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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.
Plato uses this observation to illustrate his famous doctrine that the soul is a self-mover: life is self-motion, and the soul brings life to a body by moving it. Meanwhile, in the recollection and affinity arguments, the connection with life is not explicated or used at all.
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 ...
Plato's most self-critical dialogue is the Parmenides, which features Parmenides and his student Zeno, which criticizes Plato's own metaphysical theories. Plato's Sophist dialogue includes an Eleatic stranger. These ideas about change and permanence, or becoming and Being, influenced Plato in formulating his theory of Forms. [54]
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 ...
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.