QuestionsShould we fear death?The soul does not die with the body
Should we fear death?The soul survives

The soul does not die with the body

Avicenna c. 980 · c. 1037The soul knows it exists before any body: the flying man.
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What it claims

The human soul does not die with the body, and nothing else destroys it: it does not perish at all.

Why

The thinking soul is neither a body nor produced by one, and does not depend on it to exist: so it does not perish with it.

In short

"The soul does not die with the body" is an argument by Avicenna (The Book of Healing, On the Soul, V, 2 and V, 4) on the question "Should we fear death?" (answer: the soul survives). Its claim: The human soul does not die with the body, and nothing else destroys it: it does not perish at all. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 7 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Book of Healing, On the Soul, V, 2 and V, 4
Valid

If one thing dies when another dies, it depends on it. Avicenna examines every way the soul could depend on the body, and rules them out one by one. Then he shows that no other cause can destroy it, because it is simple. Unlike Plato, he does not believe the soul existed before the body: it comes to be with it, but does not die with it. The resurrection of bodies, on the other hand, is known in his view only through revelation.

P1The thinking soul (the intellect) is not a body, nor a faculty lodged in a body: it is a substance existing in itself. He demonstrated this just before (On the Soul, V, 2).
P2A thing perishes with another only if it depends on it in its existence, and there are only three ways of so depending: as an effect depends on its cause, as two things inseparable from each other, or as a cause whose effect cannot disappear unless it first disappears.
P3The soul is not an effect of the body: since it is not lodged in it, it is neither produced by it nor made of it. The body is only the occasion of its coming to be.
P4The soul and the body are not two things inseparable by essence: otherwise neither would be a substance existing in itself.
P5Nor is the soul the cause on which the body depends: the body dies for reasons of its own (a change in its balance), not because the soul disappeared first.
P6What can perish by some other cause contains in itself a "potency to perish" alongside its "act of enduring": so it is composite (of matter and form).
P7Yet the soul is simple, separate from matter: in it the potency to perish and the act of enduring cannot coexist.
Therefore the human soul does not die with the body, and nothing else destroys it: it does not perish at all.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The structure is valid, with no hidden premise: if the only three ways of depending on the body are ruled out, the soul does not die with it; if everything that can perish otherwise is composite, and the soul is simple, nothing else destroys it. But everything rests on two things. First P1, the immateriality of the intellect, demonstrated elsewhere and disputed by materialists. Second the completeness of the lists: are there really only three ways of depending on something (P2), and only two ways of perishing? This is what al-Ghazali attacks.
Analogy. A musician plays a violin. If the violin breaks, the music stops, but the musician is not broken: she did not depend on the violin to exist, only to play. For Avicenna the body is the soul's instrument. The whole question is whether the soul really is the musician, or rather the music.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Al-Ghazali 1095 · attacks premise 3

The philosophers themselves grant that a special link joins this soul to this body, so that it comes to be only with it. If this link is a condition of its coming to be, why should it not also be a condition of its lasting? When the link breaks, the soul would disappear, and only God would bring it back, at the resurrection.

Avicenne replies
Avicenne
That a thing must come to be when another comes to be does not imply that it must cease when the other ceases. That happens only if its being subsists through that other thing and in it.
The debate goes on (our summary) This passage, written before the objection, answers it directly. Al-Ghazali replies that this link between a soul and its body is unknown to us: so we cannot rule out that it is necessary for the soul's survival. For him, the philosophers' proof is unreliable, and only revelation teaches the fate of the soul. (Our summary.)
Al-Ghazali 1095 · attacks the conclusion

Even if neither the death of the body nor any natural cause destroys the soul, nothing prevents God from annihilating it by his power. And nothing proves that the ways of perishing are limited to those the philosophers listed.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1095, after the author's death (1037).
The debate goes on (our summary) Avicenna died before the objection, and his On the Soul does not consider this case: it shows that the soul depends not on the body but on "other principles, which neither change nor perish" (On the Soul, V, 4). For him these principles (the separate intelligences, and above them God) act necessarily: so they never stop making it exist. Al-Ghazali himself reports the philosophers' answer: annihilation is not something a power could produce, since non-being is nothing. But for him God acts through a free will, which can create and annihilate: the disagreement is about the nature of God more than about the soul. (Our summary.)
Kant 1787 · attacks premise 6

Against Mendelssohn, who revived the argument from simplicity: even a simple thing, without parts, could fade away little by little, gradually losing its intensity, like a consciousness dimming by degrees. Being simple does not protect against every weakening. (Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edition; text not yet in our corpus.)

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1787, after the author's death (1037).
N
Neuroscience and materialism 1990 · attacks premise 1

Even the most abstract thought depends on the brain: some lesions, diseases or drugs damage reasoning, calculation, the grasp of general ideas, not only sensations or images. Nothing indicates that thinking goes on once the brain has stopped working.

Avicenne replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Avicenne
If the intellect sometimes seems to grow weary or tired, that is because it seeks the help of imagination, which uses an organ that does tire.
The debate goes on (our summary) Avicenna had noticed that thinking can be hindered by the body, and explained it this way (he added that the intellect often grows stronger after forty, when the body declines). His critics answer that lesions also affect abstract reasoning itself. His defenders answer that dependence in the exercise of thought does not prove dependence in the soul's existence. (Our summary.)