Why Socrates Exists

Quite honestly, today’s readings had me going in circles—Socrates’ arguments were slightly difficult for me to follow because his different points were organized or explained in a way that relates his point in a cyclic manner. Regardless, Socrates attempts to argue the immortality and the existence of the soul. The most confusing aspect of this was the beginning of his argument. Socrates bases his argument from his un-doubtful acceptance of the soul existing and being immortal; although he is known to use questions and dialogue to explain the abstract ideas, I believe assuming it exists when trying to prove it actual existence defeats the overall purpose of an argument. In other words, if one accepts this first premise beforehand, their arguments
on it only serve as a mere explanation of why the soul exists, which I believe is different from arguing with the hopes to prove its actual existence. Interestingly, Socrates’ method involves doubt and questioning things to find answers, yet he does not seem to doubt the existence of the soul. Additionally, I found the acceptance of the idea that everything having an exact opposite for which it came from as weak in regards to the strength of his argument. Socrates states, “all things come to be this way, opposites from opposites”, but is vague in terms of what is defined or assumed by the noun “things”. And although he gives examples of opposing qualities—such as hot and cold, short and tall—Socrates fails to explicitly state that opposites tend to apply only to attributes of objects, and not necessarily the objects themselves. Hence, it might have been better to state that subjective aspects of objects and abstract premises/concepts are the only “things” that can always have exact opposites. On the other hand, these “things” might have more than one opposite and would then have more than two processes, as Socrates also states objects as having in their cycles of changing to the opposing state. Overall, I believe Socrates’ argument is interesting, but has complicated premises that can become confusing to its readers