Socrates

PERIOD	PHILOSOPHERS	VIEWS
CA 800 BCE	INDIAN PHILOSOPHERS	Mind is the internal organ. The external organs are instruments of either action or perception. Mind is capable of establishing contact with all the external organs.. (1) (Below is a Translation from Sanskrit by William Judge from Patanjali - CA 300 CE) "The mind is merely a tool, instrument, or means, by which the soul acquires experiences and knowledge. In each incarnation the mind is, as it were, new. It was therefore said that the mind operates or exists for the carrying out of the soul’s salvation, and not the soul for the mind’s sake."
470 –339 BCE	SOCRATES	Death is the separation of soul & body. Thought is best, when the mind is gathered into itself and is not troubled by sounds or sights or pain or pleasure but takes leave of the body and aspires after true being. While we are in the body, while soul is infected with the evils of the body, our desire for truth will not be satisfied. Purification is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body. Body is a hindrance in the acquisition of knowledge.
428 – 347 BCE	PLATO	He thought that the soul was separable from the body, that it existed before birth and that it would definitely continue to exist after death. According to him, while the soul was tied to a physical body during life, it led a defiled and inferior existence from which it needed to be purified and freed from the shackles of the body. When a soul is born into a body, the knowledge, which it previously enjoyed slips from memory. (Phaedo)
384 – 322 BCE	ARISTOTLE	Aristotle in his book “On the Soul” regards the soul as bound up with the body. Soul perishes with the body. He ridicules Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration. He distinguishes between soul and mind making mind higher than the soul and less bound to the body. The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. The mind has the higher function of thinking, which has no relation to the body or to the senses.
1. The Cultural Heritage of India - by The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata, India Source: www.serendip.brynmaw.edu