The Soul of the World summary

A particular religious problem has plagued the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions for millennia. And that’s the problem of God’s “real presence.”

According to the Old Testament, God is present in the physical world and communicates directly with believers. Yet, paradoxically, he also transcends the physical world, existing outside of space and time – which means he can’t be part of this reality. 

Imagine that two groups of people are fighting to the death. After a violent and bloody battle, one side is victorious. They lift the armor off the corpses of their enemies and bring it home, where they set it upon an altar and light lamps around it. Why might they do this?

There are two possible types of explanations. One is that they want to acquire territory and disarm any groups that threaten it. This is the biological view. The other is that the armor becomes a trophy. For those whose worldview focuses on interpersonal relationships rather than biological objects, wanting to acquire this trophy would be their "Why?"

So far, we’ve been speaking about the subjectivity of persons and the cognitive dualism that allows us to see ourselves as both biological organisms and agents of free and responsible action. Of course, there’s still a question looming: Are the nonscientific ways in which we understand personhood –⁠ like freedom, responsibility, and accountability –⁠ just fictions we’ve invented? 

There are, after all, some well-known experiments that show what happens in the brain when people choose between two distinct actions. Certain motor centers light up, and only afterward do people report their decisions. Often, people see these studies and conclude that our brains are really driving us and that we have no free will. But does that conclusion actually follow?

What separates humans from animals? One thing is our ability to use language to create obligations, promises, commitments, and responsibilities.

Through speech acts, we can bring situations into being. Say, for instance, that I promise I’ll visit you tomorrow. When I speak those words, I create an obligation to actually visit you.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that certain entities can only be understood by looking at their final form, or the way they develop to get there. Take an acorn, for example. In the essence of an acorn is an oak tree –⁠ unless something hinders it, the acorn will always develop into an oak rather than a maple or birch tree. 

Humans are like this too. It’s in our essence to become persons. Put differently, personhood is our final form – just as an oak is the final form of the acorn. How do we actually grow into persons? By constructing, and metaphysically engaging with, the places in which we live.

Unlike in science, there’s no method that tells us how we should understand art. When we read or watch a Shakespeare play, we don’t conduct experiments to understand it. When we contemplate Michelangelo’s David, we don’t comprehend it by examining the crystal structure of the marble. 

Yet evolutionary psychologists now seek to apply their discipline where it doesn’t belong. They claim that art, music, and literature are just adaptations developed to help us pass on our genes –⁠ and that’s that. 

In physics, whatever we see as “objects” are arrangements of matter making their way from one singularity –⁠ the big bang or first cause –⁠ to another singularity, the end of the universe. The law states that matter is conserved; it’s neither created nor destroyed, but simply transformed. 

Yet, in our own lives, we’re constantly confronted by situations that feel like creation or destruction. The most difficult one to conceive of and cope with is, of course, death. We can’t escape the knowledge of our own subjectivity, and yet we know that one day, that subjectivity will end.