This essay
is not a scholarly one. There are no
citations from primary sources. In writing this, I only have in mind the
students in my Philosophy of Human Person classes –Senior High and college
students.
Philosophy,
specifically Philosophy of Man, does not only cover philosophies of ancient
Greek thinkers, like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In my previous postings and classes, I
often mentioned some ancient Greek philosophers. I may be construed that in Philosophy of Man
we will be studying “dead people with dead philosophical thoughts.” Yet, I can’t do away with the ancient
philosophies since they served as the foundation of modern philosophies, which
are varied and even confusing. Hence,
this article gives account to three ancient philosophers, namely Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. Hopefully, I can
also devote some articles for modern and contemporary philosophers.
Let me start with the
rational psychology (Philosophy of Man) of Plato. Plato, is one of the colossal figures in
ancient Greek philosophy; a student of Socrates and the teacher of
Aristotle. Socrates, Plato’s master, is also
significant in the history of ancient Greek philosophy yet has not built a
philosophical system as grand as his student.
His contribution lies in the fact that he is the first philosopher to
make the transition from his predecessors’ concern of the material cosmos to
the concern of human reality. His
predecessors like Thales, Anaxagoras, Heraklitus, Parmenides, et al were obsessed of
the question, What is the world made of? Socrates gave up this question in favor of
the new relevant one, What is man in
relation with others?
Socrates did not write
anything. Thus, not much is known of his
philosophy. He is only attributed to
some of these sayings: “Know thyself”
and “Unexamined life is not worth
living.” Because of this, I will not
dwell so much on Socrates' philosophy, as I will do on Plato's.
Man is a composite of
body and soul. But for Plato, what is
more important is man’s soul. Man is his
soul. Soul constitutes the essence of
his humanity. The human body is nothing
else than a dark world where the soul is imprisoned. The body is the realm of darkness and
ignorance. Plato theorized that the soul
belongs to the World of Ideas, which
is considered as the real world –the world of the immutable truths. The soul once dwelling in the World of Ideas fell down from that ideal
world and became trapped in the body.
Thus, man is the “embodiment of the fallen soul.”
Plato is a sort of
philosopher who combines myth[i]
and pure speculation to understand the nature of man. For me, Plato is the first philosopher to
have articulated the other dimension of man –the spiritual one. Man’s spiritual dimension is what most
philosophers attempt to reject as nonsense or what they don’t want to think
about since it’s a matter of faith, not of reason. Only Christian thinkers have the same horizon
of thought with Plato –in their understanding of man as having that spiritual
dimension.
Let me deepen my
analysis of man as an “embodiment of the fallen soul.” The term “embodiment” implies that man is not
simply a body nor a soul. If it is only
a body, then it is not a man but a cadaver.
If it is only a soul, then it is not a man but a ghost. He must be a composite of body and soul. Yet in the mind of Plato, there is something
more of the nature of the soul. Soul is
the principle of life. A plant grows (if it grows it means that it has
life) because it has soul, particularly nutritive
soul. If an animal grows and is capable
of bearing emotions, then it must have also a soul, particularly nutritive-sensitive soul. Man grows, is capable of bearing emotions,
and most of all capable of reason. Thus,
man has nutritive-sensitive-rational
soul. Among the three species, man is
the only one who is capable of reason –thus, a privileged one from other species.
The rational part of the soul of man is what makes him different from
other creatures. It is the highest part
since it has the power of abstractions and can work independently of his body.
Take note: we are only
talking of only one soul in one man but this soul has three different parts. I will not give the details of these parts of
soul in this paper. What I want to
convey here is that the highest part of the soul (rational part) strives hard to
escape from the imprisonment of the body and go back to the World of Ideas, its true home.
For Plato, the true man
is the ideal man –the man who is illumined by the true things in life which can
be found in the other-worldly realm of ideal forms.
[i]
The elements of myth in Plato’s theory are as follows: (1) the World of Ideas
–though, Plato suggests that to think of that ideal world is an exigency of
reason –meaning, as rational beings, we cannot but think of that world since
our reason demands it; and (2) the story of the fall –the soul dwells in the
World of Ideas, why it fell down from it and become imprisoned in the body
