Phaedo's Analysis

ARGUMENT PAPER I APOLOGY: DEFENSE OF SOCRATES PLATO 40C-41C PHILOSOPHY 2010 20 SEPTEMBER 2011 WALTER A. JENKINS JR Plato once said, “No one knows whether death, which People fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.” Throughout the history of mankind, man has been fascinated

Throughout the Apology, Crito and Phaedo, Socrates expresses his conceptions of death and the afterlife, which are reflected

Phaedo by Plato The opening of Plato's Phaedo finds Socrates constructing a defense of the philosophical life. When consideration is given to the status of philosophy in Greece at the end of the fifth century BCE, such a defense seems unnecessary and, at the same time, difficult. This is because ancient Greece provides

In Phaedo, by Plato, Phaedo recounts an incident with Socrates. The story starts with Socrates opening up saying that Philosophers should not only accept death, but welcome it. After all, although the body will pass, the soul is able to live on because it is immortal. He uses a lot of his intuition to back up his claim, but the main rationale is the Argument of Affinity. He claims that the world is very binary. Things are either incorporeal and invisible, or not. The body is physical, visible and corporeal. Things like the body that are visible are part of the sensible world and do not last. The soul however is not. It is invisible and incorporeal. That is why Socrates believes the soul is immortal. Simmias counters Socrates claim bringing

In Plato’s “Apology”, Plato captures the arguments that Socrates makes about death. Socrates attitude towards the fear of death was an opinion or imagination based on the limitation of our knowledge for we do not know and experience, and not on its facts. Socrates believes people should not fear death,

Throughout Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates invokes different arguments to portray specific ideas about the immortality of the soul. One of the arguments in which Socrates brings about is the cyclical argument. The cyclical argument, also referred to as the principle of opposites, connects the core ideas of the body and the mind to later prove that the soul is an immortal entity. Forms are ever changing in and of themselves to create the cycle in which Socrates explains the basis of all things. It is through knowledge of the Forms, and the existence of the body and the soul that Socrates enhances the cyclical argument to demonstrate the concepts leading to the immortality of the soul.

Throughout the course of the Phaedo, Socrates argues that the soul is immortal. Because he believes that his soul will live on forever, Socrates claims that he is not afraid to die. Socrates was sentenced to death and due to the fact that he took the poison earlier

In Phaedo Socrates claims that the soul exists somewhere after the body dies. He uses the argument of opposites to make his claim. Socrates believes that for something to “be” it must have been something else before or come from something. He gives Cebes examples of thing that are generated as a result from its opposite. “when anything becomes greater it must inevitably have been smaller and then have become greater.” He uses this example to say that being “greater” is derived from having been “smaller” at some point; and that in between being “greater” and “smaller” there are a lot of variables. After giving several examples to Cebes and Cebes agreeing to most outcomes, Socrates asks Cebes if there is an opposite to living, Cebes responds

This theory claims that the world is in a constant state of flux. Everything is constantly changing to its opposite between day and night and vice versa. Life changes to death and vice versa. Substances that have an opposite are generated out of their opposites (Holbo and Waring 23). According to him, this is a principle that holds true universally. Life is the opposite of death while sleep is the opposite of waking. Sleep is generated from waking the same way that death is generated from life and life from death. Since the soul is a living thing, it is alive so it must be generated from death. Therefore, the souls of the dead must be in some place out of which they come again. He reckons that if all living things were to die and remain in their dead form and never come back to life again, at last all would die, and nothing will be alive (Holbo and Waring 23). Moreover, Plato states that forms cannot have their opposites. For instance, something that is Hot cannot be Cold at the same time. Hot snow cannot exist because once the snow is changed from being Cold to Hot, it will melt and its property will be destroyed in the real world. Similarly, the soul is associated with Life, which is the opposite of Death. Something cannot be alive and dead at the

Louis Ferrara Dr. Edwards Philosophy 101-02 October 13, 2017 What is Death? Death is the most inevitable and unknown aspect of life. It is unescapable, and by most of today’s population, it is feared in the utmost regard. Our materialistic views and constant desertion of religious ideals has forced our society to view death as an ultimate end. Socrates and St. Augustine’s views on death differ from many views on the subject in 2017, however, for their time, these men had the power to influence a plethora of individuals with their theories. For Socrates, death should never be feared and should be considered a blessing if our souls were to ascend to heaven, or death could be an extensive slumber without any dreaming whatsoever. With

Socrates provides an idea that “philosophers are devoted to death”. He argues that philosophy is the practice of death and death is the separation of the soul from the body. One simply cannot study philosophy if their body is influenced by outside sources. The body distracts from reality and in order to study philosophy, one must have to act separate from your body not receiving satisfactions from life. This allows for the soul to get in touch with the pure truth. Socrates also states that the soul moves on to another life after death. He says that “there genuinely is a returning to life, the living come to be from the dead and the souls of the dead are” (Plato 46). The soul is what makes up the body. Your mind and how you act are what make up the soul. In order for there to be a new life, a soul has to be present. The souls continue to live on searching for more experiences to

The Opposites Argument (70c-72e) Socrates states that everything comes into existence from out of its opposite. For example, a tall man becomes tall only because he was short before. Similarly, death is the opposite of life, and so living things come to be out of dead things and vice versa. This implies that there is a perpetual cycle of life and death, so that when we die we do not stay dead, but come back to life after a period of time. Socrates mentions an ancient theory

In Phaedo, Socrates uses what he believes to be philosophical truths in order to convince his “twice seven” that the soul is eternal, and the body corrupts it. Therefore Socrates goes on to comment that any true philosopher would gladly face death

Socrates was considered by many to be the wisest man in ancient Greece. While he was eventually condemned for his wisdom, his spoken words are still listened to and followed today. When, during his trial, Socrates stated that, “the unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato 45), people began to question his theory. They began to wonder what Socrates meant with his statement, why he would feel that a life would not be worth living. To them, life was above all else, and choosing to give up life would be out of the picture. They did not understand how one would choose not to live life just because he would be unable to examine it.

The body, while seemingly clearly definable and universally understood, is a concept that humans have struggled to define and understand for much of history. Social conceptions of the mind or spirit shaped philosophers’ understandings of the relationship between the mind and body, as well as attitudes toward the body. In