Plato and Death One of the Most

Plato and Death

One of the most influential minds in western philosophy describing this search for meaning was Plato. Plato lived from 422-347 B.C, and was born into an aristocratic family in the city of Athens where he became a student of Socrates, and eventually a teacher of Aristotle. As a student of Socrates, Plato followed the structure of philosophical agreement to ensure a just society - no laws are to be broken despite their relevance. The ability for an agreed upon purpose to structure society, law, is important to both the general populace and to philosophers. This theme of law, self-actualization, and justification of responses, resources, and human thought would run through all of Plato's works. Plato's "Theory of Forms" or "Theory of Ideas" assets that non-material ideas are the basis for truth and fundamental reality, not the material and constantly evolving world we perceive on a daily basis. For Plato, these Forms were essential in formulating his views on the universe and human interaction within that universe. For example, Plato would not deny that we might be looking at a tree, but it is the consideration of that tree -- its color, texture, shape, smell, weight, position, etc. that, once we remove from the tree, is an independent variable from the physical nature of that object -- the tree. As one moves up from images, to material objects, into forms, one eventually reaches a hierarchy, or what Plato termed "Form of Good," the absolute truth of systems (Annas, 2003).

When Plato diverges into the idea of death, immortality, and the position of the soul, he tends to dialog the nature of the afterlife. In the Phaedo, one of the dialogs from Plato's middle period, the tale of Socrates' death is told through one of Socrates' students, Phaedo of Elis. Phaedo was present during Socrates' famous drinking of hemlock, and recounts the ways that Socrates explores various arguments about the soul's immortality so that he may show the world that there is an afterlife in which the soul (the essence of humanity) lives after death. Death is, in fact, a rite of purification from the disease of the body and of culture; it is a place in which better and wiser Gods rule, more noble souls exist, and the processes that make humans evil, jealous, greedy, and all the negative vices, do not exist. "… so far as [death] is concerned, I not only do not grieve, but I have great hopes that there is something in store for the dead… something better for the good than the wicked" (Phaedo, 65a-67d). Rather than constantly fearing death, the good soul should reach out and embrace it as a way of moving on, learning lessons from one plane and applying them in another. For philosophers, especially, loves wisdom, learning, and the pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, by removing the trappings of humanity and moving into a realm of more pure thought in which time constraints do not exist, the true philosopher can only benefit from the lack of "corporeal" constraints: "He who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements when they associate with the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge -- who, if not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of the true being?" (65e-66a).

In fact, there are four major presuppositions given that all deal with the way Plato seems to view the idea of death and the hereafter in four major arguments:

The Cyclical Argument -- So many of Socrates' pupils and colleagues fear death, believing that when the soul leaves the body the "being" will exist no more. Socrates, however, sees the soul as immortal and that the idea of death is as natural as light/dark, hot/cold, and all things in opposition in the universe. Things that are alive become dead, cold become hot, and therefore there is potential for death to reawaken life. "Now if it be true that the living come from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other world, for if not, how could they have been born again…. One falls asleep, then awakens…" (69e-72d).

Recollection -- Socrates' ideas on recollection show that it is possible to find energy in something inert, knowledge out of ignorance (a priori knowledge), etc. For knowledge, the person gained something either from the universe itself, or in a prior life, and is not recalling it. Since the person in Socrates' story can recall truth, there must be life from death…. "but this would be impossible unless our soul had been somewhere before existing in this form of man, here then is another proof of the soul's immortality"(72e-73a).