Originally posted by Mabus
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A Horse Is A Horse
The nature of souls in the Jossverse is well-trodden discussion territory, so much that it's difficult to imagine a theory that has not been advanced at some point. Some people have gone well afield into modern psychological theories or Eastern religions. Yet it would appear that Joss originally borrowed the idea from the loose Christianity embedded in popular American culture, adjusting it first to suit the needs of the story and later, perhaps, to consciously deconstruct it. It might prove worthwhile to try and re-cover that journey from a fresh perspective.
As it happens, I belong to a religious tradition that covered that territory on its own. In the early 19th century, the Restoration (or Stone-Campbell) movement attempted to discard a great deal of theological baggage accumulated over two millennia in the hope of achieving common ground among Christian believers. (In all fairness, it didn't work out all that well, which is another story entirely.) In the process, we greatly simplified the concept of the soul and then had to redevelop it largely from scratch. Which is to say--been there, done that.
Among the concepts excised as hopelessly speculative was the great bulk of Calvinist soteriology--original sin, depravity, predestination, and so forth--as well as the Aristotelian divisions of different kinds of souls: vegetable, animal, and human. In most cases, no official effort was made to develop replacements; what emerged instead was a broad, loose consensus based on individual study. (In religion, this is called "folk theology"; in fandom--"fanon".) One of the more influential works was that of T. W. Brents, whose Gospel Plan of Salvation I'll be quoting rather extensively from. Don't let the title put you off--Brents' book is an accessible one that inevitably ends up discussing the nature of the soul
As it happens, I belong to a religious tradition that covered that territory on its own. In the early 19th century, the Restoration (or Stone-Campbell) movement attempted to discard a great deal of theological baggage accumulated over two millennia in the hope of achieving common ground among Christian believers. (In all fairness, it didn't work out all that well, which is another story entirely.) In the process, we greatly simplified the concept of the soul and then had to redevelop it largely from scratch. Which is to say--been there, done that.
Among the concepts excised as hopelessly speculative was the great bulk of Calvinist soteriology--original sin, depravity, predestination, and so forth--as well as the Aristotelian divisions of different kinds of souls: vegetable, animal, and human. In most cases, no official effort was made to develop replacements; what emerged instead was a broad, loose consensus based on individual study. (In religion, this is called "folk theology"; in fandom--"fanon".) One of the more influential works was that of T. W. Brents, whose Gospel Plan of Salvation I'll be quoting rather extensively from. Don't let the title put you off--Brents' book is an accessible one that inevitably ends up discussing the nature of the soul
The most basic concept of the soul in popular Christian thought is that of one's personal identity. In first- and perhaps second-season Buffy, this concept might seem to be applicable to vampires. Early Angelus bears no obvious relation to Angel, and the Order of Aurelius is not much affected if we imagine the personalities of its members to be purely demonic. Yet as the idea of the soul evolved in the later Jossverse, Whedon went out of his way to keep most of the important vampires in line with it. Even Angelus eventually is revealed as a natural evolution of Liam's original self, albeit one unusually separate from Angel's better side. As a result, this original version of the soul no longer seems to be in step with canon "reality" as early as Buffy Season 3, when Angel hastily covers up his near-admission that the human's personality gives rise to the vampiric one. In order to get any further, we'll need to step away from what goes by the name of "soul" and look at the way the soul functions.
Before Brents could get to his ideas on how a person achieved salvation, he had to spend five whole chapters taking apart the then-popular Calvinist concept of what it was to have a soul, to be a sinner, or to hope for salvation in the first place. Ironically enough, it's those early chapters that the meat of this meta comes from. Brents begins his discussion of human nature in fairly modern-sounding terms, by dividing the mental faculties into two broad categories--"animal faculties" which "in lower animals...are called instincts" and "intellectual facilities", in which he includes "moral sentiments". The former category takes the place of what evangelicals still call the "sin nature"; "Paul calls them 'the carnal mind,' and tells us 'it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.'" Brents explains this inability not in the moral terms of his contemporaries, but in terms of intellect and consciousness. "It would do but little good to read the Ten Commandments to a horse, as he would not be subject to them--neither, indeed, could he be; and it would do about as little good to read them to the purely carnal mind of man (if it were possible to do so), composed of similar constituents, which knows no law but animal gratification." These instinctual drives are necessary for human survival--but when indulged without restraint, the result is what we call "evil".
Can a vampire consciousness be mapped onto "the purely carnal mind of man"? Unfortunately, Brents' construction doesn't allow this. A vampire does indeed have an intellect of its own; except possibly for the Turok-Han, vampires are not purely instinctual creatures. Brents, writing well before Freud, distinguishes something that might be thought of as the id, but he thoroughly mingles the ego and superego. A century and a half later, Restorationist churches still do not clearly separate moral and intellectual abilities; people are considered to restrain themselves from evil as much by their intellectual awareness of consequences as by conscience, which is thought of as a mostly-learned faculty. Current Restorationist thought designates humans (and, by extension, any other sapient beings that might exist) as "free moral agents"; there is no concept to explain an "unfree moral agent" that can make intelligent choices, but only if they are evil ones.
Can a vampire consciousness be mapped onto "the purely carnal mind of man"? Unfortunately, Brents' construction doesn't allow this. A vampire does indeed have an intellect of its own; except possibly for the Turok-Han, vampires are not purely instinctual creatures. Brents, writing well before Freud, distinguishes something that might be thought of as the id, but he thoroughly mingles the ego and superego. A century and a half later, Restorationist churches still do not clearly separate moral and intellectual abilities; people are considered to restrain themselves from evil as much by their intellectual awareness of consequences as by conscience, which is thought of as a mostly-learned faculty. Current Restorationist thought designates humans (and, by extension, any other sapient beings that might exist) as "free moral agents"; there is no concept to explain an "unfree moral agent" that can make intelligent choices, but only if they are evil ones.
Yet, strangely, we can see echoes of this notion in the division between Angel and Angelus. Angelus, while as intelligent as Angel, is thoroughly ruled by his "carnal mind", pursuing his violent self-gratification at every turn. And in his less-guarded moments, Angel admits that Angelus is always present within him, struggling futilely to get out and wreak havoc; when Angel says this, he invariably ends up blurring the line between Angelus and his own darker urges, no matter how much he insists that Angelus is a separate being.
"Then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me," as Brents quotes from Paul's letter to the Romans. At the same time, even Angelus can, on rare occasions, be persuaded to do good deeds if doing so is in his own interests--as when he kills the Beast, after discovering that a world dominated by vampires is not so much fun as he expects. (And Brents would no doubt agree that that would be true; an evil world is, in terms of his ideas, ruled by stupidity.) Other vampires can be seen to do the same on more frequent occasions--Spike being the most obvious case.
Does this mean Brents is of no use in explaining the soul? Perhaps not. Brents ends his discussion by defining free will in terms of the tension between the different components of the mind. A human without both animal and intellectual faculties in his nature, he suggests, would be either "nothing more than a brute" or "a mere machine"--in either case, lacking the freedom to choose that a soul implies. Moreover, remember the initial point that these faculties are not unitary themselves--they are composed of many different capabilities, each pulling in its own direction.
This would explain a number of puzzling factors that occasionally crop up in the 'Verse. Traditionally, souls are thought of as immortal and indestructible. However, we find repeated references in canon to souls being destroyed--a "four-winged soul-killer", D'Hoffryn taking the "life and soul of a vengeance demon", and of course, most prominently, Fred's soul being "consumed by the fires of resurrection" that revive Illyria
Which I suppose could be comparable to vampirism, immortal but not invincible.
Perhaps this is Harmony's best hope. If a soul is a confluence of different faculties of mind, and those faculties can be learned, then Harmony may be further on her way to having one than even she realizes. Of course, she still would have a long way to go; she ends the series backsliding yet again. Nonetheless, Harmony always seems to land on her feet, both in terms of her survival and of getting back on the moral wagon. It might indeed make a difference if Angel had confidence in her; certainly no soulless vampire has yet been treated with the consideration that Anya was given, even while she continued to brag about her life as a vengeance demon.
But isn't that unfair to Spike and Angel? Well...the world is not necessarily a fair place, after all. Or maybe it is fair. Angel never intended to obtain a soul at all; it was forced on him by a gypsy curse. Spike's trials to gain his, while intensely unpleasant, actually played to his strengths; quite possibly they cut short a process that could have gone on for much longer. Harmony would be the one having to go about getting a soul the hard way--through the business of living in a world that fears her kind and treats her as less than human. Maybe she hasn't reached the end of that path Lorne said she was on just yet.
And y'know, that Shanshu thing is still out there. Wouldn't a woman coming away with the prize be the Jossian thing to do? 
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