Introduction
For millennia, Plato’s famous dialogue “Phaedo” (in which Socrates strives to convince his disciples that one’s soul is immortal) never ceased being referred to as such that represents a high philosophical value. There is nothing incidental about it – the close examination of Socrates’ arguments, in this regard, will reveal them being logically sound and consistent with people’s unconscious desire to have their lives extended into eternity. The author of this paper will outline all four of the philosopher’s lines of reasoning that a person’s soul is immortal while promoting the idea that it specifically the second one, concerned with one’s possession of an a priori knowledge of what even the most abstract notions stand for, which should be deemed the most convincing. The rationale behind this suggestion is that, as it will be shown later in the paper, there is indeed a good reason to believe that this particular argument correlates well with what appears to be the practical implications of the most recent discoveries in the field of quantum physics.
Four Arguments
Opposites Argument
The philosopher’s first argument is reflective of his understanding of the dialectical nature of the relationship between causes and effects. According to Socrates, all the opposites in the world cannot exist without each other, for they derive out of each other while defining each other’s essence. Without the notion of “greater”, we would not have the notion of “lesser”, without the notion of “heat” it would be impossible to explain what the notion of “cold” stands for, etc. Life constantly breeds death, and, consequently, death must give birth to live. The philosopher uses this observation as such that proves the transmigration of souls: “The living come from the dead… no less than the dead from the living and, if that is so, it seems to be a sufficient proof that the souls of the dead must be somewhere whence they can come back again” (Phaedo, p. 63). Thus, according to the philosopher, the fact that the “unity of the opposites” accounts for the most fundamental principle of the universe’s functioning, is alone suggestive of the existence of a spiritual realm, in which people’s souls lead their “afterlife”.
Recollection Argument
All individuals, suggests Socrates, are endowed with some kind of intrinsic knowledge, which they seem to possess since the time of their birth, and which can be “recalled” while they interact with the surrounding reality’s physical emanations. The philosopher exemplifies the process with respect to how people instantly recall their loved ones, after having glanced at some physical items that used to belong to the former. Therefore, our whole lives are nothing but the process of a continual recollection of our long-lost essence, as individuals. Hence, the phenomenon of deja vu, as described by Socrates: “When a man sees or hears or in some other way perceives one thing and not only knows that thing but also thinks of another thing of which the knowledge is not the same but different” (Phaedo, p. 64). In its turn, this implies that we have existed prior to ending up incarnated in our present physical bodies. According to Socrates, one’s soul is nothing but a “thing-in-itself”, much like the ideas of beauty, ugliness, tallness, hungriness, perfection, etc. This serves as yet another indication of the soul’s indestructibility.
Affinity Argument
As it is argued by Socrates, each physical object has both the constantly changing, unsteady side to it and the ideational (intrinsic) one, not affected by any changes. The philosopher sees the latter as an abstract idea that defines the spatial nature of this object’s observable extrapolations. The first of the mentioned sides is perceived by one’s bodily senses, and the second by the rational part of his or her soul. According to Socrates, this can be viewed as yet another proof of the soul’s immortality: “When the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging, and being akin to this, it always stays with it” (Phaedo, p. 70). The philosopher reasons that if it is possible to preserve one’s body after the person’s death by mean of embalmment, then it should also be possible for his or her soul to live on into posterity, especially if the individual has been leading a morally virtuous lifestyle throughout the entirety of its earthly existence.
Form Argument
According to Socrates, it is namely the realm of abstract ideas (forms) that defines the quality of their materialized emanations and not the other way around. To prove that it is indeed the case, the philosopher points to the fact that whereas it is possible for us to comprehend the meaning of just about any abstract notion, we cannot grasp the discursive significance of a physical object as a “thing-in-itself”, not reflective of any theoretical conceptualization of what this object really is.
This again can be seen as suggestive of the fact that the material dimension derives from the spiritual one and that it is specifically the latter that defines the fluctuating dynamics within the surrounding physical reality. To substantiate this idea even further, Socrates uses fire as an example. The notion of fire relates to the notion of heat, but never to the notion of coldness. The same can be said about the soul – since the notion of soul is synonymous with the notion of life, one’s soul cannot have anything to do with death, by definition. Consequently, this implies that a person’s soul exists forever, unlike what happened to be the case with his or her body: “If the deathless is indestructible, then the soul, if it is deathless, would also be indestructible… the soul is most certainly deathless and indestructible and our souls will really dwell in the underworld” (Phaedo, p. 92). When assessed from the casuistic perspective, such a point of view will indeed appear to make much sense.
Discussion
As it was pointed out earlier, there is much cause-effect integrity to just about every of Socrates’ four arguments. Therefore, it would prove a rather impossible feat ascertaining that the philosopher clearly favored one of them above the rest. Nevertheless, it appears that it was namely the Form Argument that contributed the most towards lessening the fear of death in Socrates. The reason for this is that there is a strong moralistic undertone to it, and as we are well aware, he firmly believed that once in the “afterworld”, one’s soul will be held accountable for its earthly deeds. Nevertheless, as far as the author’s opinion is concerned, the most convincing of all four Socrates’ arguments is the second one (Recollection Argument). The reason for this is that, as was implied earlier, this argument is consistent with what many contemporary physicists suspect to be the operational quintessence of the surrounding physical reality. The rationale behind this suggestion can be articulated as follows.
In 1927, Werner Heisenberg formulated his famous Uncertainty Principle, which is fundamentally impossible for an outside observer to be aware of the elementary particle’s location and speed at the same time, as the very act of observation changes the spatial coordinates of this article. The Principle’s foremost discursive implication is that for as long as it remains unobserved, just about every atom can be simultaneously found in many different locations – something that presupposes the virtual existence of what can be named as the “realm of unmaterialized possibilities”, which determines the developmental vector of the physical reality’s observable extrapolations. In other words, when we focus our attention on just about anything, we bring this “anything” to life – there is no reality outside of what our attention is focused on at a particular second.
It is understood, of course, that this suggestion goes to support the validity of Socrates’ assumption that there is a higher reality out there, made of purely abstract ideas – “unmaterialized possibilities”. It will be logical to assume that these virtual possibilities are, in fact, the source of non-experiential (intuitive) knowledge of things in an individual. As the philosopher argued: “Either we were born with the knowledge of it (abstract idea), and all of us know it throughout life, or those who later, we say, are learning, are only recollecting, and learning would be recollection” (Phaedo, p. 66). Both Heisenberg’s principle and Socrates’ insistence that the spiritual reality is superior to the physical one help to explain why people often experience the elusive sensation of having been at a particular location earlier while visiting it for the first time in their life – something that is being commonly discussed in terms of a deja vu.
It may be the case that the universe is nothing but an extremely realistic three-dimensional hologram of something two-dimensional, which can be a digitally written computer program. That is, we all may be living inside a computer game of some sort – the suggestion that substantiates the legitimacy of Socrates’ belief in the soul’s immortality from the materialistic perspective. In a computer game, it is always a matter of time before a particular character in the quest of killing as many evil aliens as possible dies. This, however, does not presuppose this character’s factual death – all that needs to be done to bring him or her back to life is for the player to restart the game.
If a parallel can be drawn between one’s life and a computer game, both the deja vu phenomenon and Socrates’ Recollection Argument will indeed make much sense – people get to “relive” their lives over and over. Therefore, it is thoroughly explainable why many of them are unconsciously aware of what is going to happen to them in the future. What has been mentioned earlier also explains where one’s intuitive knowledge of things is contained – it resides in the “realm of unmaterialized possibilities”, which can also be conceptualized as a software algorithm, used for designing a computer game. Thus, Socrates’ belief in the soul’s immortality appears to be fully compatible with what the ongoing scientific progress teaches us about the universe and its operational principles.
Nevertheless, the fact that Socrates’ second argument for the soul’s immortality indeed appears to be well-substantiated, does not mean that the philosopher’s line of reasoning, in this regard, should be deemed to represent an undisputed truth-value. One of the argument’s apparent weaknesses is that, even if we assume that a person’s soul can survive being detached from his or her body, this does not necessarily mean that the former is 100% indestructible. After all, what has been said earlier implies that the soul is, in essence, information. In turn, information is a material category – the very process of preserving just about any type of information involves a physical matter in one way or another. For example, typographic ink enables the preservation of information on the page of a book. The sequence of digits is used for writing computer software, with these digits being “made” of the electrically charged and fully material elementary particles (electrons). If one’s soul is a computer program, “embodied” multiple times through the game, it will exist only for as long as it remains materially codified in some way. If this ceases to be the case, the “immortal” soul will dissipate into the surrounding entropy with no trace.
Another weakness of Socrates’ Recollection Argument is that, despite being logically sound, it is principally non-falsifiable and consequently – non-scientific. After all, this argument does not contain any suggestions that could be proven either true or false in conjunction with one’s experiential insights, concerning the subject matter in question. In plain words, there have been no confirmed cases of people coming back from the dead to tell us whether there an afterlife or not. The semi-mythical figure of Jesus and the cinematographic account of zombies stalking people in the dark, do not count. What this means is that, even though many individuals will indeed be likely to find Socrates’ second argument emotionally comforting, there can be very little practical value to it. The best indication of this statement’s validity is the fact that, unlike Socrates, most mentally adequate people do not welcome death as the actual key to discovering a “higher truth” about their own existence.
Moreover, the term “soul” conveys essentially the same message as does the notion of “individuality”. The formation of a person’s individuality, however, cannot be discussed outside of what accounted for the affecting circumstances at the time, on the one hand, and this individual’s biological instincts, on the other. To exist means to act as an “intelligent animal” and Socrates’ conceptualization of the soul denies even a slight possibility for the latter to be concerned with sexual mating, securing access to nutrients, and aspiring to impose its dominance on others.
Conclusion
As it was suggested in the introduction, there is a certain rationale in singling out Socrates’ second argument in defense of the soul’s immortality as the most powerful of all four. After all, it is namely this specific argument that stands out perfectly compatible with the theory of “holographic universe”, which draws heavily from the recent breakthroughs in physics. There are a few conceptual drawbacks to this argument, but it still addresses the issue well. Thus, it will be appropriate to conclude this paper by confirming the sheer depth of Socrates’ philosophical insights – all in full accordance with the paper’s initial thesis.
Reference
“Phaedo.”Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, 2008, Web.