Immortality of the soul in classical western thought and in Igbo-African ontology: A discourse in existential metaphysics

Abstract

In Orphism, through Pythagoras to Plato, the soul survives the death of the body. But for Aristotle it is the form of the body, and this makes its immortality unlikely, since form cannot exist without an individuating matter. Exploring synthesis, the soul is for Aquinas an incarnate spirit whose union with the body creates a unique union. This paper then employing the critical-analytic model argued that these traditions were quite myopic; and this informed the interrogation of another cultural position which is, the immortality of the soul in Igbo-African ontology. The intention is to brace the classical positions towards a holistic idea of the immortality of the soul. This is because, in Igbo ontology, there is no distinction between body and soul, as the attention is on man as a complete being, who at death experiences what this paper called ontological mutation.