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Compare socretes plato and aristotle
Plato's theory of knowledge as recollection
Compare socretes plato and aristotle
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hilosophers have contemplated over the subject of immortality. They question if the soul, particularly, is immortal. Although Plato writes the Meno, it is supposed to be a copy of what Socrates personally encountered and “taught” in his lifetime. Even though the Meno is originally about the search for the meaning of virtue, one perspective on the immortality of the soul is introduced to us by Socrates in that play. Therefore, what Socrates thought about the immortality of the soul in the Meno is the following: “If the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soul would be immortal so that you should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at present” (Plato, 86b) In the beginning, Meno challenges Socrates …show more content…
Therefore, through the soul, that has been born before being placed into a physical human body, the human has knowledge. As a result of the soul being immortal and knowing everything, Socrates ties that idea of immortality with the theory of recollection, which claims that our knowledge is inside of us because of the soul and it never learns anything new, only remembers, consequently, serving as an evidence that the soul is pre- existent. Socrates uses the knowledge of the soul to explain that there is no such thing as learning but instead there is discovery of the knowledge that one has and does, by himself, without receiving new information. However, most knowledge is forgotten at birth since we are born without knowing, for example, how to add, subtract,talk, etc. Nonetheless, the knowledge we have, has to be recollected with the help of a teacher. Socrates is able to prove this argument to a degree by using Meno’s slave, who had no prior knowledge of geometry before, as an example of how humans have the knowledge inside of them, through the soul, and they know everything but all they need are a sort of guidance to be able to “free” the knowledge they didn’t know they had inside them all this time. (Plato, …show more content…
One of the problems in his argument is how he believes the soul cannot be taught anything because it knows all and just recollects prior knowledge, but then argues that virtue is a kind of knowledge and it can be taught. (Plato, 87c) This implies that Socrates believes that virtue can be taught to the soul and it’s not something that we are born with. His principal argument of the theory of recollection, tied with immortality of the soul contradicts his other idea that virtue can be taught since it is knowledge. This causes Socrates’ argument to become very questionable, and as a result, can create the following questions; How can virtue be taught to the soul if it’s supposed to know everything? If the soul actually knew everything, then it would know what virtue is. If it does not know everything, especially what virtue is, then does that imply that the soul is not immortal? Socrates agrees, in the beginning, with an idea that he heard wise people talk about in regards to the immortality of the soul. The idea is that the soul is immortal and can, at times, reborn but never destroyed. (Plato, 81b) When relating this idea to Socrates’ argument that the soul is eternal, therefore all knowing, and has been born multiple times, wouldn’t it have been able to know what virtue is, implying that it is part of our knowledge and it is something that we are all born with?
He views death as a separation of the soul from the body when the body and soul are together it is life. He believed this so powerfully, that he did not only fear death but welcomed it. Socrates believed that he had to live a life full and hope for death. He had to convince his disciples Cebes and Simmias to be okay with his death since they did not believe in his beliefs. Socrates believed that men were the property of the gods and stated, “it is gods who care for us, and for the gods, we human beings are among their belongings. Don't you think so?” (Phaedo, 62b). Cebes was in an agreement with Socrates on that argument. They both believed that if a man kills himself he will be punished. Cebes suggest that when the soul leaves a body, it may dissipate, no longer existing as one unit. However, Socrates argues that in favor of this myth, souls after death will eventually return to the world in other bodies. Everything that comes to come from its opposites that is explained in the first argument. Simmias then argues that destroying a body will destroy the soul in it. Cebes declares that there is no proof that the souls are immortal and suffer no negative effects after each death and rebirth. Socrates tries to convince his friends with the Argument of Opposites and the Theory of Forms. Socrates hopes that the theory of forms will help explain causation and proof of the
Socrates first argument is on the Theory of Opposites in which he discusses the nature of opposite things and beings. Socrates makes his claim that everything that is, comes from its opposite being. “If something smaller comes to be it will come from something larger before, which became smaller” (71a). What he is trying to explain is that something that is considered to be “smaller” requires it to once have been “larger” previously, so its size decreased in time. Just as large and small, Socrates compares the matter of life and death as being opposites in which the soul is what moves on. The issue with this reasoning is that unlike moving from opposites such as small to large or large to small, where an object may increase or decrease, life to death is not a reversible process. Life can move to death but it cannot reverse and move from death to life. Life cannot come from death, and though life is contrary to death it is not the contradicting opposite, and it cannot be considered to follow the Theory of Opposites. It is practically impossible for something to be alive and dead at the same time, so the soul that transfers from life to death it must be able to exist within the body or out of it. Socrates believes that th...
Seeing as both Socrates and himself do not know what virtue is, Meno declares that they are unable to recognize or even discover it. After that Socrates refutes by stating the theory of recollection, and the immortality of the soul. Since Socrates believes that a soul is immortal, any knowledge can be recollected, which is what the theory of recollection is. He proves this through Meno’s slave, who had no prior learning of math or geometry. Through a series of questions, the slave boy is able to determine all of the lengths of the squares that Socrates draws, which explains to Meno that virtue can be recollected if they take enough time to find the
This quote can be used to argue what kind things he would say to our society by providing an example of what his beliefs are. He is saying that once we can only become philosophers we will be able to stop indulging ourselves with our senses and only use them when necessary. Socrates point view of philosophy is when one wants to acquire prudence and irrefutable truth, which was discussed in a classroom community among classmates, simply when wants continuously want to learn and can never be satisfied with what they know. By learning, what Socrates means is our soul 's recollecting knowledge that body hinders the soul from remembering. This is seen in Meno where Socrates shows Meno how a boy figuring out the answers to a question is actually recollecting the knowledge instead of learning something new. He would make a statement about our education system and what we currently see as knowledge what was we should see as knowledge. The way we should learn by his definition would be to have classroom discussions sessions as agreed upon by critical think by my classmates and myself in a philosophy course. Socrates would tell us how we would need to focus on recollecting and focus on feeding our soul instead of our bodies, how we would need to make major changes such as our use of technology for only necessary uses and not merely for mindless entertainment much like how we all use laptops, phones, and the
For my final project I chose to compare two works of art from ancient Mesopotamia. A visual work of art and a literary one. The visual work of art I chose was the Statuettes of Worshipers which were created around 2900 to 2350 BCE at the Square Temple at Eshnunna, a city in ancient Mesopotamia. The literary artwork I have chosen is the Epic of Gilgamesh written roughly around 2800 BCE by author or authors unknown. It was set in Uruk, another city in ancient Mesopotamia. Both of these works of art share a common theme; the theme of immortality. It is my hopes that within this paper I can accurately show how each of these works of art express this theme, and how it relates to modern society.
In the book Plato 's Phaedo, Socrates argues that the soul will continue to exist, and that it will go on to a better place. The argument begins on the day of Socrates execution with the question of whether it is good or bad to die. In other words, he is arguing that the soul is immortal and indestructible. This argument is contrary to Cebes and Simmias beliefs who argue that even the soul is long lasting, it is not immortal and it is destroyed when the body dies. This paper is going to focus on Socrates four arguments for the soul 's immortality. The four arguments are the Opposite argument, the theory of recollection, the affinity argument, and the argument from form of life. As the body is mortal and is subject to physical death, the soul
Secondly, Plato and Aristotle contrast in their view of what knowledge we possess at birth. Plato supports the doctrine of Innatism, which claims that we enter this world with prior knowledge. All people possess immortal souls; therefore, the knowledge acquired in one life can be transferred into the next reincarnation. However, we forget the knowledge at the shock of birth and we then spend the rest of our lives trying to retrieve the lost knowledge. In contrast, Aristotle's doctrine of Tabula Rasa, or blank slate, states that we are born without any knowledge. Aristotle also claimed we possess souls, but he disagreed with Plato on the soul's status of immortality. Aristotle felt souls do not return to the world, so knowledge cannot be returned to the world either.
In order for this argument to be sound, however, the premises need to be true. The first premise immediately comes in to question because it appears to be a false dilemma. Socrates is asserting in his argument that there are only two avenues death might take, when in fact there could be other possibilities. For instance, couldn't death be an eternity of sta...
The second problem is Socrates’ answer does not give the definition of virtue nor does it answer Meno’s paradox. All Socrates is saying is that we may be able to recollect the lost knowledge. He does not mention how we can do
Therefore, Socrates makes a strong case for each of his arguments to prove immortality. The most convincing argument for me was that of the argument of forms while the least effective argument was that of recollection. Although Socrates’ arguments were well supported, each argument had its flaws and still left questions unanswered. The issue that Socrates had with Anaxagoras was that they had a different view on how the workings of the universe should be described. Nevertheless, Socrates acknowledges Anaxagoras and does not undermine his teachings despite the different outlook on how the workings of the universe are.
[...] The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.” (Plato, Republic, Book VII,
Socrates discusses that people should not fear death because we do not know the qualities of death. Even though we do not know what death is, he makes some suggestions for the possibilities after death. He suggests that maybe death is just an endless sleep without dreaming, it is where we can finally come to peace with ourselves. He also suggest that maybe in the afterlife he will be able to meet heroic people in the past, where he can share his experience and question people to see whether they are wise. Even in death Socrates is still going to practice philosophy even if the place is bad. Even if he did not live a just life that he thought he did, he can examine what he did wrong and fix the problems in the after life. I agree with Socrates
Plato believes the soul is an immortal separate entity that is entrapped in the body until one dies. The soul is what possess knowledge and remembers what was known from previous lifetimes. He illustrates this with the story of Socrates and the slave boy. With this, he showed that while the slave boy was an unschooled individual, he was still able to solve the problem of doubling a square. Plato attributes this accomplishment to the soul as remembering a previous encounter with an eternal knowledge.
Plato believed that the body and the soul were two separate entities, the body being mortal and the soul being immortal. In Plato’s phaedo, this is further explained by Socrates. He claims that by living a philosophical life, we are able to eventually free the soul from the body and its needs. If we have not yield to our bodily needs, we should not fear death, since it can than permanently detach the soul from the body. The most convincing argument for the immortality of the body is the theory of recollection, which shows that we are already born with knowledge of forms and that learning is thus recalling these ideas. If we are already born with knowledge this implies that are soul is immortal, since it would otherwise be a blank page.
Socrates was considered by many to be the wisest man in ancient Greece. While he was eventually condemned for his wisdom, his spoken words are still listened to and followed today. When, during his trial, Socrates stated that, “the unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato 45), people began to question his theory. They began to wonder what Socrates meant with his statement, why he would feel that a life would not be worth living. To them, life was above all else, and choosing to give up life would be out of the picture. They did not understand how one would choose not to live life just because he would be unable to examine it.