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Plato: Soul
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Plato associates the traditional Greek virtues with the class structure of the ideal state. Temperance is the unique virtue of the artisan class; courage is the virtue peculiar to the military class; and wisdom characterizes the rulers. Justice, the fourth virtue, characterizes society as a whole. The just state is one in which each class performs its own function well without infringing on the activities of the other classes. Plato divides the human soul into three parts: the rational part, the will, and the appetites. The just person is the one in whom the rational element, supported by the will, controls the appetites.
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Plato believed that though the body dies and disintegrates, the soul continues to live forever. After the death of the body, the soul migrates to what Plato called the realm of the pure forms. There, it exists without a body, contemplating the forms. After a time, the soul is reincarnated in another body and returns to the world. But the reincarnated soul retains a dim recollection of the realm of forms and yearns for it. . . . In the Meno, Plato has Socrates teach an ignorant slave boy a truth of geometry by simply asking a series of questions. Because the boy learns this truth without being given any information, Plato concluded that learning consists of recalling what the soul experienced in the realm of the forms.
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In the context of his larger argument, Plato's theory of human nature provides the foundation for another answer to the question of why justice is better than injustice. On the view developed here, true justice is a kind of good health, attainable only through the harmonious cooperative effort of the three souls. In an unjust person, on the other hand, the disparate parts are in perpetual turmoil, merely coexisting with each other in an unhealthy, poorly-functioning, dis-integrated personality. Plato developed this theme in greater detail in the final books of The Republic.
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Plato's educational priorities ... reflected his distinct pedagogy. Challenging the Sophists - who prized rhetoric, believed in ethical and epistemological relativism, and claimed to teach "excellence" - Plato argued that training in "excellence" was meaningless without content and that knowledge was absolute, certain, and good. As a result, teachers assumed a high moral responsibility. Plato doubted whether a standard method of teaching existed for all subjects, and he argued that morally neutral education would corrupt most citizens. He preferred the dialectical method over the Sophists' rhetorical pedagogy. For Plato, the role of the teacher was not to fill an empty reservoir with specific skills, but to encourage the student to redirect his or her soul and to rearrange the priorities within it to allow reason to rule over the irrational elements of spirit and appetite.
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According to Plato, the soul consists of three basic energies which animate human beings: Reason, Emotion, and Appetite. Reason is given the greatest value, while Emotion and especially Appetite are regarded as the “lower passions”. The soul that is ordered is governed by Reason, and therefore keeps one’s emotions and one’s appetites under control. The lower passions *must* submit to the dictates of Reason.
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Plato's influence came into the medieval European tradition through the filter of Neoplatonism, a much later modification of Platonic teachings that flourished in the centuries just before and after the time of Jesus. The most famous neo-Platonist was Plotinus. Plotinus and the other neo-Platonists made much of the idea of Beauty, and the soul's quest for it, as described in the Symposium. Through neoplatonism, Plato's second theory (art as imitation of eternal Beauty and eternal Truth) became the channel of his influence on the western middle ages and the renaissance.
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