Plato's theory of immortality
Plato's theory of immortality comes from his dialogue entitled "Phaedo". This dialogue chronicles the last moments of Socrates' life. It is a moment of composure and self-sufficiency associated with faith in immortality. The doctrines in Phaedo had a great influence on the teachings of later Christianity. For in the opening verse, Socrates preaches the principle that is reminiscent of Jesus: "We should not complain to anyone, no matter how much resentment we receive from others." ”
Plato argues through Socrates that although no philosophical man is afraid of death, but, on the contrary, would welcome death, he does not yet want to end his life, because it is considered illegal. This is just as cattle keepers do not want livestock to cut themselves off.
Socrates said that death is the separation of the soul from the body. This is actually Plato's dualism: reality and phenomena; ideas and sensory objects; reason and sensation (perception); soul and body. These opposites are interconnected, and the first of each pair is superior to the second, both in reality and goodness. Ascetic morality is the inevitable result of this dualism.
Socrates' asceticism, however, has a moderately restrained and somewhat gentlemanly flavor. He does not say that philosophers should abstain from everyday pleasures, only that they should not be slaves to these pleasures. The philosopher must devote himself to the soul, not the body, and "he wants to turn as far away from the body as he can and turn to the soul." Plato believed that what philosophers should do was not to abstain from eating and drinking through moral effort, but only to be more interested in other things. This is in part a requirement for people to abandon physical pleasures and turn to spiritual pleasures. It turns out that liberation from physical despotism can lead to greatness, but just as it can lead to greatness in virtue, it can be just as heinous as it can be. (Hitler is a prime example)
Plato's intellectual side of religion, which Plato attributed to, contains a radical rejection of all empirical knowledge, including historical knowledge and geographical knowledge. So, what's left? The first is logic and mathematics, and the second is the idea of "goodness.". As long as we know that goodness is real, philosophers can deduce that the world of ideas is the real world. This view excludes scientific observations and experiments from the means and scope of acquiring knowledge. The two spiritual lives that can be engaged in by the methods recommended by Plato are only mathematics and mystical epiphanies.
For empiricists, it is the flesh that brings us into contact with the external real world. But for Plato, the flesh has a double sin: it is both a medium of deformation that allows us to see things like a hazy mirror, and a source of carnal desire, interfering with our pursuit of knowledge and insight into truth. (Through this insight of Plato, we can easily understand his views on spiritual love.)
With regard to immortality, the following verses are quoted from Socrates in Phaedo: "If we want to have true knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body—let the essence of the soul see the thing as it is, and then we can attain the wisdom we desire." This is not when we are alive, but after we die, because pure knowledge cannot be acquired when the soul is accompanied by the body, and if we really want to acquire knowledge, it can only be obtained after we die. "This separation and liberation of the soul from the body is called death... And only true philosophers have been seeking liberation from the soul. "These statements are full of mysticism.
With regard to the argument for the existence of the soul, Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, has the following apparently untenable argument:
First, everything has opposites, and they all arise from opposites, (as does Anaximander's view of cosmic justice) because life and death are opposites, so one of them necessarily produces the other.
Second, knowledge is a kind of memory, so the soul must have existed before a person was born.
This view explicitly rejects empiricism, but only knowledge called "a priori"—especially logic and mathematics—can be considered to exist in everyone and has nothing to do with experience.
Now that he has argued for reminiscence, Plato has argued that nothing that is single can have a beginning, or an end, or a change. For example, absolute beauty is always a thing, and beautiful things are in eternal change. The body is visible, but the soul is invisible, so the soul can be relegated to whatever eternal kind of thing.
Plato's Socrates is a model for philosophers of later generations. Its personal advantages are obvious. But his arguments were insincere and sophistry, and for him thought was to use reason to prove conclusions that were acceptable to him. Rather than being used for the unbiased pursuit of knowledge. Unlike his predecessors, he was not ideologically scientific, but determined to prove a universe consistent with his ethical standards. This is a betrayal of truth and the worst crime philosophically.