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Platos views on body and soul
Plato's view of the body and soul
Platos views on body and soul
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If we try to find the history of the body in terms of philosophy, we may think of the body as a prison or dungeon. Plato’s idea of the body comes from his arguments that Orphic priest presents the meaning of “body”, where a major aspect of their idea was that a man is imprisoned inside the body as in a dungeon. As it is demonstrated in Grosz’s book Volatile Bodies, Plato believes that our body is a prison for the soul, reason or mind. Following this concept of the body are Christian religious beliefs that the immortal soul given by god is associated with the divinity and mortality while the body is just a mortal, sinful, and lustful carnality (Grosz 5). This concept of this body as a prison can be found on the short story of Ortiz Cofer. Since
He makes the assumption that death is the ultimate separation of the body and soul, and the body is the soul’s prison. Philosophers spend their lives trying to reach a state where they are inevitably close to death in order to distance the soul from the body’s pleasures and desires. He believes that true philosophers despise bodily pleasures, such as food, drink, clothes, shoes, and sex, because they connect the body and soul through desire, passion, and reason. The soul functions best when it is separate from the body’s influence and control. He
One of the foundational concepts of Agamben’s theoretical framework is the concept of bare life. For millennia, life was regarded as sacred and because of that, the rulers did not have the prerogative to take it away from their subjects. Nonetheless, exceptions existed and among the most notable of them is Rome. Therein, a phenomenon of Homo Sacer emerged which politicized death. By
tied down so that they may not move or look backwards. All they see is
In his philosophical text, The Republic, Plato argues that justice can only be realized by the moderation of the soul, which he claims reflects as the moderation of the city. He engages in a debate, via the persona of Socrates, with Ademantus and Gaucon on the benefit, or lack thereof, for the man who leads a just life. I shall argue that this analogy reflecting the governing of forces in the soul and in city serves as a sufficient device in proving that justice is beneficial to those who believe in, and practice it. I shall further argue that Plato establishes that the metaphorical bridge between the city and soul analogy and reality is the leader, and that in the city governed by justice the philosopher is king.
Plato postulated that the mind was not dependent on the physical body of a person. Meaning that the mind (or soul) should be regarded as separate from the physical part of a person’s being. This proposal is the ground work from which Descartes would expand his theory of the mind. Descartes established that the mind and body were two distinct things. He stated that the mind is a thinking and non-extended thing and the body a non-thinking and extended entity. Furthering on this idea, he suggests that because the mind is not a tangible object and does not exist in three space the mind must be a quality of the body, just as all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. This connection is a contradiction because a square can only be a square if it is changed into a rectangle; the quality of the shape being a square is also gone. In contrast, a stone by itself can exist independently of all others without exact dimensions. For Descartes this meant that “God, if he chose, could create a world constituted by this stone all by itself, showing further that it is a subst...
Among the many Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece, one that was worshipped on multiple levels and to a great extent was Love. This divine force held a powerful role in many aspects of the Greeks’ lives, including the understanding of their own bodies. As the society’s culture moved away from reliance on the Divine, and towards a more scientific method of understanding itself, the notion of love remained ingrained in the set assumptions; its dual ability to cure and destroy underscored the practices of medicine and the understandings of human anatomy.
Most people have indulged in the perfect wine, made love to the perfect person while possibly wearing the perfect outfit. Or have they? Is there a such thing as perfection, if so can we attain it? No. Nothing in this world is perfect because it is impossible to create perfection. According to Plato's Theory of Forms, perfection cannot exist in the physical world but only the realm of the philosophers; the ones who choose to lurk deeper in the veiled mysteries of metaphysics.
If the body is indeed a prison, then it seems men have nothing to do sit and bide their time until they are released from these walls. "I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in
A couple of centuries ago, science had grown to understand the "mechanical universe" concept. The laws of Sir Newton and the science of physics had begun to infiltrate the science of medicine. If the universe followed mechanical laws, so might the body. To prove this theory, scientists needed to open a body up to observe how it worked. The Church was very adamant about the body being the temple of the soul and could never be desecrated.
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 widely a respected philosopher and is arguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time. I knew nothing about him or what he stood for before taking this course and I found his theory on human nature very exciting. “Plato’s most fundamental contribution to philosophy was the distinction he drew between the changing physical objects we perceive with our senses and the under changing ideals we can know with our minds.” What Plato means is when we see something that we think is good or bad that there is good strong reasoning behind why we think the way we do. I find this very intriguing because, this it pertains to how I feel about everyday things and big Icons. For example, when hanging out at a friend’s house that is considerably richer
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.
More importantly, Miles states that “the status of human bodies altered when God entered the sensible world in a human body” (4). This means that for Christian theology, the body is not necessarily something to be derided, as God took on the form of human flesh in order to save human souls and to preserve their bodies (as shown through the resurrection of the flesh). Early theological disputes surrounded the exact nature of the fleshy incarnation of God, which points towards the fact that human bodies are meaningful and that an understanding of the role of the human body is crucial to Christian theology
In my opinion, Socrates’ analysis of human nature is very true as it ultimately brings us
Plato’s idea on the self is very simple yet complex. He has a different way of talking, which means that he either tells you what he means or he contradicts himself. He starts off saying that the soul, psyche, is the “thing” that causes things to be alive, but then says that “I” equals my soul. Does that mean that I cause myself to be alive? That thought can be very contradicting and complicated to understand. He then goes and says that the soul is different from the body. This thought is very complicated and makes Plato’s words very contradicting. On the other hand, Plato’s idea of self can be simple to understand if we take another view on it. We know that two things are constant in Plato’s search to find the answers for the soul and these