Plato 's Phaedo : The Soul And The Body

In Phaedo, Socrates uses the soul and body to express the distinction between the forms and appearances. Socrates describes the soul as “divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself, whereas the body is most like that which is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never consistently the same” (Phaedo 80b). Furthermore, Socrates believes there is a “future awaits men after death” (Phaedo 63c) because it might be “a relocating for the soul from here to another place” (Apology 40d). Socrates believes “the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death” (Phaedo 64a) because philosophers are stuck “in a kind of prison” (Phaedo 62b) struggling to acquire knowledge.

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

Plato's final argument in Phaedo for the immortality of the soul is one of the most interesting topics of all time. It goes hand to hand with the application of the theory of forms to the question of the soul's immortality, as Plato constantly reminds us, the theory of forms is the most certain of all his theories. The Phaedo is Plato’s attempt to convince us of the immortality of the soul by using several main arguments. These include the argument of forms and the law of opposites. In the final passage of the Phaedo, Plato provides his final proof, although it may be his last attempt to give his reasoning, it is not very convincing. Plato has some good points and reasoning to believe in the immortality of the soul, but his arguments often

Plato uses Socrates’ Argument from Opposites to show that a living being cycles from being dead to being alive, but this falls flat because we must rely on the idea that there is another realm for were the dead souls must reside. “Let’s consider it, perhaps, in this way: do the souls of human beings exist in Hades when they have died, or do they not?” (Plato 17) This shows that their belief in an immortal soul requires that one believe that there is the existence of a place called Hades, without any other interpretation from either Socrates or Cebes. Piper would disagree with this idea because it relies on a religious belief, which can be related to the idea of the modern Christian Philosopher. “The following reflections will nonetheless consider-third-only those situations in which the philosopher is also explicitly a believer who openly accepts the truth of a sacred tradition and consciously accepts the truth of a sacred tradition and consciously tries to be aware of it in his reasoning.” (Pieper 112) Here Pieper talks about how a philosopher must be careful of his faith and make sure it does not affect his reasoning, which is what is happening to Socrates and Cebes as they reason their way through the existence of the soul. They attribute a piece of their reasoning to a potentially mythical place that the current Greek religion believes in, without considering if there are alternatives to such

Within this essay, I am going to argue that the simple soul is a more plausible conception than the idea of multiplicity within the soul within Plato’s work. This is due to the multiplicity of the soul resting on a circular argument of Plato’s ideal city which in turn rests back upon his idea of the tripartite soul. However, it can also be argued that neither conceptions of the soul are plausible due to them both relying on Plato’s theory of the Forms. Throughout Plato’s works of the Phaedo and the Republic, his account for the soul is conflicting as Plato’s two accounts cannot be reconciled. I will also refer to Plato’s work in the Phaedrus to aid my explanation of the multiplicity within the soul.

In the Phaedo Socrates argues that life is shaped by opposite, things are formed from the changing of one opposite to another. Socrates believes life plays out in cycles. Such, as in literary cycles where an end comes from a beginning so too follows the cycle of life and death, from where a death comes another life. From this theory of cycling opposites comes the argument that things can only exist from their opposites.

Speakers Note: Plato believed that the body was only a temporary vehicle for the soul. Death was the separation of the incorporeal part of living person, the soul, from the physical part, the body. After death the soul is guided to the next realm by guardian spirits.

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.

When consideration is given to the status of philosophy in Greece at the end of the fifth century

The next argument from Lucretius is the “proof from sympaethia of mind and body.” The argument from medicine is an example of this type of argument. The argument from medicine states that the mind can be cured by medicine just like the body, which is mortal. Since that which is immortal cannot be altered in any way, it could not be cured. Since the mind can be cured, the mind (soul) is not immortal. The “affinity argument” from Plato could be seen as a counterargument. The affinity argument states that the soul resembles that which is invisible and divine, while the body resembles the visible and corporeal. Since the invisible and divine outlasts the visible and corporeal, the soul must outlast the death of the body. This argument fails in a number of ways, but in relation to Lucretius, no reason is given for why the soul cannot resemble the visible and corporeal, as Lucretius demonstrates in the sympaethia arguments.

Read the following in Plato's The Last Days of Socrates: Phaedo Wisdom and the Soul

In this paper I will be discussing the tripartite (three parts) of the soul that Socrates discussed in chapter 6 of Plato’s Republic, and I will compare and contrast them to that of Aristotle and Anthony Kenny. In Plato’s Republic the three parts of the soul consist of the rational, spirited and, desire. In this dialogue the three parts of the soul go hand and hand with three parts of a just society.

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

The Forms accentuate all of Socrates arguments and formulate an argument within itself. He is emphasizing that if there is such thing as Absolute Beauty and Absolute Piety, etc., there has to be a mind and soul because without an eternal soul there cannot exist an Absolute Life. Therefore, meaning that a person cannot completely die because the soul itself is the Absolute Life of the body on Earth. Socrates also goes on to state that humans could not be able to understand concepts such as that of Equality if it was not presented in the past. He elaborates on the simple notion that a human does not comprehend unless the topic has been learned by explanation or experience.

Plato’s Republic introduces a multitude of important and interesting concepts, of topics ranging from music, to gender equality, to political regime. For this reason, many philosophers and scholars still look back to The Republic in spite of its age. Yet one part that stands out in particular is Plato’s discussion of the soul in the fourth book of the Republic. Not only is this section interesting, but it was also extremely important for all proceeding moral philosophy, as Plato’s definition has been used ever since as a standard since then. Plato’s confabulation on the soul contains three main portions: defining each of the three parts and explanation of their functions, description of the interaction of the parts, and then how the the