Philosophy †Plato Essay

2. What is the role of philosophy for Socrates and why is it valuable in itself? Explain three argu- ments Socrates gives for the immortality of the person. Briefly explain Cebes and Simmias coun- ter subscriber lines using examples from the text for support. Finally, base on your understanding of the Phaedo give your interpretation of the lead haggling of Socrates and back it up by citing the text. In Platos The Last Days of Socrates, Phaedo gives an account of the stand few hours of Socrates life, to Echecrates when he encounters him after Socrates shoemakers last.In Phaedos telling of the story, we learn about why Philosophy was so serious to Socrates, and why he fatigued his final hours explaining his arguments about the body and the person, to his two friend Cebes and Simmias. Socrates presents four separate arguments as to how the soulfulness alives separately from the body, the depression being the possible action of opposites, seconded by the theory of recollecti on, and followed by his theory of Affinity. After he presents his first three arguments, Simmias and Cebes interject with their opinions and counterarguments to Socrates first three, which is then when Socrates pick outs up with his fourth and final argument Theory of the Forms.The last and final argument is iodin of the most important arguments that Socrates will make byout the whole story. Phaedo ends his account to Echecrates by telling us of the final words of Socrates. Socrates was a well known Greek philosopher, known chiefly through the writings of his students, such(prenominal) as Plato who wrote the novel in which we are reflecting. Socrates did not publish down either of his ideas or knowledge, and instead instilled it upon other people who took the re- sponsibility of writing it down for themselves.During Socrates final hours, we find out why Phi- losophy was so important to him. He argues that the soul is a separate entity from the body, and that we must separate the soul as far as possible from it. He relates this to death, by saying that death is this freeing and parting of the soul from the body. Socrates states, on page 100 line 67d exactly why Philosophy is important those that go in for philosophy in the correct way who are always eager to set the soul free what philosophers practice is exactly this, the freeing and parting of soul from body. He believes that Philosophers live their lives being as close to death as possible, those occupied correctly in philosophy really do practice dying, and death is less scare for them than for anyone else (Plato 67a). He states that if philosophers desire that one intimacy, separating the soul from the body, then they must always be close to death and to nev- er be afraid of it. Socrates presents his initial argument that everything comes to be through opposite things coming to be from no other source than their own opposites (Plato 70e). He believed that everything that exists, has an opposite and must have came from that opposite.He provided examples such as the beautiful is presumably opposite to the ugly or when something comes to be bigger, it must be from being smaller before (Plato 70e). In explaining this argument, he presents that mingled with the two members of the pair, on that point are two-processes for the pair to come into being. In order for something to be big, it had to come from being small, it increased in size but it could go the opposite way and decrease in size as well. This argument relates to the soul and the body by saying that being alive has an opposite, which is being groundless.In order for the op-posites argument to be logical, one must be able to come back from the dead and be alive, so it is from the dead that living things come to be alive. This leads us to believe that the soul is immor- tal, and existed before the body. Socrates sums up this argument by stating, the living have come from the dead no less than the dead from the livin g and I think it seemed to us that if this were the case, it would be sufficient proof that the souls of the dead must be somewhere from where they were to be born once again (Plato 72a). quest the argument about opposites, Socrates poses the question that if we are going to recollect something, we must have had knowledge about it at a previous order in time. This is then the second argument that Plato recounts in his telling of Socrates last hours. What he is pre- senting in this argument, is the fact that when we manage something, it brings us back to think- ing about something else. So when we recognize this first prey, it triggers our minds to remem- ber something that is associated with that object. Therefore, when we remember something we are recollecting back to a previous state or time or object.He argues that these recollections canat are unlike the items we have recollected. He sums this thought up by saying, So long as, on seeing one thing, you come to have somethin g else in mind, like or unlike, from seeing the first one. What occurs must be recollection (Plato 74d). He doesnt stop at this, but then goes on to explain that we had this knowledge before we even obtained our senses. When we were born, we obtained the force to see, hear, and possess all of the other senses, but we had this knowledge before our senses, so therefore we had this knowledge before we were even born. This argument leads back to his original point that the soul exists outside of the body.Whereas if we get our knowledge before we are born but lose it on being born, and then later through the affair of our perceptions we get back those pieces of knowledge that we had at some previous time, what we call learning would be a matter of getting back knowledge that was ours anyways and wed be surely correct if we called that recollection (Plato 75e). Socrates third argument before Cebes and Simmias provide their counterarguments is his theory of Affinity.This suggests that we must distinguish between things that are material, visi- ble, and perishable and things that are immaterial, invisible, and immortal. In this case, the body is the thing that is perishable, while the soul is immortal and lives on. While arguing this to Sim- mias and Cebes, Socrates states, the soul is something thats very like whats divine, deathless, the object of intellect, uniform, undissolved, and always in exactly the same state as it ever was while body in its turn is something very like whats human, mortal, mindless, multiform, forethought to dissolution, and never the same as it was before (Plato 80b). This is yet another argument that proves his point that when the body dies, the soul still lives.He brings up the point in this argu- ment that the soul may wander, but eventually it is put into a different body or it will spend its time with the Gods. After his third argument, Simmias and Cebes at last interject and give their counterargu- ments to Socrates. Simmias i s the first to present his counterargument, by comparing the topic of the soul existing after the death of the body, to the attunement of an instrument.He states, The argument would go, thered be no way that the lyre could continue to exist as it does, with the strings broken, or that the strings could, while the attunement, which is of the same nature and the same kin as the divine and deathless, had already perished, before the mortal (Plato 86a-c). He is comparing the body to an instrument, and the soul to the attunement. When the instrument is no longer there, if it was completely broken or burned, there would no longer be a tune. The tune of one instrument does not just travel to a separate instrument when the original one is gone.Cebes then gives his counterargument, not agreeing with the one Simmias just made and not ful- ly agreeing with all of Socrates arguments. Cebes argument states that the soul does still live on after the body is dead, but that it is not entirely immo rtal. He then compares the body to a cloak and the soul to the body, stating someone might say the very same things about soul and body as about the weaver and his cloak, that the soul is something long-lived, while the body is a weaker and shorter-lived thing, but all the same, hed say, every single soul wears out many bod-ies, especially if it has a long life for if the body is in flux, and is perishing even while the per- son is alive, still the soul always weaves again whats being worn out. (Plato 87e). This argu- ment he presents states that a soul can live through many bodies, as a person can go through many cloaks each as they wear out. He finishes his argument by stating that theres no justifica- tion yet for relying on this argument of yours, and it gives us no reassurance that when we die our soul still exists somewhere (Plato 88a). Socrates final words at the end of Phaedos account were, Crito, we owe a cock to As-clepius pay our debt and no forgetting. According to Gre ek myth, the cock symbolizes a peace offering to the god Asclepius in order to receive a cure. In this case, Socrates was getting ready to die. This could call back only two things to me, the first being that he was being cured of his life by dying and being closer than ever to the one thing that philosophers dedicate their time to, sep- arating his soul from his body and having that soul be free. The second interpretation I came up with is that he offered this cock to the god Asclepius to avoid any misfortune after he dies, while his soul is still living.All in all, Socrates had many deep and thought provoking arguments as to why the soul and the body are separate, and why the soul continues to live after the body has perished. Whether or not these arguments seemed logical, or were very believable, Socrates spent his whole life dedicated to the ideas of Philosophy, and he spent his final hours instilling his beliefs upon those who cared about him. Socrates died for what he believ ed in, and thats what makes Phaedos account of his life so interesting. Works Cited Plato, , and Christopher Rowe. The Last Day of Socrates. in the raw York Penguin Classics, 2010. 87-169. Print.