Evaluate Aristotles view that the soul is mortal and inseparable from the body, making reference to Plato.

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Evaluate Aristotle’s view that the soul is mortal and inseparable from the body, making reference to Plato

Aristotle argued that a living creature is substance made of two parts body and soul. The soul of which is form and the body, matter. He argued that the body and soul are two interdependent parts of a human that rely on each other. When the body dies as does the soul, there was no separation at death and no afterlife. Aristotle placed great emphasis on physical world and the forces adopted within this. On the other hand, Plato was a dualist and believed that the soul was the single most important part of a person and believed in the importance of moral concepts, ideas and the afterlife.

Aristotle was Plato’s most prized student, but disagreed with him on a lot of cases, these disagreements came from fundamental differences between the two philosophers as Plato was a rationalist whilst Aristotle was empiricist. Plato believed in the ideal realm, which is a pre-existence of the soul, in other words us in soul form without a body. In the ideal realm our souls encounter perfect archetypes of knowledge, which we promptly forget through the trauma of childbirth, of which the soul has now joined the body. To Plato the coming in and the going out of life, birth and death were extremely important. This was because it was the representation of the soul coming in and leaving the body. Plato’s idea of the soul was that of an ever-presence authority both before and after life. After death Plato was a believer of reincarnation, which in literal terms means to be made flesh. This was a common Greek belief about backing up the immortality of the soul. It was said that once the soul leaves the body it drinks from the river Lethe of forgetfulness explaining why people have no recollection of their past lives. For this reasoning Plato drew up an analogy of sleep. As sleep comes after being awake and being awake comes from sleep, as does death come from life so in return life can come from death.

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On the other hand, Aristotle thought that the soul is the Form of the body and that the soul is simply all of the operations happening that make us human. In contrast to many philosophers and religious men, Aristotle believed that all living things had souls, but different stages in a hierarchy. His belief was that plants have a vegetative soul, animals are above plants because they have appetites, but humans are above all animals and plants alike because people have the power of reason. If a rationalist was to take Aristotle’s theory at face value, they would find a ...

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