The Discussion on Immortality by Socrates, Cubes, and Similar in Plato's Phaedo

The Soul: The Body’s Mortal Companion

In Phaedo, Socrates, Cebes, and Simmias discuss whether the soul of a person is immortal or not. Socrates contends that the soul is eternal due to the idea of recollection, the “opposites” argument, and the idea of affinity. The affinity argument holds its ground well, but the other two arguments only suggest that the soul existed before, not that it will exist forever afterward. On the other hand, Cebes and Simmias contradictions that use analogies based on concrete scenarios better display the soul as an entity vulnerable to death as the body. I conclude that Socrates’s theories of “opposites” and recollection may provide temporary immortality for the soul, but the soul is not eternal.

The immortality of the soul would suggest that the soul would exist after the physical death of a person, posing either as an opportunity to enter an afterlife or even possess another person for another lifetime. Socrates’s idea of recollection states that a person does not “learn” during his lifetime, but rather remembers knowledge he had forgotten, suggesting there was a past lifetime in which he knew the knowledge . Thus, the soul must have existed before the person was born. The conclusion of Socrates’s “opposites” argument is that the souls of the dead exist somewhere . Both arguments only suggest that a person can remember past things,and that past dead exist, but the soul itself is not portrayed as immortal.

Socrates’s argument for the immortality of the soul due to recollection may explain a person’s ability to know something from intuition or prior knowledge, but it is not related to the soul’s potential to live forever. The soul may have existed before a person was born but there is no certain to what will happen after that particular person dies. The argument Cebes gives through his analogy of the weaver can explain the possible outcome of the soul, as well as explain recollection. Cebes’s analogy suggests that the soul can live through a finite amount of lifetimes, just as a weaver can weave a finite amount of cloth before death . The possibility of several lifetimes gives recollection its potential, but eventually the soul must expire, whilerecollection alone cannot explain why the soul should have lived on instead.

Socrates explains the soul to have a special unity with the body. Simmias debates this special bond in regards to a lyre and harmony. The harmony itself is an invisible entity, while the body and bow are the physical components . Nonetheless, since the lyre must be played in order to reproduce the harmony, there is a vital connection between them, in which if the lyre would be destroyed the harmony would cease to exist. Likewise, the quality of the body may have a huge impact on the quality of the soul. In this case, Socrates’s case of affinity, in which he argues the soul cannot be “dissolved” or “scattered”, may contend with this argument; however, the case that the soul is immortal due to its potential likeness to other things invisible like the gods does only makes the case for good individuals that can meet the sufficient criteria to do so . But there will be people whose lives can be manipulated by physical desires, in can cause the body to be destroyed, and thus in this context, the soul be destroyed as well.

In conclusion, the soul may be an invisible entity, but not an immortal one. Like the body, the soul is not immune to the possibility of deformation and eventual death, although there are means to stall it.