Plato Reflection Paper

In this dialogue, Plato writes about a conversation between an old Socrates, and a young student Theaetetus (who would later become a legendary warrior and leader). The purpose of this dialogue was to determine what knowledge was, and then to assert a final claim as to the true definition of knowledge. Socrates poses the question as to what knowledge is, to Theaetetus, who provides four definitions; each of which (except the final definition) is dismantled by Socrates in order to push for a clearer definition. The definitions provided are as follows: knowledge is a list of learned subjects, knowledge is perception, knowledge is true judgment, and finally, knowledge is true Judgement with an account.

Lewis and Plato both believe that the soul is immortal, but they have different reasoning for their beliefs. Griffin however, would utterly disagree with both Plato and Lewis’ claims. In the text Our Secret, Susan Griffin claims that the soul and the self are one. She states that “the soul is meant to live in and through the body and to know itself in the heart of earthly existence… [and that] it comes into its fullest manifestation thus only when seen, especially when self meeting self returns a gaze” (17). This means that the soul and the self most grow and develop at the same rate and not until the self is able to recognize and be in harmony with the soul are they both fully developed. Because the soul and the self are one and grow together, they must also perish together. As a result, Griffin believes that the soul is very much mortal and dies when the body dies, but Plato and Lewis believe that the soul is immortal and lives on eternally after the earthy body

Within this essay, I am going to argue that the simple soul is a more plausible conception than the idea of multiplicity within the soul within Plato’s work. This is due to the multiplicity of the soul resting on a circular argument of Plato’s ideal city which in turn rests back upon his idea of the tripartite soul. However, it can also be argued that neither conceptions of the soul are plausible due to them both relying on Plato’s theory of the Forms. Throughout Plato’s works of the Phaedo and the Republic, his account for the soul is conflicting as Plato’s two accounts cannot be reconciled. I will also refer to Plato’s work in the Phaedrus to aid my explanation of the multiplicity within the soul.

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the viability of certain aspects (the sex lottery) of Plato's Republic, book V. It is college level 'A' paper.

Plato's views on life after death were manifold, and developed over time as an examination of a bevy of his literature readily indicates. However, during all phases of his writing he does demonstrate that there is in fact life after physical death, which is widely attributed to his notion of the soul. Plat always viewed the soul as an entity that was distinct from the physical body. Moreover, while the physical body was destined to die, the soul was enduring, interminable, and destined to go on somewhere in some state of being. In just what sort of way the soul would endure was a matter of question, in which at various points in his career as a writer Plato offered different accounts. Yet the most consistent part of this conception of the author's was the fact that the soul was everlasting.

During Socrates’ last days, he speaks with Cebes about the fate of the soul. Cebes is unconvinced that the soul doesn’t die concurrently with the body, which leads him to create an alternative analogy. Cebes’ imperfect analogy compares the body and soul to a cloak and a weaver, respectively. A cloak can be worn over and over again, which represents multiple human lives in a body. The weaver, however, outlasts each cloak until the last cloak dies. Cebes argues that because the weaver no long has a cloak to wear, he will die. This means that although the soul may preexist and outlive a body, it too will eventually die. Therefore, if Cebes’ analogy turns out to be more accurate and correct, then the soul is not immortal. Socrates, on the other hand, believes that the soul is immortal and looks to Forms to prove the soul’s immortality. He provides a “safe answer” that helps the reader understand not only his argument, but Plato’s argument and view of philosophy as well.

Plato strikes a similarity between the human living being from one viewpoint and social living being on the other. Human creature as per Plato contains three components Reason, Spirit and Appetite. An individual is just when each piece of his or her spirit plays out its capacities without meddling with those of different components. For instance, the reason ought to run for the benefit of the whole soul with insight and planning. The component of soul will lower itself to the lead of reason. Those two components are a blend of mental preparing. They are put in order over the hungers which frame most of man's spirit. Consequently, the reason and soul need to control these cravings which are probably going to develop on the substantial joys. These cravings ought not be permitted, to oppress alternate components and usurp the territory to which they have no privilege. At the point when all the three concur that among them the reason alone ought to lead, there is equity inside the

So what does Plato have to do with this understanding? This guy had some great thoughts and there’s one in particular I’d like to discuss a little. It’s his model (theory) of the tripartite soul. He was convinced a person’s soul is divided into three:

For Plato, he holds the idea on the soul’s immortality, which argues that the soul mirrors the essences of the Forms by being unchangeable and divine, thus belongs to the realm of the forms (Phaedo 4). Therefore, it leads to his argument that death allows the seeking of wisdom, because for Plato, one’s soul will always exist, and since it belongs to the realm of the forms, it can represent the truth accurately. For Epicurus, he has the claim that the soul is corporeal, which comes from the premises that the soul has a two-way interaction with the materials, and that it wouldn’t be able to do so if it was incorporeal. As a result, it leads to his premises to his argument on death that death is nothing to us when we don’t exist, because for Epicurus, when one ceases to exist, the person’s body and soul ceases to exist too, so one cannot experience death physically nor mentally, thus it is nothing to us. The contrast between Plato’s spiritual and intellectual view on the soul in regards to death and Epicurus’s materialistic view on the soul in regards to death results in their reason on why we shouldn’t fear death

Plato believed that the soul was divided into three parts; desire, spirit and reason. Desire, the lowest part of the soul, is constantly affected by appetitive drive and instinct. Reason, the highest part of the soul, is

The topic of souls has also been deeply debated for a long time. Plato and Augustine wrote lengthy papers on the topic, and each one has a different take on the soul and how it is part of the body. Plato pushes the idea that the soul and body are separated while Augustine and later John Calvin believe the soul and body are the same thing with the soul being the best part. I personally believe the soul and body are the same, but at the same level. Through the same level, the soul and body are equaling made to help control and maintain a human’s life. In this way, both the soul and body drive toward a goal. However, with Plato’s ideas, the souls and body pushed for different things, and humans had to find the balance. Both Calvin and Augustine state that both the soul and body drive humans to a goal, but the soul’s goal has a little more pull than the bodies. The soul can be explained as the driving focus behind the every human and the nature in how they act. Nature is not what you see when you step outside, but a person’s gifts, instincts, abilities, talents, wishes, and wants. The soul might be one aspect, but there are three parts to the souls. In his book The Republic, Plato describes the parts of the soul as rational, irrational, and spirited. Each part of the soul helps people live their lives. The rational and irrational parts of the soul battle every time we have to make a decision, and the spirited part helps us persevere through the hard times. Without the soul, human life would be run as machines. We would be told what to do, and we would have to do it without any choice. Our souls give us the chance to choose whether or not to listen to the command. However, the soul is part of the body; however, a scientist can’t find it like an organ in the human body. With the soul that resides in humans, they are extraordinary creations of God who were made in his own image at the beginning the

Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas use examples and comparison to present their arguments about the nature of the soul. Both thinkers perceived the soul as the essence of a human being, which is incorruptible due to its form. They believe that the soul is incorruptible and can act by itself because is subsistent. However, Plato believes that a human is mainly composed of its soul, whereas St. Thomas believes that a person is composed of the union of a soul and a body.

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

Plato gives an account of the relationship between his conception of the soul and the theory of the forms in the Socratic dialogue Phaedo. He rejects the established view that the soul is contingent on the body and is extinguished upon death and offers four defences for the notion of the immortality of the soul. From the observation that all things come to be from their opposites Socrates establishes that life follows death and that the soul must have existed before death. He then proposes that learning is actually a process of recollecting what we previously had knowledge of, this knowledge must have been possessed before birth, but then forgotten, again implying that the soul must have existed before birth. Socrates then draws a distinction draws between that which is immaterial, imperceptible and immortal and that which is material, perceptible and immortal. He argues that the body is like the former while the soul is of the second category, with each possessing the features of the things they bear affinity to, and thus the soul must be immortal and survive death. His final argument posits the causal nature of the Forms in relation to those things which participate in them. Socrates argues that the soul, through its very definition, participates in the Form of Life and thus must never

Philosophy came from two Greek words: Philo (love) and Sophia (wisdom). It was Pythagoras who coined the term and he was the first to call himself as a “lover of wisdom.” According to St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian and a philosopher who was inspired from the works of Aristotle said that Philosophy is the science of all things in their ultimate causes. In Modern Period, the Rationalists believed that reason makes man and it is the most necessary whenever one philosophizes. On the other hand, the empiricists will tell that Sensation is the most important whenever we philosophize. It’s like the notion of Aristotle that it is by the senses, one achieve knowledge for mind is a tabula rasa. Unlike Plato’s notion that it is in the mind that the