporters of "mediated creation" in order to defend, with Pseudo-Dionysius, Origen and St. Augustine, immediate creation (Theol. plat., V, 7 ff.; in Opera, I, Basel 1561, fol. 140 ff.). In the more mature Quaestiones de mente (Epistolae, I, II; loc. cit., fol. 675 ff.) Ficino grounds the immortality of the soul solely on the appetitus naturalis for happiness, which can be satisfied only in the next life, and he explicitly has recourse to Aristotelian metaphysics (cf. fol. 677) in setting out the argument that is perhaps the first and the last in this controversy over human destiny (St. Thomas expressly touches on the argument in: C. Gent., II, 84).

III. MODERN PHILOSOPHY

In modern philosophy the problem of immortality seems to recover its normal proportions, inasmuch as it is posed and resolved within the scope of the more universal problem of truth and being. But if in pre-Kantian rationalism immortality is still defended, in Spinoza's pantheism it vanishes into the eternity of the single substance; Hume's empiricism annuls it in absolute phenomenalism, and Kant reduces it to a mere "postulate" of practical reason (cf. Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, II, 2, § 4). In the great idealist systems which renew, within the Bewusstsein überhaupt erected into absolute reality, the Averroist position, personal immortality disappears, because the individual is reduced to a transient phenomenon. Fichte conceives the possibility of a personal immortality as moral redemption only with the survival of the body as well (cf. Über unsern Glauben an die ewige Fortdauer, ed. F. Medicus, III, Leipzig 1908, p. 186; ed. F. Büchsel, Leipzig 1914, p. 55 ff.). For Hegel immortality corresponds to the imagination of a life of consciousness withdrawn from time and movement, and therefore represents the inferior moment of abstract individual subjectivity (cf. Philosophie der Religion, ed. Lasson, I, Leipzig 1925, p. 234; II, ibid. 1924, p. 162).

Strauss sees precisely the essence of modern thought on immortality, above all in the direction imparted by Spinoza, in the conception that makes immortality not "something future but something that is apprehended as the present quality of the spirit, as its interior universality, its power to raise itself above every finite reality toward the idea." And this holds not only for the position of philosophical pantheism of the type, for example, of Hegel, but for the theological subjectivism of Schleiermacher himself, who assigns to man the task of "identifying himself in finitude with the infinite and of being eternal in the moment" (D. F. Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre, II, Tübingen-Stuttgart 1841, p. 737 ff.). The Hegelian conception provoked, among other things, the reaction of Goethe himself: the poet affirms the independence and superiority of religion over philosophy and holds as the decisive demonstration of immortality the one drawn from "activity" (Tätigkeit), that is, from the incompleteness that man experiences in this life, the restlessness that must be satisfied in another form of existence (I. P. Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe, ed. L. Geiger, Leipzig 1902, p. 245). The implicit Hegelian negation of immortality will become the starting point of Feuerbach's (v.) critique of religion. In contemporary philosophies that affirm the identity of being and time, such as left-wing existentialism and Marxism, every personal immortality is devoid of meaning and considered as pure mythology or fantastic projection of a vain subjective desire.

Cornelio Fabro

III. IMMORTALITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.

However veiled in mystery, life beyond the grave is affirmed from the most ancient texts of the Old Testament.

This is what the scholar expects, considering the universality of such a belief, especially among all the ancient Semites (E. Dhorme, in Revue biblique, 16 [1907], p. 59). In Babylonia, this second life is pale, diminished, but it is no less real and lasting. In the "great earth" (higallu), where all descend at death, there is a true kingdom, with legislation, governing bodies, etc. Nergal and Ereshkigal, king and queen, have their palace; a secretary, Namtaru; a scribe, a governor, etc. Justice is in the hands of the Anunnaki, infernal deities, who have seats of gold (E. Dhorme, ibid., p. 71 ff.).

In the Old Testament one finds the same ideas, the same expressions concerning the great dwelling where all descend (v. šē'ōl), naturally excluding the myths and the deities, since the one Yahweh is present even down there (Ps. 139, 7 ff.; Iob 26, 6). The Bible, moreover, formally affirms such survival in the well-known, most ancient phrases for indicating death: "to descend into šē'ōl"; "to be gathered to one's people"; "to return to one's fathers" (Gen. 15, 15; 25, 8, 17; 35, 29; 49, 29, 32; Num. 20, 24, 26; 27, 13; 31, 2; Deut. 31, 16; 32, 50; etc.); they evidently presuppose that something remains and survives the dissolution of the body (v. SOUL).

"The souls, held to be the most vital part of man, something that survived the dissolution of the body, a kind of reduction of the human being, but which preserved its personality intact (cf. I Sam. 28, 8-20), these souls all descended into šē'ōl, where their lot was not determined by any judgment" (M. J. Lagrange, Le judaïsme [v. bibl.], p. 345). It is impossible in fact to understand the most ancient biblical phrases of descent into the family tomb; both because of the analogy and identity with the Babylonian expressions, and because such a sense is often formally excluded by the text itself. Gen. 37, 35: "I will go down mourning to my son into šē'ōl," says Jacob, certain that Joseph has been devoured by a wild beast! Num. 16, 30: the earth opens and swallows the guilty who "descend alive into šē'ōl; cf. Judic. 2, 10. David, Omri, Manasseh "were gathered to their fathers," but were not buried in the family tomb (I Reg. 2, 10; 16, 28; II Reg. 21, 18); the same holds for Abraham, Ishmael, Aaron and Moses.

The Old Testament is very sober on the matter. And this, first of all, because of the danger of polytheism. There are traces of it in the prohibition of certain funeral rites (Lev. 30, 27 ff.; Deut. 14, 1), in the prohibition of necromancy (Deut. 18, 11; 26, 14); cf. especially I Sam. 28, 8-20 on the evocation of Samuel, where, besides the spread of necromancy in popular religion, there emerges the explicit belief in life beyond the grave, with the preservation of one's personality. The afterlife is sketched there fleetingly, also because of the real conditions then existing: heaven was closed, so that no beatitude is possible outside of Christ (Hebr. 6, 20); only at the morning of the Resurrection did the just, with the glorification of Christ, receive the awaited reward and the wicked the deserved punishment (Dan. 21, 1 ff., 13; Hebr. 11, 39 ff.; cf. A. Feuillet [v. bibl.]; F. Spadafora [v. bibl.]).

Thus is explained the inert life (Eccle. 9, 5 ff. 10), likened to sleep (Iob 10, 20 ff.; 17, 16; 20, 11 etc.), in the darkness (Ps. 49, 20; 88, 7, 13; etc.), of the souls in šē'ōl; where they cannot praise Yahweh (Ps. 6, 6; 115, 17; Is. 38, 18); and their name of rēphā'im ("languid," "weak").

The hope for the future is expressed clearly in Ps. 16, 11; 49, 16; 73, 23 ff. and often in the book of Wisdom, which speaks of immortality (Sap. 3, 4; 4, 1; 8, 17; 15, 3), of incorruptibility (ibid. 2, 23; 6, 18 ff.) and of the different lot that awaits the just (ibid. 3, 1 ff. 7, 9; 4, 4-17; 5, 15) and the wicked (ibid. 1, 16; 2, 21-25; 5, 6-13), always in messianic or eschatological contexts. For the realization of such hope was in fact imminent.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is common in the apocrypha and in the rabbinic books, with analogies with that of the wisdom books as regards the different lot for the just and for the wicked, but very confused and indistinct (J. Bonsirven [v. bibl.], I, pp. 322-49; M.-J. Lagrange, Le judaïsme [v. bibl.], pp. 353-63).

Only in the New Testament does the doctrine of the immortality of the soul have its full formulation: Mt. (and parallel passages) 5, 12, 29; 10, 28; 16, 26; 18, 9; 22, 32 ff.; I Cor. 3, 15; Hebr. 13, 14; II Cor. 5, 1-10; Phil. 1, 18-26 and passim.

IV. IMMORTALITY ACCORDING TO CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

In the face of the continuous spectacle of the inevitability of the body's death, man has always sought to secure for himself a possibility of salvation against the loss of being: agitated by the desire for a perfect and endless happiness, which he knows he cannot obtain in mortal life, man has sought in religion, in philosophy, in poetry, in art and in praxis itself as well as in the conquests of science and technology to master the corrosion of time and of death. The fundamental difficulty of the problem of immortality comes from the lack of any sensory evidence of immortality itself. On the other hand, to satisfy the fundamental requirement of an immortality in the proper sense, corresponding to the aspiration of human consciousness, the survival of being must have a double character, that is, it must be of a principally spiritual nature and have a personal structure: an immortality of a cosmic order in which the peculiarity of human nature and life vanishes, as the actualization of knowledge and love, or an immortality reserved for a few privileged ones (heroes, philosophers, sages, etc.) or, finally, an immortality of a universal character, that is, concerning humanity as such or reason in general, etc., all these conceptions do not satisfy the problem.

The universal aspiration to immortality has its root, on the one hand, in the longing for an infinite happiness that man feels and that he seeks in vain to satisfy both in the goods of the body and in those of the spirit such as are attainable in this life; on the other hand, immortality springs from the deep demand for an order of perfect justice in which the injustices that appear evident and inevitable in earthly life are repaired, with the rewarding of the good and the punishment of the wicked in a future life. This eschatological character lies at the root of the nearly universal conviction of immortality and contains and fulfills the preceding ones concerning the personal and spiritual character of survival.

Since the being of man expresses a double relationship — one intrinsic and constitutive between the soul and the body, and one extrinsic and conclusive between man and God — the orientations on the problem of immortality likewise become double. In the first relationship, if the soul does not maintain a truly substantial union, but only a dynamic one, with the body, as a simple principle of motion, then the immortality of the soul can be saved, but the ontological unity of man seems to be compromised; if, on the other hand, the soul is said to be truly the substantial form of the body, it is then difficult to understand how it can survive on its own, once separated from the body. In the second relationship, one may think that the human soul is a principle belonging to an ontological order akin to the Divinity and therefore participating in the eternity and necessity of the Divinity itself; but then birth and death are not explained; or else it is posited as a contingent reality created in time by God, and then one does not see how something that begins should not also end. These are the principal stumbling blocks of the immortality of the soul on the theoretical plane, which in classical thought prevented the formation of a consistent position on this point, which is the most decisive of man's being and which will be clarified only with the advent of Christianity.

The most complete solution remains that of St. Thomas, according to which the human soul has an entirely special nature, intermediate between purely corporeal forms and angelic natures; in fact it is the substantial form of the body, but at the same time it rises above the being of the body through its spiritual functions and is therefore a spirit. The soul is created by God in time, but although it has had a beginning it knows no end, because it is endowed (a parte post) with an intrinsic necessity of existing; it is a spiritual form, and yet every human individual is born with its own soul, which makes it a "person" endowed with rational dignity, with free choice and capax Dei, because it is by way of the spiritual and immortal soul that man is said to be "in the image of God" (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 93, a. 6). The Thomist demonstration has an apodictic character, inasmuch as it proceeds from the knowledge of real properties to the determination of the essence, and unfolds in two stages: 1) the human soul is a form subsisting in itself, that is, spiritual, inasmuch as it is endowed with operations in which the body properly does not participate (the spiritual functions); 2) a subsisting form, that is, spiritual, which operates "for itself," also has being for itself and not in dependence on the body; on the contrary, it is the body that receives being from it. Existing therefore belongs to the human soul in an inseparable way, and thus after death it preserves its being and remains incorruptible. And the soul has "a sign" of its indestructible nature in the horror that man feels at death and in the longing to live forever (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 75, aa. 2 and 6).

Questa riflessione porta l'Angelico a delineare a second metaphysical argument for immortality, inspired by the Augustinian conception of the "eternal truths," which can well satisfy the legitimate demands of the so-called "philosophy of life" or of action and of the new Christian spiritualism. The fact that knowledge attains eternal and unchangeable truths does not prove the eternity of the knowing subject, but of the object known and of the ultimate foundation of those truths, which is the "First Truth," God himself, who draws the soul to himself as to its final end: "Ex fine autem argumentum accipere possumus de rei duratione, sicut et de initio rei argumentari possumus per causam agentem: quod enim est ordinatum ad finem sempiternum, oportet esse capax perpetuae durationis. Unde potest probari ex aeternitate veritatis intelligibilis immortalitas animae" (C. Gent., II, 84).

V. IMMORTALITY ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC DOCTRINE.

In the most complete description of the afterlife in the classical world, left by Virgil (Aen., VI, 739-55), we have the synthesis of the Platonic myth with the most mature Stoic conception: it is affirmed that the destiny of souls after death differs according to the life led on earth. Those who have died, stained with sins, must purify themselves with proportionate punishments and then pass to the Elysian fields for the final purification (the bath in the river Lethe) and from there, after a period of a thousand years, take up life again in bodies. In this Virgilian description, which seems to derive especially from the Stoic Posidonius, the earliest Latin Christian literature saw an anticipation of Christian doctrine: although the eternity of punishments and of the blessed life is still lacking, there is clearly the sense of personality, of expiation and of purification even for souls that have not sinned (an anticipation of the Christian "Limbo"; cf. L. Radermacher, Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen, Bonn 1903, p. 13 ff.).

The doctrine of personal immortality is contained in the Apostles' Creed itself with the articles of the "resurrection of the body" and of "eternal life," since the body is made to rise again in order to be united with the soul, which keeps its being, and to share in its life. Moreover, the fact that in Sacred Scripture the immortality of Adam's body is presented as a free gift of God, which the first man lost through sin, presupposes that after death man's life is limited to the activities that are possible to the soul when it is separated from the body. The condemnation of the Fifth Lateran Council (19 Dec. 1513) directly strikes the denial of personal immortality on the part of Alexandrism and Averroism: "Damnamus et reprobamus omnes asserentes animam intellectivam mortalem esse aut unicam in cunctis hominibus et haec in dubium vertentes." The conciliar decree appeals directly to Mt. 10:28 ("Et nolite timere eos qui occident corpus, animam autem non possunt occidere") and to Io. 12:25 ("Qui odit animam suam in hoc mundo, in vitam aeternam custodit eam"). On the meaning and theological scope of the decree, Luther himself is in agreement, as is acknowledged on the Protestant side (P. Althaus, Luthers Stellung zur Unsterblichkeit, in Die letzten Dinge, 3rd ed., Gütersloh 1926, p. 280). The conciliar text continues by showing that the truth of immortality is at the basis of Christianity and that reason cannot demonstrate the contrary: "Alias Incarnatio et alia Christi mysteria nobis minime profuissent, nec resurrectio exspectanda foret, ac sancti ac iusti miserabiliores essent iuxta Apostolum, cunctis hominibus" (omitted by Denz-U). For Calvin it is the moral conscience that gives the decisive testimony of immortality: "Certe conscientia, quae inter bonum et malum discernens Dei iudicio respondet, indubium est immortalis spiritus signum" (Inst., I, 15, 2). The Council then, even though it does not pronounce directly on the rational demonstrability of immortality, nevertheless condemns the theory of the "double truth": "Cumque verum vero minime contra dicat, omnem assertionem veritati illuminatae fidei contrariam omnino falsam esse definimus; et ut aliter dogmatizare liceat, districtius inhibemus" (Denz-U, 738). The conciliar condemnation has a negative-positive sense: reason cannot demonstrate the mortality of the soul or its uniqueness for the whole human species, and faith cannot teach the absurd (in philosophy). That personal immortality, however, belongs to the preambula fidei and is therefore accessible to reason alone, is the doctrine of St. Thomas and is commonly accepted by theologians. The immortality of the body, on the other hand, which man lost with original sin, will not be regained except with the final resurrection of the flesh, but this is a miracle of God's power and surpasses every capacity of the human intellect (Sum. Theol., 3a, Suppl., p. 75, a. 3). Nevertheless the resurrection of bodies, although it is not natural, satisfies man's natural desire for the integrity of his person, especially when one accepts, with St. Thomas, the Aristotelian notion that the soul is the substantial form of the body, so that integral man consists in the operative harmony of his principles. The Angelic Doctor himself admits that the philosophers of antiquity did not arrive at the perfect clarity that can be obtained after Christian Revelation: "In quo satis apparet quantam angustiam patiebantur hinc inde eorum praeclara ingenia; a quibus angustias liberabimur si ponamus hominem ad veram felicitatem post hanc vitam pervenire posse, anima hominis immortali exsistente" (C. Gent., III, 48, toward the end). To this unshakable certainty faith gives the definitive confirmation.

From the historical-critical point of view: A. Stöckl, Die spekulative Lehre vom Menschen und ihre Gesch., 2 vols., Würzburg 1859, especially II, p. 148 ff. (anti-Platonism of the early Fathers). Fundamental for beliefs about immortality in the classical world is: E. Rohde, Psyche, Seelenbult und Unterblüchkeitsglaube der Griechen, Tübingen 1893; 10th ed., ibid. 1925 (for a retrospective critical discussion of the work, v. W. Jaeger, The theology of early greek philosophers, Oxford 1948, p. 73 ff.). In addition: G. Runze, Unterblüchkeit und Auferstehung, part 1: Die Psychologie des Unterblüchkeitsglaubens und der Unterblüchkeitsleugnung, Berlin 1894; W. James, Human immortality, Boston and New York 1898; I. Royce, Conception of immortality, ibid. 1900; H. Graf Keyserling, Unterblüchkeit, Munich 1907; L. Friedländer, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Rom, VIII, iv, Leipzig 1910, pp. 359-68; C. Pascal, Le credenze di oltretomba, 2 vols., Catania 1912; H. Scholz, Der Unterblüchkeitsgedanke als philosophisches Problem, 2nd ed., Tübingen 1922; C. Stange, Die Unterblüchkeit der Seele, Gütersloh 1925; K. Fahrion, Gott, Freiheit, Unterblüchkeit, Leipzig 1926; Th. Mainage, Immortalité, Paris 1926; H. Lungwitz, Über Unterblüchkeit, in Annales der Philosophie, 6 (1927), pp. 116-27; W. Gortmann, Die Unterblüchkeitsbeweise, Karlsruhe 1927 (historical exposition from Plato to Giles of Rome). - On the denial of immortality on the part of the Hegelian left, v.: C. Fr. Goschel, Von den Beweisen für die Unterblüchkeit der menschlichen Seele in Lichte der specialisierten Philosophie, Berlin 1834; Chr. H. Weisse, Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unterblüchkeit des menschlichen Individuums, Dresden 1835; I. H. Fichte, Die Seelenfortdauer und die Weltstellung des Menschen, Leipzig 1867; Fr. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, 9th ed. by E. Zeller, Bonn 1877, p. 81 ff.; id., Die Unterblüchkeitslehre der modernen Reflexion, in Die christliche Glaubenslehre, II, Tübingen and Stuttgart 1841, p. 697 ff.; E. Hirsch, Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum, Gütersloh 1926 (important for the study of Fichte, p. 172);

W. Stahler, Zur Unterblüchkeitsproblematik in Hegels Nachfolge, Münster 1928; K. Leese, Philosophie und Theologie im Spätidealismus, Berlino 1929 (specialmente p. 224 sgg., dove espone la posizione di Weisse).

Dal punto di vista sistematico-critico : K. Groos, Die Unterblüchkeitsfrage, Berlino 1922; G. Heidingsfelder, Die Unterblüchkeit der Seele, Monaco di Baviera 1930; id., Zum Unterblüchkeitsfrage in der Renaissance, in Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalters, Mélanges Grabmann, Münster in V, 1935, pp. 1265-86; G. van der Leeuw, Phänomenologie der Religion, 45ª ed., Tubinga 1933, p. 293 sgg.; trad. franc., Parigi 1948, p. 307 sgg.; S. Vanni Rovighi, L'i. dell'a. nei maestri francescani del sec. XIII, Milano 1936; vari autori, Il problema dell'i., in Archivio di filosofia, Roma 1945; E. Franck, Philosophical understanding and religious truth, Londra 1945, pp. 98 sgg., 132 sgg.; E. S. Brightman, A philosophy of religion, Nuova York 1946, pp. 387-410; J. Endres, Die Unterblüchkeit der Menschenseele, in Divus Thomas (Friburgo), 22 (1944), pp. 75-94; A. Bremond, Le syllogisme de l'immortalité, in Rev. philos. de Louvain, 46 (1948), p. 161 sgg.; F. Heller, Unterblüchkeitsglaube u. Jenseitshoffnung, Monaco 1950 (con ampia bibl.).

Nuovi studi sull'antichità classica : M. P. Nilsson, The immortality of the soul in greek religion, in Eranos Jahrbuch, 39 (1941), p. 63 sgg.; Fr. Cumont, Lux perpetua, Parigi 1940, p. 117 sgg. Cornello Fabro