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Plato on the Soul

by Lee Adams Young

It's not easy to summarize Plato's views. His writings are not cast in systematic form. In his dialogues, Plato's mentor Socrates is often his spokesman, yet does Socrates reveal Plato's full thought? The dialogues contain many metaphors and allegories. And Plato's views change through time.

Plato is to be thanked for founding the subject of philosophy. He tried to master the entire field, yet was still a pioneer. He seemed to have trouble identifying which questions philosophy should answer:

SOCRATES: Meno . . . just see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing.

You argue that a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or

about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to

enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject

about which he is to enquire.

-- Plato, Meno 80e (Jowett 1937)

The Theory of Forms

In his early dialogues Plato argued that things that change are unreal, and cannot be the object of true knowledge:

SOCRATES: How can [there] be a real thing which is never in the same

state? . . . Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge

at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing

abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless

continuing always to abide and exist.

-- Plato, Cratylus 439-440 (Jowett)

This position has not withstood the test of time. Science since Newton-itself the study of sense objects-has shown that there can be abiding knowledge of things that change.

The proper study for the philosopher was not the realm of individual sense objects, but "absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting" (Symposium 211b) Ideas or Forms:

Idea[s] or essence[s], which we define . . . as essence or true existence--

whether essence of equality, beauty, or anything else--are [not] liable

at times to some degree of change [but] are always what they are, having

the same simple self-existent and unchanging forms, not admitting of

variation at all.

-- Phaedo 78c (Jowett)

Let us seek the true beauty: not asking whether a face is fair, or

anything of that sort, for all such things appear to be in a flux; but

let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful.

-- Cratylus 439d (Jowett)

Plato suggests that the abstract Idea of Beauty should be beautiful. If this were true, then the Idea of Evil must itself be an evil notion. I say, rather, it is individual things-such as a face-that are beautiful. Otherwise, we can get universals and particulars mixed up.

Reminiscence

If the world that we see around us cannot be the source of our knowledge of the Ideas, how can we learn of them? In an earlier existence, taught Plato. You and I have immortal souls. Before we were born, our souls dwelt in the realm of the pure Forms. At birth, we tend to forget them. Knowledge consists in remembering the forms under the prompting of sense impressions (Phaedo 75-76).

This theory has few followers today. Of course, we are not born with our minds like blank slates-like Locke's tabula rasa. We are born with many instincts and skills. We are born with the ability to learn languages, and perhaps with a rudimentary vocabulary, having such words as dada, papa, mama, or nana. But most of our general concepts we learn from our elders-who inherited an instinct to teach-and from our experiences.

Why was Plato led to his theory of reminiscence? The chief aim of a person should be to lead a virtuous and happy life. And the goal of society is to be properly governed. These goals are achieved by the person or the governor through knowledge of what is good. Divers opinions of the "good" are inadequate; there must be access to the absolute Form of the Good. This can't be achieved through experience, or the teaching of others who learn by experience. Each person needs to have a soul, which had access to the Good in a prior existence-though only the true philosopher will have successfully recalled this Form. Plato needs the notion of a soul that can exist separate from the body, to show how the state is to be governed.

The Soul

Thus it was to support personal and social morality that Plato devised the scheme of Forms and the pre-existing soul. For him the soul was noble, "more like to the unseen [realm of Forms], and the body to the seen [realm of senses]" (Phaedo 79b). The contrast between body and soul was severe:

The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and

intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the

body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintellectual,

and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.

-- Phaedo 80b (Jowett)

A problem arises here. How can the soul be more like the unchangeable Forms than changeable things, if the soul is itself changeable? In a later dialogue Plato moderated his views, and included changeable entities like the soul in the realm of reality:

Only one course is open to the philosopher who values knowledge and the

rest above all else. He must refuse to accept . . . that all Reality is

changeless; and he must turn a deaf ear to [those] who represent Reality

as everywhere changing. Like a child begging for "both," he must declare

that Reality or the sum of things is both at once--all that is

unchangeable and all that is in change.

-- Sophistes 249d (Ross 1951, p. 109)

The human soul is not comfortable in the human body. Socrates suggests

that the body is the grave of the soul which may be thought to be buried

in our present life; . . . that the body is an enclosure or prison in

which the soul is incarcerated.

-- Cratylus 400b (Jowett)

The body interferes with the soul's pursuit of wisdom:

The soul when using the body as an instrument of perception . . . is then

dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is

confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when she

touches change. . . . But when returning to herself she reflects, then she

passes into the other world, the region of purity, and eternity, and

immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred. [The latter]

state of the soul is called wisdom.

-- Phaedo 79b (Jowett)

Immortality of the Soul

Plato claimed that the human soul lived before birth. Does it also continue to live after death? In that query let us follow the book Plato on Immortality by Robert Leet Patterson (1965). Plato's chief discussion of immortality occurs in the dialogue Phaedo, where he offers four arguments in favor of the idea. The first three arguments, according to Patterson (who embraces Plato's belief in immortality), are weak, so I won't dwell on them long. For example, the second argument states that the soul will continue to exist after death because it existed before birth. Well, most of us do not accept the idea of the experiences of a pre-birth soul. Even if we accepted them, the conclusion of the soul's life after death does not follow.

The proposition that the soul is akin to the eternal Forms (see Phaedo 79b two pages above) is the basis of the third argument. Plato concludes that because the soul is like the immortal Forms, then it must be immortal, too. This would follow if the soul were a Form; but the soul is a particular, while the Forms are universals. The third argument won't hold water.

Patterson urges us to accept Plato's fourth argument for the immortality of the soul. In Phaedo 105, Socrates points out that the soul is the source of life for the body. Thus life is an essential aspect of the soul. Now, life and death are opposite qualities. Therefore, says Socrates, the soul can never experience death. Life cannot be subjected to death, any more than "heat" can become cold, or an odd number may become even.

This argument hinges on another confusion of the universal and the particular. The general concepts Life and Death are indeed opposites. Life and Death are so different that one cannot become the other. But the soul of an individual human being is an individual. You have your memories and I have mine, and our souls are different. So when I die, my soul (the basis for my life) can go out of existence yet Life in general can continue. Even if I and my soul die, that does not mean that Life has experienced Death.

The soul is immortal, Socrates claims, because Life and Death are opposite and inconvertible one to another, just as Odd (concerning numbers) cannot be converted into Even. If "the Odd were imperishable, [then] must not "three" be imperishable?" (Phaedo 106a) This logic is faulty. Relative to a specific number like "three," the Odd is much more general, so the Odd could be immortal yet "three" be mortal.

Imagine that I took some hamburger and made it into three patties. Then I decided that they were too big and changed the hamburger into four patties. Thus an odd number of certain things may be converted into an even number of things-even though the Odd as a concept can't be changed into the concept of Even. So there is nothing to prevent a person's soul from experiencing death, even though the concept of Soul is the principle of Life, which is the opposite of the concept of Death.

Consider the following analogy. Suppose I have a deck of cards, all sorted out with first 13 Spades, then Hearts, then Diamonds, then Clubs. Take the sequence Spades/Hearts/Diamonds/ Clubs to be representative of the organization that a human body must have to be alive. Within each suit, the cards can be in any sequence, perhaps 3, queen, 7, ace, etc. These different sequences represent the different personalities and memories of different people. The overall sequence of cards represents a human soul. Death occurs upon one shuffle, which destroys the sequence of suits.

In this example the soul indeed provides life, according to the rule Life = Spades/Hearts/ Diamonds/Clubs. Shuffle the deck. Then that organization vanishes. The life of the individual vanishes. Yet the general rule that specifies the sequence of suits corresponding to Life still survives. So in this example an individual soul can die without requiring that Life experience Death.

When a person dies, his or her body loses that order, provided by the soul, which provides for life. Thus death is the transition order disorder. The concepts Order and Disorder are contraries, so the change Order Disorder is not allowed. Yet the order of an individual body-the soul-can disappear.

The analogies, metaphors, allegories, and myths in Plato's dialogues are of entrancing literary quality. Having chosen this genre, Plato needs to provide a valid analogy to show that the soul must continue to live after the death of the body. I cannot find any.

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