De La Soul

The Soul and the Body in Aristotle’s De Anima Aristotle’s De Anima, unveils a discussion of souls (i.e., those of humans, amongst other living things) that is quite unlike what we have seen with other philosophers prior to him. Unlike the theories espoused by his predecessors, such as those of Plato and his work in the Phaedo, Aristotle’s De Anima generates a kind of characterization of the soul that steers away from the soul as being the individual creature’s true and only identity, which is…

dualism, and believe the body to be inferior to the mind and/or soul. During the Golden Age of Pericles ' Athens, Plato, an intellectual individual, set out to understand the relations that occurred between the body and the soul. With immense studying of his former teacher, Socrates, Plato came to his realization that the body and the soul were in fact separate from one another. Not only are the two separate, but he discovered that the soul itself is immaterial and immortal and wishes…

Meno’s Paradox In the Meno, Socrates questions Meno about what virtue is. After Meno is shown that he does not know what virtue is, Socrates invites Meno to search for what virtue is together. Meno tries to show Socrates that they cannot search for virtue by introducing this paradox: If I know what something is there is no need to search for it; if I do not know what something is, there is no way I could search for it for I would not know that I have found what I was searching for if I did…

against the fear of death. The symmetry argument states that death and our pre-natal state of non-being are the same because if our pre-natal state of non-being counts as nothing then our death should count as nothing as well. In De Rerum Natura Lucretius states that “the soul and body live and perish together;…

virtues, as well as all other actions of the soul, are entirely separate from the brain’s mental processes, which I will expound upon at a later point. As well as forming virtues, the soul also reasons through desire and emotion (such as the desire to learn), and can have beliefs about objects of desire. However, according to Phaedo, the range of activities the soul may complete is far narrower than the range of activities the mind may complete. Though the soul does form desires related to…

it supports a dualism of soul and body in which the soul escapes the body determinations. In his sixth Meditation the author methodically describes the characters that are unique to the soul and the body and raises the contradictions that result from their union. In addition, it plays a fundamental role in the game of passion that bases all of his moral theory. The body is divisible, the mind is indivisible. The soul is not extended, the body occupies space. The soul is immaterial, the body…

for its consequence and its own sake emphasizing the latter point. In order to help answer this challenge, Plato divides the soul in three parts that correspond to the three social classes found in the perfect state. Plato argues that justice is the health of the soul so justice is desirable for itself. In this paper, I will analyze how Plato’s tripartite division of the soul help answered Glaucon and Adeimantus question. According to Plato, each individual has three sources of motivation and…

Throughout his “Meditations” Descartes will demonstrate that he is breaking away from the traditional way of thinking and metaphysics. And, throughout the text Descarte will lay out a foundation to a different way of thinking. One in which one does not solely rely on the senses to know things, but instead rely on an inspection of the mind. But, this conflicts with other philosophers of Descartes time, and it conflicts with what is being taught within the schools, Around Descartes time, many of…

human thought throughout time. Whether embodied or disembodied, survival of the soul seems to be dependent on forces that humans do not have the technology to scientifically prove right now. The most plausible stance about life after death is no personal survival. To prove this, first, I will describe the arguments for personal survival, which I oppose, and then present an argument based on the unintelligibility of souls with Sosa’s “Spatial Awareness” debate. A criticism for this will be…

or nature of which is to think and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this “me,” that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if the body did not exist, the soul would not cease to be what it is.” (Velasquez, 83). Descartes point is that we can think of the self without a body but we can not think of the self without thinking. By…