General Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul

Abstract

There are many general arguments, some of them very ancient, which purport to show that the soul has a destiny beyond the present life. The arguments I have in mind here are all in one way or another a priori. Some of them are a priori in the most formal sense, for example deductive inferences from the soul’s necessary indivisibility to its natural indestructibility. Others tend to rest on some kind of a priori ethical principle, for example Kant’s argument that our duty to make ourselves perfect entails that we must have an infinite time in which to accomplish this duty. Others are logically based on religious beliefs, for example the Christian belief that a perfectly loving Creator would not suffer any of his human creatures to be completely destroyed. And there are other arguments which are certainly general and can perhaps be styled a priori, although in a much looser sense, for example arguments like those to be found in Mill and Butler which deny that any valid analogy may be drawn between the soul and other things known to be destructible.