Spirit

16 - 30 June 2022

Casa Dell'Arte, Portugal

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The English word spirit comes from the Latin "spiritus" ("breath") and has several interrelated meanings: Metaphysically, a spirit is an incorporeal energy force that is present in all living things but distinct from the soul. (The distinction between soul and spirit became current in Judeo-Christian terminology.) A spirit may also be a ghost that retains intelligence, consciousness, and sentience.

The belief in spirits is closely tied to the ancient concept of animism, which attributed spirits to everything in nature, including human beings, animals, plants, and rocks. It was widely believed that spirits were composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists speculate that this may stem from early beliefs that spirits were the person within the person, most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma. In the Bible, God is depicted as animating Adam with a breath (Gen. 2:7).

The mention of spirit raises many questions within the various philosophical disciplines. Speaking of spirit evokes the metaphysical question concerning the nature of reality, and whether it is spiritual or both. It also raises the associated question of whether, for instance, knowledge is spiritual and mental, or real and material. Therefore, one of the major questions involved is an epistemological one, pertaining to the debate between realism and idealism, whether knowledge originates outside the mind or issues from it. This subject can be formulated in various ways, depending on one’s definition of realism or idealism. Philosophers in whose works spirit plays a prominent role, such as Hegel and Berkeley, have traditionally been considered idealists of some sort. Even if they, alongside Plato, hold that reality - and so independently of the human subjective mind or spirit- the question of idealism is always present.

Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Christian Science Publishing, 1934,
World Book Encyclopedia, The World Book Dictionary (World Book, 2002)
Steiner, Rudolf. A Psychology of Body, Soul, & Spirit. Steiner Books, 1999.
Spirit in philosophy, Book by  Catarina BELO,2019