The Soul Is An Essential Aspect Of Being A Human Being

Plato was a philosopher during the Classical Greek Era. He studied under Socrates and agreed with many of his teacher’s views. These views were based on the absolutes which were the pursuit of the ideal. They pursed order, rationality, truth, harmony, balance, beauty, and many other ideas. Another ideal they pursued was the concept of a good soul and life after death. Plato’s world view of death revolves around having a good soul and if a person has a good soul they will have a good life after death; he shows this through rebuking materialism, his views of death, and the fact that he believes he has a good soul and in return he will have a good life in death .

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.

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.

Socrates explains that philosophy is the preparation for death. In other words, Socrates has spent the majority of his life preparing for the separation of his body and soul. “…the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death” (101). He says that because our souls are immortal, we should embrace death and look forward to what it has to offer for our souls. To confirm this belief, Socrates again states, “…the freedom and separation of the soul from the body is called death…those who practice philosophy in the right way, we say, who always want to free the soul; and this release and separation of the soul from the body is the preoccupation of the philosophers” (104). A philosopher’s ambition, when looking toward death, is to free the soul from its body; therefore, when one dies, the soul lives on and the body does not.

In the Phaedo, Socrates proposes that the soul is immortal. Despite being a seemingly counterintuitive understanding, Socrates offers arguments for the soul’s immortality and expresses his view between the soul, or mind, and the body. Socrates practices reasoning to establish his philosophy on the concept of the soul and all that it necessitates. He rationalizes four theories of the immortality of the soul. The four arguments he establishes are; the opposites argument, also referred to as the cyclical argument, this theory indicates that there is a continuous cycle of life and death, and tries to explain that all forms obtained are eternal and fixed. The second argument is the theory of recollection; this concept suggests that all learning entails remembering knowledge that was already known. The third theory is the argument from affinity; this argument demonstrates that the soul most resembles all of that which is indistinguishable and everlasting and the body echoes that which is perceptible and finite. And though the body may be understood to exist after demise in the form of a corpse by reason of the body’s impermanence, the soul being divine in sequence will outlast the body. The concluding argument is the argument from form of life, this final argument describes that all things participate in the forms. The argument entails that the soul participates in the form of life, so

Liberation here in the visible realm comes from recognizing the hindering function of the body in the soul's search for knowledge. Socrates comments that a soul associated too closely with the

He says that we are slaves of Gods and taking one's life and not fulfill one's purpose may angry Gods; and if there is a bad and a good path in afterlife, such actions may cause one to be on a bad path. Then, Socrates justifies his calmness towards his upcoming death. He says that a true philosopher is always ready to die and is kind of half dead because one is required to disregard the body as much as possible and only use one's soul to attain truth and wisdom. Also, hearing and sight of our bodies are not accurate and may lead to wrong conclusions. However, he claims that complete wisdom can only be achieved as one dies and completely frees one's soul from the distractions of the body. Therefore, a philosopher is always ready to die and is "looking forward" to it. If there is life after death, a philosopher gains all of the wisdom possible and because of it is truly happy.

“If the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal” (The Philosophical Journey 89). This states that since the soul has all knowledge integrated, one recollects this knowledge through situations in an individual’s life and use one’s reasoning. With the dialogues of the Meno and Phaedo, Plato discusses the ideas of recollection and immortality of the soul in general. As well, the Republic, through the three different situations shown, Plato shows the ideas of the forms and what is real and what is not.

Jasmine Jack Philosophy 1000 MWF 10-10:50 AM Phaedo’s Arguments In Plato’s Phaedo, he discusses six different arguments. Some of those arguments come from Cebes, Simmias and Phaedo. These arguments are trying to decide whether or not immortality is of the soul. Because of Phaedo’s arguments, we can come to the conclusion that the few arguments, everything comes to be from its opposite, the proof of recollection, and scattering the soul, are more likely to make sense to the reading audience.

Victoria Pemberton In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates spends his final hours before his execution enlightening his friends in his reasoning behind his beliefs in the immortality of the soul. While awaiting his execution, he conveys to his friends that philosophers should eagerly anticipate death. For the soul is immortal and a philosopher spends his life preparing for the separation between body and soul. To support his claims of soul immortality, Socrates provides four arguments: Argument from Opposites, Theory of Recollection, Argument from Affinity, and the Theory of Forms.

In Phaedo, Phaedo presents the conversation between Socrates and his companions through his final hours, regarding one of the most fundamental arguments, Socrates’ argument for the immortality of the soul based on its likeness to the Forms. In what follows the essay will be focusing on the three arguments that Socrates provides for the immortality of the soul, the argument from the opposites, the Recollection Theory and the affinity argument, the analyses of Semmias counter arguments as well as Socrates response to them.

Plato’s Phaedo is a dialog between Phaedo, Cebes and Simmias where Socrates gives some arguments for the immortality of the soul. In this work, Phaedo tells us about Socrates’ final days, who has been convicted to death. Great philosopher does not have a fear of death because he believes that when a man dies, the soul still exists even if the body perishes.

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

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.

As Plato advocates that soul belongs to different order from body, so it cannot be set alongside the body as homogeneous entity. The soul’s penchant is towards another world. It becomes evident, why the senses are envisaged, not as windows but as bars, since so far as the physical nature of man is concerned it is not just a matter of noting, ontologically, the finite character of its existence, but rather one making an ethical and religious value-judgment on this earthly life form the viewpoint of higher destiny. Only when the soul has undergone an inner transformation and been duly prepared for this it can looks at the body in a fresh light, as it were, and so discover as meaningful affinity between soul and body, which serves to orientate man towards the higher reality.