Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

2. Critically compare and contrast the views on human nature of any two of the thinkers studied in this unit. Which, in your judgement, is the more persuasive of the two views? Why? Plato and Aristotle come to very different conclusions about the aspects that occupy the central understanding of human nature. Both men possessed a superior intellect; indeed, this is an illustrative example of how, their fundamental differences included the theory of the forms, immortality and their contrasting views on human virtues. They differ radically in these issues, but are close in others, such as their view that the soul is the form of the body. As an example of their fundamental differences, we can take Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s theory of the forms. Aristotle critiques Plato’s forms as only abstract copies of actual things or beings. As such the forms do not provide any explanation of the existence of such thing or how they change consequently for that reason and several others, I believe Aristotle to have the more persuasive argument on the ‘forms’. In the philosophy of Plato, the word “form” has a special meaning. Plato saw the cosmos divided into the sensible world (made up of things we know throu