The soul of a man is an intellectual soul that is capable of
understanding the natures of things. Plato and Socrates thought that the soul
and the body are two separate entities and that an external “God-like” force produces
the soul. It is perfectly understandable then to think that the soul is
imprisoned in the body. Taking Socrates and Plato’s idea of the soul,
specifically that it is trapped in the body and drives the body to be the way
it is, it would be logical to think that the soul would be trapped inside the
vessel. It is important to understand that the soul is seen as divine and pure.
It is not sentient, but is universal. However, since the soul is inside the
body, it experiences reality through the body. Therefore, the prisons of the
body also become the prisons for the soul. These prisons are the appetite for
food, luxury, pleasure and such sentient things. It is only when the body and
the intellect is free of these prisons, through philosophy, that the soul can
also be freed.
Can the soul be a
prison for the body? Aristotle saw the body and soul as a whole; one cannot
survive without the other. The soul contains the organizing principle of the
living thing. This organizing principle allows the secondary matter to become
what it is. The soul essentially puts the secondary matter together to form the
human being. This means that the soul is responsible for making the body what
it is. The body and the soul are united into one form. The soul acts as the
controlling headquarters that directs the way the body behaves and is formed.
According to Aristotle, the body is not the prison for the soul or the soul a
prison for the body. Rather, they both are co-dependent on each other and they
cannot survive alone.
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