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In Plato's dialogues, we find the soul playing 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 yourself; the soul is a self-mover. He also thinks that the soul is the ...
Paracelsus' view of the world soul extended to his understanding of the macrocosm and microcosm, where the human body (microcosm) is a reflection of the larger universe (macrocosm). By studying the world soul's manifestations in nature, Paracelsus believed that alchemists and physicians could uncover the secrets of health and transformation. [36]
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 ...
Plato, the student of Socrates and teacher to Aristotle, suggests in Timmeus that the human soul was divine in nature, and that it entered the human body after separating from a spiritual origin that it would return to upon death. Furthermore, Plato believed the soul to be a tripartite one, composed of the logos, the thymos, and the epithemitikon.
Socrates' response is to develop his theory of anamnesis and to suggest that the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is in the soul from eternity (86b), but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the trauma of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is the recovery of what one has forgotten.
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."
As in Xenophon, Plato's Socrates frequently describes the soul in a political way, with ruling parts, and parts that are by nature meant to be ruled. Nous is associated with the rational ( logistikon ) part of the individual human soul, which by nature should rule.
Plato's allegory of the cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna. Plato's allegory of the cave is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic (514a–520a, Book VII) to compare "the effect of education (παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature".