The Nature of Human Soul - Essay Example

Plato’s Phaedo has rightly considered as one of the most famous philosophic dialogues about the nature of the human be the ng and the place of soul in it. Plato’s philosophy of human nature and soul is quite straightforward: there is no separation of soul and body, and even death does not break this relationship. Plato asserts that the truth of life is in the way humans hear or see it, as both sight and hearing are the two accurate witnesses of the actual acquirement of knowledge. “And the thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her – neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure – when she has as little as possible to do with the body” (Plato).

The soul is the miracle of life, through which humans rethink their deeds and the actions of others, filling themselves with fears, loves, fancies, and lusts (Plato).     Lieutenant Commander Data may be well deprived of the lusts, fancies, and loves that are familiar to humans, but the complexity of his exquisite mind should not be disregarded. Data grasp new information coming to him from the world around him with unusual mental hunger. He has a book he likes because it reminds him of the special moments in his life, and he confesses that he and Tasha Yar used to be intimate (Star Trek).

Data demonstrates the sensitivity and respect a machine without a soul would never show, and based on Plato’s writings, it is possible to assume that Data’s body is inseparable from his soul. The latter helps him to understand the complexity of the world.       Like Plato, Descartes was extrthe only concerned with the questions of the human body and soul. However, unlike Plato, the perspective Descartes chooses is called ‘doubt’. In the First Meditation, Descartes asserts that reason and thinking capabilities are the foundational pillars of human existence.

To a large extent, thinking in Descartes is the same as the soul in Plato. Descartes writes: “although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects that are very small or distant, that doesn’t apply to my belief that I am here, sitting g by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on”.