The Divided Line

Over two thousand years ago, two of the most influential thinkers in world history formed contrasting ideas on the concept of the soul. On one hand, Plato’s idea of the soul was created based on his theory of forms, as illustrated through a conceptual apparatus called “The Divided Line”. In this diagram, concepts of the absolute, such as the essence of absolute good, come from forms and ideas, which are eventually processed into the physical world as images in our minds. These images can then once again be manipulated into forms by using thought towards principles. In a completely contrasting perspective, Aristotle proposed that the essence of the soul could be formed based on a deduction from several individuals. In the Porphyrian Tree, several
One such argument for Plato was the argument for knowledge as recollection, as stated in the Phaedo: “[…] recollection is most commonly a process of recovering that which has already been forgotten through time and inattention.”1 Drawing from this argument, Plato suggests that anything which is known of the immaterial world of forms must have been learned through recollection. In A History of Philosophy, Frederick Copleston summarizes Plato in stating, “We discover [forms]: they are not simply invented by us.”2 Because the essence of anything absolute—for example, absolute equality—does not exist and can never truly exist in the material world, these absolute ideas must be a recollection from a being prior to the physical body; therein lies the soul. The soul is a form trapped in the body, hidden from the completeness and the absolutes existing beyond the material world. Because of this, recollections of absolutes can be formulated into principles—for instance, the principle of fairness and absolute equality for all individuals—but cannot be fully comprehended due to the body always removing individuals at least one step away from truth. The art of the dialogue of the Phaedo masterfully exemplifies the truth sometimes being multiple times removed; Plato is expressing his ideas through the
Nature is “the immediate material substratum of things which have in themselves a principle of motion or change.”7 In other words, the matter and energy comprising something make up its form. Because “nature” is the material that makes up a thing, and the form of a thing is its soul, it can therefore be deduced that the soul rests in the material composition of multiple individuals. Moving from this concept of form and soul, Aristotle discusses the purposiveness of nature and how it pertains to the soul. In Aristotle’s Physics, Book 2, Chapter 8, he states, “[…] Nature belongs to the class of causes which act for the sake of something.”8 This cause of action is also referenced in his concept of causality; the final cause of something is “the sense of end or ‘that for the sake of which’ a thing is done, e.g. health is the cause of walking about.”9 This act of nature acting towards an end is referred to as the purposiveness of nature. Aristotle takes note of a specific end that all natural beings act towards: survival; this idea would lay the foundations of modern biology hundreds of years later. In defining nature, Aristotle explicitly states that “the process of growth [is the process] by which [a thing’s] nature is attained.”10 So because all things natural work to grow and self-repair, and within an object’s nature is its form and its soul, Aristotle ultimately claims that a soul resides