Where are You?
The question, “Where are you?” might be used in a variety of contexts. Depending on the context, answers might be very different. There are different kinds of “location.”
For example, recently one of my friends said, “I’m in hell.” This friend believes in orthodox Christian doctrine, so he doesn’t literally think he is in hell. Things have gone so wrong in his life—financially, career wise, church relationships, intimate family dysfunction—that he feels trapped, hopeless, and angry. He suffers every day, and there is no way to escape. We can call this a metaphorical location. It’s easy to imagine more examples. “I’m on page twelve.” “I’m in the dumps.” “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”
In contrast to metaphorical location, we often expect and respond with physical location. “I’m in the bonus room.” “I just left Safeway; be home soon.”
It’s obvious, but I’ll draw attention to this fact anyway. Physical location is the primary kind of location. Metaphorical location may something important and/or insightful about a person’s spiritual or psychological situation, but it does so without claiming literal truth. “He’s green with envy” may say something important about a person without implying that he is green. By contrast, “I just left Safeway” cannot be true unless the speaker was physically located near Safeway in the recent past.
So far I’ve said nothing controversial. But some notions in philosophical anthropology suggest other kinds of “location.” For example, some versions of body-soul dualism allow for the answer, “I’m here now, but a few hours ago I was in Delhi.” On body-soul dualism, the real person is the soul, not the body. And some versions of body-soul dualism endorse “soul travel.” On this view, the person’s body may have been here at home for the entirety of the last 24 hours, but the real person (the soul) was in Delhi (thousands of miles away from here) for some portion of those 24 hours. Thus, if such dualistic theories are true, the correct answer to “Where are you?” must be a report on the location of the person’s soul. I suppose one might even say, on this view, “I’m not here. Only my body is here. I’m on Venus.”
I don’t believe in soul travel. And I think body-soul dualism is bad philosophy in general. Remember, one of the greatest philosophers ever, Plato, made body-soul dualism a key feature of his theory. Therefore, rejecting body-soul dualism very definitely is controversial. Many Platonists, including many Christians, disbelieve in soul travel, but they need to give some explanation why. If the real person is the soul (without the body), why can’t souls travel?
On the other hand, some Platonist Christians are quite open to soul travel. When Paul says to the Corinthians that he “was caught up to the third heaven” he was talking, they say, about soul travel. I disagree. I think Paul was describing a vision. But Platonist Christians will not be persuaded easily, and I’m not going to make my case here.
In previous essays, I have described “therapeutic dualism.” Here the contrast is not between the soul and the body (as in Platonic dualism) nor between the mind and the body (as in Cartesian dualism), but between the heart and the body. Therapeutic dualism promises that if you follow your heart, which is the real you, you will live a better, more happy life. Thus, if in your heart you discover that you are lesbian, you will be happier if you practice woman-woman sex. If a teenager’s heart is female, he should be encouraged to identify as female and if necessary make use of surgery and hormone therapy to bring her body into conformity with her true self. Therapeutic dualism has gained great influence in our culture, to the point that many people argue that minor children must have access to such surgeries and hormone therapies without consent of their legal guardians (their parents).
On therapeutic dualism, a person may truthfully say, “My body is male, but I am female.” Or: “My body is female, but I am nonbinary.” The true person is the heart. I suspect—though this is not clearly said by many—that the heart can change. If that’s right, then a person could say, “I used to be female, but now I am male. The fact that my body has sex organs of one kind or another is irrelevant.”
For some Platonists, soul travel is an attractive feature of their doctrine. The soul/body division opens spiritual location. The body might be unjustly imprisoned, but the soul is free.
Therapeutic dualists—many of them at least—would not want similar implications for their doctrine. If a young girl’s heart really is male, transgender teaching says she should be able to remake her body to conform to the heart. It’s not enough to be free in one’s heart; the body needs to be remade.
It seems, then, that therapeutic dualists would answer “Where are you?” by saying, “I’m right here, trapped in this body.”
Aristotelian dualists say that the soul is the form of the body. Against the Platonists, we can say the soul is right here, in this body. Against the Cartesians, Aristotelians can admit the body and mind interact intimately. But the soul is not trapped; it is the very form of the body.
