Plato a dualist, believed that the soul is the most important entity to a person and that the body is a prison for it. Plato argued that the soul is immortal and unchanging. His idea was that the soul attempts to escape the burdens of the body in this world and aims for the world of forms. Whereas Aristotle a monist, believed that the body and soul are one entity, therefore, if the body dies so does the soul. Plato classes the body as a hindrance for the soul he considered the soul as immaterial and as an entity that belonged to the world of forms. On the other hand, Aristotle was more interested in the physical world, in contrast, Plato believed in moral ideas like the afterlife. Plato believed that the mind was the link we have with the physical part of a human that is used to grasp the concepts that the soul possesses such as beauty. In comparison with Aristotle, his ideas were based upon physical things we can see and perceive unlike Plato’s. However, they both believed that the mind is the main connection between the soul. The first part of this essay will be ‘Plato’s distinction of the soul’ in this section I will be talking about Plato’s views on the soul from his book Phaedo including the topics of the immortality of the soul and the theory of forms. The second part will be ‘Aristotle’s distinction on the soul’ in the same way I will be discussing Aristotle’s views on the soul from his book De Anima plus his argument on form and matter. Finally, the last part will be a comparison between the two philosophers to see how their ideas differ and relate.
1.Plato’s distinction of the soul in Phaedo
Plato’s two main topics in Phaedo are the immortality of the soul and the theory of forms. With the theory of forms, we can know things as they are and to explain how we can attain this certain knowledge we must admit that both the thing known (the forms) and the thing that knows (the soul) are entities of each other that are independent of this world. The forms are existing entities that are graspable in the mind, they can’t be perceived by the senses. Plato says that our goal in this life should be to separate ourselves from the temptations the body faces and to practice death to be able to find a connection with the world of forms (Faculty.washington.edu, 2018).
Socrates presents three arguments for the immortality of the soul that Plato presents in Phaedo; the cyclical argument, the affinity argument and the argument from recollection. First, I will be talking about the cyclical argument. Socrates theory Is that like the souls of the dead come from the world of the living, the souls of the living come from those who are dead (Plato and Gallop, 1975, p.70c-d). His argument states that all things in this world come from their opposite matter e.g. tall and short. Between every pair of opposite states of affairs there are two opposite processes, if the two processors don’t balance each other out everything will become in the same state. He is saying that coming back to life balances out dying, therefore, everything that dies comes back to life at some point (thelycaeum, 2018).
The second argument is recollection; this is the idea that our soul had perfect knowledge of everything before entering this world and once it entered into this world it lost that ability. This argument is based on the idea of the pre-existence of the soul, in this, the soul was accompanied by the forms and the soul had real knowledge. Plato said that true knowledge is the knowledge of the forms. We do not have knowledge of the forms from appearances, therefore, we probably have a recollection of them and then appearances remind us of them (Begum and Mushtaq, 2016). The final argument is the affinity argument, this is the idea that the soul has a likeness to a higher level of reality. There are two types of existences: visible so the world we preserve and see, mortal, changing and the invisible, immortal and never changing. Socrates states:
“The soul is more similar than the body to the invisible, whereas the body is more similar to that which is seen”. (Plato and Gallop, 1975, p.79a)
Therefore, if the soul has become free of these bodily desires then it is likely to make its way to the world of forms. The body is like one world the temporary one and the soul is like another, the empirical world (Iep.utm.edu, 2018). As we can see from the previous section, we have discussed Plato’s views, in this section, I will be discussing Aristotle’s views on the soul from his book De Anima so that we can see the difference between what Plato says about the soul and what Aristotle says.
Aristotle discusses being a morally good person, we need to function in the right way using our knowledge which we need from both the soul and body, unlike Plato who believes that the morally good part of us is embedded in our souls. Plato presented his philosophy in the form of dramatic dialogue whilst Aristotle's is in the form of a dense treatise. Chapter one of De Anima comprises and criticises accounts on the soul. He begins by observing that:
“The soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living beings” (Aristotle and Trancred- Hugh, 1986, p. 420a).
He says that the soul is what causes life and studying or looking into the idea of the soul enables us to have knowledge of life. Aristotle says that the aim of this study is to discover the “nature and substance” of the soul (Aristotle and Trancred- Hugh, 1986, p.402a). By this, he means what the actual essence of the soul is and what characteristics and attributes it has. Aristotle says that the essential attributes of the soul are held to be peculiar to the soul itself. We can think of it as a characteristic that is peculiar to the soul but other characteristics of the soul like being angry are common to the body. Aristotle says that the soul won’t be a substantial being as it won’t be existing independently rather the soul will be the substantial form of the body. What he is saying here is that the soul is a substance for the body (Aristotle and Trancred- Hugh, 1986, p.402a pp.34). He is saying that something that is a substance has more reality than an accident. Attributes are less real because attributes depend on other things. In De Anima, Aristotle noticed that the soul can’t be both matter and form of a living body because when a person dies the soul is gone but the body still remains. If the body remains and the soul is not separate from it then that means the soul is either form or matter. The matter of the body doesn’t change after death, so the soul must be the form of the living body. If the soul is the form of the body, it can’t be without matter.
3. Comparison between Plato and Aristotle
In this section, I will take both philosophers thoughts and bring them together to see how their ideas on the soul relate and how they differ from one another. Aristotle’s definition of the soul is a criticism for Plato’s ideas because he says the soul can exist without a body. For Plato, ‘real’ things are the forms and not particular things but for Aristotle, ‘real’ things are substances and substances are particular things. Aristotle says that materialistic desires should be contained but Plato disagrees as he believes the soul has no contact with the physical world and is only searching for a connection with the world of forms. In addition, Plato says that the soul is more like an intelligent being and the body itself is more perishable yet Aristotle states that if the body perishes then the soul will perish along with it. Nonetheless, in Phaedo, Plato characterizes the soul’s features saying that it has cognitive and intellectual features. On the other hand, Aristotle says that the soul is a kind of nature, he admits that the soul has different types of abilities that prove that the soul is not the body itself (Lorenz, 2009).
Conclusion
To conclude, I have discussed Plato’s view on the soul as I have done the same for Aristotle’s. To see how different or how similar they are to one another I have entwined their thoughts to one another in the first two sections furthermore I have written a separate section to compare them both.
For Plato, his idea of reality is the world of forms yet for Aristotle the reality of this world is in matter itself, for example, soil. Plato uses more of a logical structure to come across with his approach he talked about ideas that can be related to this world alone whereas Aristotle came across with more of a scientific approach, his ideas were based on the perception of things. Plato wanted nothing to do with this temporary world whereas Aristotle was ground by it. Plato says that the soul is not fully responsible for the desires our body feels such as hunger and thirst even though by having these desires it means that we are ensouled. Regarding being ensouled, Aristotle says that the concept of the body and soul is a more general relation between form and matter. The soul itself is a unique entity that we all possess and cannot live without, the body is working because the soul is working, they are entwined with one another.