When we seek to explore classical, Christian, and contemporary concepts surrounding the soul, especially with regard to the presence or absence of a structured afterlife, it is easy to see similarities between the three and realize that the classical understandings have served as the foundation upon which more spiritual connotations surrounding the soul have been devised. However, as our understanding of the universe expands and grows, so does our conscious theory on meaning and purpose. From pre-Socratic notions surrounding mind, body, and soul, borne from limited scope and understanding of our physical universe, to the focused religiosity within the Christian translation to the more contemporary, existentialist perspective adopted by many in today’s society, the meaning of life, the purpose we serve on this earth, and the exploration of both in a future, post-death tense, has transformed throughout human history, in adaptation to human thought and societal influence.

Hellenistic Views of the Classical Age

The earliest forms of philosophical thought, developed and recorded by ancient scholars during the Classical Era of 1400BC-500AD, offered the first, and arguably the most salient, musings on what would become the formative Western exploration of the human condition. Richard Tarnas, in his work The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas Which Have Shaped Our World View, refers to this study, this inquiry into purpose and meaning, this “…intellectual task as a romantic quest of universal significance”, finding that “knowledge of the world’s underlying structure and meaning entails the exercise of a plurality of human cognitive faculties– rational, empirical, intuitive, aesthetic, imaginative, mnemonic, and moral” (19). Human nature is a varied and subjective topic, but there are enough consistencies and inherent commonalities amongst humans that we can collectively recognize and theorize what it entails and how it serves to promote, explain, or affect, the meaning and purpose of life.

The classical concept of the soul, as explained thoroughly by early philosopher Socrates, in various works written by philosopher and writer Plato, was borne of this new query into existence and purpose, both of the human form and the universe. In one of Plato’s early works Apology, he demonstrates how unreceptive those who held great power over the people within society were of this new philosophy, these abstract ideas of Socrates which challenged all that Romans had known of the existence of gods, and their own notions of wisdom and understanding. In Apology, Socrates explains, ”If I say that this even happens to be a very great good for a human being—to make speeches every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me conversing and examining both myself and others—and that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, you will be persuaded by me less when I say these things” (14). Socrates’ death, and the philosophy for which he was put to death over, prompted Plato to delve into a life of detailed and recorded introspective query.

In Plato’s second period of literary achievement, his work Phaedo, among others, began to explore the human condition, its purpose and meaning, and questioned its alignment with the universe at large. In Phaedo, Socrates, nearing his demise, speaks on the three qualities of man which serve to function congruently to materialize the soul: the mind, and its ability to reason, the emotions, and their influence over the mind, and our animal instincts, and their innate effect on our actions and thoughts. Socrates proposed that these three qualities, in their intangible yet essential state, collectively formed the soul, known in the Classical Era as the psyche, and that the cultivation of reason above both instinct and emotion was the only way to “foster true success and excellence in human life” (19). In this ancient understanding, Socrates presented the soul as a scientifically provable substance, akin to the odorless, colorless, formless oxygen we breathe. He stated that “the soul is evidently immortal”, and therefore should be the primary focus in one’s life, as all pleasures and privileges of the body will cease upon death, while the soul—the mind, emotion, and instinct—will continue on (14).

Plato continued to explore this three-pronged concept throughout his adult life, giving voice to his ideas, and those of others, through the various speakers he employed in his writings. In Timaeus, the titular named character, engrossed in conversation with Socrates, explains the basis for this trifecta of human existence, stating that “two things cannot rightly be put together without a third”, that “there must be some bond of union between them” (16). We see this pattern of threes developed in Phaedo, then explore it again with the three-part description of the soul in Timaeus, with the triangular union, and subsequent fusion, of the mind, body, and psyche, and again, in the Republic, Book IV, when Plato correlates the ordering of the three-part soul with the ordering of the three classes of society.

Just as subsequent eras and periods of philosophical thought were prompted by new understandings of the universe, and our place within it, the Classical Era focused on the astronomical knowledge of the cosmos at that time. Evidence of this is presented in the creation story within the Timaeus. Unburdened by religiosity or spirituality, this understanding was borne of the “Demiurge”, a word meaning worker, but used as creator by Plato. In order to best answer the most pressing questions Plato had concerning the cosmos, and their order and intelligent, divine design, which sought to “explain mathematically the erratic movements of the planets”, he wrote the Timaeus (19). In this work, he explained that the Demiurge was responsible for forming the world “from a chaos of primordial matter”, and that it “had created the heavens as a moving image of eternity, revolving precisely according to perfect mathematical ideas” (19). This perfection, this cosmic structural integrity, was to be repeated in man’s life, as a guideline for divine ordering of the mind, body, and soul. Plato took this concept a step further by offering a set of Laws for mankind, so that they would have a clear understanding of “that which tends most to the improvement of mind and body” and have a guide for the ordering of their soul (13).

Embracing this concept of triangular structure in human order and existence, classical philosopher Marcus Aurelius, in his work Meditations, addressed life as a drama, a play of sorts, writing that “… in life three acts are the whole drama” (3). In Aurelius’ understanding, human life is designed as a three-part growing process by which we ultimately learn to accept reason and develop the ability to recognize ourselves as a part of a whole, a mere subset of nature, which seeks to return to its primal state of existence in a predesigned, yet volatile, universe. Through a plentitude of references to Plato and other great philosophers who pondered our purpose and existence as humans on earth, within Meditations, Aurelius lays out a numbered plan for life, a set of rules for living the best possible earthly existence, so that the soul, the unifying link to nature and life, is best prepared for death. He insists these meditations on life are necessary because we are born into this earthly world as mostly helpless beings who cannot provide for themselves, much less have the grounded sense of reason and intelligence which is salient to passing life “in an equable flow of happiness” (3). Instead, we must learn to calm and control our instincts and innate desires and order ourselves through reason and enhanced understanding. Only then can we rectify our souls, and only then are we living righteously.

Unlike contemporary concepts surrounding death and the soul, where focus is placed on the spiritual debate surrounding Heaven, Hell, and the complete absence of either, the soul in classical conversation was centered on the mind-sciences of philosophy and psychology. Strengthening the soul through contemplative reasoning and inquiry and using one’s time on Earth to question our purpose, our existence, and our psyche, was deemed the supreme approach to life. Death, and its forced separation of the body and soul, was not to be feared, but instead welcomed, as it frees us of our bodily restraints, allowing us to live in a blissful state of expanded consciousness.

Both Aurelius and Plato found that our propensity towards fear and anger, especially when faced with death and disorder, and our learned ability to control such impulses and actions is what largely what contributes to our calming down and ordering. When we grow in mind and reason, through age, influence, and enhanced understanding, we better learn how to maintain a sense of order which is conducive to a good life, one which allows us to leave this world for the better. Through meditation and focused introspection, we evolve past the opening act of infancy, and learn to navigate as thoughtful, reasonable human beings throughout the middle act, to best prepare ourselves for the culminating third act of death and afterlife.

Christian Influence on Philosophy and Liberal Thought

As scientific concepts concerning the cosmos and their order began to evolve, and after a “spiritual crisis” appeared in Hellenistic culture, which left “its members impelled by newly conscious needs for personal significance in the cosmos and personal knowledge of life’s meaning”, Christianity emerged as an answer to their pressing questions, a faith-based solution to their needs (19). Initially considered an “unthinking” belief by scholars of that period, Christian thought presented itself as a salient system of introspection, and “the use of reason to examine and defend articles of faith… and the discipline of logic in particular…rapidly ascended in both educational popularity and theological importance” (19).

In its dominant state, the Christian world view transformed societal understanding of the cosmos, and of the inherent meaning of both the universe and the human soul. Heaven would not only consist of a physical, albeit celestial, location, but it would also serve as the abiding place of the Christian God, therefore establishing itself as the primary aim for a pious and righteous life on Earth. Under this new belief, “God had bestowed to man the ability to determine freely his position in the universe”, equipping him with the ability to, through proper ordering of his spiritual soul, and by living his life in full devotion to God under the principles set forth in The Bible, ascend “…to full union with the supreme God” himself (19).

Around 380 AD, Aurelius Augustine, an educated Roman, growing in his own piety and religiosity, had a conversion experience which led to him becoming a Latin Father of the Church and one of the most prominent Christian thinkers in history (11). Revered for his intelligence, “his writings were so widely read and imitated throughout Latin Christendom that his particular synthesis of Christian, Roman, and Platonic traditions defined the terms for much later tradition and debate” (12). Augustine embraced the intellectual culture within the Christian world view, and ultimately transformed the philosophy surrounding the human condition for thousands of years.

Throughout history, we have experienced and recorded great men and women. We have been exposed to and understood righteousness and goodness through them. Yet, as Augustine surmised, in his work On Christian Doctrine, we have never, and will never, experience something as awe-inspiring, as incredible, as righteous, as God. As humans, even those of developed emotion and reason, we have no basis for real understanding of that which is well beyond our mental and physical reach. He writes, “For when the one supreme God of gods is thought of…their thought takes the form of an endeavor to reach the conception of a nature, than which nothing more excellent or more exalted exists” (2). Augustine speaks of God’s ineffability and gives a rounded perspective of how his unchanging nature lends to an overall truth, while also establishing His existence as the pinnacle of order.

Augustine goes on to assume that it is through this divinely inspired ordering that we beautify our souls for acceptance into the eternal abiding place of God. He writes, in closing On Christian Doctrine with an apology for its length, “… I have in these four books striven to depict…the sort of man he ought to be who desires to labor in sound, that is, in Christian doctrine, not for his own instruction only, but for that of others also” (2). Augustine designed his writing to utilize aspects of the Platonic understanding of order and psyche to support his belief in an omnipotent God, and the necessity of ordering the human soul to promote righteousness and address “the concern with the issue of how to make sense of and live within a world that seemed so adversarial and fraught with danger, a world in which so much of what matters most to us is so easily lost” (11). His extensive reach in society, and his heralded status within the church, saw to it that his instructions were both heard and taken as truth. Through St. Augustine’s writings and philosophy, the Christian Translation of the human condition was accomplished.

By the 1300s, when Dante Alighieri, an Italian soldier, political official, and poet, began to really embrace the “Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology bestowed to Christianity”, ideas surrounding the human condition and soul had taken on new, faith-based understandings which centered around the omnipotent presence of a Christian God (19). As the “world view fully re-entered the Christian psyche”, Dante, in his writing, with special focus on his epic poem The Divine Comedy, “created a vast classical Christian mythology encompassing the whole of creation that would exert a considerable—and complex—influence on the later Christian imagination” (19). Ultimately, through an intensely visual journey into the realms of Earth, Hell, and Heaven, Dante gave imaginative understanding to the very fears and concerns maintained by society surrounding the human condition and experience.

Where Augustine provided medieval society with largely implicit instructions on the ordering of the Christian soul, in an attempt to achieve righteousness on Earth, that one might be dutifully rewarded with admittance to Heaven, Dante designed “the medieval vision”, the understanding of the human condition for a society bound to their faith (19). By exploring salvation through epic poem, Dante Alighieri established a somewhat flexible approach to the query of what happens after we die. Through Virgil and Dante (the character), Dante (the author) creates a mythical world wherein readers might excitedly follow the turmoil and strife of the characters on their personal journey through the inferno, purgatory, and paradise, while dually examining the realms of Heaven and Hell, and exploring their own concerns and questions with the soul’s afterlife. The Divine Comedy, which is centered around mythical concepts of medieval torture and eternal damnation, draws, and even demands at times, great reflection and introspection to the purpose and meaning of living a well-ordered, righteous life, built upon Christian principles. When Dante writes “On the right hand I saw new misery, new torments, and new tormentors…”, he establishes a visual understanding of our greatest fear… eternal damnation in the pits of Hell from leading a less-than righteous life and never gaining salvation (1). In The Divine Comedy, Dante created a quintessential piece of literature, through which people of all faiths and creeds might explore their own thoughts and fears surrounding salvation and life after death, and discover, as he had, that “the heavens were both numinous and humanly meaningful” (19).

In The Divine Comedy, Dante, by some influence of both Christian and Platonic thought, supposes that it is the very order of the universe, in combination with the design of our psyche, which explains our purpose on earth– which is to use our intellect to make reasonable, righteous choices in our thoughts and behavior, to utilize the “governor” we are gifted with at birth, to follow God’s plan and live lives which might lead us to eternal existence in Paradiso, rather than an immortal damnation of our soul in the Inferno. Ultimately, the universe’s meaning, according to the Christian Translation, is to guide people to lives of reason and thoughtful action, in an effort to condition their souls for their eternal position within God’s paradise.

Through philosophical exploration of the human condition, and the universe at large, humans find contemplation which leads to an understanding of what God wants from them. In accomplishing this, humans learn to live in a way which pleases God, which follows his intent for them as free- willed humans who become righteous through purposeful action, faith, and reason-based intellect which centers upon goodness, so that their souls might reside in His celestial realm for eternity.

New Meaning in an Ancient World

By the Renaissance period, scholars had started to process the mathematically provable truths which were supported by that which could been seen in reality. As a result, their general understanding of the universe grew, allowing for the entry of new, verifiable information. This information, in turn, either supported their previously held beliefs, in that it offered calculable knowledge which promoted truth, or it served to challenge those beliefs, by offering irrefutable data which negated or disproved their current understanding. While the medieval period had built its knowledge upon the same cosmologic beliefs first adopted in the ancient period, new information presented in the Scientific Revolution suggested that the universe was designed by heliocentric organization, as delineated by Polish astronomer and mathematician Copernicus. This “Copernican insight… provoked and symbolized the drastic, fundamental break from the ancient and medieval universe” to the modern view of both the universe and the human condition (19).

As the Renaissance Era flourished, so did profound artistic and scientific revelations which ultimately challenged the Christian Translation of the human condition and threatened the power of the Catholic Church. Reformers, who sought to force change within the Church, through reformation of the strict guidelines established by the Old Testament, and “the Protestant spirit” which “prevailed in half of Europe” proved that “Christianity was no longer exclusively Catholic, nor monolithic, nor a source of cultural unity” (19). With this development came the first ideas of individualism, a concept which would expand into existential philosophy, and offer new meaning for the human condition and the Christian concept of the immortal soul.

The universe, in the time of Galileo Galilei, a scholar of “physics or natural philosophy, astronomy, and the methodology of science” was far more complex than previously understood (10). His ability to conceptualize what that meant, along with his enhanced understanding that we are “thinking beings”, greatly changed his outlook, by challenging his previously held beliefs (10). Yet, rather than allow this new understanding to negate his beliefs, he instead utilized it to support his thoughts on God. As “Roman Catholicism had allowed considerable latitude in intellectual speculation” for “most of the high Middle Ages and Renaissance”, Galileo was able to accept the Copernican revolution’s theories as divinable truth, which he had proven through development and use of his own telescope, with the understanding that “the Church had long been accustomed to sanctioning allegorical interpretations of the Bible whenever the latter appeared to conflict with scientific evidence” (19). In his masterpiece work Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo, through the voice of Sagredo, states that “…a great ineptitude exists on the part of those who would have it that God made the universe more in proportion to the small capacity of their reason than to His immense, His infinite, power” (7). While this largely speaks to the nature of the universe itself, it also offers perspective on Galileo’s own outlook on the human condition and displays his continued support of an omnipotent Christian God as creator.

After the Scientific Revolution, and with the “geocentric illusion” of the universe replaced by the Copernican heliocentric model, Christian and classical concepts surrounding human meaning and “theological dogma and animistic superstition” were abandoned, giving way to the idea that “man was not an absolute, and his cherished values had no foundation outside of himself” (19). Ultimately, man was here alone, an entity only of himself, one borne of haphazard design, and any inference of spiritual meaning or religious divinity was deemed unreasonable. As this philosophy spread, and more people abandoned their plans for lives of righteousness and piety, “many reflective individuals began to turn inward, to an examination of consciousness itself as a potential source of meaning and identity in a world otherwise devoid of stable values” (19).

By the time René Descartes wrote his quintessential essays in Discourse on Method, he was an established mathematician, natural scientist, yet was still a man of faith. In order to link his belief in God with the newly discovered “collective unconscious and its archetypes” he established metaphysics, a contemporary study of the mind-body correlation (19). Through application of metaphysics, Descartes “provided arguments for the existence of God” in attempting to prove that “the essence of matter is extension, and that the essence of mind is thought” (9). This, for a time, quelled the volatile nature of the divided world view, where new meaning negated Classical thought, and the belief in individualism counteracted the spiritualism necessary for a Church-run state, for divinity, for righteousness. In Discourse on Method, Descartes wrote, “…it is possible to achieve knowledge which would be very useful for life…to find a practical philosophy” through which humans could essentially make themselves “the lords and masters of nature” (4). In accomplishing this, Descartes surmises that we effectively anchor our human rationality within the spiritual natural world.

Throughout the eighteenth century, this battle between Christian thought and human reason would lend to a new age of Enlightenment. In this new age, secularization flourished in the absence of credible evidence to support theological beliefs, and “neither human reason nor the empirical world could give any direct or unequivocal indication of a divine reality” (19). During this time, Romanticism led to the production of a plethora of artistic and philosophical works devoted to personal and societal changes in the modern world. Poet William Wordsworth was one of many prominent writers who explored “views on both his craft and his place in the world” in his work, as demonstrated in the following excerpt from the poem “An Evening Walk”:

“A mind, that, in a calm angelic mood

Of happy wisdom, meditating good,

Beholds, of all from her high powers required,

Much done, and much designed, and more desired, – –

Harmonious thoughts, a soul by truth refined,

Entire affection for all human kind” (22).

Wordsworth, like most poets and thinkers of the time, no longer needed an omnipotent God, or a theological association to find connection to the universe, even if he elected to believe in one. Built upon early, Platonic ideas of the proper ordering of the mind, Wordsworth, through use of his honed craft, speaks to the value of the calm, ordered mind, while simultaneously addressing the waning religiosity of modern society. Through this, Wordsworth, other writers and artists of the time, and even “art itself—music, literature, drama, painting—now took on a virtually religious status for the Romantic sensibility” and provided a “unique point of conjunction between the natural and the spiritual” (19). Romantic notions of individuality and natural connection gifted society with a spiritual buffer between the progressive, scientific understanding of the modern world and the concepts of Christian thought.

Much like preceding periods, the Romantic period eventually yielded to ever-growing existential thought, as human and societal development, and enhanced scientific understanding, sufficiently reduced theological philosophy and its involvement in the overall human condition to an elected belief, a chosen system of personal values held unreasonable by laws of nature and science. Beginning with German philosopher Frederic Nietzsche, and “his radical perspectivism, his sovereign critical sensibility, and his powerful …anticipation of the emerging nihilism in Western culture”, the Postmodern mind would approach the human condition, and any concepts surrounding meaning within the cosmic universe, as an “open-ended, indeterminate set of attitudes that has been shaped by a great diversity of intellectual and cultural currents” (19). This indefinite, non-fixed approach to philosophy demanded intense introspection on the part of the individual, while establishing itself as an unending study of the dynamic human condition.

With the understanding that the query into life’s purpose and meaning would be continuous, schools of thought would be dedicated to the study. The great philosophers of the contemporary period would devote their lives to this task, as would the pragmatic, progressive educator John Dewey. In his work School and Society, Dewey speaks to the salience of all persons having the opportunity to explore the human condition, stating, “only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself” (5). This thinking placed emphasis on experience as the primary factor in shaping and explaining meaning in life and followed suit with the “characteristics of the larger postmodern intellectual situation” (19).

Continuing with this era of self-exploration and empirical thought, Parisian philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre would establish himself as the Father of Existentialism with his infamous lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism”, which displayed the “major tenets of existentialist thought while revealing Sartre’s attempt to broaden its social application in response to his Communist and Catholic critics” (6). In this speech, when Sartre proclaimed that “man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him”, he set in motion the process of pragmatic exploration for all of mankind (8).

The concepts that we explore, in our current understanding of the human condition, have been designed through a myriad of societal change and development. Therefore, our quest for meaning in life is volatile, subject to everchanging conditions, and dependent upon our ability to experience life from a subjective perspective. Only when a society feels restricted in their growth, their liberation, their ability to explore new, learned avenues of existence and meaning, do they press beyond whatever restraints present themselves. From ancient, Platonic concepts of psyche, and the salient trifecta of ordering, to divine thought, as necessitated by an omnipotent, Christian God to Postmodern ideas of pragmatic exploration of the contemporary human condition, society expands and explores in response to the limitations placed upon it. Therefore, the quest of purpose and meaning in life remains subjective to the will of those in search.

Works Cited and Consulted

1. Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Vintage Books, New York. 1932. Print.

2. Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Beloved Publishing, 2014. Print.

3. Aurelius, Marcus, translated by George Long. Meditations. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 1997. Print.

4. Descartes, René. Discourse on Method. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1956. Print.

5. Dewey, John. “The School and Social Progress.” Chapter 1 in The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1907): 19-44.

6. Flynn, Thomas, “Jean-Paul Sartre”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/sartre/>.

7. Galilei, Galileo, Stillman Drake, Dava Sobel, and Albert Einstein. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican. London: Folio Society, 2013. Print.

8. Guillaume, Vincent, Soline. Dorlodot, and Jean-Paul Sartre. “Existentialism Is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre., 2016. Internet resource.

9. Hatfield, Gary, “René Descartes”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

10. Machamer, Peter, “Galileo Galilei”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/galileo/>.

11. Mendelson, Michael, “Saint Augustine”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/augustine/>.

12. O’Donnell, James. “St. Augustine”. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2018. Web. http://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine

13. Plato, Benjamin Jowett, and Plato. The Dialogues of Plato. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc, 1990. Print.

14. Plato, and G M. A. Grube. Five Dialogues. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co, 2002. Print.

15. Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett. Republic. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004. Print.

16. Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett. Timaeus. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949. Print.

17. Rabin, Sheila, “Nicolaus Copernicus”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/copernicus/>.

18. Ruzicka, Stephen. “Passion of the Western Mind”. UNCG. Lecture Series. Web.

19. Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine Books, 2011. Print.

20. Wetherbee, Winthrop and Aleksander, Jason, “Dante Alighieri”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/dante/>.

21. “William Wordsworth”. Academy of American Poets. New York, New York. Web. http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/william-wordsworth

22. Wordsworth, William. The Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan and Co., 1888; Bartleby.com, 1999. http://www.bartleby.com/145/.