Plato's Philosophy: Soul, Body, and Immortality

Plato's Philosophy of the Soul and Body

In the "Phaedo," several theses are expounded by Plato concerning the human being:

• The human being is the only union of soul and body.
• The soul is divine, pre-existent to the body, and immortal.
• The body is mortal, unclean, a prison for the soul.
• The body's goal is death; the soul lives on after physical disability and death.
• The destination of souls depends on their actions in the world.
• Where life followed the right path, death is not fearful but desirable.

Soul-Body Dualism in Plato's Philosophy

For Plato, the human being is primarily their soul, and the body is merely a burden that drags the soul down as punishment. The union between the soul and the body is accidental; souls are eternal. Plato does not definitively state if there are three distinct souls or three parts of a single soul, but he identifies three functions:

• Rational: Located in the head, responsible for reason and intellect.
• Irascible: Encompasses noble appetites and tendencies of the soul, like courage and sacrifice.
• Concupiscible: Located in the belly, this is the tendency towards guilty pleasure that does not follow what reason dictates.

To explain this Platonic theory of the internal dislocation between reason and pleasure, he uses the myth of the winged chariot. In this myth, a charioteer drives a chariot with two horses: one black (representing the concupiscible soul) and one white (representing the irascible soul). The function of the charioteer is to represent the rational part. The rational part must constantly monitor and drive the black horse, aligning it with the white one.

Plato asserts that the body is a prison where the soul has been enclosed as punishment, and only when the body dies will the soul be free. The body is the root of all evil; death is liberation for the soul. To live is to be prepared to die, a purification to rid oneself of the body so that the soul can return to the World of Ideas.

According to the myth of the winged chariot, the soul fell because the charioteer could not control the black horse. Its fate depends on the life it leads to achieve purification. If purified, the soul will reincarnate into perfect beings and eventually return to the World of Ideas. If not purified, it is reincarnated as lesser beings, including animals.

The Immortality of the Soul

The rational part of the soul is eternal and has no body; it has always existed and will always exist. Plato presents several principal arguments for the soul's immortality:

• Argument from Recollection: We detect an object's form and already have concepts, but we haven't seen that object in its perfect form. It would be impossible for the soul to remember the idea of that object unless it had seen it before in the World of Ideas (recognition).
• Argument from Opposites: In this imperfect world, our ideas are perfect. Nothing is totally beautiful or good, yet we aspire to unsurpassed beauty and goodness. These concepts show the soul acquired them from the perfect world of Ideas.
• Argument from Affinity: To know is to assimilate. If the soul can know Ideas, it must have a similar nature to them: eternal and intelligible.

Once the immortality of the soul is established, it holds great importance for Plato, as it determines what happens after death: the doctrine of metempsychosis (reincarnation) until reaching the World of Ideas, or eternal punishment for those who fail.