An Analysis Of Plato's Dialogue Phaedo

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Plato’s dialogue Phaedo is one of his most famous works, as it concerns the death of Socrates and the philosophical concepts associated with his death. The Phaedo dialogue is considered to be a part of Plato’s “middle period” in that it is a firm description of Plato’s philosophical thought and not simply a direct recollection of what was said by Socrates. Plato covers multiple themes, the most important of which being his idea of the “realm of the forms,” arguments for the mortality of the human soul, and a broader theme of a philosophical life being characteristic of a good life (Connolly 1). Being a dialogue, Phaedo is characterized as a conversation between two men: Phaedo and Echecrates. Echecrates is a philosopher who wants to know the story of Socrates’ death, thus he asks Phaedo to recollect the event as he was present at Socrates’ death. The story itself is occasionally interrupted by the two men with short amounts of conversation. The bulk of the dialogue, however, is a narrative story as being told by Phaedo. Within this story, Socrates is the main character. In the narrative, Socrates has a conversation with two men named Cebes …show more content…
Using the example of the “knowledge of the equal,” Socrates states that “if we acquired this knowledge before birth, then lost it at birth, and then later by the use of our senses in connection with these objects we mentioned, we recovered the knowledge we had before, would not what we call learning be the recovery of our own knowledge, and we are right to call this recollection?” (Reeve and Miller 119). For Socrates, the human soul exists in the realm of the forms and it is here that we have knowledge of the universe. It is for this reason that humans often have what seems to be an innate ability to learn and understand the world. According to this argument, the soul is in being before birth, thus it is again proven to be

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