Greeks started to wonder about the living things and their connection with the divine. Many philosophers had different beliefs towards the connection between body, soul and divine. Plato was the first man to ask about the existence of the soul and he came to the conclusion that the soul and the body are complementary, yet absolutely different from each other. The soul is the organ that connects the body and the divine. The body is an instrument of perception to the soul. The body without the soul is just a corpse. Plato’s claim that a person should not be judged for their gender, that the gender of the body that the soul inhabits has no effect on the ultimate purpose. The soul is immateriality and immortality according to Plato. Plato gives three arguments regarding the soul: the cyclical process of the soul, the post-existence, pre-existence and the soul not composed of parts. Plato also names three areas to the soul: the appetites, the spirited and the mind.
The soul is the battery to the body; the soul allows the body to be a living thing. The soul is the spark that sets fire to the body. The body acquires life, emotion, senses and intelligence with the fusion of the soul. Plato believes that the soul is not composed of parts that can be decomposed or destroyed. When the body dies, the soul is separated from the body and travels to the invisible realm keeping all the knowledge acquired. For Plato, death is a good thing because it sets the soul free. The soul becomes it is truly self; pure, full of wisdom, good, and beautiful. However, when the soul introduces a new body the soul forgets its knowledge, but over time the soul recollects memories by learning. Plato proves this theory when, “In reference to an uneducated slave b...
... middle of paper ...
...ny form of body from a human to an animal, however; Plato explained that animals did not have the capability to recollect past memory nor had the ability to reason. In the form of an animal and if the soul is ultimate goal is to find justice, how can the soul find it without previous knowledge?
Works Cited
Cuizon, Gwen. "Is Plato a Feminist?" (2010): n. page. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. .
Therese. "Plato’s Theory of the Existence of the Soul." (2009): n. page. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. .
Republic . "Republic." (2002): 54. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. .
Garside, Christine. "Plato on Women." Feminist Studies. 2. (1975): n. page. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. .
Plato. Republic. Trans. G.M.A. Grube and C.D.C. Reeve. Plato Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
In this paper I will discuss the Final Argument in Plato’s Phaedo. In this argument Socrates concludes, “Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world (Plato, 1689).” This argument may be the most convincing of his arguments about the afterlife, but the way in which he comes to his conclusion that the soul is immortal and indestructible is flawed, and because of this, I find that Plato’s final argument is not sound and lacking validity. I feel this argument is an unsound deductive argument. In order to show evidence of this, I will examine how Plato reached his conclusion.
The differences of mind and soul have intrigued mankind since the dawn of time, Rene Descartes, Thomas Nagel, and Plato have addressed the differences between mind and matter. Does the soul remain despite the demise of its material extension? Is the soul immaterial? Are bodies, but a mere extension of forms in the physical world? Descartes, Nagel, and Plato agree that the immaterial soul and the physical body are distinct entities.
Plato, and G. M. A. Grube. "Phaedo." Five Dialogues. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2002. 93-
In Plato’s dialogue, the Phaedo, Socrates gives an account of the immortality of the soul. Socrates does this through a series of arguments. He argues that the soul will continue to exist, and that it will go on to a better place. The argument begins on the day of his execution with the question of whether it is good or bad to die. In other words, he is arguing that the soul is immortal and indestructible. This argument is contrary to Cebes and Simmias who argue that even the soul is long lasting, it is not immortal and it is destroyed when the body dies. This paper focuses on Socrates 's first argument for immortality of the human soul, his counter arguments to Cebes and Simmias ' arguments, and an explanation as to why Socrates first argument for the immorality of the soul does not succeed in establishing that the soul is immortal.
In the book Plato 's Phaedo, Socrates argues that the soul will continue to exist, and that it will go on to a better place. The argument begins on the day of Socrates execution with the question of whether it is good or bad to die. In other words, he is arguing that the soul is immortal and indestructible. This argument is contrary to Cebes and Simmias beliefs who argue that even the soul is long lasting, it is not immortal and it is destroyed when the body dies. This paper is going to focus on Socrates four arguments for the soul 's immortality. The four arguments are the Opposite argument, the theory of recollection, the affinity argument, and the argument from form of life. As the body is mortal and is subject to physical death, the soul
For this reason, Plato believes that we must separate the soul based on how it
For Plato, the soul is considered to have three parts: the appetitive or the passions, the spirited part or the will, the reasonable part or the intellect. The appetitive deals with the bodily necessities and desires. The appetite is often considered base or even sinful, but is clearly not so for Aristotle: the passions merely demonstrate a person’s basic necessities, which one can not consider without considering the human person in the same way. The spirited part reacts to injustices or incorrectness in one’s surroundings, and it is often described as the “angry” part, as anger deal with perception of injustice as well. The reasonable part concerns itself with finding the truth and distinguishing it from falsities, and is often considered both the highest and hardest to perfect part of the soul. Each part has its own intricacies and specifics, allowing them to aid the human...
Through the course of these last few weeks, we as a class have discussed the Soul, both in concept, and as it applies in terms of our readings of The Phaedo and as a philosophical construct. But the questions involved in that: In the ideas of good, of living a ‘good’ life and getting ‘rid of the body and of their wickedness’, as ‘there is no escape from evil’, (Phaedo, 107c), in whether or not the soul is immortal, or if our bodies themselves get in the way of some higher form of knowledge, or even of the importance of philosophy itself are rather complex, simultaneously broad and specific, and more than a little messy. While I discuss these aspects, the singular question that I feel applies to this is, in a sort of nihilistic fashion, does
For Descartes, these are mind and body, and for Plato they are body and soul. Aristotle, in contrast, believes in a singular being where both body and soul are connected. For myself, a Christian who believes in the existence of a life after death, Aristotle 's theory creates an obvious negation. While I could agree with the levels of the soul argument, I cannot agree with the body and soul being one and the same for the simple reason that I do not believe that when the body dies, everything dies. I believe something is left over. What that something is, where it goes and what its purpose is, I may not know for certain, but to believe otherwise would not create a better life for me. Believing the soul lives on beyond the body creates an inner desire to seek morality and goodness, and it is in that endeavor that one creates a “better” life. Similarly, it is intuition that leads me to reject Descartes ' argument because my best judgment would tell me not to believe that everything I know, all that I sense, is a figment of my mind. I cannot know if such a thing is true or false, but far too many questions are raised by such an explanation. For myself, neither Aristotle nor Descartes provide an adequate understanding into the nature of the
Plato believed that the body and the soul were two separate entities, the body being mortal and the soul being immortal. In Plato’s phaedo, this is further explained by Socrates. He claims that by living a philosophical life, we are able to eventually free the soul from the body and its needs. If we have not yield to our bodily needs, we should not fear death, since it can than permanently detach the soul from the body. The most convincing argument for the immortality of the body is the theory of recollection, which shows that we are already born with knowledge of forms and that learning is thus recalling these ideas. If we are already born with knowledge this implies that are soul is immortal, since it would otherwise be a blank page.
The nature of the soul is presented to us in an illustration of a story of a charioteer who has two horses to control: one is white and is good and noble, the other is black and frequently goes of course while it succumbs to temptations. This is how Plato describes the soul in three parts: the charioteer represents reason (which guides), the good white horse represents spirit (which animates and drives on towards glory), and the untamed black horse correlates with desire (which motivates). These three are also in competition with each other; however, for happiness to be obtained, a soul needs all three of these compon...
Plato, Complete Works ed. By John M Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson, Hackett (1997 p. 15)
Aristotle argued and disagreed with Plato’s views of the self and soul being a separate from the body. Aristotle’s view is that all humans have a soul, yet they cannot be separate from the body in which they reside. To him, there are four sections of the soul; the desiderative and vegetative parts on the irrational side are used to help one find what they are needing and the calculative and scientific parts on the rational side are
He believes that the soul takes shelter within the body. The three parts are all located in three different areas: reason is in the mind, spirited is in the heart, and desire is in the stomach. Reason is what controls the whole soul (Plato p. 49). The mind tells the body what to do, how to feel, what to say. The mind controls our appetites and decides who to honor according to memories about those people or events. The spirit is in the heart, the heart is what shows us how we feel about others. The stomach is desire as we crave to have certain possessions such as food or other physical materials in life. If what Plato is saying is any truth, than the argument presented that our soul is our life and our body is nothing but what carries our soul, is therefore false and unsupported by this idea of the mind, heart and stomach. Then so, our thought that Plato’s idea that we can make ourselves alive, is fairly reasonable and true. This is because it is more understandable to say that the reason why our souls are what makes us alive is because our souls are physically made of three parts that control the way we live. Our body is now not only what carries life for us, but what allows us to keep it. Our soul is different from the body because it represents life, but it is our body that allows our lives to