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Wellsprings
soul

Body as Tomb (Sōma Sēma)

σῶμα σῆμα

A pun older than Plato: the body (sōma) is the soul's tomb (sēma), a prison the philosopher learns to die out of.

For the Orphics and Pythagoreans, and after them Plato, the soul is a divine exile fettered to the flesh as if locked in a tomb or jail, serving out a sentence until it can be freed. Plato played on the near-identical Greek words sōma (body) and sēma (tomb or sign) to drive the point home, and in the Phaedo he cast philosophy itself as a lifelong rehearsal for the soul's release through death. Centuries later Plotinus reworked the image as the soul's descent into matter and its longing to ascend back to its source. The doctrine made the care of the soul, not the comfort of the body, the heart of the philosophical life.

Where this idea shows up

3 Greek sources·2 Jewish-canon citations

Where to read it