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Artist's depiction of a human soul leaving the body, 1808. In many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is the non-material essence of a person, which includes one's identity, personality, and memories, an immaterial aspect or essence of a living being that is believed to be able to survive physical death.
Plato's theory of the reincarnation of the soul combined the ideas of Socrates and Pythagoras, mixing the divine privileges of men with the path of reincarnation between different animal species. He believed the human prize for the virtuous or the punishment for the guilty were not placed in different parts of the underworld but directly on Earth.
The Egyptian philosopher and father of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus’s idea of the human soul would form the foundation for the Christian view of the human soul. Like Plato, Plotinus believed that the soul resulted from an immortal being that would return to its divine source upon death.
The soul fulfils its tasks with its various faculties, which are described in the relevant writings of Aristotle that were authoritative in the late Middle Ages. The soul must utilise its faculties to fulfil the requirements of its connection with the body and to ensure the survival of the human being.
On the Soul (Greek: Περὶ Ψυχῆς, Peri Psychēs; Latin: De Anima) is a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC. [1] His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations.
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 ...
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]
The concept of an immaterial soul separate from and surviving the body is common today but according to modern scholars, it was not found in ancient Hebrew beliefs. [1] The word nephesh never means an immortal soul [27] or an incorporeal part of the human being [28] that can survive death of the body as the spirit of the dead. [29]