Socrates_And_The_Immortality_Of_The_Soul

Socrates And The Immortality Of The Soul Most people grow up in the shadow of at least one of the major religions, all of which suppose some kind of survival beyond death. They therefore usually take it for granted that we can "know what we are talking about" when we speak of immortality or less grandiosely of survival after death. We assume sense has been given to talk of the soul as something correlative with the body, as Plato does when the discussion starts and death is characterized as the beginning of the separate existence of the soul and of the separate existence of the body. Although Socrates has no proof that the soul does exist after the body dies, his arguments can be convincing to many by using the dialectic. The dialogue between Socrates and the others begins with a longer statement of the type of defense Socrates gave in the Apology for thinking that death would be preferable to life for one with his interests: the desire for wisdom is frustrated by the body in various ways, so one can hope to get much further without the body's impediments. The philosopher's life is then a practicing to die [67-68, 80e-81]. The real argument starts when Cebes socrates, soul, body, one, simple, death, friends, socrates’, person, must, lyre, harmony, doctrine, composite, proof, hot, exist, come, cold, theory, point, immortality, existence, cebes, things, therefore, something, prove, process, opposites, life, first, example, being, before, awake