The Immortality Of The Soul In Plato's Phaedo

The question of what happens when and after we die is surrounded by ambiguities and uncertainty because no mode of logic or wisdom could possibly extend to such a question. Nonetheless, in Plato’s Phaedo, the character Socrates comes to grips with his death by exploring what death is and why he isn’t afraid to face it. Phaedo begins from Phaedo’s perspective as he tells his fellow philosophers his (and several other companions’) trip to visit Socrates in his cell before his execution. While one would expect Socrates to be glum before his execution he instead delves into a dialogue with his students on how death is not something to fear, but rather what every philosopher is working towards. The scope of the investigation that Socrates takes up turns from whether or not philosophers should await death to the claims of immortality of the soul. To understand where this discussion of the soul comes from, one must understand the idea of death …show more content…
Socrates never proves that the soul is immortal, but rather states that it is much like things that are: “the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, dissoluble” (80b). This does not mean that the soul is immortal, but that there is a possibility that it is. However, this gigantic leap in logic, to assume because one thing is like another that it must contain the properties of the other, makes way for Simmias’ lyre and harmony argument. Simmias uses Socrates’ own faulty reasoning to state that the soul must be destroyed upon death:
“One might make the same argument about harmony, lyre and strings, that a harmony is something invisible, without body, beautiful, divine and divine in the attuned lyre, whereas the lyre itself and its strings are physical, bodily, composite, earthy, and akin to what is mortal. Then if someone breaks the lyre…using the same argument as you…the harmony must still exist”