Mehr lesen
This interdisciplinary work examines the implicit role of "soul" in modern psychological discourse and human experience despite its apparent obsolescence in scientific contexts.
The book presents a comprehensive exploration of soul discourse across six chapters: introducing the book's scope and arguments; analyzing contemporary references to soul in everyday speech and literature with special attention to African-American contributions; examining historical discussions and scientific dismissals of soul; connecting past and present usage to psychological practices centered on self rather than soul; offering a comparative overview of soul concepts across cultural traditions; and arguing for the value of soul-talk in sustaining meaningful discourse about human worth in an era of posthumanism, vital materialism, and artificial intelligence. Written from a secular perspective, the work conceptualizes soul as performative rather than substantive-doing things and enabling experiences rather than existing as a metaphysical entity-and draws from psychology, philosophy, intellectual history, literature, and religious studies while avoiding disciplinary jargon.
This work will be of interest to psychological therapists, mental health practitioners, caregivers, scholars in psychology and philosophy, and general readers interested in the intersection of psychology and human experience.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Chapter 1: Shaping an idea of (the) soul
Chapter 2: Contemporary soul
Chapter 3: Western ideas of the soul - history
Chapter 4: Western ideas of the soul - psychology
Chapter 5: The global comparison
Chapter 6: Ensoulment
References
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Roger Smith is Reader Emeritus in History of Science, Lancaster University, UK, and Honorary Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University, UK. He took early retirement from Lancaster in 1998 and then lived in Moscow, Russia, until the outbreak of war in 2022, where he was an Honorary Researcher of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
He has published five academic books in the history of science, and edited others, on topics related to the history of mind-brain and the intellectual history of human nature and the human sciences. He has also published, for wider audiences, four books, including with Routledge (2023), Kinaesthesia in the Psychology, Philosophy and Culture of Human Experience.
