Plato’s Phaedo is a dialog between Phaedo, Cebes, and Simmias depicting
Socrates explanation as to why death should not be feared by a true philosopher.
For if a person truly applies oneself in the right way to philosophy, as the
pursuit of ultimate truth, they are preparing themselves for the very act of
dying. Plato, through Socrates, bases his proof on the immortality of the soul,
and it being the origin of our intellect. Several steps must be taken for the
soul to be proven immortal. First the body and all the information acquired
though it must be discredited. For without the question being addressed of
whether sensory information can be trusted, looking inwards towards the soul and
the intangible for the essence of truth would be absurd. Plato must prove
through Socrates that this is in fact so, For without this his legacy would be
one of being condemned to death for committing a grievous crime. Not as a
philosopher being granted a release from the body to achieve ultimate knowledge.
The pursuit of philosophy, to Socrates, involves the denial of the body’s
desires due to their distraction to any intellectual engagement. For the
acquirement of knowledge is an intellectual pursuit, one that the body confuses
with faulty sensory information, Plato says through Socrates, “Now take the
acquisition of wisdom; is the body a hindrance or not, if one takes it into
partnership to share an investigation? What I mean is this: is there any
certainty in human sight and hearing, or is it true, as the poets are always
dinning into our ears, that we neither hear or see anything accurately?” (1)
What we perceive though the senses has to be quantified constantly by the
intellect. For example, a man seen in the distance is mistaken to be a woman,
when the mistake is realized we do not jump to the conclusion that a woman just
mysteriously changed into a man. Our intellect makes the correction that it was
always a man, and it was actually a visual error that made him seem female.
Distance or any other means of creating ambiguity leads us to differentiate
between what we experience and what we know to be actually happening. If a
differentiation has to take place between the crude sensory information and what
we view as reality, than the truth or meaning within an object is not held
within the sensory perception of it. “Well, have you ever apprehended them
with any other bodily sense? By “them” I mean them all, including tallness
or health or strength in themselves, the real nature of any given thing – what
it actually is. Is it through the body that we get our truest view of them?
Isn’t it true that in any inquiry you are likely to attain more nearly to
knowledge of your object in proportion to the care and accuracy with which you
have prepared yourself to understand that object in itself?” (2) Besides the
processing of inaccurate information, the temptations and desires of the body
are so strong and numerous that the philosopher “never gets an opportunity to
think.” (3) The functions of the body that are being described as distractions
and contradictions are in fact the fundamental processes of life. To view these
as burdensome is to perceive the functions of life, those of physical necessity
as well as joy and contentment, as an annoyance. A nagging that would be
appreciated only if removed. Thus, putting the soul at the center of the
definition of what we are, that which is seeking wisdom, in short the essence of
humanity. Thus, if the body is only a distraction to thought, and intellectual
investigation is the only way to achieve wisdom and knowledge of an object in
itself, then the separation of the intellect from the burdens of the body is the
only way to achieve absolute clarity of thought. “Is death nothing more or
less than this, the separate condition of the body by itself when it is released
from the soul, and the separate condition of the soul by itself when released
from the body? Is death anything more than this?” (4) So death becomes the
pinnacle of intellectual discovery and not the grievous end to all that is
precious in life. To view something in itself by itself, with out the
distractions of the body, is the only way to discover its truth. This is true
for external objects such as that of a table or chair, and also true for the
body and that which is considered intimately apart of our person, the itself of
ourselves. That essence is the soul not the body, the intangible verses the
tangible. If the body is merely a distraction to the soul and philosophical
investigation, this raises the question as to what happens to the soul after it
leaves the body. Does it cease to exist, and if so isn’t it a paradox as to
whether there is any philosophical investigation possible at all. For if the
soul where to perish the instant it left the body, the moment that pure thought
is able to take place, no such thought would be possible. Plato answers this in
several stages, for it is a complex issue. First of all, ultimately for death to
be an occurrence that should not be feared, the soul, the essence of humanity,
must be immortal. Allowing an eternity for the philosophical investigation of an
object in itself by itself. Where does life originate from is the first question
that must be answered, and it is answered in a discussion about opposites. The
answer being that it comes from death. “And similarly if it becomes smaller,
it mist be bigger, and become smaller afterwards?” (5) “What about this: if
a thing becomes worse, is it not from being better, and if more just, from being
ore unjust?” (6) “Are we satisfied, then that all opposites are brought
about in this way – from opposites?” (7) Meaning that everything has an
opposite, and it is that very opposite that brings it’s opposite into
existence. Leading to the correlation that there are two processes of generation
being conducted between two pairs of opposites, “the first from the second,
and another the second from the first?” (8) If the opposite to big is small,
heat to cool, and sleep to awake, then the opposite of living is death. If pairs
of opposites come from each other, and death is the opposite of life, then the
living come from the dead, and the dead from the living. Giving proof that souls
exist after death and remain long enough to be “reborn”. As a further
argument as to the existence of the soul before birth the process of
recollection is introduced. This is the ability to recognize equality, beauty,
or any other quality, in the limited representations given to us by the senses.
To be able to recognize the imperfect, as a representation of a perfect
attribute, an idea of the perfect must already exist. If an idea of a perfect
attribute must exist before it’s imperfect representation can be recognized
through a sensory experience, we must have had an idea of perfection before we
started to explore the world sensually. We began to explore things sensually at
birth so if we were to have a preexisting knowledge of perfection it must have
predated our own birth. Birth is the origin of the body, and therefore to be
incorporated in us prier our bodies, its incorporation must have been an
attribute of our souls. “So it must be as a result of the senses that we
obtained the notion that all sensible equals are striving to realize actual
equality but falling short of it. “ (9) “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; otherwise we could never have realized, by using it as
a standard for comparison, that all equal objects of sense are desirous of being
like it, but are only imperfect copies” (10) The last two arguments are raised
to prove thoroughly that the soul exists after death, and that if it exists
after death that it is truly immortal. The first of these proposes is that the
soul has an attunement, like that of a musical instrument. The instrument being
the representation of the physical body and the invisible tuning being that of
the soul. The flaw with this argument is that it supposes the soul, like a
tuning coming from the strings of an instrument, is dependent upon the physical
components of the body. If the soul exists before the body then it can not be
dependent upon it’s physical components to exist. An attunement of the soul
also leads to the assumption that this attunement can vary, being more or less
in tune. Giving rise to the theory that the body can effect the tuning of the
soul, allowing the soul to be more or less in tune. Seeing that the soul can
never be more or less of a soul it can not have tuning. “Does that which is
neither more or less in tune contain a greater or smaller proportion of
attunement, or an equal one?” (11) “Then since no soul is any more or less
than just a soul, it is neither more or less in tune.” (12) The second
argument is that the soul may survive many lifetimes but eventually it will wear
out, for there are an inexhaustible amount of new bodies and lives, and only one
particular soul. For this argument to be answered the very essence of what the
soul is must be examined. Whenever the soul is present if brings life, and when
the is absent so is life. For if a thing is beautiful it said to take part in
beauty itself. Or if a man is tall he partakes in tallness. Further more if
something is beautiful, and thus partaking in beauty itself, it can not partake
in ugliness. For beauty and ugliness are opposites and one can not exist in the
presence of the other in the same object. Though the same object that was
considered beautiful when compared to something else of surpassing beauty it is
considered to be partaking in ugliness. Some objects partake in so much of an
attribute that they can not, in any comparison, partake in their opposite. That
is an opposite itself can not become an opposite to itself. Fire can not remain
in the presence of cold with out ceasing to exist. Likewise the soul, which is
life itself, can not partake in its opposite, dying, or it shall cease to exist.
For living and dying are opposites. If a soul can not partake in dying it must
be not only partaking in the attribute of living, it must be life itself,
therefore the very opposite of death. If an opposite can not become an opposite
to itself, and life and are death are opposites, then the must be immortal. The
cyclic nature of the soul, is an example of the cyclic nature of the universe.
To illustrate this Socrates gives his interpretation of how there are many
different layers to the earth and how they coexist in a cyclic pattern. For
rivers cycle into the ocean which cycles into a great cavern, called Tartarus,
that dissects the Earth allowing all water to circulate throughout the world.
This cyclic pattern also applies to the levels of beauty and divinity. For the
gems and metals that we hold precious are in fact just pebbles descended from a
reality that exists above us. For we live in hollows of the earth, that are
filled with the dregs of the celestial ether that fills the universe. This ether
flows down filling them with air, mists, and water. Where to the reality above
us, what we call air to them is like our water, and the celestial ether, in
it’s pure form is their air. Likewise if there where people living at the
bottom of the ocean they would in turn treat the water as air. This is all very
metaphoric, and colorful, but describes the different levels of understanding
and perspective associated with knowledge. If the soul is immortal then it is
living itself. By means of recollection we attribute the imperfect sensual
images of objects to be representations of various perfect attributes
themselves. With the soul existing before the body, the soul can not have
attunement for it implies that the soul is dependent upon the body for its
existence. Therefore the truth to an object in itself and by itself can not be
contained in the physical representation given to us by the senses, therefore a
philosopher should, in the search of truth, disregard the sensual distractions
of the body. Allowing the intellect to be as free as possible for philosophical
contemplation.