Over the centuries, many have tried to capture the essence of the soul: for some it was chained to the body, for others a pure spirit. The survey identified in the secular mind, the religious intuition perceived as an abyss of light in which God reveals himself.
Gianfranco Ravasi wanted to "rethink" what had already been investigated and pondered during the long adventure of human thought, from primitive cultures and ancient civilizations. He analyzed the two sources that feed the Western concept of soul: the Holy Scriptures and the Greek culture, with the myths of Psyche and Orpheus and thinkers as Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus.
At the end of this reflection, one realizes that the story coincides with the history of the soul of man, a creature of God a question emerges: the maelstrom of contemporary humanity is not an advance but a retreat insensitive , or a strange hovering always on the same space, and that his "soul, with its hunger for eternity and infinity" is that instead force us to move "further and further, an addition to unlimited. "