Argumentative Essay: The Last Day Of Socrates
ESSAY – PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT – [4- C ]
The body should be considered as a path of success rather than a prison
The scene began fist with the meeting of Echecrates and Phaedo talking about the last day of Socrates. Phaedo who was there explains in details what happened in that day. He began by saying that the day before they heard the guardian saying that the ship that Athens sent to Delos arrived. This ship explains the delay that occurred between the trial and the death of Socrates, indeed there is a law that prohibits any execution to keep the city “pure” until the ship reaches Delos and returns. After this brief introduction Phaedo begins naming the people who were with Socrates as Echecrates wanted to know every details of this …show more content…
day as he wasn’t there and that no one told him anything apart that Socrates died by drinking the hemlock.
After a little discussion Phaedo aimed at what Socrates said about the relationship with the gods as being similar to a master-slave relationship.
First Socrates pointed that the soul is locked up in the body, and that we ought to respect this situation and that escaping from it would be an opposition of what gods want. He pushed the idea further by giving an example, If you have something that you own which is referred to the souls as a proprieties of gods, you won’t accept that your possessions be destroyed by themselves as they are yours, which is the suicide of a person to escape from the body.
This definitely wasn’t the case of what the philosopher David Hume believed when he argued that” the body is a person 's property and he may decide what to do with it. If one is forced to live against his will, the basic right of free will is violated” (Campos) Which I think is wrong as we truly belong to god and that suicide is not a right, but rather living is an obligation for us.
Cebes seemed convinced by the idea but pointed something that Socrates said that I think is very important. Socrates said that one should be looking forward to death, but Cebes replied that if we consider the gods as perfect masters we ought to look forward to stay alive in order to be along with our good and perfect masters. A good man will think this way, but a stupid person will look forward to escape from his master which is wrong as there is nothing better than staying with a good and superior
master.
Socrates was very consenting toward his imminent death, which stupefied his friends. After a while this issue went out and Socrates replied that a true philosopher should look forward to death as an answer to all his question as the life of a philosopher is seeking the truth, death might be the answer of all his questions and therefore the truth. Furthermore, for Socrates death is the separation of the soul from the body, and that a true philosopher is not looking at the pleasures such as food, but he is focusing on the soul. Something that gained my attention is that earlier in that day Socrates was with his wife and his wife was holding their baby, so Socrates didn’t focus only on the soul, but pleasures also. But I think that his death was for him a truly blest event as he pointed in his first words after being released from his chains “what a queer thing it is, my friends, this sensation which popularly called pleasure! It is remarkable how closely it is connected with its apparent opposite, pain” (Plato 2003,)
I think that Socrates implicitly pointed the chains as his body and death represents the pleasure of being released.
Comparatively, speaking about why are the souls imprisoned in the body if the gods are such good master, Socrates implicitly gave the answer. Socrates stated “is the body a hindrance or not, if one takes it into partnership to share an investigation?” (Plato 2003,)
Without getting further in the discussion, we have to admit that what he said is true, for the people who take advantage of this imprisonment if I may say, and combine the body and the soul it is no longer a prison but a way and a facility to seek the truth, but for the people who don’t do so it’s a prison of the soul for them. So, it depends on how we use our body. We can also consider what Dr. Jan Garrett said during a public speech when he said “That 's because the human soul consists of three parts, represented here by a charioteer and two horses, one of them being quite unruly, representing the appetites; the good horse must struggle against the unruly one, and the charioteer, representing the rational part of the soul, must exercise constant vigilance over the unruly horse. To continue” (Garrett 2003) this metaphor of the charioteer can also be applied to the human soul and the body, where the two horses are the body and the soul if they are struggling the person will not achieve anything therefore the truth won’t be reached, but in the contrary if the two horses are in a homogeneous state, seeking the truth will be easier.
To put in a nut shell, I think that the body shouldn’t be considered as a prison for the soul, if we use it in the correct way it will only helps us to achieve our goals different as they might be. To give an example, let’s consider that a car is our body, the driver is the soul, and the highway is our life. The car in this case is not considered as a prison, but as a thing that protects us and makes our journey easier. So, here we can see that god made our souls inside our bodies to makes our lives easier and not to make us prisoner of it. Here we can say that the two analogies can be reconciled if we take in consideration what is said above.
References
Campos, Thais. "The Right to Commit Suicide." mind & soul. http://suite101.com/article/the-right-to-commit-suicide-a212389 (accessed July 4, 2013).
Garrett, Jan. "Did Socrates "Teach New Deities"?." Paper presented at Public Talk, august 5, 2003, http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/pgods.htm (accessed July 4, 2013).
Plato, . the last Days of Socrates . London: Penguin Classics, 2003. (accessed July 4, 2013).
The body should be considered as a path of success rather than a prison
The scene began fist with the meeting of Echecrates and Phaedo talking about the last day of Socrates. Phaedo who was there explains in details what happened in that day. He began by saying that the day before they heard the guardian saying that the ship that Athens sent to Delos arrived. This ship explains the delay that occurred between the trial and the death of Socrates, indeed there is a law that prohibits any execution to keep the city “pure” until the ship reaches Delos and returns. After this brief introduction Phaedo begins naming the people who were with Socrates as Echecrates wanted to know every details of this …show more content…
day as he wasn’t there and that no one told him anything apart that Socrates died by drinking the hemlock.
After a little discussion Phaedo aimed at what Socrates said about the relationship with the gods as being similar to a master-slave relationship.
First Socrates pointed that the soul is locked up in the body, and that we ought to respect this situation and that escaping from it would be an opposition of what gods want. He pushed the idea further by giving an example, If you have something that you own which is referred to the souls as a proprieties of gods, you won’t accept that your possessions be destroyed by themselves as they are yours, which is the suicide of a person to escape from the body.
This definitely wasn’t the case of what the philosopher David Hume believed when he argued that” the body is a person 's property and he may decide what to do with it. If one is forced to live against his will, the basic right of free will is violated” (Campos) Which I think is wrong as we truly belong to god and that suicide is not a right, but rather living is an obligation for us.
Cebes seemed convinced by the idea but pointed something that Socrates said that I think is very important. Socrates said that one should be looking forward to death, but Cebes replied that if we consider the gods as perfect masters we ought to look forward to stay alive in order to be along with our good and perfect masters. A good man will think this way, but a stupid person will look forward to escape from his master which is wrong as there is nothing better than staying with a good and superior
master.
Socrates was very consenting toward his imminent death, which stupefied his friends. After a while this issue went out and Socrates replied that a true philosopher should look forward to death as an answer to all his question as the life of a philosopher is seeking the truth, death might be the answer of all his questions and therefore the truth. Furthermore, for Socrates death is the separation of the soul from the body, and that a true philosopher is not looking at the pleasures such as food, but he is focusing on the soul. Something that gained my attention is that earlier in that day Socrates was with his wife and his wife was holding their baby, so Socrates didn’t focus only on the soul, but pleasures also. But I think that his death was for him a truly blest event as he pointed in his first words after being released from his chains “what a queer thing it is, my friends, this sensation which popularly called pleasure! It is remarkable how closely it is connected with its apparent opposite, pain” (Plato 2003,)
I think that Socrates implicitly pointed the chains as his body and death represents the pleasure of being released.
Comparatively, speaking about why are the souls imprisoned in the body if the gods are such good master, Socrates implicitly gave the answer. Socrates stated “is the body a hindrance or not, if one takes it into partnership to share an investigation?” (Plato 2003,)
Without getting further in the discussion, we have to admit that what he said is true, for the people who take advantage of this imprisonment if I may say, and combine the body and the soul it is no longer a prison but a way and a facility to seek the truth, but for the people who don’t do so it’s a prison of the soul for them. So, it depends on how we use our body. We can also consider what Dr. Jan Garrett said during a public speech when he said “That 's because the human soul consists of three parts, represented here by a charioteer and two horses, one of them being quite unruly, representing the appetites; the good horse must struggle against the unruly one, and the charioteer, representing the rational part of the soul, must exercise constant vigilance over the unruly horse. To continue” (Garrett 2003) this metaphor of the charioteer can also be applied to the human soul and the body, where the two horses are the body and the soul if they are struggling the person will not achieve anything therefore the truth won’t be reached, but in the contrary if the two horses are in a homogeneous state, seeking the truth will be easier.
To put in a nut shell, I think that the body shouldn’t be considered as a prison for the soul, if we use it in the correct way it will only helps us to achieve our goals different as they might be. To give an example, let’s consider that a car is our body, the driver is the soul, and the highway is our life. The car in this case is not considered as a prison, but as a thing that protects us and makes our journey easier. So, here we can see that god made our souls inside our bodies to makes our lives easier and not to make us prisoner of it. Here we can say that the two analogies can be reconciled if we take in consideration what is said above.
References
Campos, Thais. "The Right to Commit Suicide." mind & soul. http://suite101.com/article/the-right-to-commit-suicide-a212389 (accessed July 4, 2013).
Garrett, Jan. "Did Socrates "Teach New Deities"?." Paper presented at Public Talk, august 5, 2003, http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/pgods.htm (accessed July 4, 2013).
Plato, . the last Days of Socrates . London: Penguin Classics, 2003. (accessed July 4, 2013).