THE BODY AND THE SOUL IN HOMER, THE ORPHICS, HERACLITUS, PYTHAGORAS AND SOCRATES FROM THE CRICICAL STANDPOINT OF PHILOSOPHY AND SPORTS PEDAGOGY

• Published in: Studies in physical culture and tourism 2009-01, Vol.16 (2), p.155-155
• Main Authors: Bekiari, A, Famissis, K, Kritikos, A, Nikitaras, N, Kriemadis, T
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0867-1079

The objective of this research is the study of text excerpts making a reference to the philosophical views on the human body and soul of Homer, the Orphics, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and Socrates as well as a comparison of the differences between them. The results of the study indicate that the Homeric philosophy is not preoccupied by the soul but by the body. The soul is not attributed immortality and divine origin. The physical hypostasis is the most important thing in earthly life. On the contrary, the Orphics and the Pythagoreans despise the human personality, and human care as a total revolves and is concentrated around the human soul - which includes whatever divine there is in man - is immortal, survives after the death of the body and comes back to life by entering other bodies. The human body in Heraclitus represents the outside, the tangible pole of men's unity. It is the source of relationships and senses, such as hearing, sight, smell, speech and learning. The body guides common speech and constitutes truth, prudence and wisdom. The soul has to do with the inside and man's speech and thought. The soul in Heraclitus' philosophy discovers man's basic discrimination, man's best and wisdom, which, as self-knowledge, is an utmost virtue because in this way man gets to know himself and common speech; he actually gets to know it theoretically and practically. Thus the discrimination concerns ontology and cosmology, but because research moves rebelliously towards anthropology and self-knowledge, which it regards as the source of cosmogony. For Socrates the soul is composed of the spirit and the moral speech and is the source of all human values. Man's material dimension, that is, his bodily aspect, is spiritualised, and like the soul itself becomes nature. The human hypostasis is not broken to pieces but becomes unified. Finally, by means of this research, it was discovered that the aforementioned philosophers made a real discrimination between the body and the soul; this discrimination is a very important issue in sports pedagogy, because it lays the foundations of man's viewing as a whole, on the basis of the theory of speech, which becomes the centre of this discussion, as a source of movement and an anthropological motive power.