Buffyverse souls—again

[goldenboy]

Hey, did you guys see this? OK, it's not exactly light reading, but...if you've ever been confused or annoyed by Joss's depiction of the soul in the 'verse, slayage.tv has a fairly comprehensive analysis.

It pretty much reaches the same conclusion that we all have: Joss has never actually resolved the matter. Is a soul essentially a person? Just a piece of moral decision making "equipment"? Is it impersonal or unique to an individual? Just a metaphor? It throws it all out there. And the author argues that it's actually to the shows' advantage to keep things ambiguous. The piece is super long and dense, but here are a few tidbits...



The Evolution of Joss Whedon's Vampire Mythology and the Ontology of the Soul

By Scott McLaren

Slayage 18, September 2005 [5.2]

how is it possible for one to hold the ensouled Angel (and later the ensouled Spike) reasonably accountable for their crimes as vampires when prima facie such creatures, according to the Whedonverse vampire mythology, are beings without souls, without consciences, possessed by demons, and who moreover retain no connection with the absent soul of the host body's former identity?

For the doctrine common among today's major monotheistic faiths that the soul is an immortal spirit inhabiting the body and lending it intelligence, will, and personality, one must turn to the discursive but influential writings of Plato. In addition to functioning as the body's animating life force, the soul is, as Plato described it, in command of the body (Georgias 493a), the seat of all knowledge (Meno 86a), and an immortal spirit separate from the body (Meno 86b). By locating within the soul both the life-force of the body and human knowledge, Plato is the first to set forth a doctrine that allows for personal immortality in a separable soul with memories intact. This marks an enormous and important distinction from both Aristotle's assertion that a soul without a body is unthinkable and Homer's depiction of souls as imbecilic shadows divorced from their previous lives and memories (see Green and Groff 50ff; Iliad XXIII). Plato's thought was adopted and adapted by some of the earliest Christian apologists and had enormous influence on the subsequent development of the Christian doctrine of the human soul, primarily through the writings of St. Augustine (MacDonald 143ff.). From there the concept of the soul as an immortal spirit animating the body as the seat of human will, intelligence, and conscience, has pervaded every corner of Western philosophy and culture.[5]
(6) In many instances vampire folklore, albeit often unconsciously and haphazardly, is an extension of these philosophies and doctrines. Because the soul is identified so consistently in Western philosophy with the capacity for agency, it is not surprising that some of the earliest vampire folklore recounts revenants who are not soulless bodies but bodiless souls"”that is, ghosts"”who return from the dead to torment their victims.[6] The practice of exhuming bodies in Serbia and Walachia in what are sometimes referred to as the eighteenth century's European "vampire epidemics" (see Barber 5ff.; Senn 39), together with the advent of Enlightenment materialism, however, shifted the onus of blame away from the soul of the deceased and onto the corpse.

In response to Buffy's Season One question about Angel, "Can a vampire ever be a good person?" ("Angel," B1007) Giles explains that "A vampire isn't a person at all. It may have the movements, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but it is still a demon at the core. There is no half-way." Here then is the crux of the dilemma: if Angel was stripped of his soul, his personhood, and therefore his human identity, when he was turned into a vampire by Darla, then how can he be held accountable for the actions of the demon who "took over" or assumed command of his body during the soulless hiatus between his human life and his ensouled vampire life?[8] In order to answer this question Whedon seems to have developed, in parallel with the ontological definition, a concept of the soul as an existential metaphor for moral choice.
(11) There are numerous hints beginning as early as the first season that Whedon and his writers admitted the possibility of a much closer connection between the "possessed" human being and the subsequent vampire than the Watcher mythology, with its emphasis on the ontological, could admit. Whedon, however, never let go of the ontological concept entirely"”that vampires are soulless monsters worthy of death"”perhaps for the same reason that he insisted all vampires, regardless of how "fresh," burst into dust after being staked: a soul that is purely a metaphor for choice results in the unsavory image of a teenage girl killing what in the end are not monsters in a metaphysical sense, but criminals, albeit recalcitrant ones, who remain as human as the Slayer herself: "Vampires explode into dust because [. . .] it shows that they're monsters. I didn't really want to have a high school girl killing people every week" (Whedon, "Joss Whedon on "˜Angel' and "˜Puppet Show'").

It should also be noted, however, that there are several examples of soulless vampires, including Spike, Harmony, and even Willow's vampire double, who seem to possess some potentiality (and even actuality) for good, just as certain fully-human characters such as Faith are able to function, in spite of their souls, in ways that make them almost indistinguishable from vampires. In all of these ways Whedon and his writers successfully maintain the tension between the soul as an object one possesses, the seat of memory and personality as Plato and the subsequent Christian tradition would have it, and as an existential metaphor for a particular moral orientation. When a fan asked Whedon how he defined thesoul and how its presence set Angel apart from other vampires he replied that "soulless creatures can do good and souled creatures can do evil, but that the soul-free are instinctually drawn toward doing evil while those with souls tend to instinctually want to do good" (qtd. "All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel" at http://www.atpobtvs.com/vampires.html). Importantly, Whedon's definition neither dismisses the soul purely as a metaphor nor precludes one taking it, at times, as a reified organ of personality and/or moral agency.

Perhaps Angel's culpability as a vampire might be understood in this mysterious fashion that seems to unite both the ontological and the existential. Although Angel's soul, in the Platonic and Christian sense, may have flown his body before it became possessed by the demon Angelus, perhaps Angel chooses to "own" the actions of Angelus, and those around him have "no right" to take those actions from him. Though ontologically innocent, he remains somehow existentially culpable because he chooses to be so. Culpability, in a way, becomes the existential meaning that Angel brings to the ontology of his soul (see Curry 5). It is this, in fact, that may form the kernel of the Gypsy curse. Spike, as we will see in our consideration of the final season of Angel, though his crimes are as great and his soul as real, is not automatically burdened with seemingly inexpugnable guilt until he also chooses to accept, even construct, his own guilt (cf. "Damage," A5011) The presence of a soul, then, is not alone enough to guarantee remorse. Both the presence of a soul and the existential movement of the will are necessary for remorse.

http://slayage.tv/

 

[StuckinTraffic]

Interesting article, thanks for the link!


*pulls out dictionary.....*

 

[Anchovy]

Are we doing this again? Cause last time was fun in a 'pull your hair out' kinda way...j/k! 🙂

 

[goldenboy]

It was a nightmare, huh Anchovy? Just in time for Halloween! I'm washing my hands of the matter, heh. Just like to see philosophers or grad students or whoever agonize over this stuff.