Dualism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Dualism - Essay Example One key feature about dualism also has to do with the fact that greater percentage of the commentators who have discusses or written about the subject before appreciate dualism from the mind-body perspective. There seem to be this uniformity of agreement among the commentators because the mind-body perspective of dualism is considered to be the basis or history behind dualism whereby â€Å"humans have (or seem to have) both physical properties and mental properties† (Howard, 2011). In the following sections, the subject of dualism as presented from selected view points is discussed. Platonic Dualism The perspective of Plato’s dualism is related to the human life as well but Plato tackles the entities of body and soul instead of mind and body. Generally, Plato’s points and arguments on dualism are considered as the oldest. In his opinion, the body and soul of humans are two different entities that live for two different purposes. As such, Plato asserts that when o ne of the entities departs or dies, the other lives on. The College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences (2001) posits that Plato’s view on a separation of the body from the soul (in such a way that they are two different entiries) is perfectly backed by the Torah. The debate between Plato’s assertions that the soul lives after live is however challenged by the scholars of the Torah. This is because the latter argue that â€Å"when God communicates with the Hebrews in the Torah, his covenant explicitly references rewards in this life, not an afterlife† (College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences, 2001). This means that contrary to Plato’s beliefs that the soul lives after the body dies and that the souls faces reward or punishment based on the actions it performed when the body lived, scholars of the Torah refute this Socrates’ perspective of Dualism Socrates also holds a dynamic view of dualism with a lot of similarities with the views shared by Pla to. Actually, Socrates confirms that the body and soul are two independent entities of live and those they are the central point of human dualism. Idealistically, Socrates may differ from Plato in the sense that whereas Plato advocates total independence of the body from the soul and sees them as two individuals who never depend on the other, Socrates argue that the soul has a lot of relation and dependence on the body and that the body actually imprisons the soul as long as the body lives. To this end, â€Å"Socrates argues that death is a good thing because it frees the soul from the body in which it was effectively imprisoned† (Clark, 2010). The implication that is got from this assertion is that the soul is a representation of truth and wisdom and thus as an entity living in the human being, that is all that the soul seeks to champion. However, the body, which is more directed towards evil and lies is too powerful that if often times overcomes the soul and so hardly allow s the soul to operate independently till death separates the two. St. Augustine’s Dualism St. Augustine takes the subject of dualism to a more religious perspective than just being philosophical. From St. Augustine’s perspective therefore, dualism is debated more as a doctrine than a philosophical