Like most other ancient philosophers, Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: ‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it.

In short, Socrates was put to death for being a theist—he believed in a God—and for being an atheist with respect to the Homeric gods, in addition to charges of “corrupting the youth.” Plato and Aristotle believed in one God, who created the universe.

Plato was at center of Greek philosophical trilogy, along with Socrates and Aristotle in 4th century BC. His most famous work ‘The Republic’ provides useful insight into his views. Plato defined good life through practice of reasonable restraint by individual and civic duty (concept of EUDAIMONIA).

This moral conception of the good life has had plenty of champions. Socrates and Plato both gave absolute priority to being a virtuous person over all other supposedly good things such as pleasure, wealth, or power. In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates takes this position to an extreme.

What is Plato known for? Plato’s most famous work is the Republic, which details a wise society run by a philosopher. He is also famous for his dialogues (early, middle, and late), which showcase his metaphysical theory of forms—something else he is well known for.

Plato concludes that there are three separate parts of the soul: appetite, spirit, and reason.

Plato strikes an analogy between the human organism on the one hand and social organism on the other. Human organism according to Plato contains three elements-Reason, Spirit and Appetite. An individual is just when each part of his or her soul performs its functions without interfering with those of other elements.

Justice, the fourth virtue, characterizes society as a whole. The just state is one in which each class performs its own function well without infringing on the activities of the other classes. Plato divides the human soul into three parts: the rational part, the will, and the appetites.

Plato divides his just society into three classes: the producers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians. The auxiliaries are the warriors, responsible for defending the city from invaders, and for keeping the peace at home. They must enforce the convictions of the guardians, and ensure that the producers obey.

So, he bases his ideal state on the three major classes, which are the ruling class, military class and the professional class. These classes are also known as the guiding class, auxiliary class and professional class.

Notes: In the Laws, Plato described what he regarded as the second best state which is the government by law, it was supreme, applying equally on both the ruler and the subject.

Classes in ideal society Plato lists three classes in his ideal society. Producers or Workers: The laborers who make the goods and services in the society. Auxillaries: Soldiers. Guardians/Soldiers: Those who keep order in the society and protect it from invaders.

Be a “lover of wisdom,” a cardinal virtue Plato proposes instead that states should be governed by philosophers and be a lover of wisdom, which is the meaning of the Greek word, philosophia. Leadership is a duty of philosopher kings who acquire the techniques and skills for the art of ruling.

A soul, Aristotle says, is “the actuality of a body that has life,” where life means the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and reproduction. If one regards a living substance as a composite of matter and form, then the soul is the form of a natural—or, as Aristotle sometimes says, organic—body.

In ‘The Republic’, Plato firstly discussed the concept of an ‘ideal’ or a ‘just society’ and followed by the concept of a ‘just individual’. Both of these concepts are vital components in his work and are closely related. Plato’s conception of ideal society was laid out by having a structured society.

Plato is famous for having banished poetry and poets from the ideal city of the Republic. He banished them because they produced the wrong sort of poetry. To rebut Plato’s critique of poetry, what is needed is not a defence of poetry, but a defence of the freedom of poets to write as, and what, they wish.

According to Plato, the appetitive part of the soul is the one that is accountable for the desires in people. It is accountable for the effortless cravings required to stay alive like hunger, thirst, and for pointless cravings like desire to over feed.

Aristotle on the Soul

• Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question “What is soul?” At the beginning of De Anima II. 1, he says that there are three sorts of substance:
• Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive.
• Since form is what makes matter a “this,” the soul is the form of a living thing.

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