The concept of soul, although over the years it was evolving and acquiring new formulations that do not propose it or used it as it was done in antiquity to oppose it fiercely to the concept of the body and in this way to be able to stigmatize the latter more and more, always has it been related or It has been used to name the inner, spiritual part that each human being has, where the instincts, feelings and emotions of men are found and that it has nothing to do with the body that can be seen and touched. By this situation is that the soul, anima or psyche, as it is also known, supposes an immaterial and invisible principle, which is housed inside the body and which addresses all those questions that require a deeper commitment on the part of the person. Many philosophers of different cultures and creeds in turn distinguish the soul from the spirit, pointing out the most transcendent aspects in the first and the understanding in the second. Thus, according to this conception, human beings would be individuals with 3 facets or components (bodies, soul, spirit or understanding), while animals would only have body and spirit and plant beings with their body structure.
Also as a consequence of this immateriality to which it is "condemned", the soul becomes impossible for its existence to be verified through any objective research or scientific test or for the rational methodology of knowledge.
Meanwhile, and returning to the theme of the stigmatization that was given to the concept of body, we find it in what was the dual conception that, in this regard, the philosopher Plato proposed in his legacy that was later taken up by some related philosophers with sectors of Christianity (in the beginning) and Islam (in a second term), which argued that the body was something like "the prison of the soul" to which it had arrived as a result of the commission of some crime and therefore They could no longer see the eternal essences, but could only remember them (allegory of the cave). On the other hand, Platonic philosophy proposed a constant confrontation of the soul with the human body, which was always reduced to evil and condemned to contempt. These concepts of a Socratic nature still persist in some modern philosophies.
Likewise and more than anything today, the term is widely used by religion, by religious, for example, priests, who repeatedly speak about the need to purify certain souls of some men who have been contaminated by the sin.
With this sense that religion gives in these times, the soul ends up being something like the conscience of people, which due to certain circumstances, actions or misdirected thoughts is stained or damaged, religion having the job of healing it through of faith, commitment and prayer. It is interesting to note that, despite the intangibility and the impossibility of demonstrating its existence from the point of view of rational experience, all the cultures of the planet in their different historical moments recognize the soul as a real component of the human being and conceive of its separation. of the body from the moment of death or in experiences of an esoteric nature, such as so-called astral travel. Even some ancient and modern religions propose the abandonment of the body by the soul upon death, with subsequent return to a new body, not necessarily human, according to those who believe in reincarnation. On the other hand, in monotheistic religions, it is admitted that the departure of the soul at the time of death takes it to a space for eternal joy (Heaven or Paradise), final condemnation (hell) or a later state of purification ( the Purgatory of Catholic doctrine). It is added that some of these creeds, such as Catholicism, Anglicanism and Judaism, also conceive the reunification of the soul and the body towards the end of time, generally called the resurrection of the dead.
