“It’s Best For Philosophers To Be Dead”
A deep dive into Plato’s argumentation that death is the beginning of insight.
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“Death” was the first topic we discussed in theoretical philosophy at university. What a delightful and pleasant topic to start!
But I wasn’t wondering because of the seriousness of the topic — it was the criticism other students expressed. Of course, I didn’t agree with Plato either, but during the lesson, it showed me how many different viewpoints exist regarding just this one issue, not even speaking of other topics. I didn’t think about criticizing the really obvious things — but others did, and I understood that the arguments from this antique text are outdated.
The dialogues constructed by Plato(428/7–348/7 BC) are very unlikely to be historically correct. Early dialogues reflect how he viewed the historical Socrates(469–399 BC), while later works tend to contain Plato’s opinions personified by Socrates. His work “Phaedo” is one of the later dialogues he wrote.
So we have to look at it as if Plato is speaking — through the person of Socrates.
Plato’s “Phaedo” tells the dialogue between Socrates and his friends in the prison cell during the last hours before he had to die. The dialogue is fictive, showing Socrates presenting arguments and his friends agreeing and asking further questions.
Being content having to die
His friends, Simmias and Cebes, ask Socrates why he isn’t sad or angry about his death sentence, but why he seems content to die. He answers that every true philosopher would be happy to be dead. He presents the premise that death is (per ancient Greek definition) the separation of body and soul, and the soul lives on forever (of course, this is controversial today).
The body is for the philosopher just a distraction from attaining true insight and knowledge, the philosopher argues. He concludes that when he dies, he frees himself from his body and gets ready to achieve his ultimate goal, attaining true insight.
You may ask now why one isn’t just killing oneself as soon as he has understood this matter of fact. Plato has an answer for that as well: The Gods gave us this life — and we have to respect that; which leaves room for further questions: Who says the Gods are good Gods?
Also, why is the philosopher even trying to attain insight during his lifetime when he’s not really able to receive it anyway if it’s only possible for him after his death to attain true knowledge?
Plato answers that one has to prepare the soul by trying to achieve insight during its life — so that the soul is ready and willing to continue searching for insight and doesn’t end up completely overwhelmed after death (because the soul was used to the body and all of a sudden the soul is freed).
At this point I asked myself how he would know what he is saying now — this very argument about the fact that the soul is immortal — is actually true if he claims not being able to get insight during his life. That would contradict himself.
Is the soul immortal?
In the dialogue, a friend of him asks how he can be so sure that the soul lives after his body is dead and is not dying at the same time with the body. Plato presents the argument of the counterparts: Every counterpart must evolve out of its very counterpart.
For example, if something becomes beautiful, it was ugly before. If something grows bigger, it was smaller before, etc. Then the philosopher asks one of his friends what he thinks the counterpart of life or living is. His friend Cebes admits: Being dead. Thus, Plato concludes that before something can live, it has to be dead. And it’s the same with when someone dies, then the soul can live.
Well, a student from my course opposed that here, Plato is comparing apples and oranges: First, he presents examples of everlasting, somehow timeless properties: Big — small, pretty — ugly, but then he jumps to the conclusion that it must be the same with life and death.
Well, I think it isn’t the case that the soul is dead during life when the body lives and after the body dies, the soul begins to live.
Not to confuse soul and spirit, as another student interposed. With “soul” Plato means everything from our awareness, our thoughts or generally, our consciousness.
And I would argue that it is obviously not the case that life arises out of death. If we look at humans or mammals in general, it’s the case that living mothers give birth to a living child. So life arises from life, not from death.
To sum up Plato’s “counterpart- argument”, one could bring it in a general form:
If things which are F evolve into the counterpart of it, not–F, but they don’t evolve back from not–F into F, then at some point there are no F things left, and all things are not–F.
But it would be absurd that there are only not-Fs. Therefore, not-Fs need to evolve back into F.
This form of argumentation is a reductio argument or proof by contradiction. In this case, Plato means:
Supposing, everything remains dead after it has died.
Then at some point, everything is dead.
It’s absurd that at some point everything is dead.
Hence, not everything remains dead after it has died.
The “recollection argument”
With the previous argument, Plato proves that the soul lives on after death, but he goes on and claims that the soul is immortal.
So he wants to prove that the soul lives already before the body begins to live. He presents the “recollection argument”: Whenever we perceive something, he says, and we have to think about another thing related to that, that’s recollecting. For example, if we see two things which are exactly the same, we think automatically about the idea of sameness, as I am the same as myself.
And this perception begins right after our birth, Plato claims.
These ideas we get reminded of when we perceive something, he argues, need to be in us already before our birth. Because we immediately have these ideas of higher states or properties in mind, right after we’re born. And therefore, the philosopher concludes, the soul lives already before the body is born. Thus, the soul is immortal.
One could question that the ideas, or this knowledge, needs to be in us before our birth. What if we get this knowledge right at the time when we are born? Plato argues, then we would get this knowledge and would forget it right away (so that we can only remember it later). That would be absurd.
Another point of criticism is: Is it always recollecting when we perceive something and then think of something related to it? One student called it just fantasy if I see something and think of something else. And, do we really always think of the idea of sameness when we see some equal things? Or, when we see something beautiful, do we automatically think of the idea of beauty?
The final argument to prove that the soul lives on after death, through affinity
Plato’s friends aren’t content yet: They insist that with recollection he has only proven that the soul lives before the body is born. Who says it continues to live after one’s death?
Well, Plato argues that there are things that are separable and inseparable. And there are concrete beautiful things, and ideas, like the idea of beauty.
While the ideas are invisible, everlasting, and remain always the same, it is more likely for them to be inseparable, and the concrete, visible things itself are various things and change over time, so those must be separable. The philosopher brings examples of humans, horses, and coats, they all behave differently and are concrete things.
He goes on and states that the body can perceive those actual, physical things, and is similar to them, while it’s more natural for the soul to look at the invisible, inseparable, steady ideas, and is hence more similar to them.
When a human dies, he argues, the body is by its very nature visible, separable, and changing, and therefore it dies.
The soul, on the other hand, is by its very nature inseparable, invisible, and everlasting, and lives on forever.
