Plato Phaedo. An overview of body / soul / immortality. OCR training programme GCE Religious Studies

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1 OCR training programme GCE Religious Studies Get Ahead Effective Delivery of Philosophy of Religion An overview of body / soul / immortality A holistic approach However please do not let the candidates develop the impression that any part of this section of the specification will do for any question. Plato Phaedo Echecrates presses Phaedo of Elis to give his account of Socrates death. Socrates had been condemned to commit suicide by drinking hemlock, and a number of his friends and fellow philosophers had gathered to spend his last hours with him. Phaedo explains that among those present with him were Crito and two Pythagorean philosophers, Simmias and Cebes.

2 Plato Phaedo In Phaedo s account, Socrates explains to his friends that a true philosopher should look forward to death. The purpose of the philosophical life is to free the soul from the needs of the body. Since the moment of death is the final separation of soul and body, a philosopher should see it as the realization of his aim. Unlike the body, the soul is immortal, so it will survive death. Plato Phaedo Socrates provides four arguments for believing the soul is immortal. He bases the first, known as the Argument from Opposites, on the observation that everything comes to be from out of its opposite. Plato Phaedo The second argument, known as the Theory of Recollection, asserts that learning is essentially an act of recollecting things we knew before we were born but then forgot. True knowledge, argues Socrates, is knowledge of the eternal and unchanging Forms that underlie perceptible reality.

3 Plato Phaedo The third argument, known as the Argument from Affinity, distinguishes between those things that are immaterial, invisible, and immortal, and those things that are material, visible, and perishable. Plato Phaedo Both Simmias and Cebes raise objections to these arguments. Simmias suggests that the soul may be immaterial and invisible in the same way as the attunement of an instrument. The attunement of the instrument can exist only as long as the instrument itself does. (Hints of Aristotle to come) Plato Phaedo His answer to Cebes involves a lengthy discussion that culminates in his fourth argument, based on the Theory of Forms. A Form, unlike qualities in this world, is perfectly itself and does not admit its opposite. For example, the Form of Beauty does not possess any ugliness at all.

4 Plato Phaedo The soul is what animates us: we are alive because we have a soul. That concept suggests that the soul is intimately connected to the Form of Life. Since the Form of Life does not in any way include its opposite death the soul cannot in any way be tainted by death. Thus, Socrates concludes, the soul must be immortal. Plato the Dualist Last year there was a fair amount of debate on the e community about what Plato said about the two horses and the charioteer. The problem I discovered is that he uses the analogy in slightly different ways in 3 different places! Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Jowett As I said at the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three -- two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad: the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will proceed.

5 Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Jowett The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Jowett The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. A thought to keep in mind It is worth pointing out to students that many of these primary texts are not long and they are worth looking for, as textbooks often oversimplify and in doing so make mistakes.

6 Aristotle on the soul Partly because of the fragmentary nature of much of Aristotle's writing the immortality of the soul is one of those areas where he is unclear. Aristotle on the Soul Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question What is soul? At the beginning of De Anima II.1, he says that there are three sorts of substance: Matter (potentiality) Form(actuality) The compound of matter and form Aristotle on the Soul Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive. These - plants and animals - are the things that have souls. Their souls are what make them living things. Since form is what makes matter a this, the soul is the form of a living thing. (Not its shape, but its actuality, that in virtue of which it is the kind of living thing that it is.)

7 De Anima Highlights Plants have the faculty of nutrition. Some animals are distinguished by their faculty of motion The faculty of intellect distinguishes human beings. The Confusion The soul does not survive after death. Intellectual thought could possibly be separated from the soul and be eternal. A Pause to note the Greek/Christian difference. Plato and co say the soul is eternal because that is the kind of thing it is - in itself it is indestructible, whereas a Christian has to recognise that that any eternity is by virtue of the will of God - eternal life is a gift. To say otherwise would limit God's omnipotence.

8 Add to the mix Many Christians believe in a bodily resurrection So are we: Reason (intellect) Soul Body A combination? The answer clearly affects our understanding of immortality. Dualist or Monist By now candidates should be aware that there are these two basic views. Plato was clearly a dualist. Aristotle was a confused monist. For a strong monist / materialist view they need to be introduced to Richard Dawkins. Religion meets Philosophy Hick s view rejects dualism but still wishes to argue for life after death through bodily resurrection. For Hick we are a psycho-somatic unity. Hence we are led to his Replica Theory about which there is much confusion and many versions among candidates.

9 The Options on the Specification Resurrection Reincarnation Rebirth Life after death Heaven and Hell Nothing Questions underlying this area Is life after death possible? The much repeated coherent question. If I survive death what is the I that will survive? Questions underlying this area Peter Geach What Must be True of Me if I Survive My Death? It is worth keeping in mind that belief in life after death can be traced back to the cultures of ancient China, India and the Middle East.

10 What does Hick say? I wish to suggest that we can think of it as the divine creation in another space of an exact psycho-physical replica of the deceased person. (Resurrection of the Person) What does Hick say? Suppose, first, that someone John Smith living in the USA were suddenly and inexplicably to disappear from before the eyes of his friends, and that at the same moment an exact replica of him were inexplicably to appear in India. What does Hick say? The person who appears in India is exactly similar in both physical and mental characteristics to the person who disappeared in America. There is a continuity of memory, complete similarity of bodily features including figure prints, hair and eye colouration, and stomach contents, and also of beliefs, habits, emotions and mental dispositions.

11 What does Hick say? Further, the John Smith replica thinks of himself as being the John Smith who disappeared in the USA. After all possible test have been made and have proved positive, the factors leading his friends to accept John Smith as John Smith would surely prevail and would cause them to overlook his mysterious transference from one continent to another. What does Hick say? Suppose, second, that our John Smith, instead of inexplicably disappearing, dies, but at the moment of his death a John Smith replica, again complete with memories and all other characteristics, appears in India.. What does Hick say? Now suppose, third, that on John Smith s death the John Smith replica appears not in India, but as a resurrection replica in a different world altogether, a resurrection world inhabited by resurrected persons

12 A fun example Familiar Problems Vardy s photocopier Do you receive exact copies of our bodies? Would we all want that? Life after death - other views Christian: Aquinas took the views of Plato and built on them; Plato had said that the only things that can suffer destruction are those that are composite, since to destroy something means to disintegrate it to its component parts.

13 Life after death - other views All material bodies are composite; the soul, however, is simple and therefore imperishable. Aquinas adopted this and it is now a standard part of Roman Catholic theology. Jacques Maritain puts it this way: Jacques Maritain A spiritual soul cannot be corrupted, since it possesses no matter; it cannot be disintegrated, since it has no substantial parts; it cannot lose its individual unity, since it is selfsubsisting, nor its internal energy, since it contains within itself all the sources of its energies. Jacques Maritain The human soul cannot die. Once it exists, it cannot disappear; it will necessarily exist for ever, endure without end. Thus, philosophic reason, put to work by a great metaphysician like Thomas Aquinas, is able to prove the immortality of the human soul in a demonstrative manner, (The Range of Reason)

14 If only it was that simple Arguably medieval philosophy was not as certain as this and Vardy would say that Aquinas was agnostic about exactly what life after death might be. This led to some interesting speculation about whether or not, for example, we would eat in heaven. Other Issues : Reincarnation The soul of a body is eternal. The next life depends on the morality of the present life. Karma. Ultimately the soul is reunited with Brahman. Previous memories and déjà vu used to support this view. Other Issues : Reincarnation Against: Memories could have other explanations or be hoaxes. No continuity physical continuity (Swinburne). A link with the deceased cannot be established. (Geach)

15 Other Views: The Reductionist Theory Personal identity is linked to the physical body. So life after death would need to be physical. Dawkins: Genes and other peoples memories are the only way human beings can survive death. All human traits including consciousness have evolved because of some survival advantage. Support for this view Evidence from the world around us and personal experience tends to support this view. It is arguable that all mental activity is fully explainable in terms of neuron activity in the brain. Penrose s work on consciousness taking place at the quantum level may be a useful distraction. We could go on! and on! and on! There are several lessons of work here and many others that I have not had time to cover. It is worth at some point in the course trying something like this, aiming to give the candidates an overall (holistic) view of one area of the specification. I will try and include more of the common errors when we look at actual examination answers.