Phaedo free essay sample

Socrates remarks that pain and pleasure may seem to be opposites since we never experience both at the same time, but they are intimately connected to one another. Rarely, do we find one without the other. The pleasure that he experiences from being released from his chains is directly related to the pain that he experienced from being enchained. b) 67b: Death is the separation of the soul from the body. We shall be closest to knowledge (in live) if we refrain as much as possible from association with the body and do not fall to bodily pleasures but live a purified life. Philosophers are only concerned with the well-being of their souls and the best kind of wisdom comes from reason alone, when distanced as far as possible from the distractions of the body. Opposites contrasted by each other, each is necessary for the recognition of the other. c) 68b: Only a philosopher who does not fear death can truly be said to possess courage and self-control. The philosopher exchanges pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, fears for fears for wisdom, which is the only thing of true value. This pursuit of wisdom will cleanse the philosopher of all the impurities of bodily life and its passions, preparing him for a better afterlife with the gods. Contrary properties from different points of view. d) 70d: Argument from Opposites. Everything comes to be from its opposite. For example, for an object to become bigger, it must have become smaller beforehand and has become bigger out of this smallness. There are two forms of generation between opposites, where each opposite comes into being out of the other opposite. Between big and small there are the processes of increase and decrease. Opposites contrasted by each other, each is necessary for the recognition of the other. e) 72b: Transmutation of elements. There is opposite to living. Being dead is opposite to living. All dead things go from being living to being dead through the process of dying and all living things must go from being dead to being living through the process of coming to life. If this werent the case, the world would be dead. If all living things died and new living things werent made from those that had died, the number of dead would overpower the finite number of the living. Transmutation of elements. 2. Appearances deceive us. There is nothing we can gain from looking at the senses. Everything from appearances if false, so we must do away with appearances. (66 c-d) Something cant come from nothing. Our souls must exist in the underworld and cannot come from nothing to reanimate living beings in the world. Souls do not simply dissipate and drift away after death, but they reemerge in the living and are found in Hades. 71d 72a) Nothing comes from nothing, but from something. The souls of the dead must be somewhere so that they can be reborn again. Philosophy draws the soul away from the senses which deceit us into rational understanding which guides us towards what is true and just. It steers us clear of bodily pleasures and the pains of bodily life. Each pleasure and pain is like a nail that binds the body and soul together, which causes it to become impure and less able to escape into the divine company of the Gods. . a) Sensory things can never be truly equal, because, equal stones or equal sticks may look equal from one point of view and unequal from another. Thus, we would never be tempted to suggest that Equality itself is unequal. Therefore, the sticks/stones cannot be the same thing as Equality, since they can sometimes be unequal whereas Equality itself never can be. b) We are aware of sticks and stones through our senses and sense their deficiency with respect to true Equality. There are no instances of perfect equality in the sensible world, yet we have this notion of Equality for as long as we have been alive.. We do not learn of Equality through our senses, but weve obtained a knowledge of it before we birth. If equal things are different from Equality and yet can bring Equality into our minds, they somehow remind us of the Form of Equality. In other words, we are aware that sticks and stones fall short of perfect equality, but to be aware that they fall short means that we already have an idea of what it means to be perfectly equal in our minds. Learning is just recollection of things (forms) we already know and have in our minds. (pg. 64-66) 4. Parmenides and Zeno both influenced Plato in his theory of the Forms, which was intended to satisfy the Parmenidian requirement of metaphysical unity and stability in knowable reality. Zenos paradoxes aim to prove that Being is single, finite, motionless, and unchanging by examining the absurdities of the opposite common-sense hypothesis that several things exist. For example, (pg. 9) the distinction between the visible and the invisible. The body is visible and deceived by the senses, whereas, the soul is invisible and searches for understanding and knowledge on its own. The soul is divine and rules whereas the body is mortal and is ruled. Thus, the conclusion is that the body is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never consistently the same, whereas, the soul is divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and always the same as itself. The Forms must be incomposite since they are constant and invariable and particular objects in the world are variable and composite. Thus, the Forms are invisible and can only be apprehended by the mind, whereas, the material things can be sensed by the body. Echecrates is a Pythagorean who influenced Plato through mathematical constructs that everything in nature can be analyzed by numerical constituents. He viewed geometry as the basis of study of any science.