Compare and contrast Plato's concept of the Body and Soul with Aristotle's.

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Compare and contrast Plato’s concept of the Body and Soul with Aristotle’s.

In this essay I will be comparing what Plato and Aristotle thought about the relationship of the body and Soul. The main fundamental difference between what Plato and Aristotle thought about the relationship between the Body and Soul is that Plato thought that the Soul was immortal; it was existed before the Body and its here when the Body dies.

Plato thought this to be true because of his theory of forms. Plato thought we had such ideas as a ‘perfect circle,’ or a ‘perfect chair,’ not because we have seen them before or they had been described to us, but the image was already known to us through the

world of forms. Plato adopted a theory that our Soul had already lived a life in the world of Forms and as the Body experienced things this unlocked memory from that world of Forms so the Body/Mind recognises objects as a ‘circle,’ or ‘chair’ but not a perfect a ‘circle,’ or ‘chair,’ because only the Forms we remember are perfect because in the material world things change making them imperfect.

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Aristotle disagreed with Plato abut this. He thought that the Soul was a part of the Body, it was made with the Body, the body supported it and when the Body died there was nothing to support the Soul so it died too.

 Aristotle thought more along the lines of a living being is a composite whole- the body is the matter and the Soul is its form. The form to Aristotle is considered to be many things: sensation; movement; and reproduction. The Soul is affected by what the living thing is. An animal for example has the ability to ...

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