Phil.

3310 Midterm Exam Zack Viator

Mallik 10-28-14

2
Section II Medium Answer
II-2 Carefully explain two of the arguments in Phaedo that Socrates uses to prove the
immortality of the soul. Do you find either or both of these arguments convincing? Why
or why not?
Socrates sits in a jail cell waiting until he is executed; there has been a delay.
While he waits he talks with his colleges on the immortality of the soul, and discusses
who we are, what should we be, and who will we become.
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Do we believe that death is
this, namely, that the body comes to be separated by itself apart from the soul, and the
soul comes to be separated by itself apart from the body?
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The group agrees to this
point, although Socrates asks if thats all it is.
In the first argument The Argument from Alternation, Socrates establishes that
things come from their opposites, weaker from the stronger and smaller from larger.
These opposites have two pairs of processes, from A to B, and from B to A, from hot to
cold, or separation and combination. To change from one to the other there is always a
process present, while we might not have a name for the process it is necessary for things
to have a set path to go between each others form. To be awake comes from sleeping,
and to sleep comes from being awake. Of the two processes, one is going to sleep, the
other is waking up
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sleep obviously the counterpart of being awake. Is there an opposite
of being alive in the same way? Yes, death clearly opposite from life. On the same token,
Socrates asks, What comes to be from being dead? One must agree that it is being
alive.
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By accepting this line of reasoning, one must also accept that souls exist in the
underworld. The dead come from living, so life must come from death. Therefore the
souls must live somewhere in order for them to return. For this process to work
effectively a loop is necessary; where a turns into B, at some point the line would have to
turn to return to A, and vice-versa. If the line did not turn, things would always be in the
same state and ultimately everything would be dead, with nothing alive. However that is
not the case in our world, everything that dies must come back to life.
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The second argument I will discuss is the Theory of Recollection. For us,
learning is no other than recollection. According to this, we must at some previous time
have learned what we now recollect. This is possible only if our soul existed somewhere
before it took on this human shape. So according to this theory too, the soul is likely to be
something immortal.
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Socrates uses this reasoning to explain recollection (such as when
you see a lovers lyre) as the images that come into our mind from previous experiences.
But some of the things recollected are not material things, but ideas, such as equal.
Socrates inquires about equal and what it is held to mean. Everyone present understands
its meaning, but when did they personally seek out this information? Socrates says that
these ideas existed inside us since before birth; because equal cannot be acquired by
sense perceptions it must have been present before these perceptions. By accepting this
logic, then the soul must have existed before we where born.

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Phil. 3310 Midterm Exam Zack Viator
Mallik 10-28-14

3
I completely agree with the argument from Alternation, all things must come into
and out of existence. The idea of the circle is very strong, everything we know in this
world preforms some type of circuit (grass grows in the summer, and dies in the winter).
However I am not as convince by the argument from recollection. It seems fallacious the
way Socrates says we must have gained innate knowledge before birth. He talks about
common things that everyone knows, however I think he makes a hasty generalization by
assuming we do not learn these things after our birth. We may not remember learning
these things, or these things may have never been taught. In my opinion there are more
possibilities to gain this knowledge than Socrates accounts for.