Plato’s description of the soul is divided throughout several of his dialogues, mainly the Meno, Phaedo, and the Republic, and as usual it is delivered to us through his written version of Socrates (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010; Russell, 1946).
Generally, when someone is hypothesizing about something, it is a good idea to confirm that that something actually exists. Plato appears to skip this step, simply taking for granted across the different dialogues that humans have a soul, which exists as a separate thing from our body, with death being the separation between the body and the soul (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010; Russell, 1946).
Here we can see Plato proposing a dualism: the body and the soul as divided entities, which is presented as a continuation to the separation between, appearance and reality, sense-perception, and ultimately sensible objects and the Ideas conceived by Plato. (Adamson, 2014; Russell, 1946). If you’ve forgotten what these Ideas are, I recommend reading my previous text on the topic.
Further down, we’ll explore the link Plato presents between the soul and the Ideas, but first I want to explain what Plato thought constituted our soul.
Anatomy of the Soul
Plato describes the soul as being composed by three parts:
- Reason: considered the highest aspect of the soul, loves to learn and pursues knowledge of truth (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010);
- Temper or spirit: the ambitious and honour-loving part of the soul, which seeks power, victory and reputation. Also allows us to feel emotions such as anger and courage (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010);
- Appetite: the part that makes us want food, drink and sex (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010).
Because of the different things they aspire to, these three parts of the soul can be in conflict with each other. Plato gives some examples of this, such as observing that we can feel disgust at our own desires and how children can have tantrums before they develop the rationality to control their emotions (Kenny, 2010). I mean, some adults don’t have the rationality to control their emotions, but that just illustrates the point more.
You can also think about someone who is on a diet. During this period if you see you favourite sweet, like a NOMO chocolate bar, and a thought comes to your mind: “OOHH I would love to eat that whole chocolate bar in one go, it would taste SOOOO GOOD”. However, a different thought will also be expressed in your mind: “No, I can’t eat, I’ve been focusing really well on my diet for the last week, and I really want to lose some weight”. There seems to be a part of our soul that expresses our bodily desires and a separate one that reflects and analyses (Adamson, 2014).
Plato also argues that depending on each person, one of these elements will be dominant in the soul: when reason is the dominant one, we will have an academic person who values knowledge, understanding and a life of learning. When temper dominates, this person will be ambitious, tending towards a life focused on social status, such as becoming a politician. When the dominating element is the appetite, this person will focus on satisfying their wants, focusing on business in order to have the monetary means needed for said desires (Kenny, 2010).
Now that we know what Plato thought made up a human soul, let’s look at how he connects this to his theory of Ideas. As we need the soul to be alive, Plato sees it essentially as the cause of being alive, a sort of Idea of Life (Adamson, 2014). But to be a proper cause by Plato’s standards, the soul could only be alive and never dead. Thus, by its own nature, the soul is immune to death (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010). We’ve reached Plato’s theory about the soul being immortal. But this is a very big statement to make. Can Plato justify his theory better?
Plato presents us with three main arguments. The first, an argument from opposites, states that if something has an opposite, it and its opposite come from each other. You can only fall asleep if you’ve been awake, and you can only wake up if you were asleep. Life and death are also opposites, which means they must also come from each other – death comes from life and life comes from death. However, we can’t see the life that supposedly comes after death, which makes Plato conclude that it must occur in another world. Thus, our souls exist somewhere else when we die and they inhabit our bodies when we are alive (Kenny, 2010; Russel 1946).
This other world the souls go to is linked to the Ideas, being further explain in the second argument, the argument that knowledge is recollection, and whenever we learn something we are actually remembering it (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010; Russell, 1946). For example, we can have an idea of equality even from a small age – we know well when our sibling’s slice of cake is bigger than ours. But this knowledge can’t have come from experience, as it’s very hard to see two things that are exactly the same in real life. Similar things then are likely reminding us of true equality – the Idea of Equality. But no one has encountered any Ideas during their lifetime, not could they perceive it through the senses. So, this would have to have happened before we are alive, which implies that Ideas existing and our souls being able to perceive them shows that the soul existed prior to our body as a separate entity (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010; Russell, 1946).
In third comes the argument based on dissolubility and indissolubility. In plain language this argument states that things that can disintegrate (dissoluble), such as our bodies when we die, must be made up of different parts and prone to change. Now, the soul, because it can exist in the same world as Ideas before we are alive, it must be similar to them. The Ideas are unchangeable and pure, immortal and eternal, unlike the temporary things we can perceive with our senses. So, the soul will likely be indivisible, unchangeable and immortal, living beyond the death of the body (Adamson, 2014; Kenny, 2010; Russel, 1946).
Through these arguments we can clearly see Plato believes the soul will outlive the body. But you can still be asking, what happens to it when the body dies? This is where we come across a very influential thought of Plato about the soul. As stated before, Plato thinks the soul is originally from the world of Ideas, where it goes when it is not inside the body. Plato describes this as the soul joining the souls of other people, with the souls of people who are good going to an afterlife that is pleasant and perfect, the ones that are bed to an afterlife where they will suffer, and the ones that in between good and bad, to a version of the afterlife in between (Adamson, 2014).
The theory of what happens to the soul after death that Plato puts forward here will serve as the template for the ideas of the afterlife held by many western religions and that people then to generally hold presently in western society. It just shows that Plato can be credited with many of the ideas we still have today.
I hope this text has helped you learn some more of those influential ideas. At least when you hear about the soul being separate from the body and existing in an afterlife, you now know where that idea originated from.
I’ll see you amazing nerds in the next text. Be critical about what you think,
The Physiolosopher
References:
Adamson, P. 2014. Classical Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 1. 1st edition. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Kenny, A. 2010. A New History of Western Philosophy: In Four Parts. Reprint Edition. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Russel, B. 1946. History of Western Philosophy. Routledge – Taylor and Francis Group: New York.
The Physiolosopher 