Bethany Manning

'We are eternal beings.' Discuss.

The body and soul topic is primarily about the relationship between the body and soul, and indeed, if there is such a thing as a soul. The topic is seen as important as it centres on the age-old question of life after death. There are many views on this subject, but I shall only focus on three in this essay. Within dualism, the body and soul are two distinct entities, somehow bound together. Scholars that are associated with this theory are Rene Descartes and Plato. Secondly, I shall be studying soft materialism, where the body and soul are one, with the thinking that, if the body can be bought back after death, then so can the soul have a life after death. Those connected to this theory are John Hick and Thomas Aquinas. Lastly is hard materialism, the belief that the body and soul are purely physical, and that they are both one; the mind being just brain activity, not the soul that dualists would refer to. Hard materialists believe that, when the body dies, the mind dies too. This theory is generally associated with thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Gilbert Ryle.

One of the most important dualists was Plato. Plato's views changed over time, which is evident in his three books, 'The Timaeus', 'Phaedo' and 'The Republic'. In 'The Timaeus', Plato put forward that the soul, or psyche, gives life to the body – your body is like a machine, and the soul gives it life. Each of us, therefore, has a soul, and this soul must have existed before the body, to give it life. This particular thought raises many ethical issues. In 'Phaedo', Plato redefined his ideas, and divided the soul into two – the mind and the emotions. An implication of this is that the two are in conflict, or can be in conflict with each other. Plato compares this with a charioteer - the soul tries to guide the mind and body together like two horses rather than allowing them to contradict and be pulled in opposite directions. Most people never achieve this direction and allow their lives to be dominated by physical needs and sense pleasures. For instance, you really crave a cigarette, but your mind knows that smoking is bad for your health. 'The Republic', shows a more in depth look at the soul, now: reason, emotion, and base appetites. The soul belongs to a higher level of reality than the body, and is a substance, is immortal, and it remembers its life in the spiritual realm, where you gain innate knowledge. Plato has a theory of forms to explain his views on knowledge. He believes that the knowledge we are born with, i.e. justice and beauty, comes from our souls already seeing this from the realm of the forms. As we already know what beauty is, we can recognise examples of it early within our lives. This does seem quite plausible, for instance, studies on babies as young as six weeks old show that they react positively (they laugh and giggle) to photographs of people deemed attractive, and negatively (babies actually start to cry) to photos of unattractive people. How else can you explain this then by saying that we already have the concept of beauty at birth?

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Plato explains his point further with his theory of forms. Plato's view is that, the more fixed and unchanging something is, the more real it is. Take, for example, a circle. Any circle in the actual, physical world is imperfect, as a true circle has an infinite number of sides. This imperfect circle is therefore a copy of the perfect circle, which can be seen as a blue print. This perfect circle, is the form of a circle. There is also a form of beauty, justice, morality, and so on. Plato's evidence for innate knowledge shows that we have had past ...

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