Soul stuff (was: Stupid question about Horscrux!Harry)

[Judy]

Debbie wrote:
> I know this was *last* week's discussion, but my internet connection
> went down before I finished the response I had been drafting.  
> Better late than never, I guess.

Hey, I'm still hoping to find time to comment on stuff from last 
month! 

Debbie said:
> According to the CCC (catechism of the Catholic church), "soul"
> signifies the spiritual in a human being, i.e., a person's capacity 
> to do good. ...
> So, if Hx!Harry is correct, there is reason to believe that Harry
> acquired a bit of Voldemort's capacity for good, and none of his
> capacity for evil, which raises the question whether the 
> augmentation
> of Harry's soul provided additional ammunition for Harry to resist
> evil.  On the other hand, no wonder Slughorn is so horrified at the
> idea of seven Horcruxes.  If the soul represents our humanity,
> Voldemort is barely human, as the snakelike description of
> post-resurrection Voldemort suggests.

Hmmm... if the soul is one's capacity for good, could Voldemort 
*ever* have had enough of a soul to tear into seven pieces?  It seems 
that JKR has left ambiguous the question of whether Voldemort had any 
capacity for good to start with; he is said to know nothing of love.  
I suspect that JKR's conception of the soul can't fit this Catholic 
one; Voldemort must be ripping something other than just his capacity 
for good. 

While we're on the topic of souls, the question arose as to why the 
soul part that had been in Voldemort's body managed to stay cohesive 
in Albania after Voldemort's body died, while the soul parts in the 
diary and ring seem to have just faded away (or something) when their 
vessels were broken. Here, I agree with Pippin that the "soul" that 
gets divided into horcruxes must be somehow distinct from the self -- 
although the way I was thinking of it was that the soul must be 
distinct from the *mind*.  My thought was that although Voldemort cut 
off bits of his soul and put them in various objects, this didn't 
involve removing any of his mind.  He did not lose any memories or 
knowledge -- presumably -- each time he made a Horcrux. (Actually, 
Dumbledore tells Harry something like this, that Voldemort's soul is 
diminished, but not his skills.)

So, Voldemort's entire mind stayed with his body, along with the bit 
of soul that had been stored there.  When his body was destroyed, his 
mind was not, and was available to force his soul -- sleeplessly, 
endlessly, second by second -- to stay cohesive until he could 
acquire physical form through various means such as possession.  The 
other horcruxes, however, were soul without mind, and therefore 
dissipated (or whatever) when their containers were destroyed. 

Now, the diary is a bit of a special case.  It clearly has some form 
of intelligence, but I assume this is contained somehow in the 
physical object, rather than being a non-corporeal entity the way 
minds apparently are in the Potterverse.  So, when the diary was 
destroyed, that version of Tom Riddle was, too. 

By the way, I don't believe that the ring, locket, etc. could acquire 
a personality and possess someone the way the diary did.  The diary 
contained some of Tom Riddle's memories -- Dumbledore implies that 
Riddle actually wrote an account of opening the Chamber of Secrets in 
the diary, even though the words were no longer visible when Harry 
got the book. The ring, etc., presumably did not contain anything 
like the same amount of information; therefore, they don't have 
enough of Voldemort's memories to create a new version of him.   


-- Judy, who is writing quickly because she should be working