When reading philosophy I always
have a hard time processing, but when thinking and talking about it, it is a
lot easier to process. The language is
not hard to understand, but the wordiness of the conversations is hard to
process. When reading Plato and
Aristotle it feels as though they talk with a lot of fluff. I am a very straight forward person so when
being in deep conversation I prefer to speak about the point and not fill the
spaces up with nothing but phrases that basically are the same sentences just
reworded and it feels as though that is what Plato and Aristotle do.
When reading Plato I had a hard time
staying focused. What I could pick out
of it was interesting, but I honestly did not pick up much because I do not do
well when reading dialogue; especially when there isn’t a name beside the
various paragraphs to explain who is saying what. The fact that I have a hard time keeping up
with conversation that I am participating in just shows that reading
conversations is just not better. What I
did get out of it was that Socrates was talking to someone inside his cell,
before his execution, about death and where the soul will go and what will
happen to the body afterwards.
Aristotle was a little better;
partly because I had read the other hand out about Aristotle’s three
books. Once I read this paper I realized
that Aristotle did not believe in Dualism nor did he believe in Materialism. Aristotle was on the brink of discovering a
new type of “ism” when thinking about the soul and body. He was attempting to tie together Metaphysics
with the soul. He merely felt that the
body and soul were on in the same; at least this is how I interpreted the
reading, whether it is right or not I am not for sure.
The difference between Galen,
Aristotle and Plato is that Galen is much easier to focus on and he explains
the terms and functions of each of the human functions that exist through
philosophical measures. Where Plato and
Aristotle focused mainly on the body and soul, Galen focused on every little
detail; function, organs and elements on the human/animal body. It seemed that Galen found everything
important and relevant to each other rather than just one or two things
controlled everything and that was it.
One thing I did find odd was the description of bread into blood. I was not sure if he was making a biblical
reference or if it was just a common thought back then. I know the first thing it made me think of
was the resurrection of Jesus, but I figured that he probably wasn’t
necessarily talking about that, but rather that bread is like our body in the
sense that both are widely used and needed to survive.
Philosophy is not my strong suite
and it never will be. I can talk about
it just fine and hold a conversation for hours, but when doing research I try
to avoid it as best as I can. Aristotle,
Plato and Socrates are interesting people within history, but sometimes their conversations
are just too winded for quick reads.
When speaking on the subject of the soul you are speaking on a topic of
huge debate. For some people the soul is
just an entity that is stuck in your body and to other people it is a part of
your body and you cannot live without it.
With these various aspects of the soul it is hard at times to consider
which theory is right or wrong if they are either right or wrong in their own
ways.
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