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Nature of Plato's concept of the soul
About Plato's theory of Soul
A perfect society
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Recommended: Nature of Plato's concept of the soul
Plato was a famous Greek philosopher, dating back almost two and a half millennia. He was one of the first philosophers to question a systematic approach to creating the perfect society, requiring knowledge of human nature and the flaws it contains. He also was the first to experiment in democracy. Plato was a firm believer in the immortal soul. He theorized that the soul was divided into three parts: appetite, spirit, and reason. Reason, being the most important, should rule over the other two. In cases where spirit and appetite did rule over reason, Plato diagnosed that an imperfect society would be created, thus influencing individuals who contribute to the unjust society. The only way to fix this problem is for an elite group known as the Guardians to arise through education. The Guardians would be able to justly rule society without the greed for power, creating the perfect society. I, however, disagree with Plato’s theory, believing that everyone should have the equal opportunity to reach his or her potential, and that there is no perfect society.
Plato often argued that the soul was separated into three parts, also known as the Tripartite Theory. The first part of the soul identified by Plato is eros, also known as appetite. This is defined as the base of biological cravings for food, thirst, and sexual desire. The second part is nous or reason, which is the person’s knowledge. The final part is spirit or thumos and it includes a person’s passion, emotion and heart. These three parts were always present and influenced every decision made. An example that is used by the text is if a man is thirsty but thinks the water he was given is poisoned, he will not drink it. In order for him to come to this conclusion, there must be p...
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...lp it from not becoming power corrupt.
Plato often argued that the soul was comprised of three parts. Appetite, which is ones natural, desires; spirit, being ones emotions; reason, which is ones knowledge. It was this theory that leads him to the conclusion that the ruling of any part over reason would result in a corrupt society. The only way to solve this problem was through education, which would cause an elite sub-group to arise. This group would be suitable to receive higher education, allowing them to govern society. I strongly disagree with this prescription, believing that everyone should be given the equal opportunity to reach their potential and have a say in the way the society is run, creating a just society.
Works Cited
Leslie Stevenson, David L. Haberman and Peter Matthews Wright, Twelve Theories of Human Nature, (Oxford University Press, 2013), 89.
Plato firmly believed that only a select few should rule. This idea stems from his view that people are unequal in essence, as some truly enlightened individuals are able to understand justice and good whereas others could only see the suggestion of the phenomenas. He asserted that many people were
Another one of Plato’s ideas that I disagree with is having assigned positions in society. This eliminates the free choice of the citizens, and they will not be as productive doing something that they are forced to do rather than something they choose.
Plato's philosophy of government sees the State as a larger version of the individual, and the soul of an individual is comprised of three parts. Plato states that these three parts include the appetite, the spirit, and reason (167), and these parts have goals and desires that pertain only to them. For example, reason finds fulfillment in the study ...
In Plato's Republic democracy made a controversial issue in a critique by Socrates. The theory of the soul accounts for the controversy as it states that the soul is divided into three parts: the rational, the spirited, and the appetite which are ranked respectively. The idea of the soul's three parts and the soul being ruled by a dominant part is used as the basis for identifying justice and virtue. However, the theory of the soul is not only used to identify justice and virtue, but also used to show that the virtue within a city reflects that of its inhabitants.
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...
For Plato, education was more fundamental than tradition or literature or civilization or culture, for education determined how all the others were to be acquired, appreciated, and criticized. Indeed, education and philosophy were, as they are now, intimately linked. The practice of philosophy in Plato's time as in ours, the business of philosophy, was teaching far more than it was system-building. In fact, if Plato was the author of a system of philosophy, by which we are to understand a coherent set of interrelated axioms and their mutual implications, then Plato was a profoundly unsuccessful philosopher. For Plato makes such a variety of different and incompatible statements about so many topics that more than two thousand years of scholarship has thus far failed to produce anything like the consensus about his so-called system that one finds among Aristotelians, for example, or even Marxists.
Abel, Donald C., ed. Theories of Human Nature: Classical and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.
Plato who was a Greek philosopher and was the founder of the academy in Athens. Plato was Socrates student, but as education furthered, he began to form his own ideals. Plato’s Republic, translated from the New Standard Greek Text and an introduction by C.D.C. Reeve is the compilation of Plato’s teachings. An incredibly common concept that is discussed throughout the text is the idea of Justice and what it truly means to be just and to live a just life. Plato is asked to argue his definition of justice and explain why his definition is the correct one. Plato is not the only philosopher who analyzes what it means to be just and what it truly means to be considered a good citizen. Aristotle: The Politics is another compilation of texts and teachings
The Republic is the most important dialogue within Plato's teaching of politics. It deals with the soul, which, as we know from the beginning, at the level where one must make choices and decide what one wants to become in this life, and it describes justice as the ultimate form of human, and the ideal one should strive for both in life and in state. Justice as understood by Plato is not merely a social virtue, having only to do with relationship between people, but virtue that makes it possible for one to build their own regime and reach happiness.
Plato disagreed and thought that dividing power was unfair and cruel. In his mind, he felt that those in the lower class could never have the chance to get any higher in life. Though all three philosophers felt that the government should be based on the equality of all the people, they all had different views on what equality really meant. These philosophers all had their own way of gathering information and passing it through the minds of others.
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.
Plato also believes that the soul is entrapped inside the body and for those who seek
Plato thought education at all levels should be the state’s responsibility. His reasoning was that the individual
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
... state. In Plato's argument for the ideal state, the fundamental bonds which hold together his republic are unity and harmony. He explains how the just state is held together by the unity of each individual in each social class, and harmony between all three social classes. Plato explains how the ideal state must have citizens who are united in their goals. It is not the happiness of the individual but rather the happiness of the whole which keeps the just state ideal. At the same time, Plato argues that there must be harmony within the individual souls which make up the state. The lack of unity and harmony leads to despotism through anarchy which eventually arises within a democracy. Plato makes a clear argument, through The Republic, that without the unity and harmony of the individual and the state there can be no order and therefore there can be no ideal state.