As a result, knowledge becomes our greatest virtue, and justice becomes a universal concern, that which can be universally recognized and understood as such. And the mind becomes that elevated part of ourselves that holds, and has access to, these things.
In The Republic, Plato imagines an ideal political state that raises its philosophers to the status of kings, given their extensive mental training and their cognitive awareness of the eternal forms."Knowledge is power," and mind is merely the seat of that knowledge. Therefore, from a philosophy that privileges the substance of the mind and its access to our higher selves, Plato sees the possibility of a Just and noble society. And he extends his conception of the contents of mind to an entire political and social vision. Body, for its part, is associated with all things base and transitional, mere artifice; the physical is simply a copy or reproduction of something much more essential. And so, from the beginning, the distinction and separation of the substances of our minds from material or bodily substances has seen the former prioritized over the latter, setting the two in a strictly hierarchical relationship. Perhaps such hierarchy leads to everything from the higher social status, the higher value, we confer upon those who work with their minds to the prevalence of obesity, eating disorders, poor body images. A society that fails the body, the seat of the mind, will ultimately fail both its citizens and their minds. .
In the history of ideas, no one would bring greater prominence to the question of mind and body than Descartes. In his Meditations, Descartes set out to prove that in fact he was a thinking thing, and this fact alone guaranteed his existence. In effect, Descartes said: "I think, therefore I am; if nothing else, I am a thing that thinks, a thing that doubts, and these facts cannot be disputed." So Descartes' conscious existence allowed for him to exist in an immaterial realm, totally separate from material things, like the body; in the end, he does not need his body for his existence.