The Soul: An Attempt at Reanimation

Johanna Haberer’s engaging book Die Seele: Versuch einer Reanimation (The Soul: An Attempt at Reanimation) is a short and easily readable work that explores various perspectives on defining the soul. The author argues that the origins of today’s scientific mode of thinking have led to a “soulless inner impoverishment of society,” and she therefore advocates for understanding the soul in a broader sense.

In her book, she allows a wide range of perspectives to speak—almost in a sweeping survey: religion, atheism, the natural sciences including mathematics, philosophy, poets and thinkers, and even architecture. Ultimately, the discussion always returns to human mortality and to the definition of the soul as an expression of this transience.

Haberer explains that the soul concerns what is essential—what is invisible yet perceptible to most people. She repeatedly incorporates well-chosen quotations from major thinkers to provide both variety and clarification. She bridges the discussion from algorithms to digitalization and raises questions about how the soul of societies is changing in the age of dataism. She refers to warnings from contemporary literature, such as Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Even filmmakers and directors and their perspectives on the soul are included—for example, the film Soul.

The author ultimately moves toward the idea of the soul as something that connects humans with animals and with nature. To do so, she draws on a wide range of approaches from science, creative poets and writers, theologians, and philosophers, weaving all these perspectives into her reflections. The theologian repeatedly cites the Bible, primarily because she believes that life should be viewed more deeply than is customary in scientific approaches, so that a deeper reflection on life must also consider the soul’s connection with God and with the world.

From the Christian perspective and biblical quotations, Johanna Haberer turns to music—for example, Christian chorales and liturgy—establishing connections to the hymn texts of Paul Gerhardt and incorporating central cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as renowned theologians such as Karl Rahner and Carl Gustav Jung.

She concludes with her own personal interpretation of the term “soul”: a phenomenon that represents God’s love for humanity and can thus be understood as a symbol of the all-encompassing world.

Dr. Jessica D.S. Seemeyer