Plato: Immortality of the Soul

In dialogues ranging from the Symposium to the Timaeus, Plato appears to propose that the philosopher’s grasp of the forms may confer immortality upon him. Whatever can Plato mean in making such a claim? What does he take immortality to consist in, such that it could constitute a reward for philosophical enlightenment? And how is this proposal compatible with Plato’s insistence throughout his corpus that all soul, not just philosophical soul, is immortal? In this chapter, I pursue these questions by (...) applying the distinction between general and earned immortality to the Phaedo and the Symposium. I argue that, while Plato attributes general immortality to all soul in the Phaedo, in the Affinity Argument, he proposes that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality through contemplating forms. It is this form of immortality that Plato claims is unavailable to humankind in the flux passage of the Symposium. At the same time, in the ascent passage, he holds out the possibility – albeit with significant reservations – that the philosopher’s soul may transcend its humanity and achieve earned immortality through its communion with the form. (shrink)

This paper concerns the place of Plato’s eschatology in his philosophy. I argue that the theory of reincarnation appeals to Plato due to its power to explain how non-human animals came to be. Further, the outlines of this theory are entailed by other commitments, such as that embodiment disrupts psychic functioning, that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, and that the soul is immortal. I conclude by arguing that Plato develops a view of reincarnation as the chief tool that (...) the gods have to ensure that virtue is victorious over vice throughout the whole cosmos. (shrink)

This paper concerns Plato’s characterization of the body as the soul’s tool. I take perception as an example of the body’s usefulness. I explore the Timaeus’ view that perception provides us with models of orderliness. Then, I argue that perception of confusing sensible objects is necessary for our cognitive development too. Lastly, I consider the instrumentality relationship more generally and its place in Plato’s teleological worldview.

I argue that Plato thinks that the soul has location, surface, depth, and extension, and that the Timaeus’ composition of the soul out of eight circles is intended literally. A novel contribution is the development of an account of corporeality that denies the entailment that the soul is corporeal. I conclude by examining Aristotle’s objection to the Timaeus’ psychology and then the intellectual history of this reading of Plato.

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...) (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

The interest of the young Brentano for the philosophy of Plato is linked to his Aristotelian studies. Brentano understands Aristotle’s philosophy in deep continuity with Plato’s one. This continuity is clear in one of the most controversial points of Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle: the nature of God and the status of human soul. Brentano finds in both Plato and Aristotle a personal, monotheistic and creationistic God who also creates human soul, which is immortal. This approach is explained in some texts (...) from the youth of Brentano, although there are signs indicating that he sustained it until the end of his life. In his interpretation of Plato’s God, we see that Brentano identifies Him with the Idea of Good and the Demiurge. The Idea of Good would have even created the other Platonic Ideas, which should be understood as gods. (shrink)

At Phaedo 86b7–c2 Simmias puts forward the theory that the soul is the attunement of bodily elements. Many scholars have claimed that this theory originates in the Pythagoreans, especially Philolaus. The claim is largely based on their reading of the Phaedo, since we have scarce doxographical evidence. In this paper I show that the dialogue in question does not constitute any evidence for the Pythagorean origin of Simmias’ attunement theory, and that it rather represents the theory as stemming from a (...) materialistic world view that had become widespread among people at that time. I also pursue the question how and why, then, the attunement theory was able to attract many people, by examining its relation to Socrates’ affinity argument. (shrink)

I argue that Plato distinguishes between personal immortality and immortality of the soul. I begin by criticizing the consensus view that Plato identifies the person and the soul. I then turn to the issue of immortality. By considering passages from 'Symposium' and 'Timaeus', I make the case that Plato thinks that while the soul is immortal by nature, if a person is going to be immortal, they must become so. Finally, I argue that Plato has a psychological continuity approach to (...) personal identity. Thus, for Plato, a person becomes immortal by avoiding reincarnation and securing for themselves psychological continuity forever. (shrink)

In De Anima I 4, Aristotle describes the intellect (nous) as a sort of substance, separate and incorruptible. Myles Burnyeat and Lloyd Gerson take this as proof that, for Aristotle, the intellect is a separate eternal entity, not a power belonging to individual humans. Against this reading, I show that this passage does not express Aristotle’s own views, but dialectically examines a reputable position (endoxon) about the intellect that seems to show that it can be subject to change. The passage’s (...) argument for the indestructibility of intellect via an analogy to perception does not fit with Aristotle’s own views. Aristotle thinks that perception operates via bodily organs, but denies this of understanding. He also requires separability from the body for indestructibility, something this analogy rules out. However, Aristotle’s Platonist interlocutors may well endorse such an argument. My dialectical interpretation best resolves the interpretative difficulties and explains its place in the larger context, Aristotle’s discussion of Platonist views on the soul. Aristotle presents a challenge to his insistence that the soul is subject to change, dialectically resolves that challenge, and then ends by reserving the right to give a different account of the intellect. (shrink)

Bessarion’s major philosophical treatise In Calumniatorem Platonis is a systematic approach to Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy written in response to George of Trebizond’s Comparatio Philosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis, which attacked Plato’s authority and proclaimed Aristotle’s superiority. A striking example of this is Bessarion’s attempt to defend Plato against George of Trebizond’s accusation that Plato did not offer sound arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul. In this article, I focus on Plato’s proof of the immortality of the soul (...) in the Phaedrus (245c5-246a2), as presented by Bessarion in the eighth chapter of the second book of the In Calumniatorem Platonis. The Phaedrusʼ proof is based on soul’s definition as a self-mover: since the soul always moves itself, it is the source of motion and is, therefore, ungenerated, imperishable and immortal. Bessarion’s interpretation of the Platonic proof gives the impression that Bessarion cites the text where Plato argues that the soul is immortal (245c5-9), and he summarises the text where Plato argues that the soul is ungenerated and imperishable (245d1-246a2). I argue, however, that Bessarion does not offer an original reading of the Phaedrus’ proof, and I also propose that Bessarion’s interpretation reflects his attempt to harmonize the Platonic and the Aristotelian views. (shrink)

Plato’s tripartite soul plays a central role in his account of justice in the Republic. It thus comes as a surprise to find him apparently abandoning this model at the end of the work, when he suggests that the soul, as immortal, must be simple. I propose a way of reconciling these claims, appealing to neglected features of the city-soul analogy and the argument for the soul’s division. The original true soul, I argue, is partitioned, but in a finer manner (...) than how we encounter it in our everyday lives. (shrink)

The possibility of a harmony between the psychological doctrine of Aristotle and that of Plato marks a significant issue within the context of the debate surrounding Aristotle’s putative opposition to or harmony with Plato’s philosophy. The standard interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of the soul being purely hylomorphic leaves no room for harmonisation with Plato, nor does a functionalist interpretation that reduces Aristotle’s psychological doctrine to physicalist terms. However, these interpretations have serious drawbacks, both in terms of ad-hoc explanations formulated in (...) the developmentalist mode, and the misconstruing of some of the fundamental features of Aristotle’s psychological doctrine. A dualist interpretation that accepts Aristotle’s doctrine of some part of the soul being properly incorporeal, separable and immortal overcomes these drawbacks and, significantly, opens the door for Platonic harmonisation. Furthermore, it can be shown that the kind of immortality in question is also in line with the Platonic stance, due to a deep similarity between the conceptions of metaphysical and moral personhood held by Plato and his student. However, this Aristotelian dualism is not Platonic dualism simpliciter. Rather, it is best understood in terms of the division of labour between Aristotle and Plato suggested by the Neoplatonic commentators generally, and Simplicius in particular. I argue that though questions surrounding these issues and particularly the issue of reincarnation remain, an account of Aristotle’s psychological doctrine as dualist and in harmony with Plato’s view of the soul can be shown to be stronger than both standard hylomorphic and functionalist accounts, both exegetically and philosophically. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that we can better understand Plato’s Phaedo, if we don’t concentrate solely on the hints of Pythagoreanism among the characters and their doctrines, as though that were the principal key to the dialogue’s dialec- tical targets. I suggest that the dialogue is intended to make us think of the meta-physics of at least one other Presocratic predecessor, besides any Pythagorean influence (which may be much less than has been thought). Not least among the thinkers of (...) whom we are reminded is Heraclitus. In the Phaedo, Plato invites us to explore the limitations of these earlier metaphysical views, and to consider how far they can or cannot make space for the capacity of the soul to direct the body, to make decisions, to grasp eternal truths and potentially to survive in perpetuity beyond the decay of the body. (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three contemporary (...) ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

The paradigm according to which the cosmos is ordered by the demiurge is characterized in the Timaeus as ‘Animal Itself,’ while παράδειγμα in the vision of Er from the Republic denotes the patterns of lives chosen by individual humans and other animals. The essay seeks to grasp the animality of the paradigm, as well as the paradigmatic nature of animality, by means of the homology discernible between these usages. This inquiry affirms the value within a Platonic doctrine of principles of (...) persons over reified forms, of modes of unity over substantial natures, and of agency over structure. (shrink)

The theme of Soul, World, and Idea is the meaning of immortality and eternality for Plato as seen in the Republic and Phaedo. It offers a reinterpretation of the platonic ideas and the immortality of the soul as wholly within lived experience.

The aim of this paper is to explore the consequences of accepting the immortality of the soul with regard to moral behavior. Philosophers from different periods and fields offer a variety of arguments which prove the immortal nature of the soul based on ethical theories, such as happiness is the end of mankind, man’s incapability of fulfilling his final purpose, the posthumous award of divine justice and so on. Through a critical appraisal of different but representative philosophical approaches to immortality (...) presented by Plato, Kant and Petros Brailas-Armenis, this paper aims to show that there is a strong interaction between ethics and psychology; the idea of eternal life has a deep moral meaning as an incentive for being virtuous. Therefore, both knowledge about and belief in the immortality of the soul can serve as a springboard for an ethical life. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Simmias' famous epiphenomenalist analogy of the soul-body relation to the harmony and strings of a lyre leads to Socrates' initial refutation and subsequent prolonged defense of soul's immortality in the Phaedo. It also yields in late antiquity significant treatments of the harmony relation by Plotinus and Porphyry that present a larger context for viewing the nature of harmony in the soul and the psycho-somatic compound. But perhaps the most detailed treatment of the musical analogy, and certainly the most radical, is (...) to be found in Gregory of Nyssa's De Hominis Opificio. Gregory's remarkable development of the musical instrument analogy provides a multi-layered analysis of interrelated causality on the mechanistic, physiological, psycho-somatic and intellectual/spiritual planes. Gregory not only sees mind/soul and body as radically equal and yet multilayered in their mutual development; he also refuses to restrict mind to the brain alone, for all physiological systems, in his view, are holistically and individually expressive of mind's activity. Gregory's theory is more innovative than Augustine's view of the mind/soul-body relation and, in my view, the most important account between Plotinus and Aquinas. (shrink)

Plato’s use of afterlife myths is often viewed as an abandonment of rational discourse for a coercive practice designed to persuade citizens to be concerned about the condition of their souls by appealing to their worst fears about the afterlife. But such interpretations overlook the frequently critical tenor of Plato’s myths. In this paper I develop the claim that Plato appeals to muthos as a means of critiquing various specific logoi by focusing upon the relationship between the myth of the (...) earth in the Phaedo and the four logoi about immortality that precede it. I argue that these logoi fail to be persuasive because they rely upon a construal of the relationship between body and soul that denies them meaningful reference to the lives and deaths of embodied beings. The myth of the earth provides a critical engagement with the perspective from which Socrates and his interlocutors have produced these logoi. (shrink)

In Plato’s Apology (29a-b), Socrates agues that he does not fear death; indeed, to fear death is a sign of ignorance. It is to claim to know what one in fact does not know (Ap. 29 a-b). Perhaps, Socrates suggests, death is not a great evil after all, but “the greatest of all goods.” At the end of the dialogue, after the judges have voted on the final verdict and Socrates has received the death penalty, the philosopher considers two common (...) views of death: that death is a long dreamless sleep and that death is a journey to another place - Hades. According to Socrates, either of these views of death would be acceptable to him; the one, because he would receive a wonderful rest with no dreams to disturb him; the other, because he would be able to talk philosophy with those who had gone before with impunity. In this paper, I will examine Socrates’ view of death, and I will argue that, according to Socrates, there could be a third perspective on death that will not only make him truly immortal in a certain way, but will also immortalize the practice of Socratic philosophy. Hence, Socrates embraces his sentence because dying at the right time and dying in the right way provides him the possibility of a good death. <br><br>. (shrink)

Psiche sets up a close-knit comparison between the psychology of Plato's Republic and Freud's psychoanalysis. Convergences and divergences are discussed in relation both to the Platonic conception of the oneiric emergence of repressed desires that prefigures the main path of Freud's subconscious, to the analysis of the psychopathologies related to these theoretical formulations and to the two diagnostic and therapeutic approaches adopted. Another crucial theme is the Platonic eros - the examination of which is also extended to the Symposium and (...) Phaedrus - taken up explicitly by Freud in relation to the concept of libido. Finally, the author also addresses the two themes - of, inter alia, a metapsychological nature - inherent to the moral dimension. -/- Psiche istituisce un confronto ravvicinato tra la psicologia della "Repubblica" di Platone e la psicoanalisi di Freud. Convergenze e divergenze vengono discusse in relazione sia alla concezione platonica dell'emersione onirica dei desideri repressi, che prefigura la via regia per l'inconscio di Freud, sia all'analisi delle psicopatologie correlate a tali impostazioni teoriche, sia ai due approcci diagnostici e terapeutici adottati. Altro tema cruciale è l'eros platonico - la cui disamina viene estesa anche al "Simposio" e al "Fedro" - ripreso esplicitamente da Freud in relazione al concetto di libido. L'autore affronta, infine, le due tematizzazioni, di natura metapsicologica e non solo, inerenti alla dimensione morale. (shrink)

To unravel the intricacies of the last argument of the Phaedo for the immortality of the soul, the reader has to peel away successive presuppositions, his own, Plato's and not least the presupposition that Plato very skilfully portrays as being shared by Socrates and his friends.A first presupposition is the reader's own. According to our modern ways of thinking, a soul that is immortal, if there is such a thing, is a soul that lives forever. That presupposition is not shared (...) by Socrates and Cebes (Socrates' interlocutor in the final argument). A soul that survives separation from the body, once or a number of times, is held to have survived death and therefore to be immortal. But it does not follow that it will live forever. For a soul to live forever, it must be shown to be not only immortal, but imperishable. Only if the soul is both immortal and imperishable can the assembled company be sure that the Socrates who is talking to them now will still be living when, after sunset, he has drunk the hemlock and can talk to them no more.The modern reader who has divested himself of the presupposition that immortal and imperishable are mere synonyms, and therefore appreciates the need for an argument designed specifically to prove that the soul is imperishable and not merely immortal, has nonetheless to be aware of a second presupposition, a presupposition shared by Socrates and his friends which restricts the meaning that the modern reader might otherwise suppose to be conveyed by the word 'imperishable'. Both Socrates and Cebes, as portrayed in the Phaedo, take it for granted that the only time when the soul might perish is the moment of her separation from the body. Provided it can be shown that the soul will survive separation from the body, no matter how often the body is taken from her, the soul, so they are happy to assume, will have shown herself to be both immortal and imperishable.We do not have to suppose that this second presupposition is shared by the author of the dialogue. Plato's subtle but insistent restriction of the moment when the soul might be threatened with extinction to the moment of her separation from the body has been deliberately designed to alert the reader to a way of thinking which Socrates, Cebes and Echecrates all take for granted, but which Plato does not necessarily invite the reader of the dialogue to share.The restriction is nonetheless essential to the structure of the argument. It is because Socrates does not envisage a possible extinction of the soul at any moment other than the moment of separation from the body that he is able to present a soul that is essentially alive as immune to the death which separates soul from body, however often such a separation may occur, and as therefore (so he claims) not only immortal but imperishable.In presenting that argument, how far has Plato deliberately foregone any attempt to prove that the soul is imperishable subsequently to the moment of her separation from the body? Socrates argues that the soul is unaffected by the death of the body because she is essentially alive. He does not argue that she is immune to destruction or extinction because she is essentially existent. In the face of Plato's silence, in the Phaedo and elsewhere, the modern reader has to hold in abeyance a third and final presupposition, that only a being whose essence it is to exist can of its nature never not exist.To understand the dialogue is therefore no easy matter. The reader needs to distinguish Socrates as the mouthpiece of Plato from Plato as the author of the dialogue. At the same time the modern reader has to distinguish the Plato of history from a fictional Plato who shares our own ideas and our own preconceptions, including the concept of a being cuius essentia est esse. An intricate double task, which other modern readers of the dialogue have so far not even attempted. (shrink)

Two Concepts of the Soul in Plato's Phaedo is a fresh study of Plato's psychology with particular focus on his arguments for the immortality of the soul. Through detailed textual study, this new work examines the structure of the dialogue making explicit the nature of the argumentation within the text and its relation to Plato's other accounts of immortality.

This paper aims to achieve a better understanding of what Socrates means by "συμφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν" in the sections of the "Phaedo" in which he uses the word, and how its use contributes both to the articulation of the hypothetical method and the proof of the soul's immortality. Section I sets out the well-known problems for the most obvious readings of the relation, while Sections II and III argue against two remedies for these problems, the first an interpretation of what the (...) συμφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν relation consists in, the second an interpretation of what sorts of thing the relation is meant to relate. My positive account in Section IV argues that we should take the musical connotations of the term seriously, and that Plato was thinking of a robust analogy between the way pitches form unities when related by certain intervals, and the way theoretical claims form unities when related by explanatory co-dependence. Section V surveys the work of IV from the point of view of the initial difficulties and suggests further consequences for the hypothetical method, including the logical relation between the συμφωνν[unrepresentable symbol]ν and διαφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν relations, and the need for care in ordering the results of a hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper aims to achieve a better understanding of what Socrates means by "συμφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν" in the sections of the "Phaedo" in which he uses the word, and how its use contributes both to the articulation of the hypothetical method and the proof of the soul's immortality. Section I sets out the well-known problems for the most obvious readings of the relation, while Sections II and III argue against two remedies for these problems, the first an interpretation of what the (...) συμφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν relation consists in, the second an interpretation of what sorts of thing the relation is meant to relate. My positive account in Section IV argues that we should take the musical connotations of the term seriously, and that Plato was thinking of a robust analogy between the way pitches form unities when related by certain intervals, and the way theoretical claims form unities when related by explanatory co-dependence. Section V surveys the work of IV from the point of view of the initial difficulties and suggests further consequences for the hypothetical method, including the logical relation between the συμφωνν[unrepresentable symbol]ν and διαφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν relations, and the need for care in ordering the results of a hypothesis. (shrink)

Phaedo of Elis was well-known as a writer of Socratic dialogues, and it seems inconceivable that Plato could have been innocent of intertextuality when, excusing himself on the grounds of illness, he made him the narrator of one of his own: the "Phaedo". In fact the psychological model outlined by Socrates in this dialogue converges with the evidence we have (especially from fragments of the Zopyrus) for Phaedo's own beliefs about the soul. Specifically, Phaedo seems to have thought that non-rational (...) desires were ineliminable epiphenomena of the body, that reason was something distinct, and that the purpose of philosophy was its 'cure' and 'purification'. If Plato's intention with the "Phaedo" is to assert the separability and immortality of reason (whatever one might think about desire and pleasure), then Phaedo provides a useful standpoint for him. In particular, Phaedo has arguments that are useful against the 'harmony-theorists' (and are the more useful rhetorically speaking since it is only over the independence of reason that Phaedo disagrees with them). At the same time as allying himself with Phaedo, however, Plato is able to improve on him by adding to the demonstration that reason is independent a proof that it is actually immortal. (shrink)

In this dissertation I propose a new method of interpreting Plato's Phaedo based upon Socrates' description of the "summoner" at Republic 522e--525a. I elucidate the summoner paradigm as a four step process in which one notices an apparent contradiction in perception, separates two opposites from one mixed perception, realizes the priority of the opposites, and recognizes their transcendence. In the Republic , its primary purpose is to move the subject from pistis to dianoia and from dianoia to nous. The summoner (...) method of interpretation looks at how Plato sets up contradictions within the text and implicitly argues for models of resolving them. ;Using this method of interpretation, I, in performing a close reading of the Phaedo, argue that early in the dialogue Plato introduces contradictions and suggests models of resolution which he later applies in the arguments for immortality of the soul as he attempts to resolve the soul as summoner. He avoids contradiction in the cyclical argument by treating the soul as if it were a substrate in which characteristics alternate and in the recollection argument by applying the summoner paradigm in an attempt to separate out form. When neither of these approaches is successful, he uses the affinity argument to show that the soul is some kind of an intermediate. In the final argument, Plato resolves contradiction by locating the ontological level of the soul and altering the summoner paradigm so that it separates out intermediates, thus making the soul an intelligible object that may be grasped by the intellect. ;In conclusion, I argue that, though I show limitations of all of the arguments individually, each plays a significant role in directing and refining Plato's inquiry into the nature of the soul, and that the arguments work dialectically to help us move from opinions of the soul to some degree of knowledge of its status and degree of intelligibility. (shrink)

This study argues both that the proofs are ultimately unconvincing and that Plato was aware of the problems. The Phaedo is shown as a truly dialectical philosophical conversation about the immortality of the soul.

Despite the bad press, Plato has a valid argument for immortality from three premises: (1) if the natural evil of a thing cannot destroy it, then it is indestructible; (2) the natural evil of the soul is vice; and (3) vice cannot destroy the soul. These premises are contestable, of course, but Plato has some good reasons for advancing them.