Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

by Barbara Ehrenreich

One can’t even find the concept of the “immortal soul” in the Bible. It was grafted onto Christian teachings from the pagan Greeks long after the Bible was written.2 The idea of an immortal soul did not survive the Enlightenment unscathed. The soul depended on God to provide its immortality, and as his existence—or at least his attentiveness—was called into question, the immortal soul gave way to the far more secular notion of the self. While the soul was probably “discovered” by Christians (and Jews) reading Plato, the self was never discovered; it simply grew by accretion, apparently starting in Renaissance Europe. Scholars can argue endlessly about when exactly the idea of the self—or any other historical innovation—arose; precedents can always be claimed. But historians have generally agreed on the vague proposition that nothing like either the soul or the self existed in the ancient world. Ego, yes, and pride and ambition, but not the capacity for introspection and internal questioning that we associate with the self. Achilles wanted his name and his deeds remembered forever; he did not agonize over his motives or conflicted allegiances. That sort of thinking came later.