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Plato’s Phaedo

In the Phaedo Plato highlights the immortality of the soul by invoking arguments from recollection, opposites and scattering. In this account, it is argued that true philosophers should not fear death but look forward to it. According to Socrates, the purpose of leading a philosophical death is to free one’s soul of the body’s needs. The account indicates that a philosopher should see the moment of death as an achievement of his or her goal. To him, the body will survive death because it is immortal, unlike the body. The philosopher goes on to provide four arguments for supporting his argument that the soul is immortal. These include the argument of opposites, the theory of recollection, argument from affinity and the theory of forms. This paper will base its arguments on the second argument that supports the immortality of the soul, the theory of recollection.

The second argument of Socrates, that is, the theory of recollection argues that learning is usually an act of recollecting pieces of information that we had before we were born but lost them, as a result, of forgetting. Socrates argued that true knowledge is the knowledge of the unchanging and eternal forms that determine perceptible realties. For instance, we are able to comprehend that two sticks are different in width but equal in height, or vice versa, because we have an in build understanding of the form of equality. This is to mean that individuals have an in built understanding or perceptions of what it means to be equal even when we know in reality that no two things are equal. Since we can understand this form of equality even though we had never encountered it, the ability that we have to grasp this must be because of the recollection of some immortal knowledge we had before we were born and forgot. This then argues or shows that a part of us, or the soul, must have existed before we were born, which in turn shows that the life of the soul extends beyond the life of a body.

These arguments of the immortality of soul presented through recollection of knowledge relate in some way to the theory of Socrates of forms. According to Socrates, a form, unlike other qualities factors in the world, does not admit its opposite and is perfectly itself. For instance, the form of beauty does not allow any ugliness in it. In addition to this, a beautiful person might be extremely beautiful in comparison to other people but would not seem as beautiful or beautiful at all when compared to gods, and this Socrates concluded that form is perfectly itself. On the other hand, the form of beauty is utterly and perfectly beautiful. The soul is what makes us human beings, and we are alive because we have it. This indicates that the soul is intimately connected to the form of life. The form of life does not allow its opposite, death, and, therefore, death cannot tarnish the form of life, and this is why he concludes that the soul is immortal because it death cannot reach or affect it.

The arguments made above that the soul is immortal because of the argument of recollection and the theory of form claim that certain conditions have to be sufficient for recollection to occur. These conditions are as follows. One condition is that recollection must be of some knowledge or information that we knew previously. Another condition is that this recollection must be initiated by sense perception, the perception of something not similar or equal to something that is recollected. This serves to differentiate recollection from the normal recognition or from re- learning. However, I find it increasingly unlikely for these claims to be true. I, for example, find his argument that one forgets death and all the knowledge he or she previously had before death because of the trauma of death, but I find it unlikely that one would forget such an event.

From Plato’s arguments on recollection, he gives examples of the existence of absolutes such as equality and beauty, and gives this as evidence that a nonmaterial soul exists because a person possesses knowledge of these absolutes in the physical world even though there are no absolutes prevalent in the real physical world. Nevertheless, since Plato imagines and emphasizes on the partition of the spirit from the deceased and the existence of the soul in a realm that is non-realm, why is it not possible for him to believe in the existence of absolutes? That is to mean, why is it that the soul has to leave the body for it to gain knowledge, disregarding the concept of recollection? Plato does not seem to establish adequately evidence for the necessity of the afterlife. If there were enough evidence, it would seem that one could sensibly give an account of death when they are alive, which would support the preceding theories and arguments.

A revised claim about the sufficient conditions for an act of recollection would not require the soul to leave the body to recollect knowledge. This revised claim would not be subject to the same criticism because when someone defines an absolute using the revised claim, they would not seem like they had the knowledge before they were born, but they would seem like they are describing the absolute through simply stating their opinions of what they understand or think as beautiful or equal, thus taking their views and opinions to be the description of an absolute, something that is possible in real life, unlike the explanation offered by Plato.

One can, therefore, change the arguments of Socrates that we recollect or understand things because of some knowledge we held before, to argue that we recollect and understand things because we have the ability to imagine and have one’s own opinions about what things are. This argument does not succeed in establishing that we come by knowledge about equity through acts of recollection because the new argument refutes the claims and the need for the soul to be separate from the body to attain knowledge. All we need is one’s opinions and an imagination to understand equality.

We, therefore, cannot accept the theory of form of Socrates because it is unlikely that the existence of absolutes depends on the immortality of the soul, and its separation from the body, rather one’s understanding of these absolutes can be from the imagination. Since Plato argued that the trauma of birth deletes the memory of an individual upon their birth, he leaves a chance to argue that what these individuals know is from their imagination, and I suggest that imagination may also be present for the concept of absolutes like life and beauty.