St Augustine's Confessions vs Plato, Phaedrus and the Soul

2081 Words9 Pages
Augustine and Plato are among the most enthralling thinkers ever. Their works are truly timeless, and to be fully appreciated they should be studied at length. The ideas they present in the many works written by each man are meant to be studied, not summarized. Without years of contemplation, there is no paper that will do them justice. This work will attempt to highlight Socrate’s allegory of the soul to Phaedrus, and juxtapose it with St. Augustine’s theory of the soul in his well known book of confessions. Their view on good and evil and the fundamental properties of the human soul are amazingly similar despite the two men’s stark differences in their approaches to philosophy. Augustine believes a Soul exists in everything that is living. That which is lifeless is without soul. There are three different levels of souls. There are those of trees and plants, which just exist, those of animals which are sensitive to some things, and those of the human. The human’s soul is the highest order of souls because it is aware of itself. It considers itself and the meaning of its existence, and this is the type of soul he focuses on. Saint Augustine seems to discover little about his soul through Christian Scripture. What he uncovers of his knowledge of the soul in his Confessions he does through his relationship with god. The bible only discusses the soul in terms of its predetermined sin, and the path a human can take to save his own soul. The bible does not discuss the properties of the soul, or the meaning of its existence. The soul is something that humans cannot begin to attempt to fully describe. The best hope expand the mind to gain a greater perspective of what the nature of the soul is, but everything we can learn about it is limited by a Human’s ability to learn based off of what he experiences in the world. Since the soul is of a
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