Socrates Teachings on Soul

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the life of the Greek philosopher Socrates and how he set the standard for all subsequent western philosophy through his critical reasoning, by his unwavering commitment to truth and through his own example of his life. It examines how his influence on philosophy as a way of life is of central significance for he symbolizes the uneasiness of the relationship between society and philosophy. It evaluates the four doctrines of Socrates on life: virtue is knowledge, the Elenchus (method through which Socrates exposed his interlobular ignorance), the claim to ignorance and his view of the soul - the main focus of the paper. Socrates believed that the soul is eternal and in order to prove his argument he spent his life training it to separate itself from the basic requirements of the body.

From the Paper:

"However, the first is called the Argument from Opposites. Here he argues that all the things that comes to be from out of its opposite, with the intention, for example, he says that a tall man becomes only tall due to the reason that earlier he was short (7). In Plato's dialogue, The Phaedo, Socrates holds that "life must be lived with a view to the cultivation of the Soul"."

Likewise, death is the opposite of life; therefore, living things come to be out of dead things and so going vice versa too. Thus, this argument and claim of Socrates means that there is a continuous cycle of life and death, resulting to the fact that when one dies they actually do not remain dead forever, but instead come back to life after a specific time frame. Wile on the other hand, Christians believe no life after death and have the opinion that once a human is dead there is no comeback as claimed by Socrates (7)."

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