Religious Studies OCR A-level revision notes covering the philosophical language
of soul, mind and body in
the thinking of Plato and
Aristotle
• metaphysics of
consciousness, including:
o substance dualism
o materialism
soul mind and body ocr a level religious studies notes
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Religious Studies
Unit 1
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Soul, mind and body
Plato
Plato is a substance dualist and thus argues that a human person consists of
two distinct and separate parts/substances (the body and the soul).
Plato is a rationalist and thus uses rational arguments to prove that we have a
soul and that the soul lives on.
Plato describes the relationship between the body and the soul by saying that
‘the person is a soul imprisoned in a body’ and thus it is the soul, which gives
the body life.
He outlines his view on the soul in two books; “The Phaedo’ and ‘The
Republic’.
Plato uses the term ‘psyche’ to describe the soul which is an eternal
permanent part of us.
Plato is using reason in order to explain the existence of an eternal soul
which existed in some previous world/realm (the World of the Forms).
Plato’s arguments for the existence of a soul
Theory of opposites – Plato argues that everything comes from its opposite
(e.g. day comes from night and night comes from day) and therefore life
comes from death and death comes from life so therefore there must be
something eternal which lives through this process of death and life and this
Plato argues is the soul (reincarnation). This links to the idea that because
there is nothing in this world, which gives us permanence, there must be
something eternal which gives us permanence. For Plato therefore, the true
essence of a person is their soul. However, a criticism of such an argument for
the existence of a soul is that day does not cause night and that life does not
cause death, rather they are just the succession of one another (they do not
actually ‘cause’ each other) in the same way that by kicking a ball causes it to
move.
Meno and the slave boy – Meno owned a slave boy who had not received any
education and Plato asked the slave boy to do a mathematical equation,
which the slave boy was able to work out. Plato therefore argues that if he
did not learn this ability it must have been innate and thus ‘all knowledge is
recollection’. Therefore, this knowledge must have been obtained prior to
birth in the World of the Forms.
The Myth of Er (contained in the Republic) – Er was a soldier who died in a
battle and his body was left on the battlefield for ten days. When his body
was retrieved he awoke and described what had happened to him in this
period. Plato believes that when we die the soul leaves the body, enters the
realm of the Forms, gains all knowledge and then walks through the river
Lethe (the river of forgetting), before choosing to return into another body.
This explains why all knowledge is gained through recollection.
The Charioteer analogy – Imagine a charioteer which represents the soul and
is steering/driving two horses which represent appetite and emotions and it
is the soul/reason’s job to make sure that everything is heading in a rational
direction. This is called the tripartite view of the soul.
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