Philosophy: Mind, Soul, Consciousness, Body - Part 7
In contrast to the philosophers that were before Plato (Pre-Platonists), Plato does not think in absolute but in relative units. For him, there are not the absolute opposites such as warm – cold, or wet – dry or big – small, etc., between which there is literally nothing, but for him every element of such a pair of opposites is able to bring about the other. It is not about absoluteness and BEING, but about relativity and BECOMING. It is about more wet or more dry, warmer or colder, etc. What is wet can always become less wet, i.e. more dry, and finally produce dry.
Life can become death and death can become life. If something becomes dry, it must have been wet before. If something dies (becomes dead) it must have been alive before. When something becomes alive, it must have been dead before, etc. In all these cases, it is not a question of substance arising and passing away, but of a change in the properties or the form of the substance, and this also applies to the substance which the soul is made of.
Opposite pairs in the Socratic-Platonic sense thus condition each other. They do not exclude each other but complement each other. They obey a Yin-Yang principle. This philosophy, which was formulated 2400 years ago and the roots of which are probably even older, is more modern than ever.
Certainly in the course of the following centuries many other philosophers and mystics have wracked their brains about the relationship between soul and body and about the immortal portion of man. Unfortunately, I have to leave them unmentioned, so as not to go beyond the scope of this essay. Only so much is to be said at this point: for the ancients there was no separation between philosophy and science.
It should be mentioned that until recently, physics was not called "physics" in English, but rather "natural philosophy". And even the materialistic view and thinking of today's science is not a product of the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, least of all of the Platonists, even if this is always so rumored. Materialistic realism is a spawn of the modern age; it is the accompanying philosophy of so-called "classical physics" which is also called "Newtonian physics", and it ultimately led to the Cartesian split, which made the soul-body-relationship to the dichotomy or even to the soul-body-problem as which it is referred to, today. A dichotomy is the division of a whole into two parts that exclude each other instead of conditioning and complementing each other as is the case with opposite pairs in the Socratic-Platonic sense.
Life can become death and death can become life. If something becomes dry, it must have been wet before. If something dies (becomes dead) it must have been alive before. When something becomes alive, it must have been dead before, etc. In all these cases, it is not a question of substance arising and passing away, but of a change in the properties or the form of the substance, and this also applies to the substance which the soul is made of.
Opposite pairs in the Socratic-Platonic sense thus condition each other. They do not exclude each other but complement each other. They obey a Yin-Yang principle. This philosophy, which was formulated 2400 years ago and the roots of which are probably even older, is more modern than ever.
Certainly in the course of the following centuries many other philosophers and mystics have wracked their brains about the relationship between soul and body and about the immortal portion of man. Unfortunately, I have to leave them unmentioned, so as not to go beyond the scope of this essay. Only so much is to be said at this point: for the ancients there was no separation between philosophy and science.
It should be mentioned that until recently, physics was not called "physics" in English, but rather "natural philosophy". And even the materialistic view and thinking of today's science is not a product of the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, least of all of the Platonists, even if this is always so rumored. Materialistic realism is a spawn of the modern age; it is the accompanying philosophy of so-called "classical physics" which is also called "Newtonian physics", and it ultimately led to the Cartesian split, which made the soul-body-relationship to the dichotomy or even to the soul-body-problem as which it is referred to, today. A dichotomy is the division of a whole into two parts that exclude each other instead of conditioning and complementing each other as is the case with opposite pairs in the Socratic-Platonic sense.
To be continued.
