Soul and Mind

Abstract

The author shows that the Russian word duša ‘soul’ has a much wider scope of use than the English word soul and that it embodies a different folk psychology (fully congruent with what has been described as the Russian “national character”). She also shows that the English word mind stands for an Anglo‐Saxon folk category, which has been reified as an objective category of thought. She links the decline and fall of the concept soul and the ascendancy of mind in English with changes in the cultural history and in the prevailing Western ethnophilosophy. 1989 American Anthropological Association Show more