How convincing are Platos arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo?

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How convincing are Plato’s arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo?

Plato’s Phaedo begins with Echecrates asking Phaedo of Elis about what happened in Socrates’ cell during his final hours. A number of Socrates’ friends were present; amongst them were two Pythagorean philosophers, Simmias and Cebes. The dialogue set forth in Phaedo, is narrated to us through Phaedo by Plato. The account begins with Socrates engaging in dialectic with Simmias and Cebes, discussing the afterlife.

Socrates argues that the soul is detachable from the human body, and that a “true votary of philosophy is always pursuing death and dying.” However, he also explains that it would be wrong to commit suicide because man is not the sole possessor of his body, and so he does not have the right to take his own life. Socrates then discusses why a philosopher would look forward to his own death, and this is because “the thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself” and “this purifies the soul from preoccupation of the senses and physical desires”. So considering that death is the separation of the soul from the body, the greatest acquirement of knowledge and wisdom is gained after death. This is better understood through the words of Socrates in Phaedo: “He who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements when they associate with the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge.” Hence why Socrates claims that “death is the ideal home for the soul.”

Socrates then puts forward four different arguments to his friends why the soul must be immortal. The first of these is the Argument of Opposites (also known as the Cyclical Argument), where Socrates states that “everything comes to be from its opposite,” as wake comes from sleep. He asks his friends to assume that one existed before a certain time, but the body did not, which would lead to the conclusion that one does not equal one’s body, and so the soul and the body are two different entities. He then asks Cebes if there exists an opposite to living, and Cebes replies, “being dead.” Socrates then claims that since being alive and being dead are opposites, it can be concluded that life comes from death, just as death comes from life. However, this argument does not provide a proof that the soul exists after death.

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Cebes notices that the above argument has a significant resemblance to Socrates’ doctrine of recollection (from Plato’s book, Meno), where Socrates’ argues that there is something which he calls a “true opinion” in each man which can be discovered or ‘recollected’ by questioning him, and this ‘true opinion’ can then be converted into knowledge by further questioning. This leads on to Socrates’ next argument for the immortality of the soul: the Theory of Recollection. The theory states that if man is able to answer a question with a correct answer without knowing or having learnt of the subject before, the man ...

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