Plato discusses reason in relation to soul. According to him the soul consist of three energies which usually animate human beings. He argues that soul is basically governed by reason and therefore it keeps ones appetites and emotions under control. He also says that emotions must be ruled by reason in order for a person to be happy and that when lower passions are ruled by a person is bound to become just.
According to Plato human happiness can result from the accomplishment of man’s real nature. He also believes that the average man mistakenly identified his self interest with the satisfaction of his irrational desires while man’s real self interest and fulfillment of his true nature lay in the control of his irrational desires. Plato was trying to put in the idea that it is a violation of man’s true nature to allow irrational desires to dominate reason.He believes that reason is not a tool made for attaining goals independently thought worth while rather than rationality itself expressed in the giving of reasons and the avoidance of contradictions, confers to value to goals and opinions. He believes that persons are reasonable but obviously not the empirical human being according to Plato reason recognizes moral demands and if it rules, directing desires and spirit rightly the person will produce moral behavior.
Reason produces wise people especially when it rules the soul.When all parts of the soul collude in the rule of reason in particular with desires being restrained and not unruly the person is temperate and thus justice consists in each part functioning as it should ,being contented to make its contribution and accepting the contributions of others plat assumes that having reason in control automatically means acting morally. This is because he believes that if we reason well then we are going to realize that acting morally is truly good (Routledge. om, n. d). Kant and Plato have similar views for they have tried to derive moral law from reality.
They both believe that immorality involves inconsistency and is therefore irrational. Kant views are also similar with those of Plato. This is because he uses reason to ground morality for he says that reason provides support to the egoist. Egoism holds that we ought only to act on own interest according tom Plato egoism is irrational.Just like Plato, Kant uses reason to ground morality.
Just like Plato, Kant says that rationality is definitive of human nature and it is universal among all human beings. All human beings then ought to be moral because they have the capacity to be rational. He also says that other animals lacking this rational capacity are not subject to moral law and therefore cannot be judged by it. Kant and Plato differ greatly when it comes to reason.For example Kant believes that human reason is by its nature architectonic because it thinks of all cognitions as belonging to a unified and organized system. He says that reason is our faculty of making inferences and also identifying the ground against every truth.
Unlike Plato Kant believes that reason connected us directly to things in themselves. Unlike Plato cant believes that human reason seeks to move from an apprehension of a series of conditioned phenomena in space and time.Human reason also seeks to know what lies beyond the range of experiences. This tendency to go beyond the limits of experience culminates in the representation of ideas of the soul, the world and God as the final outcome of the efforts of reason to affirm what is absolutely unconditioned. The only thing I can request from these philosophers is the relationship between reason and inconsistence. This is because I didn’t understand why inconsistence is considered to be immoral and irrational (Seop.
leeds. ac. uk, 2009).
