The “cyclical argument” of the Phaedo imparts the ideology Socrates had in regard to the immortality of the soul and his views about death, which he was about to face himself. Among a gathering of his most faithful followers, his friends are astonished that Socrates is not desolate about his ill fate, but rather, he is delighted with it. Socrates proclaims that the life of a philosopher is merely a preparation for death since the mind is most pure when the pressures of the body is felt least. He even informs them that he believes in the soul and the afterlife. After his friends vocalized their skepticism of his beliefs, he begins a discourse in which he attempts to prove the immortality of the soul. In the “cyclical” argument or the argument
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Our soul is immortal and our body is mortal and therefore when our bodies die, our soul will continue to live. The Opposites Argument is also known as the Cyclical Argument because it clarifies the cycle of death and life. The cycle includes the dead being created from the living and through death, the living are created from the dead through their birth. The soul extracts itself completely unscathed from the physical body at our death then enters another body at birth. The soul, which always brings life, is eternal and enduring. The resulting conclusion is not solely immortality – it is an boundless cycle of reincarnation. If life goes into death but death never back into life, then there will be no life and all things will remain in the state of death. Further, if there is no everlasting cycle of death and life, and if there are a finite number of souls, then ultimately every living thing will be dead. However, we should not rush death. Socrates believed that man should never kill himself since we have no ownership of ourselves. He emphasized that men belonged to the gods and he says, “I believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we men are a chattel of theirs” (62b). The ownership our death is in the gods’ hands, not
Our soul is immortal and our body is mortal and therefore when our bodies die, our soul will continue to live. The Opposites Argument is also known as the Cyclical Argument because it clarifies the cycle of death and life. The cycle includes the dead being created from the living and through death, the living are created from the dead through their birth. The soul extracts itself completely unscathed from the physical body at our death then enters another body at birth. The soul, which always brings life, is eternal and enduring. The resulting conclusion is not solely immortality – it is an boundless cycle of reincarnation. If life goes into death but death never back into life, then there will be no life and all things will remain in the state of death. Further, if there is no everlasting cycle of death and life, and if there are a finite number of souls, then ultimately every living thing will be dead. However, we should not rush death. Socrates believed that man should never kill himself since we have no ownership of ourselves. He emphasized that men belonged to the gods and he says, “I believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we men are a chattel of theirs” (62b). The ownership our death is in the gods’ hands, not