2025 Theses Doctoral

For the Life of the Soul

Carr, Jacob Andrew

There are a handful of analytic and educational philosophers in recent times who bear witness to the meaning, reality, history, and value of the soul. They believe it is a crucial phenomenon to consider in our philosophical anthropology, our educational theorizing, and in considerations of human flourishing. They bear witness to the soul in spite of an anti-soul culture present in the academy, and in spite of an increasingly techno-dominant world. However, the analytic and educational philosophical traditions are not united. They do not cite each other. Their terms, modes of thought, and the value they perceive in the soul can appear quite different.

In this study I investigate representative thinkers from each tradition, representing the core tenets of their approach to the soul. I then argue that these differences in approach are not fundamental nor of necessity, but in fact can be joined together in a mutually beneficial, stronger, more holistic approach to the soul. To do this, I defend an image of the world in which both analytic and analogical thought are at home, along with science, and along with our first person experience of the soul at the human scale.

I show that, ultimately, a joint approach between analytic and educational approaches depends on a certain kind of unity in the soul – a unity of head and heart, reason and imagination. This leads me to conclude that this work of joining these approaches is as much theoretical as it is ethical. I end the dissertation with a meditation on our office as human beings who enjoy the life of the soul. May this study be a renewal of that life.