Plato's Phaedo: A Summary of the Immortality of the Soul, Part Two

The second major discussion centered on the immortality of the soul. One of the discussion's participants, Cebes, begins by saying that many men fear the dissolution and destruction of the soul once it is separated from the body. Like mist or vapor, it is issued forth and promptly dissolves. If this is true, Cebes says, then there is a good deal to fear from death.

Cebes' comments start another round of discussion. Socrates takes it upon himself to prove that the soul is immortal, first by arguing that opposites arise from each other are mutually exclusive of each other. For instance, sleeping and being awake are opposites and cannot co-exist at the same time, yet one can only be called "sleeping" after being awake, and "awake" after having slept. Socrates uses the same argument with life and death. Life is the opposite of death and vice versa. Death, then, arises from the living, and the living arises from the dead. If this is so, he says, then our souls must exist somewhere else before being reborn - probably Hades.

A third (albeit related) discussion arises from the discussion on Death, notably one on the theory of recollection (anamnesis). In this theory, Socrates' argues that all learning is a form of recollection. Because the soul is immortal, we actually have a vast storehouse of knowledge at our disposal. At birth, we lose much of our knowledge and are forced, step by step, to recall what we once knew. Only at death can we arrive again at the level of knowledge that we had before our birth.

Even after the preceding discussions, however, Socrates' friends are not convinced that the soul exists after death. Once again Socrates composes a string of logical arguments to prove his point. First, he says, it is agreed that there are two kinds of existents: one is visible and earthly, the other invisible and divine. The visible and earthly are always shifting in form; they never stay the same. On the other hand, what are invisible and divine is invariable; constant. Using the body as the representation of the visible and the soul as the representation of the invisible, he argued that the soul is simply not made of the same stuff as the body, and thus will persist. After all, if the skeleton (which is earthly) lasts a very long time, why shouldn't the soul, which is divine? If we understand that the soul is what makes the body live, then it must be deathless, according to the logic offered by Socrates.