Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Henry of Ghent, Plato and Francis de Vitoria

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5 ideas

16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 3. Self as Non-physical
276 My individuality is my soul, which carries my body around [Plato]
     Full Idea: While I am alive I have nothing to thank for my individuality except my soul, whereas my body is just the likeness that I carry around with me.
     From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 959a)
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 1. Identity and the Self
364 One soul can't be more or less of a soul than another [Plato]
     Full Idea: Is one soul, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another? Not in the least.
     From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 093b)
     A reaction: This idea is attractive because unconsciousness and death seem to be abrupt procedures, and so appear to be all-or-nothing, but I would personally view extreme Alzheimer's as an erasing of the soul, though a minimum level of it seems all-or-nothing.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 1. Self as Indeterminate
180 We call a person the same throughout life, but all their attributes change [Plato]
     Full Idea: During the period from boyhood to old age, man does not retain the same attributes, though he is called the same person.
     From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 207d)
     A reaction: This precisely identifies the basic problem of personal identity over time. If this is the problem, DNA looks more and more significant for the answer, though it would be an awful mistake to think a pattern of DNA was a person.
181 Only the gods stay unchanged; we replace our losses with similar acquisitions [Plato]
     Full Idea: We retain identity not by staying the same (the preserve of gods) but by replacing losses with new similar acquisitions.
     From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 208b)
     A reaction: Any modern student of personal identity should be intrigued by this remark! It appears to take a rather physical view of the matter, and to be aware of human biology as a process. Are my continuing desires token-identical, or just 'similar'?
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
330 No one wants to be bad, but bad men result from physical and educational failures, which they do not want or choose [Plato]
     Full Idea: No one wishes to be bad, but a bad man is bad because of some flaw in his physical makeup and failure in his education, neither of which he likes or chooses.
     From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 86e)