Summary MIND, BODY AND SOUL NOTES AND EVALUATION

MIND, BODY AND SOUL
DUALISTS

 Two aspects to human conscious: physical and non-physical
 Life after death

PLATO

 Dualist: soul and body are separate but interact
 Soul is immaterial, pure thought and eternal, and originated from the World of the Forms
 Soul precedes Body
 Body is physical and is subject to decay. Chained by our senses
 Soul is more important and gives us our Life
 Our soul is determined by what life we lived before

ANALOGY OF CHARIOTEER

 Tripartite view
 Charioteer: Reason
 White horse: Spirit
 Black horse: Desire
 Wings: The Divine (Form of the Good)
 The disharmony between the two causes them to drop into the human world and partake in a human body
 Harmony of the soul = Becoming eudaemon

EVIDENCE OF IMMORTAL SOUL

 Theory of Opposites: There is an opposing notion to everything, it would be contradictory for the soul to die
 Slave Boy dialogue in Meno
 Disharmony we view in other human beings

MONISTS

 Humans are purely material, but the soul gives us characteristics
 No life after death once your body dies
 Soul and body CANNOT BE SEPARATED

ARISTOTLE

 Mortal soul
 Body is the Material, Soul is Form (DON’T CONFUSE W/ CAUSES)
 All living things have a soul, even animals and plants
 Soul gives our telos/ Final Cause/ purpose

HIERARCHY OF FACULTIES




(Ian Alexander, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)