Compare And Contrast Augustine And Plato's View Of The Soul

Aristotle and St. Augustine have both been influenced by Plato. Their philosophy on morality, politics, and the purpose of life has been platonically influenced. St. Augustine is the true heir of Plato because he has taken Plato’s ideal state, and revealed the implications of the lives that the citizens of the earthly city lead, in the City of God. Plato’s state is an ideal state, that would not function in reality. St. Augustine has taken Plato’s notions, and have furthered the implications of living a life that strives towards a common good. The consequences, whether negative or positive, cannot be seen in the earthly state, but can be seen in the City of God.

Plato’s theory of the simplicity of the soul is seen in the Phaedo. Through the mouthpiece of Socrates, Plato argues for a simple soul which only has one true aim. He states that the soul only seeks truth and that all other senses and experiences are merely distractions through the soul being embodied ‘the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality.’ (Plato, 1997, §65c). The simple soul can only aim to grasp the truth of reality which it gets closer to as man becomes closer to death. This is why, in Plato’s opinion, a philosopher in particular can

life: seeing the world in relationship to oneself alone, versus viewing the world as an aggregate.

What a man hopes for is the central tenant to his worldview. That worldview is not only the lens through which one views the world, but the expression through which the world shapes how one views the world. In a way, worldview colors what we see in the world, all the while those same things are shaping that very same worldview into something new and different. Ultimately, where our hope lies always remains central to worldview. This is especially true in our view of the physical dimension. How one views the material world and human bodies in relation to human souls and the afterlife is fundamental to one’s worldview. Plato, the Late Classical Greek philosopher, and Saint Augustine, the Catholic Bishop of the North African city of Hippo, both made their views on the material world and human bodies clear in their writings and dialogues. While Plato’s hope rested in an ethereal bodiless existence, Augustine hoped in the redemption and reconciliation of the body through Christ.

“If the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal” (The Philosophical Journey 89). This states that since the soul has all knowledge integrated, one recollects this knowledge through situations in an individual’s life and use one’s reasoning. With the dialogues of the Meno and Phaedo, Plato discusses the ideas of recollection and immortality of the soul in general. As well, the Republic, through the three different situations shown, Plato shows the ideas of the forms and what is real and what is not.

In this essay it will be argued that the soul is mortal and does not survive the death of the body. As support, the following arguments from Lucretius will be examined: the “proof from the atomic structure of the soul,” the “proof from parallelism of mind and body,” the “proof from the sympatheia of mind and body,” and the “proof from the structural connection between mind and body.” The following arguments from Plato will be used as counterarguments against Lucretius: the “cyclical argument,” the “affinity argument,” the “argument from the form of life,” and the “recollection argument.” It will be shown that Plato’s premises lack validity and that Lucretius’

Aristotle has a different view on the make-up of the soul. In Aristotle discussion On the Soul he talks about the kinds of souls possessed by different living things such as plants, animals and, beings. Aristotle then goes on describing the substance that makes up the soul, the first is matter which is not this in its own right, the second is form which makes matter this and the third form is the compound of matter and form. Every living body is a substance and the soul is the actuality of the body. The soul

Throughout his Confessions, Augustine's view of humans--our essential nature has interesting differences from the way in which others, in different time periods and in different civilizations, have seen humans.

Medieval philosophers developed very precise notions of God and the attributes that he has, many of which are even now well-known among believers. For example, God is all-powerful all-knowing and all-good Other commonly discussed attributes of God are that he is eternal, that he is present everywhere and that he has foreknowledge of future events. While these traditional attributes of God offer a clear picture of the kind of being that he is, many of them present special conceptual problems, particularly when we try to make them compatible them with potentially conflicting facts about the world.

In our unit on Christian philosophies, one thing that we learned about was the influence that Plato had on Christianity. Plato took the idea of one's "self" as split between the physical body and the soul. Also, his theory of the forms basically foreshadowed the Christian idea of a divine heaven, of which the real world where we currently live is strictly a mirroring image. Both views of the world show an assumption of stagnant reality and complete truth, preparing people for the coming of Christianity. Augustine, who came at the end of the line where Plato existed, took both reasoning and logic as complements of faith, and that this pair would define Christianity.

Another similarity they both share is the position of life is really death. To them the afterlife is the heaven or paradise and earth is just preparing us to get there. Plato describes that life on earth is to prepare the soul for existence in the afterlife. Saint Augustine shares a similar view in that who knows where people and bodies came from. Did god create us or did we just magically show up. After people die they can leave their life on earth behind them and spend eternity with god. The free soul can go to heaven where his bodily desires will no longer impede his attempts at reaching the true joy of knowing God. Augustine’s views are enforced through Christ and Christianity. The time periods brought different perspectives Christianity was very powerful in the time of St. Augustine and was not around when Plato was alive. To Augustine, Christ was God in human form, and his death showed God’s infinite mercy, as it presented Christians with the fact that God is within reach.

Both authors used their work to teach lessons in a way that would best communicate to the reader with relation to their own life experiences and careers. Both authors wrote their work as a way of acknowledging their own mortality. In other words, Aristotle spent a significant part of his life as a teacher of philosophy, and an earlier part of his learning and Augustine spent most of his later life teaching the Christian ideals. Both writers wished to teach people after they reached the end of their life and were to continue to the next one. In addition, they took the opportunity to communicate to those, during their times and after, who they were not able to speak to directly.

explains his belief that the “soul exists before, and survives the body”. Plato 's beliefs of

The “City of God” is an eloquently written challenge, from Saint Augustine, for human society to choose which city it wishes to be a part of, the city of God or the city of man. As described by Augustine, the city of God is a metaphorical place where the citizens love, glorify, worship, and praise God. They find their strength and authority through mutual servitude with Yahweh. This city is then compared to the earthly city where the people love themselves, glorify themselves, find strength in themselves, and worship themselves or created things. The earthly city seeks praise from people and strives for domination. These two cities are the crux of Augustine’s novel which entails people to be worthy citizens of the City of Heaven, despite the devastating fall of Rome. Many people questioned whether Christianity was at fault for Rome’s demise, claiming that the pagan gods were angry that Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome, thus the pagan gods were thought to have left, leaving Rome vulnerable to attack. Thereby, Augustine sets out to dispute these beliefs by stating that God initiated all of creation, and in such a grand plan, the fall of Rome is rather insignificant. The more important issue is to choose a life in the city of man or the city of God, of which Augustine marks the parameters with compelling metaphors that beg the reader to choose the everlasting city because it provides the achievement of peace, the achievement of a purposeful ending, and the

For a philosopher such as Plato, he believed that we are imprisoning our souls in our