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Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul

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Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul Michael Lacewing Plato s Phaedo Death is the separation of the soul from the body When it is joined to a body ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul


1
Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul
  • Michael Lacewing

2
Platos Phaedo
  • Death is the separation of the soul from the body
  • When it is joined to a body, the soul is only
    able to view existence through the bars of a
    prison, and not in her own nature she is
    wallowing in the mire of all ignorance

3
A separate soul I
  • Souls cant be destroyed
  • The soul is unseen
  • All unseen things are simple, they have no
    parts
  • To destroy something is to break it into parts
  • Objection perhaps there are other types of
    destruction

4
A separate soul II
  • Change is change from what something (currently)
    is to what it (currently) is not
  • Life changes into not-life, death
  • Becoming alive involves a change from not being
    alive
  • Upon life, the soul is joined to the body - so
    the soul exists before birth
  • Objection not all change is like this - coming
    into existence is not a change into an opposite

5
Aristotle
  • A person is an ensouled body
  • The soul is the form of the living body - what
    does this mean?
  • Four types of cause or explanation
  • Material that out of which a thing comes to be,
    and which persists, e.g. marble of a sculpture
  • Efficient brings about change or rest, e.g. the
    sculptor

6
Four causes (cont.)
  • Final the end (telos), that for which a thing
    is done, e.g. the answer to why the sculptor
    made the statue
  • Formal the account of the essence, e.g. what a
    sculpture is, so that we understand what the
    sculptor was doing

7
What is a heart?
  • Material muscle (flesh)
  • Formal pumps blood
  • Final sustain life by pumping blood
  • Efficient cell development guided by genes
    aiming at creating a living organism

8
What is a soul?
  • living is the being the essence of living
    things, and the soul is the cause and principle
    of this. (415b).
  • What it is to be a living being is to live and
    the soul is the formal, efficient and final cause
    of a living thing.

9
What is a soul?
  • Final living things live in order to live (stay
    alive)
  • Efficient living changes and develops our
    bodies it changes and develops us as persons
  • Formal the activity of living provides an
    account of what it is to be what we are, a
    particular kind of living being.

10
Soul as form
  • Matter endures (material cause). But we always
    identify matter by some form it has.
  • With living beings, matter constantly changes.
    Living things are forms embodied in ever-changing
    matter. Even to refer to a living thing is to
    privilege form over matter.

11
Human soul and body
  • Different living things are capable of different
    kinds of lives
  • plants growth and reproduction
  • animals sensation
  • human beings rational activity
  • So each has a corresponding type of soul.

12
The intellect
  • No part of the body corresponds to the intellect
  • Each sense is limited to a type of experience
  • But thought can be about anything
  • So the intellect seems to be another kind of
    soul, and this alone admits of being separated,
    as that which is eternal from that which is
    perishable (428b)

13
Descartes on the soul
  • Aquinas developed Aristotles ideas, claiming the
    soul, intellect and the form were the same thing,
    and a separable substance
  • Descartes agrees, but drops reference to form
    The soul is the intellect and a separate
    substance from the body.
  • Bodies work mechanically - they dont need
    explaining in terms of the soul.

14
What am I? the narrow view
  • I am essentially a soul, a thing that thinks
    that can be separated from a body. (Meditation
    II)
  • But is Descartes right to think souls can be
    separated from bodies?

15
What am I? the broad view
  • I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a
    vessel, butI am very closely united with it, and
    so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem
    to compose with it one whole. (Meditation VI)
  • I am a person - an embodied soul.
  • the soul takes on bodily experiences as its own,
    i.e. we refer our sensations, emotions, etc. to
    our selves.

16
What am I? essentially
  • I am not essentially a person, because I could be
    the same thing - a soul - without a body.
  • I am essentially a person, since I am my
    psychological properties, and these depend on my
    body.
  • I am essentially a person, because the unity of
    soul and body creates a new, distinct kind of
    thing.
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