Mankind Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Mankind - Essay Example Such an understanding is important for all students of sociology, philosophy as well as psychology since it can show what it means to be human. The viewpoint taken by Aristotle regarding the human being and the soul of a person seems to be rather abstract since he considers the soul to be the essence of anything around him. He uses the example of an axe which is an axe due to the nature of the object and if somehow that nature was taken away from it would cease to be an axe. He also used the example of the eye and took sight to be the soul of the eye because without sight the eye would be lifeless. In this manner, for animals and for human beings, the soul is distinct from the body yet it is connected to the body since it guides the condition of self-nutrition, movement, thinking and sensation. With this definition, animals and human beings can be said to have souls but other living things such as plants or other basic forms of life may not have souls at all as the definition of the soul is applied to higher life forms. Aristotle therefore creates a threshold before allowing anything to have a soul or not since the lower forms of things are more likely to have an essence which makes them what they are. Thus the essence and the soul of a chair could be its utility in terms of comfort and location. The soul of a computer could be the ability of the computer to assist its human owners in performing the tasks they need the computer to perform. The differentiation between the soul and the body also allows Aristotle to suggest that while a person may lose a part of their body they can still retain their soul as a whole. However, the processes which cease to be displayed by a body once the soul has departed i.e. self-nutrition, movement, thought processes and sensation have given the functions of the soul for Aristotle. This is what makes us human and without this soul and its functions