My Immortal Soul Essay

Plato has ro procedured galore(postnominal) readers with the work of a great philosopher by the name of Socrates. Through Plato, Socrates lived on generations later on his time. A topic of Socrates that m either go away rest to controvert is the persuasion of an amaranthine psyche. Although at that place ar various whole works and dialogues about this topic it is found to be best explained in The Phaedo. It is sensible to say that the mind may wonder when one dies what ex fermently happens to the honey thought, the giver of life often thought of as the very fragrance of life does it live on beyond the corpse, or does it die with it? Does the individual have noesis of the past if it really does live on? In Platos The Phaedo, Plato recounts Socrates final days out front he is put to death.Socrates has been wrapped and sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens and not following the rights of Athenian religion.1 Socrates death brings him and his fellow ph ilosophers Cebes, Simmions, Phaedo, and Plato into a perplex dialogue about this c erstwhileption of an afterlife and what does one have to look forward to after death. terminal is defined as the separation of the tree trunk from the disposition. In The Phaedo death has deuce notions a common one which is the basic creative hypothecateer that the someone dies and the physical, idea that the psyche separates from the personate after death.The soul is most comparable that which is divine, perennial 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, knowledge is not something one came to understand but it was rattling imprinted on the soul. Knowledge to Socrates was an unchanging eternal truth, something that could not be acquired done experience and time. Socrates friends believe that after de ath the soul disperses into the air like a breath. On the contrary Socrates believes that the soul is in fact immortal and if one wants to become 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 arguments for this idea of an immortal soul.These arguments were to illustrate and verify that death is not the dying of body and soul collectively, but 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 exercise of life in this argument, and therefore cannot die and it is besides to be seen as virtually never-ending. Next is The Theory of Recollection, which insists that at birth everyone has knowledge that the soul experienced in another life. Meaning that the soul would have had to be hold upent before birth to bear this said knowledge.Th e Form of bearing Argument confers that the soul bears a resemblance 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 perchance the dim-wittedst of all. It reiterates Socrates thoughts of the body and soul, in saying that when the body dies and decomposes our soul allow for continue to exist in another world.3Since the soul is immortal it has been recycled many times, and has excessively experienced everything there is to experience, for Socrates and Plato this idea of retrospect 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 organism recycled. Grasping the understanding that things come to be beings by being composed of something pre-existing and when ceased these move ordain continue to exist. Focusing on The Theory of Recollection, this is th e claim that knowledge is innate, and cannot be learned. What you said about the soul. They think that after it has left the body it no longer exists anywhere, but that it is washed-up and dissolved on the day the man dies.(Cebes)4 Socrates point for this argument is that our soul with holds this knowledge and we are born with it. Although we do not remember things before we are born it is said thatcertain experiences can nevertheless re awaken certain aspects of that memory.For causa in The Meno, Socrates raises a mathematical riddle to Menos slave boy, who does not have any prior learn in mathematics. The boy thinks he knows the answer but Socrates makes him see that his initial hypothesis of the answer is wrong. By purely asking questions, Socrates gets the slave 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 Furthermo re Socrates also makes another example of recollection by stating if one were to come in contact with a usher or an item of a beloved then it would be simple to recall said individual to the mind. This is the idea of how recollection works. If we examine this example and change certain aspects of it, it does not become very clear either.If a picture of a beloved one was shown to a stranger it is estimable to say that the stranger would not be able to recall any thoughts, memories or details of the person in the photograph because they do not have any prior knowledge of said person. In invest 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 someone who already knows the person. Plato also uses an example of a fomite stating that before a vehicle is mobile there were parts that were make to turn it into a vehicle such as the engine, steering wheel, and etcetera. He continues to make the point that plane after the vehicle breaks down that these pieces give still remain to create the next vehicle. According to Plato ordinary objects record 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 validity to it. In essence there was time where provided the soul existed and it soon found a home in a body of another, making it now a mortal being(birth). Reincarnation is not only a rebirth of the soul but the neutralization of the knowledge one attained 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 connection with particular objects we recover the know ledge we had before.However, this relationship in the midst of the perception of sensible objects and our capacity of finding knowledge can micturate a series of confusions concerning whether it is possible to recall all prior knowledge. The caper in this argument and certain aspects of this notion of an immortal soul is that even if it were samplen that we were made 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 to(predicate) information given by Plato or Socrates to make this argument suffice. We must raise an inquiry of why is that in order to think of matinee idol 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 commensurate 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 Philosophy. Hackett produce Company, Inc 20062. Morgan, K, 2000, Myth and Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Plato, Cambridge Cambridge Universit y 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 refer from the philosopher Phaedo3 Socrates theories discussed by Plato4 Phaedo 70a5 Platos The Meno