My Immortal Soul Essay

Plato has roused m some(prenominal) readers with the work of a great philosopher by the name of Socrates. Through Plato, Socrates stand upd on generations after his time. A head of Socrates that many will continue to discuss is the theme of an ever-living dispositionfulness. Although in that location atomic number 18 various works and dialogues about this topic it is found to be best explained in The Phaedo. It is fair to say that the sense may wonder when unmatchable dies what exactly happens to the beloved soul, the giver of liveness often thought of as the very essence of purport does it live on beyond the personate, or does it die with it? Does the soul fork up noesis of the past if it really does live on? In Platos The Phaedo, Plato recounts Socrates net days onward he is put to death.Socrates has been impris wizardd and sentenced to death for debasing the youth of Athens and not following the castigates of Athenian religion.1 Socrates death brings him and his baby buster philosophers Cebes, Simmions, Phaedo, and Plato into a perplex dialogue about this notion of an afterlife and what does one have to look forward to after death. Death is defined as the separation of the body from the soul. In The Phaedo death has two notions a coarse one which is the basic idea that the soul dies and the physiological, idea that the soul separates from the body after death.The soul is most like that which is divine, immortal intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and ever self-consistent and invariable, whereas body is most like that which human, mortal is, multiform, unintelligible, dissoluble, and never self-consistent. (Phaedo)2 According to Socrates, companionship is not something one came to understand only when it was actually imprinted on the soul. cognition to Socrates was an unchanging eternal truth, something that could not be acquired through experience and time. Socrates friends imagine that after death the soul disperses into the air li ke a breath. On the contrary Socrates believes that the soul is in detail immortal and if one wants to generate free of pain they way to do so is to exempt themselves from the physical pleasures of the world. In this dialogue Socrates and the philosophers explore several considerations for this idea of an immortal soul.These arguments were to adorn and verify that death is not the dying of body and soul collectively, still when the body dies the soul continues to live on. Socrates offers readers four main arguments The Cyclical Argument, which is the idea that forms are fixed and external. The soul is the sole purpose of life in this argument, and therefore cannot die and it is also to be seen as virtually never-ending. bordering is The Theory of memorial, which insists that at birth everyone has companionship that the soul experienced in another life. Meaning that the soul would have had to be pull roundent before birth to bear this verbalise association.The Form of Life Argument confers that the soul bears a similitude to that which is imperceptible and godly because it is abstract. The body bears a resemblance to the perceptible and the corporeal because it is objective. The Affinity Argument maybe the simplest of all. It repeats Socrates thoughts of the body and soul, in saying that when the body dies and decomposes our soul will continue to exist in another world.3Since the soul is immortal it has been recycled many times, and has also experienced everything there is to experience, for Socrates and Plato this idea of medical record is much deeper than remembering something once forgotten. Socrates views knowledge as something that cannot be learned but the soul recalls it as it is being recycled. taking hold the understanding that things contend to be beings by being composed of something be and when ceased these separate will continue to exist. Focusing on The Theory of Recollection, this is the fill that knowledge is innate, and cannot b e learned. What you said about the soul. They come back that after it has die harding the body it no considerableer exists anywhere, but that it is destroyed and dissolved on the day the man dies.(Cebes)4 Socrates contingent for this argument is that our soul with holds this knowledge and we are natural with it. Although we do not remember things before we are born it is said that sealed experiences can nevertheless re awaken authentic aspects of that memory.For example in The Meno, Socrates raises a mathematical problem to Menos knuckle down son, who does not have any prior training in mathematics. The boy thinks he knows the issue but Socrates makes him see that his initial hypothesis of the answer is wrong. By purely asking questions, Socrates gets the striver boy to state the right answer. Socrates insists that he has not told the boy the answer, but through questioning the slave boy, Socrates aided him to recollect the slave boys own knowledge of mathematics.5 Furtherm ore Socrates also makes another example of recollection by stating if one were to come in contact with a picture or an cessation of a beloved then it would be simple to recall said person to the mind. This is the idea of how recollection works. If we examine this example and change legitimate aspects of it, it does not become very clear either.If a picture of a beloved one was shown to a unknown quantity it is safe to say that the stranger would not be able to recall any thoughts, memories or detail of the person in the shoot because they do not have any prior knowledge of said person. In order for the stranger to do so they would have had to been in acquaintance with that person in the photograph at one time or another. This act of resemblance is easier for mortal who already knows the person. Plato also uses an example of a vehicle stating that before a vehicle is mobile there were parts that were do to turn it into a vehicle such as the engine, steering wheel, and etcetera . He continues to make the point that purge after the vehicle breaks down that these pieces will still remain to create the next vehicle. According to Plato ordinary objects participate in this recollection of platonic forms themselves these things remind of us platonic forms because the soul once encountered it. He persists that the soul must have existed because of this.All of which are ways to reiterate that this idea that knowledge is imprinted on the soul may have lustiness to it. In essence there was time where only the soul existed and it in short found a home in a body of another, fashioning it now a mortal being(birth). Reincarnation is not only a rebirth of the soul but the neutralization of the knowledge one attain before birth as well. Then there is a period where our a priori knowledge seems to disappear only to reappear when it is recalled. It is claimed that we lose our knowledge at birth then by the use of our senses in tie with particular objects we recover the knowledge we had before.However, this relationship between the perception of fair objects and our capacity of finding knowledge can produce a serial publication of confusions concerning whether it is possible to recall all prior knowledge. The problem in this argument and certain aspects of this notion of an immortal soul is that even if it were proven that we were make up something before birth, and something will remain after death, it is not for certain that it is the soul.Through scientific study it is understood that the body is also made of atoms it is also known that atoms existed before the body and will continue long after the body. The atoms that make up the body will in fact be recycled as well just as Socrates has the concept that the soul lives on. Plato and Socrates were correct on the idea that certain parts were in pre-existence does come to make one existent and will exist after death. Although even with this idea one cannot be certain that the soul is one of the p arts of the body that is solely immortal.There is not adequate information apt(p) by Plato or Socrates to make this argument suffice. We must raise an head of why is that in order to think of perfection we must have already had to have seen it? Aside from philosophical views, in everyday life we encounter imperfections and it is safe to say that the mind is capable of wondering what something of beauty, perfection, or a perfect circle appears to be. The mind is also able to think about these ideas even if the soul has never encountered it. If these arguments prove anything it proves that The Theory of Recollection and The Cyclical Argument both attest that the soul existed before but the arguments do not prove that the soul will continue to exist after this life.Works Cited1. Cahn, M Steven. Classics of Western ism. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc 20062. Morgan, K, 2000, Myth and Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Plato, Cambridge Cambridge University Press.3. Partenie, Catalin , Platos Myths, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . (April11th2010)1 Cahn- Platos, The Phaedo2 Quote from the philosopher Phaedo3 Socrates theories discussed by Plato4 Phaedo 70a5 Platos The Meno