Plato - Phaedo
From The Inferno
Phaedo, or On the Soul
Contents |
[edit] Author’s Notes/Introduction
This is an outline of the arguments presented in the Phaedo. Notice, if you’re skimming, that there are four main arguments for the immortality of the soul: Argument from Opposites, from Recollection, from Affinity, and the response to Cebes.
[edit] Summary
- Drama about the last moments of Socrates’ life --> heavily influenced by Pythagorean ideas
- discussion of the immortality of the soul
- begins by saying that suicide is wrong, and yet a philosopher ought to want to die
-->parallel between not escaping prison and not killing oneself
-->gods are the possessors of men(62b)
- gods indicate when it is necessary to die and when it is not necessary
- wise man should want to die, however, even though when alive he is in the control of the gods, who are greater than he
- better future (63d) awaits those who are good than those who are wicked
- the one aim of those who practice philosophy is to practice for death (64a)
- true philosophers are already nearly dead
- death is the separation of the soul from the body and since a philosopher does not concern himself with bodily pleasure, he is already as one who is dead
- no truth (65b) in physical senses
- reality becomes clear through reasoning alone, and physical sensations detract from reasoning process
- the forms are not grasped through the body but through the mind-->body confuses the soul
- desire stems from the body and so the philosopher must escape it in order to attain knowledge -->if we are ever to attain knowledge, it must be able death
- purification by separating soul from body prepares one to die a good death
- fear of death is wrong then because it is fear of losing physical pleasures
- of course, to understand that death is the ultimate purification, one must first believe that the soul is immortal and does not dissolve when dissociated from the body
[edit] Proof 1: Argument from Opposites
- the soul comes from the dead (cycle between Earth and underworld 70c), and to show this, Socrates demonstrates that all things come from their opposite
- smaller from larger (he says yes) and there are then two processes, the increasing and the decreasing --> therefore if there are two opposites they come from each other (he proves this by giving lots of examples)
- since dead is the opposite of alive, therefore, they come from each other and the souls of the dead must be somewhere such that they can return
- also, if everything that were to die were not to be immortal and return, eventually everything would be dead
Objection: The lecture addressed some objections to the argument, namely that alive/dead are not necessarily opposites (a rock is not alive, but we wouldn’t call it dead), and that something can become alive from having been not alive, but not necessarily dead (i.e., could come from the void).
[edit] Proof 2: Argument from Recollection
(see Meno – basically, we don’t learn anything, we recollect it from knowledge our soul already possesses (remember the slave and the geometry proof?))
- assuming that this theory of recollection is correct, it necessarily implies that our souls exist somewhere before we do
- further twist to this argument: when you see two sticks that want to be equal but aren’t quite, clearly you cannot derive from them the idea of Equality but rather you must have prior knowledge of the form of the Equal-->must have that knowledge prior to realizing that all objects strive and fail to be Equal
- Socrates says (76b) we must have this knowledge from before we were born --> either we recollect it in life or know it all along, but we don’t first acquire it in life
- He is here an anti-empiricist, because this argument from recollection only works if one assumes we cannot learn from perception
[edit] Proof 3: Argument from Affinity
- Moreover, the soul not only exists before birth but continues to exist after life (see also the response to Cebes, below)
- soul will be scattered if it is composite
- two sorts of existence, visible and invisible-->invisible remains the same, visible doesn’t and the soul is invisible, the body visible
- soul resembles the divine in that it rules the body
- well--prepared soul is pure and leaves with no bodily accoutrements and so is divine and invisible and not composite (81b)
- no one joins the gods except he who lead a philosophically pure life
- the soul is therefore immortal because it shares in the properties of the eternal forms, namely, it is divine, invisible, incomposite, and invariable
- philosopher must keep his soul from believing that things which cause passionate feelings are true (83c)
- pleasure/pain are likes nails riveting the body and soul together
Objections
- Simmias counters: is body:harp::soul:harmony, going with the visible/invisible dichotomy, then the soul will be destroyed with the body, as the harmony is destroyed with the harp (86a)
- Cebes counters: body is like a cloak in that the soul wears out many of them but might perish before the last body perishes (old man who dies before his cloak is worn out has still worn out many cloaks over the course of his life)-->soul damaged by association with body
[edit] Responses
(92-->on)
[edit] To Simmias
- recalls the idea of learning through recollection
- if the soul were a harmony, then it could not exist before the body either (a harmony is based on the idea that a harp does in fact exist)
- the harp analogy is further flawed because the soul directs the body but the harp directs the harmony
- furthermore, a harmony is equal to all other harmonies and does not participate in disharmony, but not all souls are equally good
- also, if a soul were like a harmony, then it would always be in tune with the body and would follow it in all things, but that is clearly false, by the earlier argument about purification through dissociation
[edit] To Cebes
(this argument is an important proof for showing that the soul exists not only before life but after death)
- assumes that forms exist (100b) --> everything that is beautiful is so because it shares in the Beautiful and nothing is beautiful therefore without sharing in the form of the Beautiful
- this is the safe account [sophisticated account would be that 10 is greater than 8 because it exceeds it by 2, whereas safe would be that 10 is greater because it participates in bigness]
- however, something cannot be two things are once --> a man participate in both Tallness and Shortness together (103b)
- Same goes for things which participate in the form --> 3 cannot contain 2
- a thing doesn’t admit its opposite of that which brings along something of its opposite
- So…a soul brings life and will not admit the opposite, death (105d)
- Possible problem in that something could admit its opposite and thereby be destroyed (106b), but as the soul is deathless Socrates argues that it must also necessarily be indestructible --> since it cannot perish, it must simply withdraw at the approach of death
- at this argument for the eternality of the soul, Cebes admits he is convinced
- Socrates now puts forth a natural history of the world which I will not summarize because it’s not really philosophically important, I think, but it might be worth a skim if you have the time
