1001Philosophers

Plato vs Rene Descartes on Mind

Plato treats the mind primarily as the rational soul whose proper activity is the contemplation of the Forms; the body is its temporary host and the senses are obstacles to clear knowing. Descartes recasts the same intuition in the modern voice of the cogito: the thinking thing is what each of us most certainly is, and its nature is grasped by clear and distinct ideas independent of the body. Where the Platonic mind ascends toward what it once knew, the Cartesian mind constructs knowledge from its own present-moment certainty.

About this topic

Philosophy of mind asks what mental states are, how they relate to bodies and brains, and how thought, perception, and feeling are possible at all. Classical sources from Plato through Descartes treated the mind as a distinct substance, while later philosophers proposed varieties of materialism, functionalism, and emergentism in its place. Phenomenologists in the twentieth century turned attention to consciousness as it is lived from the inside. Contemporary philosophy of mind works in close dialogue with cognitive science.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full Plato vs Rene Descartes comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the the Mind quotes hub.

Representative quotes on mind

Plato on mind

  • “Philosophy begins in wonder.”

    155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377

  • “Some say that the body is the " tomb " of the soul , their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life ; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also properly called "sign". But I think it most likely that the Orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the "safe" for the soul, until the penalty is paid, and not even a letter needs to be changed.”

    400b–c

  • “Perception and knowledge could never be the same.”

    186e

  • “Neither perception nor true opinion, nor reason or explanation combined with true opinion could be knowledge… Then our art of midwifery declare to us that all the offspring that have been born are mere wind-eggs and not worth rearing… and if you remain barren, you will be less harsh and gentler to your associates, for you will have the wisdom not to think you know that which you do not know.”

    210a-c

  • “I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.”

    229c

All 8 Plato quotes on mind →

Rene Descartes on mind

  • “I think, therefore I am.”

    Je pense, donc je suis.

  • “M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind , and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.”

    Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori , A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch

  • Attributed to Rene Descartes:

    “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

  • Attributed to Rene Descartes:

    “Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.”

  • Attributed to Rene Descartes:

    “Cogito, ergo sum.”

All 9 Rene Descartes quotes on mind →

Continue reading