ACTS Apologist Blog: Do Orcs Have Souls?

Back when I was in middle school I saw this Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called "The Sixth Day". It was all about this evil corporation which runs this secret, behind-closed-doors human cloning market.

The film ends with a cloned Arnold Schwarzenegger talking to the original one about the meaning of his life as a clone. He asks, "Do I have a soul?"

A similar question was asked at a recent Bible Study meeting. One of the students asked if the Orcs from the Lord of the Rings fiction would have had souls. Another asked about Ents.

And, as always, people are very curious about whether dog, cats, and llamas have souls. (No one is ever curious whether dung beetles have souls.)

The Catholic faith, by way of Thomas Aquinas, has a lot to say on the topic. So let's dive in.

Defining Death:

I want to start in a sort of backward way. What exactly is death?

It seems like an easy question at first. Everyone knows the difference between something which is alive and dead. And yet, the closer you look at the matter the more difficult it becomes to provide a precise definition.

The medical community has long struggled with this question. They can look at various signs of death - cessation of cardiovascular activity, cessation of brain activity - and conclude that a patient has died.

But those are only symptoms of death, not death itself. This is made evident in those remarkable instances where a person comes back to life after everyone presumes the person is dead.

So, again, what is death?

The "Life Principle":

Reflecting on that question, Thomas Aquinas would observe that living things are distinct from non-living things because they have a self-sustaining, self-organizing principle which incorporates the various parts of the organism into a whole. This “animating principle of the body” is the difference between a body and corpse.

Death, therefore, is what occurs when this life-principle of a creature is absent. Now, this life-principle isn't a detectable thing the way a heartbeat or brain activity is. This is why a precise demarcation of death will remain elusive.

The name we give this self-sustaining, self-organizing, integrating life-principle is... the "soul". And the relationship between the body and the soul (to reprise my favorite analogy) is much like the relationship between the sides and angles of a triangle. The two come together to form one thing.

OK... now we can begin to answer Mr. Schwarzenegger's question. Yes, the cloned Arnold has a soul. How do we know? Because he's alive and asking questions.

Classifications:

Now, as soon as people hear that, they think:

"Wait a minute... my dog is a living organism. Under that definition my dog would have a soul. But I've always been taught only humans have souls. So what gives?"

This is where Aquinas (following after the Greek philosopher Aristotle) recognized different types of souls. These are differentiated based on their "powers" - which refers to the types of things a living species is able to do by its nature.

What Thomas arrived at were three categories arranged in a hierarchy, each building on the one below it. Here is a brief survey.

Vegetative Soul:

This refers to living thing which simply grow in place and reproduce. The powers inherent to a vegetative soul would be include the bare necessities needed for a thing to live and reproduce.

Animal/Sensing Soul:

The animal soul is a step up from the vegetative soul. It includes all the vegetative powers but adds more atop. These would include the ability to consciously sense, react, and remember various stimuli.

Human/Rational Soul:

Now we move up one more level. There is another type of creature which has a very unique skillset. These creatures have the power to:

Reason from premises to conclusions based on the rules of logic.
Comprehend universal principles based on discreet instances.
Sense moral realities and act upon conscience.
Use free-will to overcome instinct and basic impulses.
Desire infinite transcendent goods like love, truth, beauty, and goodness.
And other cool things!

The fact that mankind naturally (and uniquely) expresses those powers points us to something different about human souls. In Thomistic philosophy, human souls are known as "Rational Souls".

These are the types of souls which are specially made in the image and likeness of God. And it is commonly understood (but not officially taught by the Catholic Church) that these are the only souls which transcend physical death and have an eternal destiny.