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You can find a corresponding essay on my blog here: https://premieretat.com/on-the-soul-platos-four-arguments-for-immortality-in-the-phaedo/
In this video, I consider Plato's four arguments for the immortality of the soul set forth in the Phaedo. The Phaedo recounts Socrates' last dialogue before being executed at the hands of the Athenians. As a result, he takes the time to remind cheer his friends and attempt to convince them that there is a life beyond the sensible world. In his day, as in ours, many were dubious that the soul could survive the death of the body, and Socrates addresses this doubt by offering four arguments for the immortality of the soul. The first argument is grounded in the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, the idea that the soul reincarnates after death. Socrates tries to provide a philosophical argument for such a view by noting that, in the world of becoming, things come from their opposites in an unending cycle. And, since life and death are opposites, one should expect life to come again from death. The second argument uses the doctrine of recollection. On this view, all knowledge is really a remembrance of the realm of the forms. But, since this realm is immaterial, we must have previously been immaterial to have been previously acquainted with what resides there. Third, he argues that the soul would be most akin to the invisible realm, and the body to the visible. And, since the invisible world is deathless, we have reason to believe that the soul is also imperishable. Finally, the fourth argument turns on the exclusion relations among forms. In order for something to be what it is, it must rule out its contrary properties. The number three, for example, is necessarily odd, and thus cannot be even. And, Socrates argues, that the soul is defined as what gives life. This entails that life belongs to it essentially, and so it necessarily excludes death. It is thus deathless.
