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Plato's theory of the soul, which was inspired variously by the teachings of Socrates, considered the psyche (Ancient Greek: ψῡχή, romanized: psūkhḗ) to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how people behave. Plato considered this essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of a person's being.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed the soul's existence was not separate from the human body, thus the soul could not be immortal. Similarly to Plato, however, Aristotle believed the soul is composed of three parts: the vegetative, sensitive, and rational. Growth and reproduction is a result of the vegetative soul, and is found in all organisms.
The soul is at the heart of Plato's philosophy. Francis Cornford described the twin pillars of Platonism as being the theory of forms on the one hand, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul on the other. [114] Plato was the first person in the history of philosophy to believe that the soul was both the source of life and the mind.
Dorothea Frede argued that “as to the exact nature of the soul we are left somehow in the dark by Plato in the Phaedo and also in Republic X." [28] D.R. Campbell argued that "Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts." [29]
Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. In the Timaeus , Socrates locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso , and the appetite in the middle third of the torso, down to the navel .
Plato relies, further, on the view that the soul is a mind in order to explain how its motions are possible: Plato combines the view that the soul is a self-mover with the view that the soul is a mind in order to explain how the soul can move things in the first place (e.g., how it can move the body to which it is attached in life). [10]
Plato defined the faculties of the soul in terms of a three-fold division: the intellect (noûs), the nobler affections (thumós), and the appetites or passions (epithumetikón) [1] Aristotle also made a three-fold division of natural faculties, into vegetative, appetitive and rational elements, [2] though he later distinguished further divisions in the rational faculty, such as the faculty of ...
In Plato's dialogues, the soul plays many disparate roles. Among other things, Plato believes that the soul is what gives life to the body (which was articulated most of all in the Laws and Phaedrus) in terms of self-motion: to be alive is to be capable of moving oneself; the soul is a self-mover. He also thinks that the soul is the bearer of ...