Are humans the only living creatures with souls? What about animals and plants?

“Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity.” – CCC 364

In order to answer this question, one must first know what a soul is. A soul, on its most basic level, is the “life principle” or “animating principle” of a body. In other words, the soul is what gives life. Thus every living being including plants and animals have souls.

While plants, animals, and anything living contains a soul, the human soul is unique. In man, the soul has not only vegetative powers (as plants have) and sensitive powers (as animals have) but also rational powers. It is this rational power that separates us from other living beings in this world. The reason our souls are rational is because our souls are spiritual. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church point out we are “animated by a spiritual soul” (CCC 364). It is this difference which makes human beings understand abstract concepts like morality and justice while animals cannot.

Another difference between the soul of a plant or an animal with a human soul is that the souls of human beings are immortal. They (the human soul) do not cease to exist when they get separated from the body at death but will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

St. Paul while writing his first letter to the Thessalonians talks about human beings being made of spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). It is to be noted that both soul and spirit are the same and this “distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul” (CCC 367). Soul when distinguished from spirit means that which gives life to a body. Spirit when contrasted with soul simply means those aspects of human life and activity that transcend our bodily limitations and so open the soul toward the supernatural life of grace (spirituality). The CCC is clear about this: “Spirit” signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God (CCC 367).

Edin Michael

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The views, thoughts, opinions presented here belong solely to the author and are not necessarily the official view of the Jesus youth movement.

Complemented by Chris Cammarata

As a further clarification, when we speak in this context about animals and plants as having “souls,” we are using the word similarly to how the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle used it.

Aristotle’s idea of the soul was not the same as our Christian understanding. For him, the soul was simply something that any living being had (“living being” referring to anything that is capable of self-sustenance, growth, and reproduction). This idea of the soul was his attempt at explaining why some things are alive and some things aren’t. In other words, the soul for Aristotle was the “vital principle”… soul = life, and no soul = no life. So when he speaks about plants as having a “vegetative soul” and animals as having a “sensitive soul,” he is explaining that each category of living beings has certain properties. Plants have the most basic principles of life: they can grow and reproduce. Animals are more sophisticated: in addition to growth and reproduction, they can sense the world around them and are capable of movement.

For Aristotle, the human soul was unique because human beings are rational–capable of thought and reflection. In other words, what makes human life unique from plants and animals (according to Aristotle) is our ability to use reason.

However, Aristotle lived long before Christ and his views were not entirely in line with Christianity. For instance, Aristotle believed that when a creature died, the soul also died too (whereas we believe in the immortality of the soul).

Many centuries later, though, St. Thomas Aquinas would take some of Aristotle’s ideas and combine them with a Christian understanding of the world, the human person, and God.

So in other words, when we speak of plants and animals having a “soul,” think of it as a useful tool for explaining why some creatures are alive and others are not.

Disclaimer!
The views, thoughts, opinions presented here belong solely to the author and are not necessarily the official view of the Jesus youth movement.