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Date Posted: 16:48:22 07/13/06 Thu
Author: manwitch
Subject: Re: vampires
In reply to: Dickbd 's message, "Re: vampires" on 14:26:05 06/26/06 Mon

I'm not sure the show said the soul is the conscience. Regardless of what Joss may have said.

Angel said the soul was the conscience and Buffy believed him.

In the first two episodes, the master said to luke, as he was preparing for the Harvest, "Your soul is my soul," and Giles said in explaining vampirism, "The soul of the demon infects the host" or something to that effect. But there is an implication early on that other creatures have souls. Even in the episode Angel, he says that the soul he had previously is gone, but he does not say definitively whether or not another one took up residence. The idea of being soul'less comes later.

If you are familiar with the last, oh, say, 300 some odd years of philosophizing on the soul, you may have noticed that the Buffy series depicts characters using competing philosophies of the soul. Angel is Kantian. Spike is Nietzschean. Buffy is Lyotardian, if that's a word. Note that each character is either born or vamped when their respective philospher is at or near the peak of his intellectual power and influence. Therefore I think it hard to say that the series ever comes down with a single consistent definition. Although I do think they suggest a preference (Lyotard). The soul is what is born from our compassionate interactions with and sacrifices for others. There is no greater moment for Buffy, than when her love and sacrifice infuses and illuminates everything she is supposed to hate and be against and annihilates the contradictions of us and them, good and evil. And that's the moment Spike can feel his soul.

Angel's Kantian soul, which most people associate with the position the Buffyverse itself holds, is really left in the rear view mirror by the end of Buffy season 5.

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