This short post presents his basic arguments for the existence of the soul. Good for a quick review.
Without much commentary, here are the arguments, boiled down.
1.. All users differ from the things used.
2. Man is the user of his body.
3. Therefore, Man differs from his body.
1.. Man is a soul or a body (brain) or a union of the two.
2. Man is not the body and not the union of the two.
3. Therefore, Man is a soul.
Argument:
1.. All souls that live in the body are deceived and are hindered from receiving the truth.
2. Your soul lives in the body.
3. Therefore, your soul is deceived and is hindered from receiving the truth.
Argument:
1.. Every “embodied” soul that escapes from the body receives the truth.
2. A soul escapes from the body upon the body’s death.
3. Therefore, every “disembodied” soul receives the truth.
Argument:
1.. Back to the present life: every embodied soul that is least concerned for the body makes the nearest approach to knowledge and the truth.
2. Describe that soul which is least concerned for the body—Plato describes it
3. Therefore, it is this soul that makes the nearest approach to knowledge and truth.
Argument:
1.. All things that order and rule over natural things are close to divinity (are divine).
2. The soul orders and rules over the body (a natural thing).
3. Therefore, the soul is close to divinity (is divine).
Argument:
1.. All divine things are immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and unchangeable (immutable).
2. To repeat, the soul is in the “very likeness” of a divine thing.
3. Therefore, the soul is immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and unchangeable (immutable).
RELATED
Plato’s View of Justice and the Soul
ARTICLES IN SERIES (alphabetical order)
Descartes’s Meditations I and II
Hume’s Argument against Design
Nietzsche’s Madman and the Death of God
Paley’s Watchmaker and Design Argument
Plato the Soul Man
Plato’s View of Justice and the Soul
Sartre’s “Existentialism and Humanism”
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 