Search For Truth In Letter To The Hebrews, By Socrates

The philosophy discussed in the Phaedo revolves around Socrates discussion of the existence and nature of the afterlife. One of the overarching themes in Phaedo is the soul’s immorality. The dialogue explores a number of arguments for the immortality of the soul to illustrate the concept of the afterlife where the soul is supposed to dwell following our deaths. Four essential arguments are put forth for the soul’s immortality. The four arguments are: The Opposites Argument, The Theory of Recollection, The Affinity Argument and The Argument from Form of Life.

Born in Athens in 437 B.C, Greek philosopher Plato is one of the most powerful thinkers in history. Coming from Greek aristocracy, Plato had political ambitions as a young man and appeared to follow the family tradition. However, Socrates and his dialectical method of inquiry, which was to question and answer everything to show ignorance, soon captivated Plato.

At the core of Socrates’ argument is the need to break down the definition of holiness into smaller coherent characteristics. Socrates uses a series of question that are consistent with Euthyphro’s argument to ensure that he [Euthyphro] offers a consistent flow of definitions of the word holy.

Socrates points out that this allegory corresponds to the earlier discussion about the good. Hence, it relates to the analogy of the sun and the analogy of the divided line. Socrates describes analogy of the sun as "a child of the good and most similar to it". He begins with saying that there are things which we can see and feel (visible realm) and there is the good itself, something we can only think about (intelligible realm). He continues, saying that eyesight requires light in order for object to be seen. Light comes from the sun, hence, sun gives a possibility for objects to be seen. Socrates compares the relationship between sight and the sun to the intellect and the good. Good gives power to things that are known. So, just as sun enables

The problem with Socrates concerns the problem with the role of value and reason. Nietzsche believes that the bulk of philosophers claim that life is a corrupt grievance for mankind. Nietzsche reasoned that these life deniers were decadents of Hellenism, as a symptom of some underlying melancholy. For someone to paint life in such a negative light they must have suffered a great deal through the course of their own life. Furthermore, these no-sayers agreed in various physiological ways and thus adopted the same pessimistic attitudes towards life. Socrates was ugly, alike decadent criminals and by ways of these similarities was decadent as well. Nietzsche also claims ugliness as a physiological symptom of life in its decline supported by studies in phenology.

In the Phaedo, Plato presents a conversation between Socrates and two of his interlocutors, Simmias and Cebes, as they discuss the immortality of the soul during Socrates’ last hours before his death in the jail at Athens. At 70a, Cebes offers his worry that upon death the soul “…is destroyed and dissolved…and is dispersed like breath or smoke.” The rest of the dialogue consists of a debate between the three men as they consider the form and indissolubility of the soul. In this paper I will show that though Socrates’s position does not definitively explain his claims about the soul’s immortality, which he lays out in the Resemblance Argument, he does successfully respond to Simmias’ Lyre Objection, which itself offers a reasonable but still not infallible objection to Socrates’ original argument.

There are times in every mans life where our actions and beliefs collide—these collisions are known as contradictions. There are endless instances in which we are so determined to make a point that we resort to using absurd overstatements, demeaning language, and false accusations in our arguments. This tendency to contradict ourselves often questions our character and morals. Similarly, in The Trial of Socrates (Plato’s Apology), Meletus’ fallacies in reason and his eventual mistake of contradicting himself will clear the accusations placed on Socrates. In this paper, I will argue that Socrates is not guilty of corrupting the youth with the idea of not believing in the Gods but of teaching the youth to think for

Philosophy can be defined as the pursuit of wisdom or the love of knowledge. Socrates, as one of the most well-known of the early philosophers, epitomizes the idea of a pursuer of wisdom as he travels about Athens searching for the true meaning of the word. Throughout Plato’s early writings, he and Socrates search for meanings of previously undefined concepts, such as truth, wisdom, and beauty. As Socrates is often used as a mouthpiece for Plato’s ideas about the world, one cannot be sure that they had the same agenda, but it seems as though they would both agree that dialogue was the best way to go about obtaining the definitions they sought. If two people begin on common ground in a conversation, as Socrates often tries to do, they are

Socrates ponders this thought and explains that, “His soul must have always possessed this knowledge, for he either was or was not a man” (The Philosophical Journey 89). This explains that it is an innate notion, where the soul always has the knowledge and can be obtained through remembering said knowledge. Therefore, Socrates believes that since the truth is always inside the soul, then it must be immortal. The soul has all knowledge, and through the process of recollection, one can recover this information.

Plato attempted to demonstrate that there was proof of a “divine goodness” by several illustrations. Such illustrations include his famous “Divided Line”, “The Simile of the Sun”, and “The Allegory of the Cave”. In these expressions, he aims to pick apart the foundation of knowledge and where it comes from. He believed that human souls could ultimately reach the highest level of reality and have a total understanding of all things. In other words, the soul who had reached the highest level of understanding no longer needed to question or perceive things, because he would recognize and comprehend “pure knowledge” or “pure goodness”. (Soccio)

The other possibility is that he does not corrupt them at all. Third, in frustration, Meletos accuses Socrates of being nonbeliever, at the same time he claims Socrates teaches new gods. Thus, Meletos contradicts himself. Socrates argues that fear of death is foolish, because it is not known if death is a good or an evil, thus there is no reason to fear death. Socrates claims that his mission is in service to God.

In The Republic, Plato introduces a philosophy that transcends the exclusivity of the contemplative and the active lives. He defines the ultimate truth as “aletheia”, which literally translates to mean “unhidden” or “that which does not remain unnoticed”. Through his use of the term and his allegory of the cave, Plato makes the strong implication that philosophers must actively seek to discover the absolute truth, rather than relying on traditional methods of contemplation and the persuasive tone of rhetoric to prove its existence. To better explain his reasoning, Plato constructs a metaphor between the sun and the ultimate good. He argues that “the soul is like the eye” in that it requires an exterior force to establish clarity of

In Plato's Dialogues, there is the singly ignorant person, the individual who is ignorant of some information or truth but who knows that he is ignorant, and the doubly ignorant person, the individual who is ignorant of his own ignorance. Socrates, in the Apology, maintains that he is singly ignorant when he states that the only thing he is that he knows nothing. The singly ignorant person is in a far better position to learn than the doubly ignorant person, because the singly ignorant person admits of his ignorance and can, if he desires, take the necessary steps to remove that ignorance. This is what Socrates does in his dialoguing, a.k.a. "teaching." He is attempting to remove his own ignorance, and in some cases (such as in Euthyphro) move the doubly ignorant person to a state of single ignorance. This paper will show in context the meaning of Socrates' "ignorance" in the Apology and how it relates to his search for the truth about piety in Euthyphro.

With the notion of philosophy and the studying of philosophy it is well known that it is powerful and dangerous. Philosophy has many reasons for its importance such as how to understand your ideas, the origin of your ideas, how to contrast arguments. Philosophy can also help you defend arguments, read it, build your position and understand it. Philosophy is used for the betterment of the world, gender, race, civilization, town, state, country, etc. But in order to practice philosophy you need parrhesia and you need philosophy to practice parrhesia, they come hand in hand with each other. There have been many imperative philosophers that gave us the knowledge and foundation for our study of

In this dialogue Socrates and the philosophers explore several arguments for this idea of an immortal soul. These arguments were to illustrate and verify that death is not the dying of body and soul collectively, but when the body dies the soul continues to live on. Socrates offers readers four main arguments: The Cyclical Argument, which is the idea that forms are fixed and external. The soul is the sole purpose of life in this argument, and therefore cannot die and it is also to be seen as virtually never-ending. Next is The Theory of Recollection, which insists that at birth everyone has knowledge that the soul experienced in another life. Meaning that the soul would have had to be existent before birth to bear this said knowledge.