The Concept of the Soul

• It is said that the whole of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato
• The theory of "A world beyond what we usually experience" is written in "The Republic"
• Plato said we could not always trust our senses, for example a straight stick looks bent in water
• Plato and Descartes are rationalists
• Plato contrasted the flux and change of the empirical world of sense experience with the perfection of the world of forms
• Plato believed in

  • An imagined world- full of images
  • An empirical world- filled with our five senses
  • A metaphysical world- beyond what we understand
• The empirical world is set in time, whereas the metaphysical world is transcendent
• The empirical world is physical, whereas the metaphysical world is intangible
• The empirical world is imperfect, whereas the metaphysical world is perfect
• Plato thought if we could escape the world of illusions, we might experience true reality
• A metaphysical counterpart does exist, it does not decay or change
• Plato's cave analogy is about people not thinking for themselves
• Plato said education and philosophy is the way out of the cave
• Dualism was incorporated into Christianity, it dominated during the medieval period
• Jewish ideas of Jesus and his followers combined with the ideas of Plato to form early christianity
• Neo-platonists were widely accepted in the first and second cetury
• jewish and greek ideas of the soul were similar
• Christians linked jewish and greek ideas of the soul
• Christians believe a body received a soul from God
• The soul was the inner existence of a human being, inhabiting it during life and returning to God at death
• The soul was the moral and spiritual dimension of human existence
• "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour" - Luke 1:46
• The world we live in is constantly changing and imperfect
• The world of perfect ideas is constant and unchanging
• The forms is more real than this world as it is eternal
• There is a perfect version of everything in the forms
• Forms are immaterial and non-physical
• Forms influence the world, but are purer
• The Form of Beauty is perfect in a way that beauty cannot be on earth
• Plato never explains how the Forms influence this world
• In the cave analogy, the sun represents the form of the good, which is almost god-like
• All good things derive their goodness from God
• Beauty is entirely subjective
• Justice and beauty are human concepts that develop through society
• We know when something beautiful matches our inner idea
• Beauty is part of the world of the forms
• Dualism of material substance is the physical body and the soul
• Dualism- the idea that the soul exists independently of the body
• The World of Forms is eternal, perfect and unchanging
• The soul is superior to the body and belongs to the world of forms