"The desires of a multitude of inferiors are dominated by the desires and wisdom of a few good men."
Plato Plato
Ancient Greek philosophers
1 The soul and its composition
Plato's theory of the soul is essentially a theory of human nature. Plato defines the soul as follows: "The soul is the first source and cause of movement of all things that have existed, existed, and will exist, and which are contrary to them." Plato believed that "things that get motion from the outside have no soul, and things that have movement within themselves have souls", so "self-movement is the soul".
Plato pointed out in the Republic that the soul has three parts: reason, passion and desire, reason controls the activity of thought, passion controls rational emotions, and desire dominates the tendency to seek pleasure and avoid suffering. The nature of the soul is reason, and both passion and desire should be subordinated to reason; desire against reason and in favor of physical enjoyment is an abnormal act contrary to the nature of the soul.
2 The soul is immortal
Plato's argument for the immortality of the soul has two aspects, one is through the recollection of the soul, since the soul forgets the knowledge itself because it is united with the body, and learning is to recall the knowledge that has been cared for, then the soul is eternal and does not disappear after the death of the body. The second is to argue through movement that everything with eternal motion is immortal, only the movement of the self can never stop, the movement of other things cannot be eternal, and the soul is the movement of the self, so the soul must be unborn, eternal and immortal. The theory of immortality of the soul is not only a pillar theory of religious theology, but also a necessary prerequisite for ethics to advocate moral life.
3 Soul recalls
Plato believed that the soul was an impure idea that itself contained elements of yearning for the body, and that the union of the soul and the body, though a fall, was in keeping with the nature of the soul. Before the soul falls, it contemplates the realm of ideas and contains innate knowledge. After the soul attaches itself to the body, due to the interference or "contamination" of the body, it forgets the knowledge it has contemplated in the past, and only with proper training can it recall the ideas it has seen. Therefore, learning is memory, and "recall" is the soul's concern for itself, the re-recognition of having knowledge. In this sense, Plato said that "memory is the practice of death", because since knowledge is forgotten after the soul has fallen into the flesh, only by purifying the pollution of the flesh as much as possible can knowledge be as close as possible, and the most thorough way of purification is the complete separation of the soul from the body, which means the end of the individual's life, the return of the soul to the contemplation of the idea, and the highest wisdom can only be attained after death.
Plato equates the memory of the soul with the purification of the soul through the recollection of the soul, emphasizing the consistency of intellectual training and moral cultivation. At the same time, it answers the question of how people in the sensible world can recognize ideas. Soul memoirism is the first time in the history of philosophy that a priori theory has been proposed in a crude form, and it also provides a conceptual argument for Socrates' question-and-answer method, which can induce truth within the soul because the soul is connected with the field of ideas and has knowledge itself.
Micro-lessons are recommended
01 20 philosophers daigo-inspired life strategies
Ordinary people study philosophy, not to learn, but to get inspiration from philosophy, and then match it to their own life experience, constantly thinking, doubting, reflecting... Thus organizing into your own philosophy and finding ways to deal with various problems.
This philosophy course will focus on 20 "big problems" in life, such as loneliness, love and hate, life and death, confusion, and desire, each of which is divided into 5 lectures, telling you about the thought systems of 20 ancient and modern philosophers such as Heidegger, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Plato, and Sartre, and explore their own life strategies.
02 104 wisdom courses spanning the 2000 history of philosophy
This course does not pursue "efficiency", does not throw textbook introductions to philosophy directly to you, but carefully "grinds" difficult ideas into vivid stories and easy telling, and takes you a little bit to understand the long history of philosophy and the essence of philosophers' thought through 104 courses in a whole year.
The presenter will analyze the essence of 20 classic philosophical works such as "Existence and Time", "Republic", "Meditations", and "Drinking Chapters" for you. It covers ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, early modern Western European philosophy, German classical philosophy, existentialism and postmodernism.
03 Philosophies and inspirations of 100+ literary and artistic works
At the beginning of each lesson, the presenter will cut in with a movie, a novel or a piece of music, on the one hand, in order to start from vivid emotional experience and realization, and then rise to philosophical questions and reflections, so that the audience can more easily open the door to philosophical thinking.
On the other hand, in addition to the function of entertainment, good literary and artistic works also contain a life experience and a possibility of life. Deeply understand the connotation behind literary and artistic works, do not stick to the self, better understand others, and understand the external world.