Plato on the Soul (A History of Western Thought 11)

This video is part of our History of Western Thought series, in which I address the thought of Plato regarding the soul and its relationship to the body. I discuss body soul dualism, the recollection theory of knowledge (epistemology), and Plato's approach to the Tripartite soul.

[meditatio]

So glad you are continuing this series!

[mysticmouse]

I like this series on ancient philosophy. So necessary - informs our ideas to this day.

[JonathanWells-vznw]

When my kid was 1.5 years and pointing to everything saying, "what's that?" I always responded like a good platonist, "don't you remember?"

[EsotericHighway]

I was just reading and Platonism came up a few times. I realized I didn't know a lot about Plato and wanted to learn more..and then, boom. This is in my feed.

Great talk. Thank you.

[daviddoch]

YES. Would be very interested in The Greeks concept of The Afterlife. From the divisions of their Heaven, The Soul and Reincarnation.

[mugglesarecooltoo]

I've been trying to get through this recently, but just haven't been able to get through it (my boredom, that is). Thanks for doing my civic duty for me.

[josewalle]

Great video ! Will you be so kind to share the excellent piece of music that plays in the intro, great taste !
Thank you

[ZeroGravity]

The mind & body don't need to be escaped from, mind & body are valuable temporary tools of your eternal spirit & soul. You are soul and if watching this video, it's safe to say you possess spirit. Your mind & body are to be mastered by you, soul. In short, we need to encounter spiritual birth. [The conscious awakening of our soul.] I'm not talking religion, I'm talking awakening our soul, increasing even manufacturing greater consciousness. The level of consciousness one possesses is the true measure of one's present spirit. The more conscious you live the more spirit you possess. Consciousness is spirit and spirit is awareness. Your consciousness is reflected in the depth and quality of your spirit. [Stretch your mind and you'll increase consciousness.] The next step is to fill that new consciousness with what's right and a yearning to grow even more consciousness going forward. With work before you know it, you'll throw away your jeans & buy a robe. Love your mind & body, just don't listen to it. :)
P*E*A*C*E

[HungNguyen-jdyi]

What are the similarities and dissimilarities of the Soul between Plato and Aristotle?

[anorman]

*Descartes*. I legitimately thought you said "Dick Clark" at first and was really confused.

[vscmnvi]

God is infinite within and without like a mirror, and the image in the mirror.

[mikepsy]

"THE STATE OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH" By prof. Siegbert W. Becker (WELS):
"What do you do with the words of the Lord Jesus, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, ” for surely these words indicate that the Savior believed that the soul cannot be killed?... the Israelites could not have learned the doctrine of immortality from the Greeks since Old Testament books written hundreds of years before Plato clearly teach this truth. That Plato might have learned it from the writings of the prophets, as Luther believed... And if they insist that the Jews had to learn it from somebody, why could they not have taken it from the Egyptians? The Egyptian conception of the immortality of the soul is much closer to that of the Bible than is that of Plato and the Greek philosophers. That the Egyptians believed in the immortality of the individual person and not just a vague indestructibility of soul substance is clearly proclaimed by their elaborate tombs and by their highly developed embalming processes.

But when Plato held to a view of the immortality of the soul... he called the immortality of the soul was nothing more than a perduration of the intelligence or the conservation and preservation of reason. The individual person, who is so important in the Christian view of things, is of no significance to Plato...

at the very beginning that the Bible uses the word “soul” or “spirit” in various senses. At times it uses the word “soul” to mean simply a person, or even an animal, or any living creature. We do the same today when we count the number of souls in our congregations. Paul did this when he said, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers” (Rom. 13:1). This was done also by Moses, for we might translate Genesis 2:19 in this way, “Whatsoever Adam called every soul, that was the name thereof.” And the context makes it very clear that the “souls” that he named were the animals. We are here evidently dealing with a figure of speech, in which the part is named for the whole.

But how can we say that the soul is a part of an animal? The answer to that question lies in the fact that the word “soul” is at times used in the Bible to denote nothing more than life itself. In the first chapter of Genesis the animals are described as having souls, for when it speaks of beasts, and foul, and creeping things, “wherein there is life, ” we might more literally translate, “wherein there is a living soul” (Gen. 1:30; see margin.). And when Paul said of Eutychus, “His life is in him, ” we could just as correctly translate, “His soul is in him” (Acts 20:10). All this should prompt us to be a little cautious about using a passage like, “Man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7) to prove the soul’s immortality. When the word “soul” is used in this sense it comes very close to the modern, unbelieving view of the soul, which sees in the soul nothing more than the vital functioning of the body, and which treats anger and worry as little more than a superconcentration of the wrong kinds of acids in the body...

John says in Revelation, “I saw the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, ” (Rev. 6:9) no other meaning could possibly fit the context...

This doctrine that the soul... of man lives on after death is so universally believed... that we may say that it is a part of the natural knowledge... When the ancients buried their dead and placed into the tombs the implements and the supplies that they would need in the next world, they gave eloquent testimony to their belief in a life after death. That man has a soul which survives the body is a part or man’s natural belief as an incurably religious being...

That the individual human person survives after death is clearly taught by the earliest books of the Old Testament... for example, that Abraham “was gathered to his people” (Gen. 25:8). This surely does not refer to the burial of Abraham’s body, for his people were buried in Ur of the Chaldees and in Haran, and Abraham was buried in the cave of Machpelah. Of Isaac (Gen. 35:29) and of Jacob (Gen. 49:29, 33), too...

Remarkable in this connection are the words of the Lord Jesus when He spoke of these things to the Sadducees. The Sadducees denied the existence of an immortal soul and of the resurrection of the body. The Savior told them that their views reflected an ignorance of Scripture. And to show them that the Bible teaches this doctrine, the Savior quoted a passage... which shows us again that the Lord expected the details of the Scriptural revelation to be treated as authoritative and inspired... “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:32). When God spoke to Moses, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had been dead and buried for hundreds of years. Yet God did not say, “I was the God of Abraham, ” but “I am the God of Abraham.” Consequently, so our Lord argues, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob must still be alive...


the wicked shall be cast down into Sheol (Ps. 9:17)... the word should be translated as “hell.” But... when the Savior in prophecy says, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol” (Ps. 16:10)... It is clear from the words of the Savior that His soul was in Paradise... We must be careful to interpret Scripture by Scripture... It is clear that Sheol can either refer to heaven or to hell, just as we speak of “the next world, ” or “the afterlife, ” or “the great beyond.” When we say that a man has passed over into the great beyond we do not thereby teach that there is only one place to which men go after death, or that all those who have passed over are in the same compartment. And if we say that the believers will find joy in the next life and the unbelievers will find sorrow there, we make it plain that we do not believe that they are all in the same state, or even in the same place, but they are all in the next world.

After death, then, the soul goes to heaven or to hell...

we should not attempt to answer every question that is asked, but if we can give an answer which is in harmony with the teachings of the Bible, we may spare some... anxious moments... to stumble in our faith the first time we are faced with the apparently... “deep thinker, ”...

when the Bible speaks of heaven in the literal sense it means the sky...

When I was a boy and heard how the people of Babel wanted to build a tower whose top would reach into heaven, I thought that these were people who wanted to save themselves by their works, who wanted to build a tower so high that they could step off the top of it into heaven and thus get there without faith. But the story makes it very clear that these men built the tower... to keep themselves from being scattered, to enable them to stay together on the plains of Babel (Gen. 11:4). And when we know from Genesis 1 that heaven is simply the sky above us, we realize that these people wanted to build a skyscraper that would be visible for miles and serve as the focal point of their community.

In the light of all this, the words of Paul, in which he says that we will meet the Lord “in the air” (1 Thess. 4:17) become doubly significant. How far do we have to go to meet the Lord? The Lord is everywhere.

If our eyes could be opened, as were the eyes of Elishah’s servant, we might see not only the angels who are present round about us, but we might even see the Lord here and now... “In heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven”

[egoillusion]

Thats why the bible make clashes on difficulty on understanding God n soul interpretation as the eastern n western ideas met in different perspective.

[evoov]

God why do ppl equate Plato as a dualist? When clearly Plato is not. If you actually read Plato. How much you want to bet this video. Says that sensible objects like chairs share an ideal form of chair in abstract reality?

[robsonbass]

For me, this world is like a video game. The body is what the soul (the player) occupies. When the body dies, the person does not. However, my Christian beliefs add a twist. Those who are not Christian are "Non-Player-Characters" (NPC's). Like animals, they operate primarily on instinct. When one is born again, they receive a spirit and can now effectively see this world from the spiritual perspective. From the chair of the player, if you will, able to see this temporary world for what it is - enabling them to act accordingly based more from spiritual needs than their body's needs. That's why the Apostle Paul said "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".

[jordanlindo]

The Immortal Soul is a pagan doctrine from the Serpent that told Adam and Eve that they would not surely die as GOD said they would if they ate the fruit. Man is Body and Breathe of Life when we die the Breathe of Lige returns to God and our Body decays.