Phaedo: Separation Of The Soul From The Body

Nam Le
Phil 210
9/22/09
Phaedo

1. a) 60b: 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,
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 weren't the case, the world would be dead. If all living things died and new living things weren't made from those that had died, the number of dead would overpower the finite number of the living. Transmutation of
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. Zeno's 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. 69) 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