8/17/2019 Semestral W1 - Plato - Phaedo by Plato

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PHILOSOPHY PAPER PLATO - PHAEDO CONSTANCE CHUNG

24 April 2014

PHAEDO by PLATO

In this paper, I will examine the argument of opposites and recollection out of the bigfour arguments to refute Socrates’ view on the immortality of soul. Whereas thetheory of recollection displays the soul must exist before death, and through theargument from the opposites, Socrates attempted to prove soul must be born out ofdeath. Therefore, souls are immortal and a coherence between life and death.

Started from 70e, Socrates was introducing the argument of the opposites to furtherhis argument that “being alive” is the opposite of “being dead” by introducingsomething smaller comes from something bigger and vice versa, and souls existed inthe underworld before it comes back to earth and reanimate another human body as

a circle. If there are no souls in the underworld, then there are no livings, thereforesoul must exist in the underworld. And the livings are born out of death.

This theory is established on a theory that the dead will reincarnate in human formand walk on earth again, which was accepted as given by Cebes. But if we examinethe theory of the opposites that something must be come out from its opposite, thenit would work fine if souls lives on, and bodies dies, then souls are stuffed to another

 vessel, and become another creature walk on earth again. Hence, souls is a constant,a coherence between life and death process. But if vice versa, we test the theory fromthe other side. Life came out from dead bodies whilst the soul demised, it would

 become a fictional creature as we called zombie nowadays, and the argument would

 be invalid. A soul needs a vessel to come back to life. If the entire human races refrained fromreproduction or terminated entirely, whilst the souls in the Underworld areincreasing while the earth can’t provide a vessel for them to come back. It’s highlyunlikely God would make a person sprouted from the ground or rain human beingsto the earth. In my opinion, “there are living beings so we have living beings” is aprerequisite and a paradox for the theory of opposite to work.

Despite on a hypothetical ground that soul does exist before and after our earthly life,there is no argument provided to prove that Gods are recycling the “used” souls, andthe coherence of the soul. For example, questions like if Gods are recycling people’ssouls to new human beings, what’s purpose of erasing our “knowledge” and devisingus to recollect them? Would it be more convincing if we consider there’s acontaminated souls landfill, and there are new souls cloning out of machineeveryday? And hence, people share certain knowledge, yet not from their previouslife, but programmed to be? Socrates’ theory only proved that different souls sharethe same nature, but no verbal argument can prove that the soul reincarnated is thesame as the one previously dead. To prove this, you have to a tracking system on animmaterial substance and track its previous life to its next life, or else, it isimprobable to discuss the coherence of soul.

To sum it up, through Socrates’ last words, the theory of opposite and recollectionestablished on the ground only if we took the pre-socratic period theory on soul

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8/17/2019 Semestral W1 - Plato - Phaedo by Plato

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PHILOSOPHY PAPER PLATO - PHAEDO CONSTANCE CHUNG

reincarnation as correct, then it can only prove that soul’s existence, but thecoherence is not a necessity, and hence immortality was uncertain as well.

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