When Souls Had Wings (2009)

Oxford University Press

The book traces the history of the idea of pre-existence, investigating the cultural work the paradigm has performed through the centuries. Givens describes how pre-existence has been invoked to explain "the better angels of our nature," and to account for why we know what we should not know, whether in the form of a Greek slave's grasp of mathematics, the moral sense common to humanity, or the human ability to recognize universals. The belief has explained human bonds that seem to have their own mysterious prehistory, salved the wounded sensibility of a host of thinkers who could not otherwise account for the unevenly distributed pain and suffering that are humanity's common lot, and has been posited by philosophers and theologians alike to salvage the principle of human freedom and accountability.