Comparing Plato, Phaedrus And Republic

Generally speaking, there are two basic philosophical camps regarding human nature: the camp of the spiritualists and that of the materialists. The controversy of human nature still goes on in the present day and philosophers continue to debate over it; however, these hypotheses and theories remain in the realm of doubt until death comes and endorses it. Nevertheless, as Plato points out: “The feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher, and all philosophy has its origins in wonder” (Theaetetus 155). Sa’di and Pope were both the followers and preservers of classical philosophy, albeit in their own way and they belong to the camp of believers in the divine nature of humans.

In the present dissertation, Plato is taken as the key theorist

The soul, being immortal and eternal, attains an awareness of Forms before entering a human body and descending on earth and can remember these ideas. This is the aforementioned ‘doctrine of recollection’ or ‘anamnesis’. This doctrine is inevitably interlocked with his theory of ‘immortality of the soul’. This theory is elaborated primarily in the three dialogues of Phaedo, Phaedrus and Republic. In Phaedo Plato holds that death is but “freedom and separation of the soul from the body” (280). Warning against the contamination of body he observes

Thus Plato holds that

And indeed the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality. (275-276)

In Phaedrus, Plato initially affirms the immortality of the soul. He argues that a thing which is moved by another force is destroyed as soon as it stops, while “whatever is always in motion is immortal... So it is only what moves itself that never desists from motion, since it does not leave off being itself” (586). Moreover, the self-mover must be the source from which the motion in everything else originates and “a source has no beginning” in that if it began from something else it would not be a source. As a result of this, a self-mover is indestructible, it also does not have an end. Plato, then, continues with the elaboration on the structure of the soul with the aid of his famous ‘Chariot Allegory’. He maintains that the soul is consisted of three parts: The charioteer and two horses. These parts correspond to the three elements of rational, spirited and appetitive distinguished by Plato in The Republic. The charioteer takes control of two winged horses, but the driving is described by Plato as a “a painfully difficult business” (588). The wings are