Concerning the Immortality of the Soul as Presented by Socrates in the Phaedo

The character of Socrates in Plato's Phaedo contends that a true philosopher strives for wisdom above all else and welcomes death as a means of separating the soul from the encumbrance of the body. Yet in his constant pursuit of knowledge, even on the eve of his death, Socrates falls short of this aim. Though he provides four arguments to support the immortality of the soul, each one provides refutable, unconvincing evidence, culminating in a logos that egregiously defies our everyday experiences.

Socrates' first argument is the Theory of Opposites. Socrates begins the argument by discussing the nature of opposites. "If something smaller comes to be it will come from something larger before, which became smaller" Socrates says to his friend, Cebes (71a). In simpler terms, to say something is "smaller" requires that that thing must have been "larger" in the past. To connect the two points requires a process, Socrates argues, which we might call decreasing. Thus, the overall pattern can be depicted as: larger¨¤decreasing¨¤smaller. Of course, "smaller" and "larger" are opposite judgments. So too are "better" and "worse" and by association "sleep" and "awake." Socrates ultimately makes the leap to life and death, relying on the same argument for larger and smaller. Socrates forces Cebes to admit that because "living" and "dying" are opposites they have a necessary relationship like "larger" and "smaller." So when he concludes that living is the opposite of dying, the overall scheme appears like this: life¨¤dying¨¤death. However, when Socrates attempts to reverse the scheme it becomes irrational: death¨¤living¨¤life. Cebes nonchalantly accepts this reasoning and allows Socrates to finish the argument with the conclusion that if there is this link between life and death, death and life, the soul must persist from one to the other.

The problem with this reasoning lies in this step: death¨¤living¨¤life. Unlike decreasing-increasing, living-dying is not a reversible process. It is easy to imagine how "smaller" can become "larger" through increasing. A snowball becomes larger after I roll it on the ground and it picks up more snow. And the reverse: the snowball becomes smaller when it melts and the snowball shrinks. Implicit in Socrates' assessment of opposites is an element of reversibility. Therefore, anything which increases can also decrease. So too can something worse become better, something sleeping become awake and fall back asleep again. Yet living and dying are clearly not reversible processes. When my dog dies, it ceases to be. It loses its existence. Its corpse exists, for a limited time, but soon barely a carcass will remain. Death is a final process. Unlike the snowball, I cannot simply resurrect a dead dog to reverse the process. Thus, because life and death have not been shown to be reversible, it does not stand that it is necessary for the soul to persist. Upon dying, the soul can dissipate, as Cebes originally suggested.

The second argument is The Argument from Recollection. Here, Socrates proves himself master of reasoning, yet limited in perspicuity. Socrates offers another contentious statement to Cebes: "learning is no other than recollection. According to this, we must at some previous time have learned what we now recollect" (72e). In other words, Socrates introduces the idea of a priori knowledge. A priori knowledge is knowledge that is not dependent on experience, but rather like something innate. For example, I know a priori that 4+3=7. In elementary school, I learned to add and subtract different numbers, but not every combination of numbers. I added 6 and 1 to get 7 as well as 5 and 2. But without ever having performed the operation 4+3 before in my entire life, I know that it is equal to 7. Socrates offers Cebes the example of the Equality itself. He says that we can qualify two sticks or two rocks as "equal" but only in a limited number of regards. This stick is the same length, the same weight, and the same diameter as that stick, but they differ in color. Socrates is essentially arguing that no two things are exactly equal. Yet implicit in the idea of Equal, or the "Equal itself" is absolute equality. Therefore, according to Socrates, the idea of the "Equality itself" is a priori, that is innate; it can only come prior to experience. If it comes prior to experience, then in order to understand it, we must recollect it. Recollection, therefore, suggests that the soul carries knowledge of the Equal itself and "gives" it to us when it enters our physical bodies. Through recollection, we are able to recall concepts that we never experienced. In short, the Platonic Forms or Ideas, such as Equality, Justice, and Beauty are all innate. I can say that this tree is beautiful or that painting is beautiful because though the two objects are clearly different, there is some overriding principle that dictates what Beauty is. This overriding principle comes from our immortal souls and gains this knowledge before our own experiences.

Socrates falls just short of his mark, even though he seems to have fully convinced Cebes and Simmias that the soul existed before birth. Ideas like Equality and Justice are not necessarily innate. It is possible that without a priori knowledge of the Tall itself, I can compare my height to Shaquille O'Neal, realize that his head is closer to the sky than mine, and qualify this difference as me being "smaller" and he being "taller." Put simply, Ideas like Tall or Small or Beauty or Justice can be extrapolated empirically from experience. For instance, if I see a grotesque image, I know it is grotesque not because of a priori knowledge of the "Grotesque itself," but rather because I interpret the image. In the image, there might be a man expressing indescribable agony. Looking at his facial expressions, I might recall seeing my brother fall off a bike making the same expressions and extrapolate that the man in the image is also in pain. I know that pain is bad because I have felt pain and it is inherently unpleasant. Thus I qualify the image as "grotesque" because it compounds unpleasant experiences I have had or witnessed. On the other hand, when I see a serene image of a duck in a pond, I call it "beautiful." I don't merely recall "Beauty itself" but rather I concoct this idea by comparing it to the grotesque image and noting the differences. The painting is brighter, the colors are not as morose and gloomy, the duck looks relaxed, etc. Therefore it must be "beautiful." This idea of empirically deducing the Ideas themselves like Beauty and Equality and Ugliness discards the need for a priori knowledge. In doing so it nullifies the necessity for the soul to exist prior to our own lives.

The third argument is the Affinity Argument. Socrates again exhorts his loyal companions with lofty ideas about the soul's immortality. "So the soul is more like the invisible than the body, and the body more like the visible?" Socrates asks his faithful companions (79c). His argument follows accordingly. There are two types of things in the world: simple things and composite things. That which is composite must necessarily decompose into its individual parts. Composite things are also sensible and subject to change. Conversely, that which is simple cannot decompose because it is not made up of parts. Simple things are by their nature invisible and eternal. Socrates argues that the Forms - Beauty itself, Justice itself, etc. - are akin to the simple things because they are eternal and changeless. Instances of beauty, like beautiful clothes, a beautiful painting are subject to change, transient, and thus, composite. Socrates argues that the body bears an affinity towards composite things because the body is sensible, mortal, and divisible. The soul, however, is more like the simple things because it is invisible and indivisible. To prove the soul is immortal requires the same logic that is used to show the body is mortal. By bearing an affinity to the simple, invisible things, the soul must be immortal. To strengthen his argument, Socrates elaborates on the function of the soul: "...when the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging" (79d). In other words, thinking rationally is the soul's prime function and this function enables the soul to grasp the changeless, eternal, immortal Forms. The body's prime function, however, is to understand the composite things because the body itself is composite. By virtue of the fact that the soul has the capacity to grasp immortal things, whereas the body cannot, the soul must be immortal.

Again, Socrates uses strong logic to reach weak conclusions. The soul undoubtedly bears an affinity towards invisible things, but that doesn't mean the soul is immortal or even changeless. To refute Simmias' Harmony Thesis, Socrates says to Simmias, "one soul is said to have intelligence and virtue and to be good, another to have folly and wickedness and to be bad" (93b). Socrates reasons that it is possible for one soul to be better (more virtuous) than another whereas one note (or harmony) is only more or less out of tune than another note. Notes are not "better" or "worse." Admitting that a soul can be "better" or "worse" no doubt recalls the Theory of Opposites Argument. Indeed, if "better" and "worse" are opposites, than we can imagine the following process: worse¨¤ameliorating¨¤better. And the reverse: better¨¤worsening¨¤worse. We can certainly imagine a soul improving or worsening. A criminal can reform his ways and become a Samaritan. So too can a devout Christian lapse into criminal behavior. Therefore, the soul is subject to change. The soul cannot be like the changeless, simple Forms. The definition of Beauty itself never changes: it neither improves nor worsens. Moreover, to further refute Simmias' Harmony thesis, Socrates reasons that while a soul can influence and direct the body, a note cannot direct the instrument. By admitting that a soul influences and directs the body by offering wisdom, Socrates concedes that the function of the soul involves a constant connection to the body. The soul, therefore, is not as far removed from the body as Socrates believes if the soul is constantly commandeering the body. In short, the only "affinity" linking the soul to the Forms is that it is invisible. In all other regards, the soul would have to bear an affinity towards the composite things and therefore be mortal.

Socrates final argument, The Argument from Forms, is the most convincing, yet still fallible and refutable. As Socrates argues, Forms come in opposing pairs. There is a Form of Evenness and Form of Oddness. Even numbers like 2 and 4 participate in the Form of Evenness, while odd numbers such as 3 and 5 participate in the Form of Oddness. If I have three items on a table and remove one item, then the Form of Oddness would give way to the Form of Evenness. It is impossible for the three items to be Even; and to remain odd, the three items will "avoid" the Form of Evenness at all costs. Socrates uses the example of fire and cold to further illustrate his point: "so fire as the cold approaches, will either go away or be destroyed; it will never venture to admit coldness and remain what it was, fire and cold" (270d). In other words, to be fire, fire must always be hot. When something cold approaches the fire, the cold threatens to vanquish the fire's existence. Because fire participates in the Form of Heat, it cannot also participate in the Form of Cold. By drawing these parallels, Socrates ultimately arrives at his conclusion concerning the soul. The soul only exists in living things. Therefore the soul participates in the Form of Life. Like fire, the soul will have to resist its opposite, the Form of Death, to exist. Furthermore, for a soul to exist, it has the ontological necessity of being undying (immortal) just as the number 3 to be considered odd has the ontological necessity of being uneven. Therefore, while the soul is contained inside the body and the body is subject to death, the soul eschews death in order to exist from one life to the next.

The previous argument relies on two premises. The first, that opposite Forms exist and repel each other or one annihilates the other and the second, that no thing can share opposite Forms. Thus, Socrates would say that though a black and white checkered towel shares the opposite Forms of Blackness and Whiteness, it actually is neither. It participates in the Form of "Checkeredness." Thus, whether or not two opposing Forms are present in something is irrelevant; we can always resort to classifying a different Form to encompass the simultaneous presence of the two opposing Forms. This means that "blackness" and "whiteness" are somehow absent from the object in question. Our everyday experience of the world requires that something checkered must be both black and white. Yet according to Socrates, this is not the case: it is simply "checkered" and cannot be simplified further because the Forms are indivisible. Furthermore, there are cases where two opposing Forms can coexist. A good example is mathematics. We know that the expression, lim n¡ú¡Þ 1ⁿ has no solution. Yet common sense would dictate that 1 raised to any conceivable power is 1. There is no possible case where 1 multiplied by itself any number of times is anything other than 1. Thus, this expression would have to participate in the Form of the One as well as the Form of No Solution. How can this be? How can these two opposing Forms coexist without repelling or conquering the other? Socrates might explain this conundrum in terms of doxa (the expression seeming to converge at 1) and logos (the expression in reality having no solution). However, casting aspersions on the reality of something by subjugating it under the category of doxa is unsatisfying. To claim that the soul is immortal because it resists the Form of Death utilizes logos to defeat our everyday "doxic" experience of what life and death are. Yet Socrates unabashedly challenges our deep-rooted conceptions without understanding the gravity of his conclusions.

Socrates relies on four succinct arguments to convince his friends of the soul's immortality. The strongest of the four arguments is actually un-Socratic, but rather wholly Platonic. Plato is really using the character of Socrates as a vehicle to spout his own philosophical views. Indeed, Plato's theory of Forms is pivotal in Socrates' final attempt to prove the immortality of the soul. Yet the Theory of Forms is not flawed insofar as it reaches an irrational conclusion, but rather because it reaches an empirically unverifiable conclusion. The Pre-Socratic tradition of doxa versus logos had carried over to the 4^th century with Plato. Following in the Rationalist tradition of Anaximander, Plato's claims transcend our senses and culminate in a kind of defeatism that forces us to admit, "We just have to take Plato's word for it." After all, without dying ourselves, it is impossible to know whether Plato is really right or not. We are actually slaves to logos in a way, because we reach difficult conclusions without ever being able to disprove or verify them.