Next in theology, the philosophy of god, Nietzsche is famous for saying that God is dead. Nietzsche uses the title Twilight of the Idols to suggest that the time of decline has the hollow idols that the world believes in. He believes that the previous ideas of God and religion are not true and that people need to get rid of them. In my view, Nietzsche was anti-god because he believed that Church was the anti-life. He believed that “the practice of the Church is hostile to life” (Twilight, Maxims and Arrows, 52). He is against God because his theory was that “by saying God sees into the heart’ it denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life…The saint in whom God takes pleasure is the ideal castrate…Life …show more content…
Mind and body have distinct natures, in Plato’s case, he embodies this concept in his work “Phaedo.” For Plato, the body associates with us in all sorts of ways such as, evils, inconvenience and distractions which keep us from gaining knowledge. He believes, “For, if pure knowledge is impossible while the body is with us, one of two things must follow, either it cannot be acquired at all or only when we are dead; for then the soul will be by itself apart from the body, but not before” (Phaedo, 66e-67a). He often says that the body’s imprisonment of the soul remains trapped as we live, but desires as immaterialists are to be freed from that which is materialistic. I believe when the soul is apart from death, it makes its way back. Plato is basically saying that the soul exists as the immaterial substance while the body is the material substance. Carrying on, the mind and body’s action attribute to Descartes of the thinking mind and the non-thinking body interacts by means of efficient causation which means that the mind causes events in the body. In the Meditations of First Philosophy, Descartes thought of metaphysics, regarding the value of human nature, he says, “…my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing. It is true that I may have . . . a body that is very closely joined to me. But nevertheless, on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it” (Descartes, 54). This also has the existence of the two separate substances, the body and soul but instead of separation, they operate more close together like having a connection. A person in nature is
The differences of mind and soul have intrigued mankind since the dawn of time, Rene Descartes, Thomas Nagel, and Plato have addressed the differences between mind and matter. Does the soul remain despite the demise of its material extension? Is the soul immaterial? Are bodies, but a mere extension of forms in the physical world? Descartes, Nagel, and Plato agree that the immaterial soul and the physical body are distinct entities.
One of the ways in which Descartes attempts to prove that the mind is distinct from the body is through his claim that the mind occupies no physical space and is an entity with which people think, while the body is a physical entity and cannot serve as a mechanism for thought. [1]
Descartian dualism is one of the most long lasting legacies of Rene Descartes’ philosophy. He argues that the mind and body operate as separate entities able to exist without one another. That is, the mind is a thinking, non-extended entity and the body is non-thinking and extended. His belief elicited a debate over the nature of the mind and body that has spanned centuries, a debate that is still vociferously argued today. In this essay, I will try and tackle Descartes claim and come to some conclusion as to whether Descartes is correct to say that the mind and body are distinct.
In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes makes a point that there is a distinction between mind and body. It is in Meditation Two when Descartes believes he has shown the mind to be better known than the body. In Meditation Six, however, he goes on to claim that, as he knows his mind and knows clearly and distinctly that its essence consists purely of thought. Also, that bodies' essences consist purely of extension, and that he can conceive of his mind and body as existing separately. By the power of God, anything that can be clearly and distinctly conceived of as existing separately from something else can be created as existing separately. However, Descartes claims that the mind and body have been created separated without good reason. This point is not shown clearly, and further, although I can conceive of my own mind existing independently of my body, it does not necessarily exist as so.
For Descartes, these are mind and body, and for Plato they are body and soul. Aristotle, in contrast, believes in a singular being where both body and soul are connected. For myself, a Christian who believes in the existence of a life after death, Aristotle 's theory creates an obvious negation. While I could agree with the levels of the soul argument, I cannot agree with the body and soul being one and the same for the simple reason that I do not believe that when the body dies, everything dies. I believe something is left over. What that something is, where it goes and what its purpose is, I may not know for certain, but to believe otherwise would not create a better life for me. Believing the soul lives on beyond the body creates an inner desire to seek morality and goodness, and it is in that endeavor that one creates a “better” life. Similarly, it is intuition that leads me to reject Descartes ' argument because my best judgment would tell me not to believe that everything I know, all that I sense, is a figment of my mind. I cannot know if such a thing is true or false, but far too many questions are raised by such an explanation. For myself, neither Aristotle nor Descartes provide an adequate understanding into the nature of the
“We owe the notion of “the mind” as a separate entity in which “processes” occur to the same period, and especially to Descartes” (Rorty, 2008, p. 234). Plato was the first philosopher to argue that there was something beyond our body. Descartes agree with Plato on this theory and explored this idea more in-depth. Stating that these innate ideas exist, but they remain idle in our minds until a significant event awakens them. He arrived at this idea by doubting everything that he was taught was the truth, and he even doubted his own sense saying that they were deceptive, and after using philosophy of doubt he came to the realization of his existence through the logical reasoning. After he established that his senses were not real, he began to doubt his brain, he stated that our dreams are an interpretation of reality, even though they seem so real. He says that it was only thr...
Many ancient philosophers, including Plato, explored metaphysics in relation to reality before Descartes’s in-depth questioning of the subject. However, Descartes’s views on mind/body dualism differ greatly from Plato’s. As Marleen Rozemond (author of Descartes's Dualism) points out, Plato believes that the body is simply a vessel for the soul to use, while Descartes provides proof that the body and soul are interconnected (172). One does not simply use the other; though they are separate, the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. Cartesian dualism tells us that "although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind" (414). However, Descartes also states that "nature also teaches me by . . . [sensations] that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit" (412). Descartes shows through his dualism that though the mind and body are separate entities, they are connected and reliant on one another. This is one key idea that separates Descartes from great thinkers like Plato. Add another Rozemond quote.
two distinct kinds of entities, bodies and minds (1). All objects that exist or can exist belong to one of these categories. The two forms are said to be mutually exclusive and commonly defined by fundamentally different characteristics, yet both are required to accurately define the world around us. According to Descartes, the body is a tangible physical substance (the unthinking thing), whereas the mind is an intangible non-physical substance (the thinking thing) and comes metaphysically before the body (3). The mind and body casually interact with one another while maintaining their distinctiveness: the eyes perceive objects and then focus the image to the pineal gland, where it transmits the information to the non-physical mind; the mind then may transmit a signal to the body, telling it what to do. The mind and body are independent from one another, yet they work in harmony; the mind receives signals from the body and the body responds to signals from the mind.
Nietzsche?s most famous statement is, without a doubt, that ?God is dead? (GS 108/125, Z P 2, etc.). Through many years of being quoted, contemporary society seems to have lost the significance of such a profound statement. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this statement is that ?we have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers? (GS 125). It is important to remember that Nietzsche did not believe this to be a literal event. Instead, he explains ?that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable? (GS 343). Such disbelief has begun to cast morality, indeed mankind?s meaning, into doubt. Without God, how can universal moral truths be justified? Where is the meaning of man?
Since Descartes many philosophers have discussed the problem of interaction between the mind and body. Philosophers have given rise to a variety of different answers to this question all with their own merits and flaws. These answers vary quite a lot. There is the idea of total separation between mind and body, championed by Descartes, which has come to be known as “Cartesian Dualism”. This, of course, gave rise to one of the many major responses to the mind-body problem which is the exact opposite of dualism; monism. Monism is the idea that mind and body one and the same thing and therefore have no need for interaction. Another major response to the problem is that given by Leibniz, more commonly known as pre-ordained harmony or monadology. Pre-ordained harmony simply states that everything that happens, happens because God ordained it to. Given the wide array of responses to the mind-body problem I will only cover those given by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. I will also strive to show how each of these philosophers discuss what mind and body are and how each accounts for God’s influence on the interaction of mind and body, as this is an interesting distinction between them, as well as the important question of the role of substance. This is important, I believe, because it helps to understand the dialogue between the three philosophers.
Descartes argues that the mind and body can be thought of as separate substances. Descartes writes “I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because … I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am merely a thinking thing and not an extended thing and because … I have a distinct idea of a body, insofar as it is merely an extended thing and not a thinking thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it” ( Descartes 50). With this quote, Descartes is saying that the mind and body are separate because he has two distinct ideas of the body and the mind and the body is not a thinking thing as he is but an extended substance. Another point to Descartes argument is that the mind and body are different due to one being indivisible and the other being divisible. Descartes writes “a body, by its very nature, is always divisible. On the other hand, the mind is utterly indivisible” (53). Here is saying that there are ...
Throughout the evolution of philosophic thought, there have been many different views on the relationship of mind and body. The great philosopher Plato and the Neoplatonists held the belief that man's body is merely a prison of his soul, but St. Augustine later refutes this with his idea of the disembodied soul. He distinguishes between the concept of the physical form and the spiritual soul, and he argues that humankind can be redeemed because of the God spirit contained in the intellectual soul. This intellectual soul is not an inseparable part of the body, as St. Thomas Aquinas postulates. Instead, this soul is indeed the higher part of man, the state and well-being of man depends upon its stability.
Plato believed that the body and the soul were two separate entities, the body being mortal and the soul being immortal. In Plato’s phaedo, this is further explained by Socrates. He claims that by living a philosophical life, we are able to eventually free the soul from the body and its needs. If we have not yield to our bodily needs, we should not fear death, since it can than permanently detach the soul from the body. The most convincing argument for the immortality of the body is the theory of recollection, which shows that we are already born with knowledge of forms and that learning is thus recalling these ideas. If we are already born with knowledge this implies that are soul is immortal, since it would otherwise be a blank page.
While the great philosophical distinction between mind and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the influential work of René Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first systematic account of the mind/body relationship. As the 19th century progressed, the problem of the relationship of mind to brain became ever more pressing.
Plato; a Greek philosopher who postulated about the difference between the body and the soul would disagree with this as he believed in the idea that the soul is indeed distinct from the body. He stated that the soul was capable of knowledge as it was immortal and as such had experienced the forms during its time spent in the , 'world of the forms ' before it was incarnated our mortal bodies. Plato goes so far as to use the term , 'imprisoned ' in his book phaedo when describing the nature of our soul in the body; he states that the goal of our soul is to reach the , 'world of the forms ' and that true philosophers avoid distractions such as ,loves and lusts, and fears.....and endless foolery ' the body creates which 'impede us in the search