Socrates Condition Of The Soul

After Socrates finishes his argument that the soul is like the Forms and therefore is immortal, Simmias interrupts and tries to disprove Socrates’ argument. He begins by comparing Socrates’ argument to a harmony in relation to its instrument (85e-86a). Simmias suggests that a harmony is to a soul as a lyre is to the body. He reasons that, if we accept Socrates’ line of argument, the harmony must not only preexist the lyre but also live on after it is destroyed. I find this reasoning to have one true quality but also one false quality. First, the harmony is indeed invisible, so in that way it does resemble a soul (see Premise 3 above). However, one of the conditions of a soul was that it did not change (see Conclusion 2 above), which does not …show more content…
Socrates first explains how you can make a fuller harmony by making it harmonized. He ventures to say that each harmony can be uniquely harmonized, depending on its components and parts (93a-b). I find this explanation plausible and therefore treat Premise 1 as factual; for instance, a better constructed wooden violin will naturally sound better than a cheap plastic violin, therefore proving that harmonies can sound better or worse. Socrates consequently deals with the soul. Referring back to the Theory of Forms, Socrates says that they “have agreed… that one soul is not more and not less a soul than another” (93d). He derives this conclusion by rationalizing that, since the soul is divine and shares characteristics with the Forms, it cannot be either more or less a soul (80a-c). Since Premise 2 is based off of the Theory of Forms and by extension the Theory of Recollection, neither of which are the topic of this paper, Premise 2 will be assumed to be true. If I were to challenge this premise, I would be challenging Socrates’ entire argument. After stating Premise 2, Socrates gives an example of his reasoning. He compares wickedness to disharmony and virtue to harmony, explaining then how one soul cannot have more wickedness or virtue than another (93d-e). He proceeds to make a counterargument against Simmias, saying that, if they were to accept Simmias’ assertion, the soul would admit no disharmony nor wickedness. This comes from an early claim regarding the Theory of Opposites. The Theory of Opposites essentially states that opposites do not admit each other but they produce each other (70e-72a). Thus, Socrates’ lines of reasoning are coherent because if the soul were a harmony, it in no way could be disharmony or wickedness. Yet, we previously proved that the soul is