Plato Final Analysis

In this paper I will discuss the Final Argument in Plato’s Phaedo. In this argument Socrates concludes, “Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world (Plato, 1689).” This argument may be the most convincing of his arguments about the afterlife, but the way in which he comes to his conclusion that the soul is immortal and indestructible is flawed, and because of this, I find that Plato’s final argument is not sound and lacking validity. I feel this argument is an unsound deductive argument. In order to show evidence of this, I will examine how Plato reached his conclusion.

The best way to examine this would be to pick at the individual premises that Plato makes. An outline of these premises in Plato’s final argument and his conclusion are as follows:

P1. When in us, the form will never admit it’s opposite

P2. Things that always bring along a form will never admit it’s opposite

P3. The soul always brings along life (into a body)

P4. Life and death are opposites

P5. The soul will never admit death

P6. That which does not admit of death is immortal

P7. The soul brings along the immortal

P8. The immortal is indestructible

P9. What always brings along something indestructible is itself indestructible

Conclusion: The soul is indestructible

Socrates argues in premise one that the form will never admit its opposite, which is accurate if the argument is true. He relates the soul here to other examples of opposites further validating premise one. One example involves fire and ice. Snow is always cold, and cannot admit the opposite of cold, heat, without withdrawing or disappearing completely; fire is always hot, and cannot admit of the opposite of hot, cold, with...

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...d of sense (B), but all he is entitled too is sense (A).

In the final argument, Plato examines forms and their ability to never admit of their opposites. At this point, he forms premises that are logical, such as a fire possesses the form of heat, but can never admit of its opposite, cold, unless the fire were to withdraw or perish. Plato then goes on to approximate the nature of souls to the nature of forms. When doing so, an ambiguity arises of what is meant by “being immortal”, he uses the word in two senses: (A) immortal means that it is impossible for the soul to exist and be dead, and (B) immortal means that it is impossible for the soul to be destroyed. He provides evidence for sense (A), but then uses sense (B) to derive a conclusion. This renders the final argument in Phaedo unsound and not very valuable making the argument a unsound deductive argument.