[Grammar] Spinoza was one of the biggest souls who/that (?) lived on Earth.

[Conatus]

Hi,

Taking in regard the semantic meaning of "soul" in the following phrase (a person), does one have to use "who" or "that" in it?

"Spinoza was one of the biggest souls __ lived on Earth."

Are maybe both pronouns acceptable?

 

[MikeNewYork]

Hi,

Taking in regard the semantic meaning of "soul" in the following phrase (a person), does one have to use "who" or "that" in it?

"Spinoza was one of the biggest souls __ lived on Earth."

Are maybe both pronouns acceptable?

Either "who" or "that" can be used for a person. I believe most would prefer "who".

 

[Raymott]

Hi,

Taking in regard the semantic meaning of "soul" in the following phrase (a person), does one have to use "who" or "that" in it?

"Spinoza was one of the biggest souls __ lived on Earth."

Are maybe both pronouns acceptable?

If the meaning of 'soul' is supposed to be 'person', then it's probably wrong. I don't know how big Spinoza was, but he wasn't a giant (literally).
What are you actually trying to say? I don't think you can refer to Spinoza as a 'soul' without some spiritual connotation of the word. I'd change it. Maybe "one of the greatest souls", but this is implicitly spiritual.

 

[MikeNewYork]

If the meaning of 'soul' is supposed to be 'person', then it's probably wrong. I don't know how big Spinoza was, but he wasn't a giant (literally).
What are you actually trying to say? I don't think you can refer to Spinoza as a 'soul' without some spiritual connotation of the word. I'd change it. Maybe "one of the greatest souls", but this is implicitly spiritual.

I disagree. I think one can describe a person as a "soul" without a spiritual or religious connotation. We talk about "poor souls", "good souls" and jolly old souls". Whether Spinoza was great or not depends mostly on opinion. I think he was an important philosopher.

 

[Raymott]

We don't refer to famous people as "big souls".

 

[MikeNewYork]

We don't refer to famous people as "big souls".

Why not? If "souls" means "people:, it is fine.

 

[Raymott]

Why not? If "souls" means "people:, it is fine.

It's fine if Spinoza was one of the biggest people who lived on Earth. But he wasn't.
I can't believe I'm arguing about this.

 

[Conatus]

If the meaning of 'soul' is supposed to be 'person', then it's probably wrong. I don't know how big Spinoza was, but he wasn't a giant (literally).
What are you actually trying to say? I don't think you can refer to Spinoza as a 'soul' without some spiritual connotation of the word. I'd change it. Maybe "one of the greatest souls", but this is implicitly spiritual.

Thank you very much for your answer, Raymott.

I'm trying to mean "one of the greatest souls", taking "soul" in its spiritual connotation. I tought it would be possible to use "big" as a synonym to "great" after checking this example in Word Reference online Dictionary (English to Portuguese):

The boss is a big man in the community. [according to the mentioned dictionary, as a synonym to "important": ]big] - Dicionário Inglês-Português (Brasil) WordReference.com

Before asking the question I checked "biggest souls" on Google as well and I found more than 800 results.

I remembered that at least in journalistic texts it's common to see "giant" as a synonym to "very very proeminent in her/his field of work".

I've seen that in Word Referece thesaurus one can see "big" as a synonym to "important", "proeminent": big - WordReference.com English Thesaurus

I'm not insisting on that "big" is possible to convey this meaning. I'm just showing the sources I've checked to you all.

Actually, I was more concerned about which pronoun to use when the noun it refers to is at the same time an object ("soul" in its denotative meaning; an abstract object, of course) and a subject ("soul" in one of its connotatives meanings: a person) and Mike kindly answered my question. But this issue you've raised is interesting and important too. What do you think about the meanings shown in the sources above?

 

[Conatus]

great soul vs. big soul:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...rect_url=t1;,big soul;,c0;.t1;,great soul;,c0

big soul:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...moothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1;,big soul;,c0

 

[Rover_KE]

The use of 'soul' to mean 'person' is mostly restricted to literary or poetical usage.

'The liner sank with the tragic loss of 2,400 souls' (crew, passengers, entertainers,temporary staff).

'Old King Cole was a merry old soul'.

'Spinoza was one of the biggest souls...' sounds quite wrong.

 

[konungursvia]

I think the soul is intended to refer to that part of the person other than the body, its extension, its weight, size etc. I agree the sentence the OP gives might raise eyebrows a little, but I don't think it's because it's logically flawed.

On another note, my brother, a philosophy grad, thinks of Spinoza as the greatest of all of them in some respects -- I forget which respects though. I haven't read him, because when I came across him, I was at a non-spiritual moment in my adolescent development.

PS. In the movie Master and Commander, based on an Irish novel, the ship's crew is listed as 384 souls, meaning the people obviously. Some were children, and were visibly about 1/4 the size and weight of the larger men. Just sayin'.

 

[emsr2d2]

In spiritual terms, a soul is a soul is a soul, regardless of how tall/short/fat/thin the person is. I believe that many years ago, someone tried to measure the weight of a soul by measuring the weight of a body just before death and just after death. It was an unmitigated failure.

When not talking in a spiritual way, we do indeed refer to people as "souls" regardless of whether you are talking about people who die in a transport accident (Titanic) or not. We also sometimes refer to people as having a "beautiful soul" when we mean that they are kind, generous, kind-hearted etc.

I find "biggest souls" very unnatural.