Purchase Solution

Body and soul, Plato and Nietzsche

Not what you're looking for?

Ask Custom Question

Requesting TA 102713, Worked with me on earlier issues and helped tremendously.

Compare Plato's and Nietzsche's views on the nature of the soul and the body, as well as their ideas about the relationship between the.

Using The Republic and Thus Spoke

Purchase this Solution
Solution Summary

Whereas for Plato the soul is the essence of the human being and is imprisoned in the body, for Nietzsche the soul is just a word for something about the body. How do these two philosophers argue for their divergent positions? This is what is discussed here.

Solution Preview

In the Phaedo, Socrates was reported to have told the people who were sorrowful about his imminent death that the real Socrates was not the body that will be left after his demise. What changes, according to Socrates, is the body while the soul remains unchanged. So Socrates believed that his soul will survive death. The argument for the immortality of the soul is thus set out in the Phaedo, taken up later in the Republic. For Plato, then, man's real self is the soul which is in the body like in a prison and it is death that releases it from the body. It is this dualism that one finds in the Republic where two opposites are discussed. Everything is thought to have "its peculiar evil as well as its good" (The Republic, Part VI, Book X, 608 C-end, "Immortality and the rewards of Justice"). What is evil impairs what is good, in that way, the body impairs the soul, and it is its prison! So, man should distance himself/herself as far as possible from the passions of the body in order to maintain her true essence which is to "...apprehend and hold converse with the divine, immortal, and everlasting world to which she is ...

Purchase this Solution
Free BrainMass Quizzes
The World Health Organization

This quiz assesses the students knowledge about the World Health Organization. Although listed under “Philosophy” it is relevant to health care, political science, pre-med, and social scientist students as well.

Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy

Short quiz relating to Descartes

View More Free Quizzes
Related BrainMass Solutions

  • Plato & Nietzsche

    Cooper The solution provides information, insight and information on the ideas proposed by classical thinker Plato and modern philosopher Nietzsche, in particular their ideas on the relationship between the body and the soul (spirit).

  • Plato's definition of the human being and human society

    16952 Plato's definition of the human being and human society Using Platos (The Republic) and Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) How does Plato define the human being in the Republic?

  • Both Plato and Nietzsche describe a process that could be called "enlightenment." Compare and contrast their views on this process.

    beauty of any one body, soul or law but pure beauty by itself.

  • What is the impact of Christianity on philosophy?

    The human being is also a composition of two distinct entities: Soul and Body: the soul, understood as the Essence of the human person being incorruptible while the body which Plato described as the prison of the soul, is corruptible, that there is a

  • Plato & Nietzsche: reason

    For Plato: 1. Plato is the total opposite of Nietzsche, and he knew it. Nietzsche wrote not so much as the "Antichrist" but rather as the "AntiPlato." (use that phrase in your paper, trust me, your prof will love it) 2. Reason IS man for Plato.

  • Plato's philosopher and Nietzsche's Overman

    For Plato the earth is an illusion because of its impermanence and the only thing that is real is the world of the unchangeable Forms. And that is why Zarathustra says, "I shall not go your way, O despisers of the body!

  • Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle

    Cooper (ed.), Plato: Complete Works, Hackett 1997. G. Fine, Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, Oxford University Press 1998 Adler, Mortimer J. (1978). Aristotle for Everybody. New York: Macmillan.

  • historical development of determinism, existentialism an dua

    Ideas on mind/body dualism are presented in Hebrew Scripture as well as in the writings of Zarathushtra. Plato and Aristotle also dealt with ideas that there exists and incorporeal soul that holds the faculties of intelligence and wisdom.

  • Republic

    9300 Republic What are the 3 parts of the soul and how do they correspond to the 3 parts of the city, according to Plato? Hi there,

    As it happens, Plato ends up using the theory of the soul that he also proposes in the Phaedrus.

View More Related Solutions