Happiness and Aristotle’s theory of the soul

The process of philosophical development is similar to the process of learning to walk after you have suffered an injury. It takes lots of training for your muscles to work properly and in a coordinated manner. The learning process can prove tough, but works fine if you are willing to put in the hours; there are ways to accelerate and shorten the process, and from those ways, the most effective is the comparison of concepts between various philosophers. Comparisons will help you understand aspects that you had not considered before. It will sharpen and speed up your mind to an extent that you had so far regarded as impossible. In the case of #aristotle ’s theory of the soul, there is no better teaching method than comparing it to Plato’s theory of the soul. #plato , who had been a student of #socrates , taught in his school that the soul is immortal and that it preexists before entering the body. Plato further taught that the soul is on a quest for truth and knowledge, which it can acquire by remembering eternal truths encountered before birth. Plato named those eternal truths or perfect abstractions “Forms.” When Christianity began to spread in the earlier years of the Roman Empire, the soul played a central role similar to the one it had played in Plato’s philosophy. Christianity teaches that the soul is created by God and that is thus immortal. It regards the soul as the seat of all moral responsibility and teaches that the soul survives physical death. After death, the qualities acquired by the soul will lead to its salvation or punishment. Similarly, Islam regards the #soul as a person’s inner essence that will be judged in the afterlife. Depending on the qualities of the soul, a person will ascend to paradise or rot in hell. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/happiness-and-aristotles-theory-of-the-soul/