Describe Platos Theory of Body and Soul.

        Whilst in this world our soul is influenced by our body.  When the body and soul combine the body obstructs the souls ability to recall the ideal forms.  Our minds long for our soul to remember the world of forms, but our body fights our mind by blocking it with sense pleasures.  Needs like eating and sleeping are constantly interrupting our minds from pursuing more intellectual pursuits.  Plato writes

‘The body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food: and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact.  As men it takes away form us all power of thinking at all’

This shows how Plato believed the soul can be corrupted.  The care of ones soul is therefore the most important task we have as humans.  Perfecting our soul should be done throughout our lives.  However this is very difficult for everyone apart from philosophers like himself, as they do no let themselves be corrupted by sense pleasures.

Plato believed the soul was divided into three components; reason, will and appetite.  He argued that we can identify these parts of the soul as they sometimes clash with each other.  For example a person may crave or have an appetite for something, yet resist the craving with willpower.  Plato contended that for our souls to function properly we should let reason, the highest part of the soul, to control the lowest part, appetite, with help from will.

        When we die, Plato believed our soul returned to the world of forms, to begin the cycle once more, the movement of the soul, Plato referred to as Transmigration.    This means that our soul, according to Plato is immortal and unchanging – ‘The soul most closely resembles the divine and immortal, intelligible and uniform and indissoluble and ever-unchangeable’  

        In Platos book ‘The Phaedo’ Plato attempts to justify his beliefs by giving logical and reasonable arguments, often known today as ‘The argument from the cycle of opposites’ and ‘The argument from knowledge’