Do you think demons have souls?

[anyatara]

I suppose, the only way we can answer this question is with some good quality guess work, but it was just something I was mulling over. I was thinking about vampires, how when humans are sired, a demon takes over their body, and they lose their soul. That got me to thinking, do demons have souls? They pretty much live (Or, a lot of them do, at least) for killing, and torturing, and I find it hard to believe anything, or anyone with a soul could just feel no remorse for their actions, at all. On the other hand, when Anya becomes a vengeance demon again she does feel guilty, and even when she changes from mortal to demon and back again, she doesn't seem all that different, not soul-losing different anyway. I was just wondering what everyone else thinks, considering my thoughts kind of contradict each other, and I'm just really curious.

 

[Wesley]

I will say I do believe that demons have souls. Look at Lorne, if that guy doesn't have soul, then James Brown doesn't have soul.

I think there is a little bit of a dichotomy sometimes between thinking 'soul' means 'good' and 'demon' means 'evil'. In the early seasons if it was demony it was evil, but by the end and especially on AtS Demon was just like 'Human' and some were good and some were evil etc.


So I say demons definitely have souls, or something like a soul anyway. Lorne, Landok, Clem, Slurpee Demon etc. if these guys don't have souls then I don't want to live in that world!

 

[BuffyElevated]

Ditto to Wesley, for sure.

 

[PrincessBuffy16]

Umm, not that sure. I don't think all demons have souls. I belive that some demons are made souless, their purpose is torturin and killing, and that's what makes their day. But I do belive there are good demons, like Whistler, who have souls, and because of that they are on the good side - no killing.

 

[Dancing man]

I think it depends on the deamon.

 

[Spike Angelus]

Like said above, it may depend on the demon, and if it does, maybe "soul" means different things to different races of demon? We've seen Lorne read demons after they have sang, so there must be something there, even if it's not the same as what humans call a soul.

 

[Buffyverse Fan]

I believe one of the writers blatantly said that Clem is a good example of a Good Demon that definitely doesn't have a soul.

Based on what we've seen, humans with some demon in them can have a soul (Doyle, S3 Cordy, Anya). But Pyleans are the only ones that confuse the issue. Maybe they're either more "cow" than they'd like to admit or are technically neither human or demon, just resemble each?

 

[BillyidolwannaB]

I think Pyleans are something different altogether.

 

[Anya2012]

I think Lorne had a soul...he wasn't really evil.

 

[AndrewCrossett]

I think in the Buffyverse, the term "demon" is used to mean any intelligent creature from a world or dimension other than our own, excluding humans. As early as "Becoming" we had Whistler explaining that not all demons are evil.

Since vampires are actually demon spirits inhabiting a human body, and vampires have no souls (normally), we can assume that at least some demons are soulless... probably the evil ones.

My perception is that, just as having a soul doesn't automatically make you "good", not having one doesn't make you "evil"... it just makes you, in effect, a sociopath -- someone who can't understand the concept of any greater good than one's own wants and desires. The Judge (in season 2) informed us that even some vampires have more humanity left in them than others. Some people become vamps and immediately become diabolically evil (e.g. Angel), while others don't seem to really change that much at all, except for the need to drink blood (e.g. Harmony).

Even some supposedly evil demons seem to have souls. Illyria was an Old One... pretty much the gold standard of demonic evil... but she proved capable of aspiring toward good, in her own way, even though it's confirmed there's none of Fred's soul left inside her to influence her.

I'd say Whistler, Clem, Doyle, and Lorne are all good examples of demons with souls.