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Socrates Argument Of The Movement Of Life And Death

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In Plato’s The Phaedo, Plato recounts Socrates’ last days. Socrates’ road to death leads him into an exchange of ideas about the concept of an afterlife. Socrates develops several arguments regarding the immortality of the soul. This was to prove that death is not the dying of body and soul jointly, but when the body dies the soul still exists. The weakest argument Socrates presents is The Argument of the Movement of Life and Death (70b-72a), which the soul is fixed and external. It is difficult to completely say that Socrates’ arguments are ludicrous because his introduction with basic comparative opposites is coherent, but then comes the gray scale of right and wrong. I agree that there is a theoretical soul, but disagree that there …show more content…

The Argument of the Movement of Life and Death stems from the notion that opposites come from their opposites (71a). One example is “it must have been greater and then have become smaller” (71a). This example can be represented with a piggy bank. If you never started with a small amount of coins, then you cannot have a lot of coins because there would be no start amount to compare it to. According to Socrates, this is “a process of generation from each to the other” (71b) since you can gain more coins by adding more to the piggy bank and you can end up with less coins when you retrieve the coins from the piggy bank. This leads to Socrates’ main question: “Do you not say that living is the opposite of being dead?” (71d). Death and life are opposites: a person cannot be dead if they were never alive and a person cannot be alive if he/she is immortal. This is all coherent up until this part. Even though Socrates does state that opposites are involved with processes (71b) and is understandable, his next proposal does not, despite abiding from all his previous questions and statements. Socrates declares that since life and death are opposites (true) and they are involved in a process or circle of life (true), then “souls of the dead exist somewhere, whence they come back to life” (72a). I agree that death and life are opposites and the circle of

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Although Socrates’ demonstration was clever, it did not prove his point. I do not believe that Socrates’ response conquered the paradox, but rather looped around it and created another. I do not believe that his response to the paradox was good for a few reasons. If we assume his theory to be true, we are still left with many questions. The first problem, is that his theory does not answer the question of where or how these souls came about.

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Even on his last day of existence, Socrates did not surrender his exploration of the nature of the soul. Using the Socratic Method and the Recollection Argument, he cleverly proved that the soul exists before birth and that it is immortal. In this paper, I will explain Socrates’ line of reasoning by using the words of the philosophers engaged in the discussion recollected in Phaedo and a metaphor of my own. Secondly, I will point out some limitations in the Recollection Argument, such as its exclusive definition of all learning as recollection and the negative perception of the body. Finally, I will assess the strength of Socrates’ premises and the conclusion to reach an overall evaluation of the argument that established a strong foundation

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In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, he explains the soul and comes to the conclusion that the soul is immortal. Through describing the last hours of Socrates life before his execution, he lays out three arguments in support of the idea that while the body may cease to exist the soul cannot perish. In this paper, I will explicate Socrates three arguments for the immortality of the soul and their objections. Then I will argue on the presupposition of the Law of Conservation of Mass, that the universe, entailing the soul, must be cyclical. The Law of Conservation of Mass

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However, the number three cannot ever be even for it holds a natural form of oddity that cannot be changed, the same is found with immortality. A soul cannot admit to death, which is the opposite of its essence immortality just as the number three cannot admit to being even. Leading to Plato’s conclusion of how a soul then must have to retreat, connecting back to Socrates believing death is best characterized by the soul separating from

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He also believes that it is not difficult to refrain from death, but it is difficult to stay away from evil since it surrounds us all. Doing something evil and sinful will torment one’s soul forever, even after death. Socrates believes

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Throughout this dialogue, Plato delivers the theory of eternal forms which he touched up on, in his previous dialogue, immortality and purification. He introduces the argument of the opposites, and the argument of affinity to back up his explanation. Plato begins the dialogue by suggesting that the world in which we live in, is surely not where we are presented with the finest forms, but rather a “prison” (62b) leading up to the afterlife. Phaedo suggests that Socrates stated “We men are in a kind of prision, and that one must not free ourselves or run away”(62b) trying to state that the world we are in is not the world which our souls continue the rest of their lives immortally. He clarifies that one should not kill themselves to get there and in order to receive a good after life one should not take their own life away, as it is surely wrong and we would want our soul to be pure.

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Socrates states that a good philosopher should not fear death, but rather embrace it and look forward to it. This is also where he comes out with the four claims of the separation of the soul and the body. With this point Socrates is trying to explain to Cebes, Simmias, and the others in the room that the soul is everlasting and outlives every body that it is ever in. They agree that the soul is long lasting but does not live forever. This is the end for Socrates as him and Crito head to the bath chamber and return to say goodbye to his three sons and the women of the household.

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Socrates’ original argument was not valid or sound. The premises were corrected but the argument needed another premise to make the conclusion true. Adding premise two takes away any confusion there was to what immortality meant. Since Socrates’ spent almost the entire book creating a just person and a just city the information about what is good and bad for a soul makes sense. It also makes sense that those things cannot destroy the soul because injustice and other vices could only lead the body to make poor choices and possibly get sick or die from those poor choices.

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