Plato Questions - Concept of the Soul

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Plato Questions

a) Explain Plato’s concept of the soul and its relationship to the body.

Plato was a dualist. He believed that we are dual creatures, the soul is distinct from the body and vice versa. The body has extension (it takes up space) and is impermanent: it has a beginning and will have an end. The soul takes up no space and is immortal: it pre-existed our body and will live forever.

Plato believed that the soul was immortal; it was in existence before the body and it continues to exist 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’, not because we have seen one before or that it had been described to us, but the image was already known to us through the world of Forms. Plato was also a rationalist. He believed that you only have true knowledge and understanding of reality through reason. The physical world is inferior, or course, to the realm of Forms. Any knowledge we have of the physical world is through our senses and is subjective and inexact.

Plato adopted the theory that our soul had already lived a life in the World of Forms, and as the body experienced things, this caused the soul to recollect lost memories. Plato called this the Theory of Recollection – All our ideas are innate such that all learning is a remembering. At birth, as the soul is cast into a body, it is thrown into a state of forgetfulness. Learning, then, is a process of reawakening to what we already know in the depths of our souls but is nonetheless concealed to our normal, everyday consciousness. Plato often viewed the process of life as a moving from darkness or a state of sleep toward the light and full wakefulness. Given this view, Plato viewed teachers such as Socrates to be not instructors who instill knowledge but rather as “midwives” whose job is simply to help give birth to those ideas that are already within us.

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Plato believed that the human person also has different elements: the physical body, the mind, and the immortal soul. The body, like everything else physical, is in a constant state of change, and therefore cannot be the source of the object of reliable truth, because it is never the same from one moment to the next. The soul, in contrast, is immortal and unchanging, and therefore can both know and be known. Plato divided the soul into three parts: the appetitive part, the spirited or emotional part, and the intellectual part. The appetitive part seeks the fulfillment of various bodily ...

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