Philosophie Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Philosophie - Essay Example The second part, on the other hand, will compare some important concepts that have been forwarded by each of them in order to underscore some important lessons. The last part will conclude this paper by stating the relevance of each of their views in the subsequent studies on the philosophy of the mind—how their analyses guided various schools of thought pertaining to metaphysica and the mind-body problem (philosophies of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, and Martin Heiddeger). To Plato, the physical world is nothing but an immitation of a perfect world, as stated clearly in the article entitled "Plato Overview" (Clark 1). Physical objects are construed as beings lacking the state of perfection. In this regard, the humans’ acquisition of sensible experiences gives them what Plato called ’opinions or beliefs’ (Clark 2). Such position, as reinforced in an academic paper entitled "Temporal Platonic Metaphysics," is based on the assumption that: (1) physical objects can only be regarded as imperfect versions of their perfect counterparts and (2) humans’ senses can only grasp these imperfect characteristics of physical objects (Mikovic 1). Following this reasoning and connecting this to his position on the nature of the human mind, Plato then recognized the need to transcend physicality as he regarded humans as more spiritual than physical. In Plato’s renowned metaphor, humans are souls trapped in physical bodies. Such conception of the state of ’being trapped’ is both revolutionary and developmental—revolutionary because it introduced the concept of non-materiality as another facet of humanity, and developmental because it highlighted the proper way through which the spiritual or ideal state of objects could be grasped. While humans gain sensible experiences through the physical contact with physical objects (as mediated by the five senses), such occurrence is made possible by the author and governor of the visible world of appearances called