The Phaedo by Plato - Assignment Example

Plato’s Phaedo All learning is a process of recollection since we are born with a lot of knowledge, which we forget at birth, and thus we can be made to remember all this knowledge through a process of proper questioning. This notion propagated by Socrates implies that if learning is a process of recollection then man must have existed before and thus it is in agreement with the notion that life is the opposite of death. Death being the opposite of life implies that life comes from death as Socrates argues that everything originates from its exact opposite. Furthermore, the discussion on recollection and death cannot avoid the aspect of immortality, materiality and invisibility, which is discussed in the dialogue of Socrates and his friends. This paper will therefore seek to examine the viability of the claim that all learning is a process of recollection in relation to the other claims made by Socrates that support the notion. The soul must have been in existence long before one is born and therefore before birth the soul has all knowledge, which it had acquired in its previous life. At the time of birth, the soul is forced to take a new body, which is then supposed to be in control of since the body is mortal but the soul is immortal. The body thus relies on the soul, which plays the divine role and acts as a source of authority for guidance in all its endeavors. As a person grows, the soul may start to forget some of the knowledge acquired as the person encounters different situations, which erode some of the information. However, it is worth noting that the information is not fully lost since when a person acquires knowledge either through sight or through other senses the impression of what is being learned will already be in the mind and the soul will reignite the impression. Therefore, a person can only remember that which he already has an impression on.1 The aspect of abstract equality reinforces the idea that all forms of learning are just a mere process of recollection. When human beings acquire any new form of knowledge they usually have to relate it with what they perceive in their minds to be the absolute truth. But where does absolute truth come from since right from the time that a person starts acquiring knowledge he already possess a definition of this absolute. It therefore emerges that a person is born with this knowledge on abstract equality, which implies that the soul must have existed before and thus acquired all such knowledge. The present reasoning thus only refers to the absolute good, justice, beauty and holiness, which must have been received before the time of birth. It follows that what is nowadays called learning is not actual learning but a process of recollecting the absolute truths that had been acquired and therefore it is correct referring it as the process of recollection. The existence of the soul before birth implies that the soul must also exist after death and therefore leads to the conclusion that it is immortal and it does not change. The immortality of soul is in exact opposite with the body, which is material, visible and perishable and cannot exist beyond death. Thus, there is a clear difference between the two and despite the fact that they coexist here on earth the soul is the one that continues to live after death. The soul is therefore superior and does not lose the knowledge acquired rather it stores it and uses it in the different bodies it may acquire. The unchanging and invisible forces that are in charge of the world and that control what happens make the world to remain the same. Nothing changes at all and these forces ensure that a system of order, which is entirely essential for human survival is maintained throughout the world. They ensure that the souls that are virtuous during their life on earth transcend to the next level where they are transformed to souls that dwell with the gods. Socrates actually argues that any true philosopher will refrain from engaging in the pleasures of the body since they only defile the body and they have no eternal value. He argues further that philosophers refrain from pleasures not because of the motivation to accumulate wealth or because of the mere avoidance of wickedness in order to be seen as good people but because they are rationale and they understand the importance of the soul. The philosophers understand that the soul is first received in the body and it has to be consistently encouraged to refrain from the lustful desires of the body until the time when it is separated from the body. In contrary, the soul that is polluted and wicked is attracted by the desires of the body, which encourages it that it is worthwhile fulfilling its desires. This kind of soul believes that absolute truth exists in body form and it does not see the importance of focusing and emphasizing on the soul. This wicked soul after it dies it does not have peace but goes to corporeal life where it is punished in Hades and thus experiences another form of imprisonment. It therefore emerges that only the virtuous soul is immortal and thus it is the one can come back to life and allow recollection of information to take place. The argument by Socrates on learning being a process of recollection of the information acquired is questionable. First all philosophers cannot ascertain his argument that all things originate from their exact opposites and thus life originates from death to be true. This is because it is a common knowledge that when a child is born he does not possess any prior knowledge rather he acquires it right from the first day and therefore his life becomes a life of learning until his death. The information on abstract equality that Socrates argues the child to be born with can be explained as to be obtained from nature as a child grows. Furthermore, his idea indirectly implies that human life is a cycle from death to life and vice versa which is not true. Nobody has ever had experiences of his life before he was born and at the same time, nobody has experiences of his life after death and therefore his claims are not true. Secondly, Socrates claim that human beings forget the information they had acquired previously during time of birth does not hold water and therefore it is not a universal truth. There are no sufficient explanations to proof that during birth there is a process of lose of knowledge, which takes place to make a person forget completely everything. His friends probably were convinced to believe the argument probably because there was no way in which they could proof him wrong. In addition, tests that have been conducted on newborn babies reveal that they completely do not know anything at that time and they are helpless without the help of an adult person. Several explanations seem to be in contrary with the argument of the soul being in a perfect harmony with the body and at the same time the body being in harmony with the soul. The illustration Socrates uses of lyre in explaining the above harmony points out that the harmony comes into existence when the lyre is combined with strings and therefore harmony comes after the lyre. He uses the explanation to point out that soul comes before the body and thus consonance between the two is a product of the initial existence of the soul. However, this line of argument shows that the soul cannot be in harmony with either the body or its parts and thus disapproves his argument. The soul is always in constant fight with the body since in most of the times its desires are opposite to those of the body thus the two cannot be in a state of harmony. Furthermore, a harmony has to be in the state of its constituent elements and cannot exist in a state that is different from the elements but its degree can vary depending on the variations in the parts. However, this poses a challenge to the viability of the entire theory since a soul can only be a soul and it has no degrees of variations like the body and other similar examples. In addition, his argument that the soul takes on many bodies is not correct since if a soul after it has separated with the flesh goes to the underworld then the likelihood of it coming back is minimal. It is therefore evident that Socrates arguments are questionable and there is a high probability that majority of them are not true depending on the way one interprets them. It is impossible for a person to recollect information of events that happened in the past before the person was born and in this case the time when the soul existed in another body. For example, there is no person who can be able to explain the history of Rome by merely recollecting the information without having to acquire the information through his senses of sight and hearing. It therefore follows that if Socrates arguments are correct at all then they are only applicable in the field of logic and maybe in some aspects of mathematics since they are the only ones where there is a possibility of a person recollecting information. Socrates argument in this dialogue and especially those revolving around the existence of different forms seem to be introduced in haste and as thus, there are numerous questions, which are left unanswered. One of these questions pertain the extent to which the different forms exist since the degree of variability is not explained well in the dialogue. This is made further uncertain by the fact that Socrates uses non-material considerations such as those on justice, holiness and beauty among others to explain his argument. The argument on abstract equality also is not clear since he does not provide a detailed explanation of the meaning of abstract equality. Finally the portrait of the death of Socrates and the events surrounding his death show that he was completely detached from his body since he did not seem to care about it when he was about to drink the poison and actually after drinking it. This has resulted to some people misinterpreting his teachings and generally philosophy as a teaching that encourages people to hate their bodies and thus not take care of them. Despite the above criticism on Socrates argument, there is a lot of evidence to show that most of the critics stem from wrong interpretations of the dialogue and thus Socrates arguments are valid. Many philosophers seem to be in agreement with majority of his arguments and especially those revolving around the soul and immortality. It is actually believed that over seventy percent of the people in the world believe that the body is temporary and that the soul is immortal. This is so because they can see that death is inevitable and when a person dies it is evident that unless the body is embalmed it soon decomposes and becomes dust. On the other side there is a lot of information that show that the soul goes to the unseen world after death where it lives forever. This supports Socrates assumption that there are two worlds, one that is seen which is the current world and another one that is unseen which is underworld. It is widely believed in accordance with Socrates arguments that the unseen world remains the same since it is not affected by temporal events that happen on the physical world. All this evidences support the argument on all learning being a process of recollection of past knowledge, which is important since it affects all other theories originating from Socrates’ teachings. Therefore, it can be seen that just as Socrates argued all learning is a process of recollection of knowledge that had been acquired previously. This has been elaborated through the discussion on the theory of opposites, recollection and the argument on affinity and the theory on the unchanging invisible forms. All of the above arguments despite the few critics on their applicability are relevant and form an integral part of philosophy. Bibliography Plato, Phaedo ( 72c-83c) 114c-11b) translated by F.J church. New York: Macmillan/ library of arts, 1951. Read More