Platos View On The Souls

Platos View On The SoulsPlatos fancys about the personfulness were new and extremely advanced for his age, as with most of Platos philosophies, yet on the early(a) hand they appear to be both self-conflicting and flawed. In this essay I provide proceed to justify this narrative.Plato was a Greek philosopher with many views on flavour and dieence. Platos views on the mind tree trunk distinction view been the stern of many criticisms since his time. In the republic, he formulated ideas on the allegory of the hollow out and the theory of the forms. He believed that our existence on earth was merely a shadow of a higher spiritual plane, our bodies just a vessel, or even looked upon as a cage trapping the disposition and restrict it from this higher plain.1Plato was a dualist and so believed that when the cloth tree trunk dies the individual lives on. He believed that we atomic number 18 dual creatures the nous is distinct from the carcass and vice versa. The body h as extension (it takes up space) and is impermanent it has a beginning and will bemuse an end. The soul takes up no space and is immortal it pre-existed our body and will live forever. Plato does not really believe that the soul lives but that thither is a come apart of existence that exists outside(a) time. Platos views, are best set forth in his analogy allegory of the cave in which it depicts a captive that escapes the cave metaphorical for this life- and goes on to discover e verything he once believed in was exactly a fraction of the truth Platos main philosophy stemmed from the cave and was about knowing the theory of the forms. Here, he thought that the soul is immaterial and is immortal, withal the body- organism somatogenetic- could be doubted as it was part of the empirical world.Plato believed that the soul was immortal it was in existence in front the body and it continues to exist when the body dies. Plato thought this to be true because of his Theory of Fo rms. Plato thought we had more than(prenominal) ideas as a perfect circle, not because we have seen wizard before or that it had been described to us, but the image was already known to us through the world of Forms. This theory also explained how the soul was generated the soul already lived a life in the world of forms, a world that cannot be destroyed as the body can be destroyed. Once you die, the soul is free for a short time before being entrapped once again in another body.2Plato was also a rationalist. He believed that you only have true knowledge and understanding of reality through reason. The visible 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.Platos idea of the soul is his dualist position, believing that body and soul are fundamentally distinct. His theory on the soul was produced in his book Phaedrus. In it Plato was most concern with demonstrating the immort ality of the soul and its ability to survive bodily death. He proposed the idea that, like Aristotles idea of motion, whatever is the arising of its own motion or animation moldiness be immortal.3Plato was compose at a time in Greek philosophy where pop opinion believed that the soul did not survive death, and that it dispersed into nothing, like breath or smoke. Plato believed that the soul must be immortal by the very nature of being the source of its own animation, for it is only through a psyche that things can be lifetime rather than dead. The souls are both animated and at the same time the source of its own animation. Plato also states that the soul is an unmistakable and non-tangible article that cannot be destroyed or dispersed, much like his ideas about forms of non-tangible realities such as beauty or courage. In a more simplistic sense, the soul is a form and is outside time in that way.The object from affinity, as Plato posited in Phaedrus, states that because th e soul is an covert and intangible entity, as opposed to a complex and tangible body the twain must be distinct and separate. Plato believed that which is manifold must be divisible, sensible and transient and that which is artless must be invisible, indivisible and immutable.4Forms condense a resemblance to the simple, immutable entities, such as beauty however a beautiful painting is transient and palpable. The body shows an affinity to the composite by nature of its mortality and mutability just as the soul shows a similar affinity to immortality and indivisibleness. To further emphasise the point, Plato writes when the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging, and being akin to this, it always stays with it whenever it is by itself and can do so it ceases to stray and remains in the same state as it is in touch with things of the same gentle (Phaedo, 79c-d). He argues that just as the bodys prime functio n is to understand the material and transient world, the functioning of the soul as an entity of rational and self-reflective thought demonstrates its connexion with a simple and immutable world showing that the two are distinct. However Plato does not explore the criticisms of this argument that just because an entity portrays an sleeper, does not needs require it to be as that which it affiliates.Plato believed that the soul, if it were to be the animator of all living things, must be responsible for a persons mental or mental activities and responses. For the soul cannot be the reason for life, yet at the same time limited in its influence over the bodies in which it animates. However this provides whiz of the most serious and potentially defeating criticisms of Platos views on the soul. He fails to address the end of the interrelationship between body and soul, if they are indeed distinct. He doesnt acknowledgement if the soul act as controller of a lifeless body, or is t here more to the body than simply the material. Moreover the argument from affiliation would suggest that the body is concerned with the material, composite world whilst the soul is concerned with the invisible and simple world. If this is the case then the soul cannot, following from Platos argument, have any interaction with the material, bodily world for then it ceases to be simple and immutable.An argument from recollection, which Plato first put forward when discussing his theory of the world of the forms, also serves his theory of the soul. Perfect forms, such as equality, are knowable a priori we have no need for experience to tell us whether two lines are equal length. We must, therefore, know these things through recollection of these perfect forms. Therefore, the soul must have pre-existed the body to know these facts a priori.Platos argument from opposite words was establish on his idea that everything in the observable world has an opposite effect. As Plato writes in hi s work Phaedo If something smaller comes to be it will come from something large before, which became smaller (Phaedo, 270d). In other words everything we can know has an opposite asleep and awake hot and cold. Similarly they are reversible, just as one goes from a state of sleep to a state of being awake, one can do the opposite. Plato argued that if this were the case, then the same should apply to life and death. Just as one can go from life to death, one must be able to go from death to life and if this statement is correct, then the soul must survive this transition and as a consequence possess immortality and separation from the body. He believed that animation and life was intrinsical to the very notion of the soul, just like heat is a part of fire thus it cannot be destroyed and is eternal.A separate argument from his theory of opposites was that of a similar theory of the forms and their opposites. He stated that no entity can consist of contradictory forms, and thus one form must necessarily exist and the other not in any crabby entity. The number five cannot possess both the form of even and mirthful by adding or subtracting one the form of odd is displaced by even. Plato wrote so fire as the cold approaches will either go absent or be destroyed it will never venture to entertain coldness and remain what it was, fire and cold The soul must tract in the form of life, for we know that those living have a soul. Therefore, it cannot ingest the form of death also, for this would be in direct conflict of life. The soul must onto formally necessarily exist, and must therefore be immortal.Contemporary compend of Platos views on the soul produces many criticisms there is a clear chronological confusion as his work progresses with the soul starting as an intelligible and non-tangible item, yet progressing to where the soul becomes a complex tripartite entity that is trapped in the material body, yet still longing to enter the world of the forms. Plat o demonstrates a contradictory and muddled thought process that attempts to obtain resolutions for flaws in his thinking. The idea of an imperfect entity entering the perfect realm of the forms is one such logical fallacy in his argument and he does this by seeking to find reason and justification for his conclusion, rather than seeking a conclusion found on all of his own logic.