Fundamental Dialectic of Soul and Spirit
Not Spirituality but That Which is More Spiritual Than Spirituality
Is the soulfulness of the soul. Accepting that spirituality is not an empty concept, the soul in its soulfulness is fundamental to the spirit in its spirituality. The two have both been equated and differentiated but only one is more disclosive of ground in general and the ground of the human being specifically. If we take spirit to mean consciousness or reason or mental cognition, then the soul takes on the locus and inner core and essence of the human being in its activity.
If reason and cognition are part of what the human being does, if they are of the human essence, then they are contained within the ground of the human essence. To describe it more visually: if spirit means consciousness, it is related to the head; if soul means "heart" and sensuousness, meaning of the feelings, moods, and senses, it is related to the body's heart.
Head and heart. Consciousness and perceiving / feeling and sensing. Reason, logic, deduction, and induction / intuition, gut feeling, instinct, sensation. Formal reason / spontaneity and whim, irrationality, caprice, and impulse. A posteriori / a priori. Spirit / soul.
Soul is of the heart. Heart also means the "heart" of the matter. Spirit is of the head. The head also means what must be held on to so that "you don't lose your head." Head is also of that which is at the top, as in the head of State. In the same way, soul is that which is at the bottom, as in baseness, at the base, as in base instincts. Soul is additionally of the core, chest, and stomach, as in the heart being located at the core in the chest, and in reference to intuition as being gut feeling—all these are at the core in the chest or stomach. These are of the bottom at the base of. Spirit also means alikeness, similarity, and kinship, as in "the spirit of." Similarly, soul is of essence, as in "the soul of."
Alikeness as the spirit of something; essence as the soul of something. A soul of something can be the spirit of something else. The soul of a great story can be in the spirit of a particular genre. The soul of a painting can be in the spirit of tragedy. The soul of a speech can be in the spirit of another great orator. The soul of a musical composition can be in the spirit of a different composer. The soul of a nation can be in the spirit of myth. The soul of myth can be in the spirit of religion. The soul of religion can be in the spirit of order. The soul of order can be in the spirit of authority. Authority can be in the spirit of governance. Governance can be in the spirit of unity. The essence of unity can be in alikeness and kinship of belonging. The essence of belonging can be in the alikeness of essence. Essence can be in the alikeness of existence. Existence can be in the kinship of occurrence. Occurrence can be in the kinship of truth. Truth can be in kinship with bestowal.
Authentic Soul: Of a Mind and of a Conscience
Soul is of essence and fundamental ground. Spirit is of alikeness and kinship. The human essence consists in soulfulness. More originarily and primordially, spirit does not consist in consciousness and reason but is of the null ground. The null ground is of the fact that the whole of human existence is without ground—without an absolute grounding or justification bestowed by a god or an objective and universal principle or guide. See here about the "of-ness" concerning spirit in reference to soul, soul being of essence. Spirit refers in its alikeness and kinship to soul in its of-ness concerning soul. The spirit of human existence refers in its of-ness to the essence inherent in soul, that being of the null ground. In reference to the null ground, the soul of human existence can be in the spirit of either authenticity or inauthenticity. Authenticity is the human soul's ownmost possibility of being, of being itself. Inauthenticity is the human soul's nonmost, unmost, possibility of being, the public way of being of everyone, of being not itself and not of a conscience.
Of being lost in the gigantic of public ways of being, of predominant and mass made culture, distraction, fleeing, and escape. These are not of the self or of one's ownmost making. They are premade fabrications always already there for pick up and tailoring. One's ownmost authentic way of being is made and forged by the ownmost possibility of ways of being. One's ownmost authentic possibility of being is always of a self and of a conscience.
The human soul is most itself and most soullike when it is of one's ownmost self. The soul is never "gone" or destroyed, for as long as you are alive, you cannot lose your soul. But nevertheless, the soul can indeed become "lost." Not in the sense of destruction or expropriation, but in the falling prey to publicness, mindlessness, selflessness, of not being of a conscience, the soul can become lost in the sense of forgetting—of forgetting soulfulness and of "leaving it behind somewhere." This "somewhere" whence the soul is left behind and forgotten is the public space of inauthenticity. But the call of conscience can call to one's heart as a summons out of the publicness of the everyone and into the authentic constitution of mindfulness and selfness. The response to the call of conscience is one that is resolute and anticipates its ownmost possibilities and ways of being.
The call of conscience is nothing of consciousness, reason, or mental cognition, but is a call to soul and of spirit—of the spirit's kinship with and of soul: to be of a soul. For the essence of human existence is wholly of soulfulness. Human existence dwells in soulfulness.
Soul as Groundgiver
The soul is the essence of the existence of the human being. It is the ground of the human being and is expressed and disclosed in attunements. The soul is of the expressive-disclosive character of attunements, that which shows "how one is getting along." Attunement becomes concrete in mood but is ontologically prior to mood. Soul expresses the spirit of human existence, the alikeness and kinship, of the of-ness of spirit. One can be of, through attuned comportment, "the spirit of leadership" or "the spirit of fearlessness." Or even of "the spirit of boredom" or "the spirit of anxiety." But this rests wholly in and of the soul in its essence of expression-disclosure. What is expressed and disclosed is, most properly, the authentic human self which expresses and discloses itself, the world, and its relations to both, including the human soul to whom one is speaking or engaging with. Soul expresses and discloses unto soul. The souls of other humans.
The soul in its soulfulness is the essence and ground of the human being. It is of and reflects the tension of the null ground, the groundlessness of all existence, and opens up the possibility for grounding in Dasein, for grounding in human existence. This means authentic human existence which is rooted in the soil of the earth. The soil of the earth is that place in which one finds themselves, in the belonging of a free and open community of near dwellers, of neighbors, who have all claimed their essential constitution as stewards of the earth, who harvest the earth's abundance for everyone, and who, as stewards, erect their dwelling upon the earthen land and cultivate and prosper as peoples, in free and open self-government and autonomous organization. —Sociare, original sense of socialism.
