Phaedo Presents Arguments Both For and Against the Immortality of Soul.

The first argument put forward by Socrates for the immortality of the soul is based on the argument of the opposite and the process of becoming. At this point in the dialogue Socrates is addressing Cebes and he starts by telling him how all things with opposites come from there opposite. Socrates says “For example when a thing comes to be larger, it must, surely come to be large from being smaller before.” Cebes agrees with Socrates in this example and Socrates then begins to elaborate on the argument by saying a process between the two extremes takes place in all things that come to be from their opposites, furthermore Socrates says that there is always to opposite processes. An example of this would be travelling up: we travel upwards from down; and likewise for travelling down: we travel downwards from up. Next Socrates applies this thesis of becoming to the more relevant example of life and death. In terms of “becoming”, we can denote that dead things come to be from those which are living, just as living things come to be from those which are dead. One additional point that Socrates adds to this argument is how the transition between opposites must be non-linear: “If there were perpetual reciprocity in coming to be between one set of things and another then soon all things would exist in that lonely state”. By this he means that if things came to be from their opposite in a linear fashion then eventually coming to be would be eradicated as there would be no reverse back into the opposite state. From this Socrates has proved that coming to be is a “cyclinical” process and it enforces the argument that the soul is immortal by stating life and death are part of a cycle and without one the opposite would not exist. In terms of this argument the soul would appear to be sustained in death, rather than perish, and comes back into a body where it is sustained in human life.

One idea which would contradict this argument  could be that if we have two states, life and death, and the soul occupies one state at any given time, then it would be logical to assume that the soul can not exist in both states simultaneously . Taking this into account we can conclude that the soul would have had a first instance in this cycle, where it occupied a particular state; or a first time that the soul existed, on either side of the continuum, and thence it is also logical to assume that there will be a last. This would assert that the soul, whilst having the capacity to exist in death, would still be perish eventually and hence defies its immortality.

The next argument present in the Phaedo with relevance to Immortality of the soul concerns learning and recollection. Socrates wants to demonstrate how learning is in fact remembering. His claim is that when we see something, for example two stoned which are of similar size, we would judge then to be not quite equal. Because we have never known a true state of equality in this life, to have an understanding of what equality is, we must have already had an understanding if it before we were born. Socrates would refer to the equality we encountered before birth as the form of equality. He would further say that when our soul joined the body at birth, our perception (from the body) polluted our understanding of equality and matter only strives to imitate the forms:

“We must previously have known the equal, before that time when we first, on seeing the equals, thought that all of them were striving to be like the equal but fell short of it”

Simmias and Cebes accepted this view however were reluctant to accept that the soul exists after death. Socrates then integrates this argument with the argument of becoming and tells them if then accept the argument of becoming then it is inevitable that the soul will exist after death as well as before.

The final Argument that Socrates gives for the immortality of the soul is based on his two realms of existence. He tells Simmias and Cebes that the first and most pure realm of existence attains the following qualities: invisible, divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself. He then says the second and flawed realm of existence attains these qualities: visible, human, mortal, unintelligible, multiform, soluble, never consistently the same. With these two realities in mind he likens the soul to the former realm and the body to the latter.