Plato by Mason Andrew S

Author:Mason, Andrew S.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317492528
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

In the Phaedrus (245c), Socrates identifies the soul with “what moves itself”, and claims that what moves itself, “because it never lets go of itself, never ceases to move”. It is not wholly clear whether this is meant as an argument for immortality or just as an explanation of it. But it can be read as an argument, similar in spirit to the last one in the Phaedo, but perhaps somewhat stronger. While in the Phaedo the soul was seen as essentially living and a source of life, here it is seen more specifically as essentially moving and a source of motion. The thought seems to be that bodily things will cease to move when they lose their source of motion; but the soul, being its own source of motion, has no reason to cease to move. This is not, of course, conclusive; even if it is its own source of motion something might extinguish it and so bring its motion to an end. But it has some inclining force; the obvious reason for death in the case of bodies is not present in the case of the soul, leaving it unclear why it should perish.

There is another, more complex, argument for immortality in the same passage of the Phaedrus, also turning on the idea of self-motion (Phdr. 245c–e). Socrates begins by affirming that what moves itself is the source of all motion. This assumption is in fact open to question. It seems true that if we can trace a series of motions to a source, that must be a self-mover. Clearly something that is (in all respects) moved from outside cannot be the source of a new series of motions; and, on Plato’s assumptions, an unmoving thing cannot cause motion. But it is not obvious that every series of motions must have a source. Could it not just go back infinitely into the past?

In any case Socrates, having affirmed that what moves itself is the source of all motion, draws from this the consequence that it is ungenerated; for if it were generated, the thing that generates, not it, would be the source of its motion. From this, in turn, he concludes that it is immortal, since if the source of all motion were to perish it could not be generated again, and the universe would come to a stop. These arguments have some force; but the most they can show is that soul, the genus, is ungenerated and immortal. As we have seen, an individual soul might move itself in one respect while being moved from outside in another; hence it might be generated by something else, although once it exists it sustains and directs its own motion. But the genus soul, if it is the source of all motion, cannot be moved from outside in any way; hence indeed it cannot be generated by anything else. Likewise, an individual soul could perish, and might be replaced, since there would be other souls still available to act as

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