In Plato's Phaedo there are three arguments advanced in favor of the immortality of the human soul. The first argument, or Cyclic Argument, is that the soul passes from the living to the dead, and then again from the dead to the living, in a sort of cycle between the two. The second argument, or the Remembrance argument, is that all human beings have some prior knowledge that was known to them without having been taught, so they must have acquired this knowledge at a time when their soul was in a previous life. The third argument, or Affinity Argument, is that all human souls have the ability to see or access things other than our bodies, and that therefore all human souls continue to live even when the body ceases to exist . Plato uses three arguments, the Cyclic Argument, the Remembrance Argument, and the Affinity Argument, to support the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Plato's first argument in the Phaedo, the Cyclic Argument, refers to a sort of cycle for the human soul. Plato says, “Yes, he said. And there are many other processes, such as division and composition, cooling and heating, that equally involve switching in and out of each other. And this applies to all opposites, even if not always expressed in words: are they generated from each other, and is there a passage or process from one to the other?” referring to this cycle he refers to, which the human soul continually goes through (Phaedo p. 454). To make this topic simpler and easier to understand, we can say that all things are created through their opposites, and that in doing so two opposite processes also exist. For example, something that is small can only become large through a process of increase, and something that is large can become small only through a process of decrease. If these opposing processes did not exist, everything could only exist in one state and the other state, the opposite state, could not exist. Therefore, since the living and the dead have been opposed, everything that is alive must become dead, and everything that is dead must become living. For the reasons of this topic, the human soul is part of a cycle in which it continually oscillates between being alive and being dead. When the human body is deceased, the human soul becomes dead, and then comes back to life when it enters a new human body. The Argument from Remembrance, Plato's second argument, is a slightly more difficult concept to understand. This argument, on the Phaedo, says that "If it is true that we acquired our knowledge before our birth, and lost it at the moment of birth, but then, by the exercise of our senses on sensible objects, we recover the knowledge that we have had once before, I suppose that what we call learning will be the recovery of our knowledge, and surely we should be right in calling this memory” (Phaedo 75e-76) explains here that human beings are already born with the knowledge that we have obtained in previous times to be in the state of life. When one sees something and remembers something about it, it shows that a previous knowledge of that thing must have existed. Therefore, the human soul must have existed in a previous time. to make it possible to remember knowledge before one's birth. Without the pre-existence of the soul, humans would not have this prior knowledge and would not be able to recall these memories of previous states of life. Therefore, the human soul must have been in a state of life at a previous time in order to remember. The third topic in the.
tags