Explain the first three arguments Socrates gives for the immortality of the soul.
The Phaedo is one of the most widely read dialogues written by Plato: a well-known ancient Greek philosopher. The dialogue recounts the occurrences that took place on the day that Socrates, Plato’s teacher, was sentenced to death by the state of Athens. In the Phaedo, Socrates asserts that the soul is immortal, and that the philosopher spends his entire life training it to detach itself from the body. Socrates proposes four arguments in order to defend this claim, but this essay will discuss just three: The Argument from Becoming, also known as The Argument from Opposites, The Argument from Recollection and The Argument from Affinity. The Argument from Becoming involves the idea of generation between opposites, for example the generation from life to death via the process of dying, and vice-versa. The Argument from Recollection rests on the idea that we have innate knowledge; knowledge is already present in our minds and the process of ‘learning’ is mere recollection of ideas and truths that we have possessed since before birth. Finally, The Argument from Affinity utilises Plato’s central teaching, the Theory of the Forms, in order to aim to prove that the soul cannot be destroyed and thus, is immortal.
In his Argument from Becoming, Socrates highlights the significance of processes of becoming between opposites. For example, between the opposing states small and large, there is the process of growing; between the opposing states of being awake and being asleep, there is the process of awakening and so-on. Something that comes to be ‘larger’ must have necessarily been ‘smaller’: “when a thing becomes bigger, it must…have been smaller first before it became bigger” . All becoming, all coming to be, is generated from opposites, and the actual becoming lies in the process. Being alive and being dead are opposing states; being dead comes from being alive, and being alive must come from being dead. In the case of death, the process is dying, and the generation from death to life must involve the process of coming alive. Socrates argues that nothing can exist independently of its opposite; generation from an opposing state is necessary. Processes must be cyclical as opposed to linear, for if they were linear, this generation could not take place. As Socrates claims:
If there were not a constant correspondence in the process of generation between the two sets of opposites, going round in a sort of cycle; if generation were a straight path to the opposite extreme without any return to the starting point or any deflection…in the end everything would have the same quality and reach the same state, and change would cease altogether .
Therefore, Socrates concludes that “coming to life again is a fact, and it is a fact that the living come from the dead, and a fact that the souls of the dead exist” . “A fact that the souls of the dead exist” entails that the soul is, in fact, immortal.
The idea that ‘learning’ is mere recollection of ideas that are already present in our minds is reinforced in the Argument from Recollection. Socrates adopts a rationalist position in this sense (as opposed to an empiricist one) by claiming that we have innate knowledge, i.e. knowledge ‘built’ into our minds prior to any form of experience. The theory behind the argument was earlier reinforced in The Meno, one of Plato’s earliest dialogues. Socrates’ argument is presented as follows: there are things in the world that we perceive to be as equal, for example two sticks appearing to be equal in measurement, yet we do not perceive the idea of equality itself; equality is an abstract concept. Hence, the two sticks are not identical to true equality; the Equal itself. However, we have this idea of equality; when we see the two sticks that appear to be equal in measurement, we ‘recollect’ the idea of equality, and so it is the case that we must have had some prior knowledge of it before we saw equal things: ”we must have had some previous knowledge of equality before the time when we first realised, on seeing equal things, that they were striving after equality” . This knowledge is not gained via sense perception; we must have acquired it before we possessed our senses: “so before we began to see and hear and otherwise perceive equals we must somewhere have acquired the knowledge of equality as it really is” . We have possessed our senses since birth, therefore Socrates concludes that our souls must have existed before birth.
The final argument, the Argument from Affinity, involves the use of Plato’s famous Theory of the Forms as evidence that the soul cannot be destroyed. The Forms are not merely concepts; rather, they are what our concepts are concepts of. The Forms are what underlie our perception and are stable and self-identical. Socrates begins by pointing out that things that are composite can be dispersed and destroyed, and conversely, things that are in-composite cannot. Furthermore, he claims that things that are constant and unchanging are likely to be in-composite. The Forms fall under this category of existence, which is one that we can access solely with our minds. The Forms are invisible; upon perception, we do not observe them. Appearances, however, we perceive with our senses; this kind of existence, by contrast, is composite, mortal and ever changing. By analogy, the soul is invisible, yet the body is visible. Socrates argues that the soul is like in-composite, unvarying things in the universe (i.e. the Forms): “the soul is most like that which is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform…whereas body is most like human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible” . Therefore, he concludes that it cannot be destroyed or dispersed in any way; it is eternal.
In conclusion, the main aim that Socrates is trying to achieve through his arguments is to show that the soul exists in ‘The Other World’ and thus, is immortal. A wider implication that could be suggested according to the arguments is that ‘death’, as we know it, is a somewhat illusion.