Mind, Body and
Soul
Plato’s Ideas of the soul
Plato had a dualist approach to the soul, believing it was a
completely separate item to the body and simply influenced the
material, similar to how his theory of the Forms worked. He had
three main defences for his ideas on the nature of the soul:
The theory of recollection
The theory of opposites
The myth of Er
The theory of recollection
To understand this defence, understanding Plato’s idea of the
soul is needed:
When the soul is intertwined with the body it becomes
complex, and has three main parts
Reason: searches for the truth and rules the soul, linked
the mind
Spirit: passion and emotion, can be controlled, linked to
the heart
Desire: what the simple animalistic body wants, the
gluttonous and perverted
Plato observes these parts of the soul through evidence of
a conflict between them, like a child having a tantrum,
think of when you have conversations with yourself in your
head (e.g. whether to eat a cake when you’re already full)
Plato places the soul amongst the Forms; it is eternal and a
perfect version of what a human could be. A soul is given to a
human when they are born, it already knows the Forms from
when it was within them, but the memories become hazy. Plato
, calls this state of having innate knowledge as being in ‘plus
one’. This means that learning is simply the act of recollecting
innate knowledge within us of the perfect Forms which our soul
has forgotten. This happens because the soul yearns for the
Forms once again, and the more we reach for the Forms the
more satisfied the rational (ruling) soul is. This is seen as the
only conclusion possible by Plato which is demonstrated in the
Phaedo:
Meno states that learning is impossible as when you are
asked: “do you know it?”, there are only two answers, that
you do or do not
If you do know, then you haven’t learnt anything
If you don’t know, you cannot be taught as you will not
know if the information taught to you is correct
Meno concludes that it is impossible to go from a state of
zero to a state of plus one
Socrates then shows Meno the Equal Itself, and shows that
he must have already known Equal as he can recognise it
in an imperfect world of flux
This shows that Meno had innate knowledge of the Equal
Itself, coming from an immortal soul that once participated
in the realm of the Form
In summary: Plato’s soul is immortal and has innate knowledge
of the realm of the Forms. The Rational soul rules over the Spirit
and Desire.
The theory of opposites
The second defence relies on fundamental understanding of the
concepts of opposites.
Think of a winter day, the cold is constantly there and it
cannot ever be fully eliminated
When you light a fire, the cold is temporarily supressed, it
isn’t entirely eliminated
Soul
Plato’s Ideas of the soul
Plato had a dualist approach to the soul, believing it was a
completely separate item to the body and simply influenced the
material, similar to how his theory of the Forms worked. He had
three main defences for his ideas on the nature of the soul:
The theory of recollection
The theory of opposites
The myth of Er
The theory of recollection
To understand this defence, understanding Plato’s idea of the
soul is needed:
When the soul is intertwined with the body it becomes
complex, and has three main parts
Reason: searches for the truth and rules the soul, linked
the mind
Spirit: passion and emotion, can be controlled, linked to
the heart
Desire: what the simple animalistic body wants, the
gluttonous and perverted
Plato observes these parts of the soul through evidence of
a conflict between them, like a child having a tantrum,
think of when you have conversations with yourself in your
head (e.g. whether to eat a cake when you’re already full)
Plato places the soul amongst the Forms; it is eternal and a
perfect version of what a human could be. A soul is given to a
human when they are born, it already knows the Forms from
when it was within them, but the memories become hazy. Plato
, calls this state of having innate knowledge as being in ‘plus
one’. This means that learning is simply the act of recollecting
innate knowledge within us of the perfect Forms which our soul
has forgotten. This happens because the soul yearns for the
Forms once again, and the more we reach for the Forms the
more satisfied the rational (ruling) soul is. This is seen as the
only conclusion possible by Plato which is demonstrated in the
Phaedo:
Meno states that learning is impossible as when you are
asked: “do you know it?”, there are only two answers, that
you do or do not
If you do know, then you haven’t learnt anything
If you don’t know, you cannot be taught as you will not
know if the information taught to you is correct
Meno concludes that it is impossible to go from a state of
zero to a state of plus one
Socrates then shows Meno the Equal Itself, and shows that
he must have already known Equal as he can recognise it
in an imperfect world of flux
This shows that Meno had innate knowledge of the Equal
Itself, coming from an immortal soul that once participated
in the realm of the Form
In summary: Plato’s soul is immortal and has innate knowledge
of the realm of the Forms. The Rational soul rules over the Spirit
and Desire.
The theory of opposites
The second defence relies on fundamental understanding of the
concepts of opposites.
Think of a winter day, the cold is constantly there and it
cannot ever be fully eliminated
When you light a fire, the cold is temporarily supressed, it
isn’t entirely eliminated
