Plato's dialogues are recorded in many books:
Socrates was sentenced to death by court and mass jurors.
Fedo and some of Socrates' students came to the prison early in the morning to visit the teacher. Socrates was about to be executed, and Socrates very calmly and calmly talked to his students about his views on death, saying a phrase that was widely praised by later generations: "Philosophy is the practice of death."
This is also a widely misunderstood, often understood negative outlook on life. To truly understand, we need to pay attention to the process of argumentation for this conclusion.
Socrates first gave the definition of death: "Death is the separation of the soul from the body."
According to Socrates, true philosophers care only with the soul, even if the price is to get rid of the body. Socrates said that there is absolute goodness, absolute beauty, and absolute justice in this world, but these absolute knowledge cannot be detected by the senses of the flesh alone. Man's flesh will perish, will produce pain and desire, and will cause man to create many obstacles in the pursuit of truth. Therefore, man should take the interference of the flesh to obtain the truth that the flesh cannot obtain. Death, on the other hand, can achieve a complete separation of body from soul.
Then, the belief that man should be physically responsible for the truth is presupposed, and under such a definition and derivation, the purest soul refers to the soul that is completely and completely separated from the body, and even free from any physical interference. The undisturbed soul is the basis for obtaining the sameness of truth without contamination.
Then the more thorough the soul, the easier it is to obtain pure truth. The pursuit of the highest truth is the lifelong goal of the philosopher, so it is eventually deduced that the philosopher is practicing death.
The difference to be made here is that there are two basic premises that are preset here
1 Passionate about the pursuit of wisdom and in the pursuit of wisdom can recognize people who break through and get rid of all obstacles
2. The flesh is an obstacle to those who seek wisdom
Death is a disembodied soul referring to pure truth and not to physical formal death. Death is used to refer to pure truth, and if a person acquires pure truth, then he is the equivalent of death.
The soul is immortal
But then another problem arises, death can separate the body from the soul, but we can also say that man dies like a lamp, the body dies, the soul does not exist, then the pure truth cannot be obtained, and this matter cannot be based. On this basis, Socrates argues that the soul is immortal.
Socrates proposed that everything in the world is opposite, and the opposites are transformed. For example, big changes from small, fast from slow, weak from strong, and so on. In the same way, life and death are opposed to each other and transform into each other, just like the four seasons of nature.
If there is only from birth to death and not from death to life, then everything in the world will die, and there will be no more living things.
The converse argument is used to prove that the soul of the deceased must exist in another world.
The recall argument is used to prove that the soul exists before a person is born
Already exists.
" Memories " are the restoration of one's own knowledge. This knowledge is acquired before people are born, but they are forgotten at the moment of birth, and later people restore the knowledge they once had by virtue of their perception of concrete things. How do you understand this seemingly bizarre argument? Socrates' "memories" may be closer to "associations", such as when seeing the objects owned by the family, the image of the family will naturally emerge in everyone's heart. More crucially, when people use experiential feelings to perceive concrete things, they already have absolute images in their minds.
Socrates' students argue that even if Socrates had proved that the soul existed before a person was born, it could not prove that the soul does not perish after it is detached from the body. Thus, Socrates concludes with a single argument of essence. Socrates said that if something is not composite, it should be consistent and unchanging, such as "true goodness" and "true beauty", these absolute essences are single and independent, so they cannot be changed; Compound things will decompose, such as the naked eye can see the carriages, horses, clothes and flesh and other objects often change. The soul is single and indivisible, and by analogy from the above points, the soul should remain after death.
Here you go
Let me take a look at the derivation of Socrates' view of the soul
The premise is as follows:
Experience: Big changes from small, fast from slow, weak from strong, opposite each other, transforming each other.
Deduction: If everything dies, then there will be no living creatures living. And there are living things in this world. To explain this phenomenon, to put forward the hypothesis that life and death are opposites and transform each other. Therefore, after the death of one life, there must be a soul that exists in another world with the knowledge accumulated in the previous life, until reincarnation is the next life, but according to experience, we are born a blank. Thus, the setting is that the soul reincarnates as the next life, and at the same time necessarily forgets all knowledge, and can only rely on the memories of the current life to regain it.
Experience: What is visible to the naked eye is compound things, and composite objects will die.
Missing premise: Objects must exist because objects, whether visible or invisible to the naked eye. Determined to be a thing by its presence.
Deduction: The composite thing is extinct, the soul is not dead. The soul is not a composite, the soul is a single essence
The soul exists after leaving the body. Man recalls knowledge in the soul through experiences in reality. Such as virtue, knowledge these are all single essences
Socrates' claim to the immortality of the soul derived from the pursuit of truth refers to the spiritual existence of a certain quality.
In order to prove the immortality of the soul, he again developed a concept of reincarnation
Doesn't it feel familiar? Somewhat like Hinduism, socrates' constant pursuit of purity is likely to be an important basis for Socrates' student Plato to establish a theory of ideas.
At last
I finished this article in March this year, but it has not been uploaded, I heard that it was plagiarized to the headlines, so I updated it here, if found, I will definitely pursue legal responsibility.