[Neurons] Philosopher's Series # 9

[Charles DesJardins]

Charles DesJardins

 

The Philosopher's Series #9

 

August 15, 2008

 

 

PLATO AND NEURO-SEMANTICS # 5 

 

Plato believed that man's soul consisted of several different elements. This
division of man's soul is called the Tripartite Soul. Plato believed that
man was separated from the animals by the use of reason and language; this
is man's highest element. The lowest element of man's soul is his bodily
appetites which are his desires and needs for his body. The middle of the
three elements is his spirited elements which are expressed through emotions
such as anger, ambition, pride, etc.

 

The three elements of man's soul fall into a natural hierarchy. The supreme
element is man's use of reason and language in the search for beauty, truth,
justice, etc., the lowest being the bodily appetites, and the middle being
the emotional elements. This hierarchy of elements that constitute man's
soul is known as Plato's tripartite theory of soul.

 

Abraham Maslow theorized that man is motivated along a hierarchy of needs.
This hierarchy is known as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow
believed that man's behavior is driven by needs. These needs are usually
arranged in a hierarchy, the bodily needs are the lowest and the needs for
beauty, truth, self-actualization etc. are the highest needs. In between the
highest and the lowest needs are the needs for safety, social, and esteem. 

 

Plato believed that the elements of man's soul would war against each other.
Even though man may have a desire for reason, his bodily appetites would war
against this desire for beauty and truth. A man may choose to pursue the
life of reason but his bodily appetites or his emotions may interrupt his
higher element. Plato believed that the person would only truly function
when all the needs were fulfilled. 

 

Self-Actualization Psychology purports that for an individual to
self-actualize, to live a life of being as well as a life of doing, all the
lower deficiency needs need to be met. These needs are met both from a
biological level and from a cognitive level. It is when a person has the
deficiency needs met that he or she can live at the being needs. Even though
Plato did not formulate his tripartite theory through understanding the
lower deficiency needs versus the higher being needs, he did understand that
man had needs at multiple levels and that for man to truly function to his
true form, he must have a balance of all the needs met.

 

There is a high degree of agreement between Plato's tripartite theory of
soul and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Both saw man living a hierarchal
existence and both saw man having lower base needs and higher being needs
with needs in between the two. Both realized that man needed to fulfill all
the needs to fully express him or herself. What do you believe? Do you
experience that you have higher needs and lower needs? Do you experience
that those needs are sometimes in conflict with each other? The lower needs
warring against the higher needs? Do you sense that when your lower bodily
needs and your social or emotional needs are met that you reach to the
heavens with your being needs? How do you choose to live? If our lives have
lower and higher needs and if all those needs need to be met, how will you
meet them?

 

Have you learned to unleash the constrictions of limiting beliefs that may
hold you back? Have you entered into your sacred matrix with its meanings,
states, and intentions to understand their relationships with your ego? Are
you willing with intention and meaning to excel to your very best and very
highest by constructing positive meanings and intentions to all your lower
needs and thus live within and through the volcano of self-actualization? 

 

In Neuro-Semantics we do not view the "soul" as made up of three separate
elements, but view it systemically and holistically.  These so-called
"elements" are facets of the same thing; these are but names that we can
call them; yet they work together as a whole. Plato's conception of man's
soul, a tripartite soul, is a two thousand year old concept that has been
updated and expanded in Maslow's view of the full being of the human
organism; same facets, different names. Neuro-Semantics views man as a whole
being. It does not, from false-to-fact, believe in an elemental man made up
of mind, body, and emotion, but of man holistically as having a
mind-body-emotion system. 

 

Charles.desjardins at sbcglobal.net

 

 

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