Abstract
From Antiquity, philosophers have associated the destiny of the soul with its nature: the materiality or the immateriality of the soul is critical when deciding whether (I) it is distinguishable from or identical to the body, (II) a part of it, (III) and/or a part that survives the body. But what is the soul? To put it in simple terms, it is the set of operations that a living being can accomplish during its life.
In this respect, "soul" encompasses activities that range from breathing and sleeping to thinking about Pythagoras' theorem or about one's beloved. If the soul is material, constituted by elements that undergo generation and corruption, the soul will follow the destiny of its component parts.
Such is the position held by the atomist Democritus of Abdera (460-400/380 B.C.): every existing thing is made up by material indivisible and invisible components, whose aggregations form...