ABSTRACT
The soul is seen as pertaining to the original infinite forms which the body copies only imperfectly. The soul, as Plato theorizes, is an intellectual form which makes the world both possible and intelligible. Dualism does not end with Aristotle’s embracing of a less idealist conception of the soul, for it persists through his belief that the intellect is not bound by a material body and is an immaterial constituent of the soul. The body has become a profitable site for investment by the media which advertise success stories of extravagant plastic surgeries that have turned common women into Barbies or of body-building exercises and machines that have transformed old men into athletes. The issue of the body seems to withhold any essentialist conception and is going to acquire more complexity within the postmodernist and post-colonial premises of thought.
