Brief History of the Soul, ch. 1

This chapter seeks to express the teachings and differences in understanding the soul between Plato and Aristotle. Plato had much to say about the soul. He believed it to be made up of three parts: desire/appetite, reason/thinking, and spirit/referee of the other two. Plato wants to define the soul in terms of motion (seeking to answer how motion can exist at all) and wants to express the soul as being 'imprisoned' by the body (and therefore necessarily separable). This is where Aristotle departs. Aristotle argues that the soul and body seem to have some sort of necessary co-existence; perhaps each existing because of the other. This is built off of his theory of Forms and explains how bodies are different (and why). Aristotle does believe in parts of the soul, but maintains unity found in conscious thinking. At the end of the day, the giants of ancient Greek thought, though departing from each other on the nuances of soul, both argue that there must be a non-physical, thinking faculty that exists and that it is nonsense to explain reality in purely physical concepts (as demonstrated by Socrates).