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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.
Plato describes the world soul as a mixture of sameness and difference, forming a unified, harmonious entity that permeates the cosmos. This soul animates the universe, ensuring its rational structure and function according to a divine plan, with the motions of the seven classical planets reflecting the deep connection between mathematics and ...
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]
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]
Augustine saw the human being as a perfect unity of two substances: soul and body. [7] He was much closer in this anthropological view to Aristotle than to Plato. [8] [9] In his late treatise On Care to Be Had for the Dead sec. 5 (420 AD) he insisted that the body is essential part of the human person: In no wise are the bodies themselves to be ...
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 ...
In this process, the individual human being does not become something they were not before; rather, they realise their true nature, which is already present within them. The birth of God begins in the soul of the individual human being and extends to encompass the entirety of the soul. For Eckhart, this is the meaning and purpose of creation. [64]