LIFE AFTER DEATH: Plato's Dualism

Question 1

Who was Plato?

Answer 1

Pupil of Socrates and major influence on the development of Western philosophy

Question 2

What does Plato’s allegory of the cave illustrate?

Answer 2

The idea of the World of the Forms (the philosopher’s world):
True reality exists beyond normal perceptions of the world. What we perceive around us is a shadow of this truth. The real world is unchanging and eternal, where there are perfect forms of what we know on earth

Question 3

What is the Form?

Answer 3

The essence of an object. We can recognise forms because we are born with a dim recollection of them from our prior existence in the world of the Forms. e.g. the beautiful person participates in beauty with all other beautiful things but beauty itself is beyond our normal perception.

Question 4

Why is the soul according to Plato eternal, unlike the body?

Answer 4

The soul was connected with the real world of the Forms before it became tied down by a body

Question 5

What did Plato believe about the soul?

Answer 5

He was a dualist. States in the Republic that the soul belonged to a level of reality that is higher than the body. The soul is an immortal substance that controls 3 areas of life: reason (need for knowledge), emotion (part of human that looks for honour, virtue), and basic drives (bodily satisfaction)

Question 6

For Plato, how does the soul relate to the world of Forms?

Answer 6

The soul is that which can grasp the realm of ideas. It is not matter, which is gross and unthinking. The soul is trying to steer the mind into the spiritual realm while the body wants to be involved in worldly matters

Question 7

What did Plato claim about knowledge?

Answer 7

All knowledge is recollection of things remembered from when we were in the WOF. We don’t learn, we only recollect

Question 8

What did Plato think happens when we die?

Answer 8

The soul separates from the body. The body doesn’t survive death