Plato

• Plato is a tripartite, what are his three views on the soul?


  reason, spirit, base appetites
• Did Plato see the soul as a reality or metaphor?


  Reality
• Plato saw the soul and the body as two separate entities
• In plato's understanding the soul is temporarily united with the body, but can leave the body and move on
• • Socrates argued that the soul continues to live on in a mode where it still has thought and intelligence
  • after death it is undisturbed by bodily demands so it can reach its highest state
  • Also argued that the soul necessarily must continue living, because life is the essence of what the soul is.
  • Soul animates the person
• • Plato gives arguments to justify the view that the soul is immortal
• • Argues that every quality comes into being from its own opposite or at least depends on its opposite to have any existence at all.
  • He therefore uses this to show that life therefore comes from death and death from life in an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth
• • For plato the soul is immortal and the body is not, therefore the body and soul are two separate things
  • He did not question how the mind and body may be joined together and work in the same person
• • At the end of Republic, Plato introduces the myth of er
• • When considering the nature of the soul, Plato looked at it from his dualist view of reality.
  • he was trying to work out what was temporary and subject to change and what was eternal
  • explored how humans can relate to the realm of the forms and how reason can give the best route to certain knowledge and wisdom, as part of his argument that society would be better run by philosopher-king
• PLATO IS A SUBSTANCE DUALIST