Plato: Soul’s Immortality and Theory of Knowledge
Plato’s View on the Body and Soul
In his pejorative conception of the body, influenced by Pythagoras, Plato considers the body the prison of the soul, where it has been locked up as punishment for a past fault. While the soul inhabits a body, it is like being in a tomb, and only death will deliver the liberation of the soul. The body is seen as the root of all evil, the origin of irrational love, passion, hatred, discord, ignorance, and madness – all considered the death of the soul. While the rational soul tends towards the sublime, the body tends towards the irrational. Life, therefore, must be a preparation for death, an exercise of purification to gradually rid oneself of the body and its tendencies, so that the soul can return as soon as possible to its true home: the World of Ideas.
The Immortality of the Soul
The rational part of the soul is immortal and eternal; it has always existed and will exist after separating from the body. Plato devoted an entire dialogue, the Phaedo, to proving the immortality of the soul. His main arguments are:
- Argument from Recollection (Anamnesis): To know is to understand a subject by relating it to concepts we already possess. We couldn’t do this if we knew nothing beforehand. Therefore, knowing is essentially recognizing or remembering the Idea of that object, which the soul perceived in its prior existence when it lived in the World of Ideas, free from the body.
- Argument from Imperfection: This world is imperfect, yet our minds hold concepts of perfection (e.g., a perfect circle, absolute beauty, or goodness). These perfect concepts cannot be derived solely from observing imperfect objects in the sensible world. For instance, objects are only more or less circular because they approximate the perfect Idea of circularity. Similarly, we desire unsurpassed beauty and goodness despite only encountering imperfect examples. This implies our concepts of perfection predate our experience of the material world, meaning the soul pre-existed in the World of Ideas. If the soul pre-existed, it is not sensible or corporeal and will continue to exist after the death of the body.
- Argument from Affinity: Following pre-Socratic thought (“like is known by like”), there must be a similarity between the knower and the known. If the soul is capable of knowing the eternal and intelligible Ideas, it must share a similar nature with them. Therefore, the soul must also be eternal and intelligible, not mortal and perishable like the body.
Plato’s Theory of Knowledge
Knowing is Remembering (Anamnesis)
Plato argues that all knowledge is essentially recollection (anamnesis) of something the soul has always known. How else could we grasp the Ideas if they are not found in this world? The explanation is that the soul knew the Ideas before its incarnation. Following its punishment (incarnation), it forgot them. However, since the sensible world is a copy of the World of Ideas, encountering objects in this world serves as an occasion for the soul, through effort, to gradually remember what it already knew. As mentioned, while there is no perfect circle or perfect justice in the material world, our mind possesses these concepts, which must have originated from within itself, recalled from its prior existence.
Opinion and Science (Doxa and Episteme)
Plato distinguishes between two fundamental types of knowledge, which in turn are subdivided:
-
Opinion (Doxa) or Sensible Knowledge: This is the knowledge we gain through our senses regarding material things. It is unreliable and cannot constitute true science because the objects of sense perception are constantly changing. Opinion includes two levels:
- Imagination or Conjecture (Eikasia)
- Belief (Pistis)
- Science (Episteme) or Intelligible Knowledge: (Implied continuation) True knowledge concerning the unchanging World of Ideas.