Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-43350363-20200822005246/@comment-46529511-20200822011150

this is a difficult question! as the very nature of "soul" is hard to pinpoint since it's so different in many different medias, but i think in JoJo, a soul is something you're born with, only beings with souls may have stands (ignoring the new universe as it clearly has different rules for stands), and we've seen many things with stands before, and these have been humans, a dog, a bird, a monkey, and the animals that anubis possessed, like those 4 mice, or that one cow, so we can assume humans and every other animal are born with a soul, and when the soul leaves them, they are truly dead.

Vampires like DIO and Vanilla Ice are dead, in the traditional sense but still have souls, this is because they are dead physically, their heart is no longer beating blood throughout them, they do not require air in their lungs to breathe, but because their soul is still inside their body, this allows them to live after death!

Zombies however seem to be mindless, so therefore their souls have most likely left their bodies, though, the Ripple is mentioned to be "life energy" if i remember correctly, so do you require life energy usage to use the Ripple? this is a good question that i find very interesting, if a Zombie wanted to kill itself using Ripple like Straits did when he was a Vampire, would it be able to use Ripple without a Soul and therefore without Life Energy? i personally think not but that's not comfirmed at all so i can't really say with that one for sure.

plants are also living things, do they have a soul? in most things trees and stuff are told to have life energy, if they do in jojo, does that mean they could be "born" with a stand? i personally don't think so, as i don't recall any plant in jojo ever being refferered to as having life energy (Stray Cat obviously doesn't count as it has the soul of a Cat inside it)

my final point of interest about the very nature of a soul in jojo would have to be Gold Experience, when it gives life to something, it uses life energy, does that mean these creatures have brand new souls? can Gold Experience create souls?? i don't really think that's the case 'cus otherwise he could of done it for any of his friends who died, and just gave them a new soul, or, maybe that's faulty reasoning? hard to say, what i think happens there is Giorno uses his OWN life energy to fuel these creatures, if that makes sense, and those are my thoughts :o