Body and Soul

This chapter examines the question of what we are, maps the possible answers, and locates those answers in certain classical Jewish sources. It then develops a distinctively Jewish approach to that question—an idiosyncratic version of dualism—that hasn’t been seriously explored in the general philosophical literature. After defending its Jewish bona fides, the chapter motivates it based on more neutral philosophical considerations. It will emerge that there’s a well-motivated, deeply Jewish, and heretofore neglected contender on the question of human ontology.