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Arguments against plato's immortality of the soul
What is the theory of recollection according to Socrates
Arguments against plato's immortality of the soul
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Considering the arguments from Plato’s Phaedo argue: “Death is not the end and we ought not fear it.” Souls are immortal and continue to live after the body has died. The theories of recollection and opposites are sensible and Socrates can justify them.
The Recollection Theory is an argument Socrates brought up many times before. This theory is evidence that souls have existed before this current life. Cebes describes this theory in Phaedo as Socrates has described it many times before, “we recollect now we must have learned at some time before; which is impossible unless our souls existed some-where before they entered the human shape. So in that way too it seems likely that the soul is immortal” (Plato 137). When we learn something “new”
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This theory describes relationships between all things and how they relate to one another. “The living have come from the dead no less than the dead from the living… souls of the dead must exist in some place from which they are reborn” (136). Socrates explains that souls are immortal and there is a never-ending cycle of living and dying, to live one must have died and to die one must have lived. No matter what something is, there is always an opposite. The opposite of “being alive” is “being dead”. If someone is not alive than they are dead and if they are not dead than they are alive. Something with an opposite replies on its opposites existence to exist. Without it, it would not exist at all. Although I find the theory of opposites confusing, it is logical. Socrates stated that if something becomes bigger than it must have been smaller ergo if something becomes smaller than it was once bigger. Opposites are the reason for everythings existence. Life and death, sleeping and waking, weaker and stronger, are all opposites, one ceases to exist without its opposite. I cannot think of a word that can falsify this theory. Socrates understood what he was talking about and had evidence to back up his theories, he could usually refute others when they countered
Socrates is unable to prove his argument that the soul is immortal through the theories of Opposites, Recollection, and Forms because he is unable to explain his reasoning to give a legitimate answer. Although he had given enough evidence to try and prove his point, the evidence given was not convincing enough. His idea often fell through when he tried to relate back to the theories because the possibility that the soul lives on forever leads to so many questions that all don’t necessarily have a reasonable answer or an answer at all, therefore Socrates idea that the soul is immortal is false.
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
Socrates, Celebs and Simmas, agree that the opposite of life is death and vise versa. By this notion of opposite they agree that when man is born, he comes from death. And when man dies he changes from life to death. By this conclusion it is the soul that comes into life from death. And if the soul comes into life from death it must go to death from life.
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
The 'doctrine of recollection' states that all true knowledge exists implicitly within us, and can be brought to consciousness - made explicit - by recollection. Using the Platonic concepts of 'Forms', 'particulars', 'knowledge' and 'true opinion', this essay explains what can or cannot be recollected, why all knowledge is based on recollection, and why the doctrine does not prove the soul to be immortal.
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,
Life and death are dualities. These two immaterial forces culminate into a beautiful and tenuous composition creating an awareness of abject mortality that indirectly contributes to the breadth and depth of human existence. This existence or being is marked by an incessant love of life, influenced by the pervasive knowledge of eventual death. The characters in Mrs. Dalloway endeavor to grasp the meaning of both life and death through the act of resistance and/or acceptance of the impermanence of human existence as it relates to them personally and to those around them. Nietzsche’s interpretation of the themes of life
For instance, he suggests, when the soul leaves the body, it may be dissipated like breath or smoke so that it no longer exists as one coherent unit. Socrates ' answer begins with a consideration of the myth that the soul exists in some other world after death, and that after some time it returns to animate another body in this world. If this is true, Socrates suggests, then the soul must cohere after death, since otherwise it could not return to animate another body. Socrates ' task, then, will be to show that the souls of the dead may return to this world in other
In the Phaedo Socrates claims that the soul is indeed immortal, that it lives forever and cannot die even after the body has died, thus philosophers spend their lives devaluing themselves from their body. Socrates presents the Theory of Recollection to persuade his fellow philosophers that have convened inside his cell that the soul is immortal. In essence, the recollection argument refers to the act of learning, because the soul is immortal, according to Socrates, then this suggests that when a person is learning something they are actually relearning it, because their soul has existed before they were born. This idea of recollecting knowledge is prominent and is the most convincing argument in proving the existence of immortality through the soul, however, this argument does not suggest that the soul continues to exist after death and lacks clarity regarding what truly happens after a person dies.
First and foremost, Socrates believed that when a person dies the body is what seems to die while the soul continues to live and exist. Although many suggested that when the body dies the soul dies with it, Socrates provides numerous arguments to prove his point otherwise. The arguments that were presented consisted of The argument of Reincarnation, The argument of Opposites, The argument of Recollection, and The argument of Forms. The argument that was most convincing for me was that of the Argument of Forms because Socrates makes his most compelling arguments here and it’s the most effective. On the other hand, the argument that I saw to be the least convincing was that of the Argument of Recollection and Reincarnation because both arguments fail to fully support the idea of the soul being immortal.
What happens when we die? This is a question humans have been pondering for centuries and although there are those who say they’ve been to the beyond there is no tangible proof of what lies beyond the grave. Sokrates was one of those who pondered what happens when we die and if death is worth fearing along with the idea immortality. In Apology, Sokrates defends his ideas before being prosecuted and in Phaedo those same values are tested when he faces his own death.
Socrates gives examples of waking/sleeping and life/death (Phaedo, 109-71d). Right before Socrates does the life and death argument he gets everyone thinking about sleeping and waking up. In order to go to sleep you would have to be awake and in order to wake up you must have been asleep. Then, Socrates translates this into life and death. Socrates asks, “Do you not say that to be dead is the opposite of being alive? I do. And they come to be from one another? Yes. What comes to be from being alive? Being dead. And what comes to be from being dead? One must agree that it is being alive” (Phaedo, 109-71d). The opposite of being alive is being dead and the opposite of death is being alive. If one of the opposites is present, then we can deduce or come to a conclusion about the other. For example, if a person is alive then we can deduce or come to the conclusion that they are not dead. And the opposite is also true; if a person is dead then we can conclude that they are not alive. Another example that Socrates mentions is the opposite of dying is coming back to life (Phaedo,
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.
For example, life is the opposite of death, whereas death becomes living. Like Socrates said, “the living have come from
This idea, fathered by Plato, also seems to have some roots in some sparse writing by a Greek poet named Empedocles. Empedocles lived between 495-430 B.C. and appears to have created some theories that poses Nativist undertones. Empedocles talks about reality being a continuous cycle of love and strife and the mind grasps reality as it has a built in ability to (Samet, Jerry). These writings are rather sparse but they do serve as an important piece of background which lead directly to the more relevant Nativist Plato. Plato is usually referred to as the father of Innatism and it is from him that many early theories about Nativism find roots. Typically Innatism and Plato are connected through math and geometry. These two ideas are universal and undying and so therefore they cannot be forgotten when a person dies. Since math is so important to our understanding of the universe and because it can never change or be destroyed we as beings can never be destroyed. However, other pieces of Plato’s work like Meno show similar yet different arguments for Innatism. In the writings of Meno Plato proposes the doctrine of anamnesis (Samet, Jerry). This idea basically says that all learning is in fact recollection. This idea states that perceptions and the experiences of the world rekindle the knowledge that is already within us (Samet, Jerry). The reason Innatism works in the first place is because Plato in Phaedo has the speaker Socrates put forth the idea that there is a form of existence before birth. The mind or soul is active at this time and it is during this time that we learn everything. Using the idea of the immortality of the soul a jump can be made to the idea of reincarnation. With this idea in mind, it is easier to see how our souls can never be destroyed and maybe therefore neither