Similarities Between Descartes And Plato

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Descartes believes that the mind and body are separate because people are a rational thinking thing. One needs to think to exist that was the first certainty Descartes came too. Thinking is what makes us exist and the body is simply an extension to that. The body is unnecessary to exist since a person can exist without a leg or an arm but you cannot deceive existence from thinking. Descartes uses the example of the triangle and in class we modified this to say one can imagine a pink triangle since what makes a triangle a triangle doesn’t depend on the color but you can’t imagine a triangle without three sides because that is what makes it what it is. Similarly, you can imagine a mind with all different types of bodies but you can’t imagine …show more content…
While Plato believes that all knowledge was previously known and when you’re reborn you simply recall this knowledge and that is how you understand these ideas that you weren’t directly taught. Descartes believes “…things exist just not how I grasp them…” (52)j the reason for learning those concepts comes from something called intellect, a way of processing and interpreting information and data into making better inferences and judgements about certain decisions. Plato believes that the philosopher should welcome death, and that to gain true knowledge one must separate himself from the body because it’s a distraction, to rise above the physical and this is something Descartes also believes in something similar but Descartes believes that the mind and body are already separated and mind more closely represents the soul. Fundamentally I believe these two would agree since both believe in a different source of knowledge although one predetermined and the other intellectual, the idea that there is something more than the senses is still shared. Also, the idea and want to separate from the body is also something very similar. Plato wants to separate the soul from the body since it is more of a restraint than anything else while Descartes argues that there already

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