Hi, need to submit a 1500 words paper on the topic Philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

Hi, need to submit a 1500 words paper on the topic Philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

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 about metaphysics and the mind-body problem (philosophies of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, and Martin Heidegger).

Overview of Plato’s and Aristotle’s Teachings

&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp. To Plato, the physical world is nothing but an imitation 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.

&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp.&nbsp. While humans gain sensible experiences through 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 the Sun. On the other hand, humans can grasp the ideal forms of physical objects through dialectic reasoning as guided by the author and governor of the intelligible world called the Good. Formally defined, dialectic reasoning is the process of dialogic questioning-and-answering by which premises are examined and traced to the first principles on which they are based. What this process provides humans is the apprehension of the absolute truth or its substance. Thus, Plato believed that substance is that which defines the ’is-ness of a thing—simple yet concise understanding of what a thing is and what it is for.