Published : 2025-11-06

Does a (young) person today – besides the body – still have a soul? The spirituality and corporeality of human existence in the understanding of Christian metaphysics.

Abstract

The contemporary world presents young people with many challenges, including raising the question of the place and role of the immaterial element in their lives. This text is an attempt at a philosophical answer to the question of whether, in the age of the latest technologies, materialism, and an almost obsessive “cult of the body” and corporeality, there is still room in contemporary human being for rational reflection on the human soul and on spirituality itself. The author points out from the outset that philosophy constitutes a privileged, if not the most appropriate, space for discourse on the issue of human spirituality and the significance of that which is immaterial in man, and which also has its source in a unique religious, especially mystical, experience. The article refers to historical – philosophical – conceptions of the human soul in the context of its close relations and connections with the body, invoking here the findings of classical Greek thought (mainly Plato and Aristotle) and also Christian philosophy and theology (Saint Thomas Aquinas and contemporary Thomists). The central axis of the conducted deliberations is the fundamental thesis that the soul, perceived as an immaterial element of human existence, and also the source of the immateriality of actions proper to man, only together with its assigned material, organic body constitutes a psychophysical unity, and from a metaphysical perspective – a complete substance. Based on the consistent findings of philosophical realism, the author of the text argues for the inseparable connection of the soul and body, occurring both in the metaphysical and phenomenological realms. He also emphasizes that the soul is “act” and simultaneously the “form” organizing organic matter, which aims to maximize the human potential to be a specific body and, together with that body, the recipient of eschatological destiny.

Keywords:

human, youth, soul, body, substance, metaphysics of the human person, Christianity



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Mrzygłód, P. (2025). Does a (young) person today – besides the body – still have a soul? The spirituality and corporeality of human existence in the understanding of Christian metaphysics. Społeczeństwo, 35(2), 26–49. https://doi.org/10.58324/s.450




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