Demons And Souls

[white avenger]

Throughout both series, it was established and repeated on numerous occasions that vampires, with the exception of Angel and later Spike, do not have souls. My question is, do demons in general have souls? In the Buffyverse, the soul seems to be more or less synonymous with a conscience, or the ability to differentiate between right and wrong, and it has been shown that some demons, such as Whistler and a few others (I'm not sure whether or not Lorne could actually be classified as a demon or simply an alien, since he comes from another dimension) are not evil or amoral, but actually have the ability to differentiate between right and wrong and actually prefer to do what is right.

Anyhow, what's your opinion on the matter? Do your average, run of the mill demons have souls? Or are they, as the Initiative defined them, simply animals?

 

[Vengeance]

Well, demons like Clem and the demons from Hell's Bells would seem to indicate that they have souls. Or perhaps only certain breeds of demons have souls. Either the violent demons are animals and are just violent by nature or they have no souls and just enjoy killing. What Angel says in "Angel" that "the demon takes your soul" would suggest that most demons are soulless.

 

[Skytteflickan88]

They don't have human souls, seems to be what we're suppose to believe. But maybe they have something similar? Maybe even in some demon species, something better? It's not like only humans can be nice.

Who has a consience or not might actually not have anything to do with souls, who's "nice" or not. Just with impulses and survival instincts and the need to feed. For example, a human who's hungry/in drugs might kill and eat another human being, but that doesn't mean that their soul stopped working or something. With the same reasoning, I think it's safe to say that our nature (what we need to do to survive ,for example eat) doesn't effect our souls, and it might be the same with demons. Just because something rips a human apart and feeds doesn't make it evil or souless, no more than any human who eats a cheeseburger.

I would actually say that humans can be more evil than several species we've seen in BtVS and Ats, who only feeds to survive, while we kill animals simply so we can dress in their skin because it's fashionable. True, I can't come up with a specie we've seen enough to say that for certain, but many demons who are called "evil" on the show, might have more of a conscience than we have, have "better" souls.

I would count Lorne and anything other alien as a demon, but that's a question of definition I suppose. Technically, the humans in Pylea could count as aliens as well. I wonder what the backstory is there. Did a few people migrate to Pylea, or was it the other way around? Did they evolve on their own, in another dimension? I believe in the first option.

---------- Post added at 01:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 PM ----------

I think I remember someone saying that the demons on earth are hybrids, maybe even human/demonhybrids(not like Doyle, more "demonic"), unlike what came before, like for example Illyria, who was a "true" demon. So maybe demon of today have more human-like souls than thos that "came before"?

 

[white avenger]

. Technically, the humans in Pylea could count as aliens as well. I wonder what the backstory is there. Did a few people migrate to Pylea, or was it the other way around? Did they evolve on their own, in another dimension? I believe in the first option.

---------- Post added at 01:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 PM ----------

I think I remember someone saying that the demons on earth are hybrids, maybe even human/demon hybrids(not like Doyle, more "demonic"), unlike what came before, like for example Illyria, who was a "true" demon. So maybe demon of today have more human-like souls than thos that "came before"?

As for the humans on Pylea, I think that they were descended from humans who were either sent there by a spell similar to the one that was used on Fred or kidnapped the way that Buffy and the others were in "Anne." (Different dimension, I know, but it could still have been done by the Pyleans at some time in the ancient past.

And it was Anya back in Season 3 who mentioned the "old" demons breeding with humans to make what were referred to as demons in Buffy's time. (which corresponds with the Jewish tradition that Lilith, Adam's first wife, after being expelled from Eden, mated with demons or "creatures of the night)

 

[thevikingsgirl]

IMO they started the soul thing before they'd thought out the story and rather than explaining themselves out of it later, they just ignored it and did what they wanted, making for massive inconsistencies.

 

[Kana]

I think from an outside of the show perspective, thvikingsgirl is more or less spot o, but looking at it more closely, it really depends on how one defines the soul.

Originally, the soul was depicted as the immaterial nature of the being question that houses their consciousness, individuality, memories etc; in short, the spirit.

Now in a way this was actually quite convenient when it comes to vampires because if the soul is gone the vampire is just someone who looks like the preceeding human. Of course they have their memories but at the core it's a different species with different tendencies from their human predecessor. This makes Angel and soulledSpike totally innocent of the crimes the demon counterpart commited. It also doesn't make soulledSpike anymore responsible for getting his soul than Angel.

The other idea, as WA suggested, is that the soul is the conscience. This makes more sense as when talking about Angel and Spike there appears to be a sense of continued consciousness. Spike and Angel have human souls though, what about other creatures.

Well it depends on the creature. Some demons are depicted more like animals while others seem more intelligent on par with humans. Somehow it doesn't seem right to say that humans have the right sort of soul and demons don't. It could be a case of evolution as far as how close demon and human nature is but indeed vampires are human/demon hybrids but they are considered evil but other demons seem further away from human kind as far the appearence is concerned and may be more human friendly. What we have to consider is the biological or metaphysical make up of the demon and couple it with how assimilated they are with human culture, considering humans appear to be the dominant species. In some respects the human soul being the spirit makes more sense because can we really seperate our sense of right and wrong from our very identity?

 

[Black Eye Guy]

IMO the conscience is separate to a soul, demons can have a conscience but no soul.

So like Lorne and Vengeance Anya maybe didn't have a soul but they still had the conscience to know what was good and bad, while season 3 Faith had a soul but was able to ignore the conscience, and didn't see good and bad.

Vampire have no soul, but seem to be able to ignore the conscience also, but think they still have it like Faith. It's what enabled Spike and Harmony to seem good even without a soul.

But I wouldn't even believe 100% in my own theory, lol.