Plato's Theory of Immortality

(Originally written July 9, 2006 in Book 4)

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter XVI - Plato's theory of immortality

Plato believes in dualism of body and soul.

Death is the separation of soul and body.

This is rooted in Orphic tradition.

Plato focuses on the soul, as he believes all philosophers ought to do, which leads him to a mild asceticism.

Philosophers are to discover the soul from communion with the body.

Plato (through Socrates) denounces bodily pleasures as wicked, or distracting but neglects wholly pleasures of the mind, an error that has produced serious problems like greed, power-lust and many forms of cruelty.

"Many eminent ecclesiastics, having renounced the pleasures of sense and being not on their guard against others, became dominated by love of power, which led them to appalling cruelties and persecutions, nominally for the sake of a religion" (Russell, 135-136).

Linehan - In Russell's charge against Plato's ignoring of mind pleasures he uses three examples: Milton's Satan, Ecclesiastics and Hitler. His language is harshest with the ecclesiastics, another jab at religion. Contempt.

The body is a hinderance to intellectual advancement. The senses deceive the mind with inaccurate accounts of true reality.

"True existence, if revealed to the soul at all, is revealed in thought, not sense" (Russell, 136).

This condemns empirical observation, including history and geography.

What is left after the renunciation of empirical knowledge?
1) Logic
2) Mathematics
3) The Good
(Logic and mathematics are only hypothetical)

"While the soul is infected with the evils of the body, our desire for truth will not be satisfied" (Russell, 137).

Scientists cannot gain knowledge because they do not ignore the body or the physical world.

Plato uses mathematics and mystical insight to escape the evils of the body.

Plato condemns the body so much to exclaim that knowledge, if it is acquired at all, is only done so after death.

Purification was vital to acquire knowledge. Purification for Plato was to free themselves from the evils and needs of the body.

He proclaimed that wars were due to the love of money and money was needed only for bodily satisfaction.

When Socrates refuses to escape death he offers reasons for his belief in the immortality of the soul.
1) All things have opposites and are generated by opposites. Thus, life and death are opposites. Life produces death and death produces life. Since the body dies, something must live, which is the soul.
2) Knowledge is recollection, thus the soul existed prior to birth (knowledge as recollection is based on the idea of innate ideas).

Knowledge that exists from birth is not empirical knowledge, only a priori knowledge like logic and mathematics.

Russell - There are no innate ideas, only empirical observation. We do not truly posses ideas like absolute equality (as Plato explains). Even if we did possess them, children cannot articulate it until a certain age. Thus even if we have innate ideas they are brought on or 'elicted' by experience without it being directly derived from experience.

Linehan - we are born with countless innate ideas, but we have shroud of intellectual darkness that covers them. Experience helps us to uncover or remove the shroud as in the case of the idea of absolute equality. No, a child cannot express the idea of absolute equality, but when 'elicited' by experience it becomes clear that one can clearly articulate this idea. but, the shroud can sometimes be added to or fastened over our innate ideas through experience rather than be peeled back. Take for instance the idea of reality. While a child cannot express or articulate the idea of reality, he has no reason to doubt that what he sees as real. It is only through philosophical training or terrible psychological terrors in dreams and hallucinations that he begins to doubt the idea of reality. Experience is the catalyst for grasping innate ideas and the catalyst for doubting innate ideas. Experience is both reliable and unreliable, illuminating and dimming to the mind. Experience is not to be contemptible, but not uncritically trusted either. Man is not the measure of all things, therefore his experience cannot be the absolute end for knowledge or intellectual judgments.

Socrates also claims that only complex things can be dissolved and the soul, like ideas are simple and not compounded of parts. Simple things cannot begin, end or change.

Essences are unchanging, thus simple.

Things that are seen are temporal. Unseen things are eternal. Body - seen. Soul - unseen.

The soul being eternal, contemplates eternal things, but is confused by temporal, changing things, like the physical world.

The souls of true philosophers will dwell with the gods in eternal bliss after the body dies. Impure souls will become ghosts or be reincarnated into animals that they lived like. Men who lived virtuously without being a philosopher will come back as a social animal, i.e. ant, bee, wasp, etc. Future Modern Ancient Greeks idea?

Socrates - "Ideas exist, and that other things participate in them and derive their names from them" (Russell, 142).

Socrates (through Plato) believes that good souls go to heaven, bad to hell and intermediate to purgatory.

The Platonic Socrates is indifferent to worldly success, devoid of fear and cares for what he believes as truth more than anything else. But he is also flawed. He is dishonest in his arguments, smug, unscientific, and hell bent on conforming the universe to his ethics.

Side-note: I find a curious phrase in Russell's account of the Platonic Socrates' flaws. "His courage in the face of death would have been more remarkable if he had not believed that he was going to enjoy eternal bliss in the company of the gods" (Russell, 142). This condemnation is a condemnation of being consistent with one's ethics. Regardless of whether or not Socrates was correct in his belief of the afterlife (which he was not), he cannot be faulted for living by his standards. Condemn the standards if you wish, but not the man for living by them perfectly. Would it be better if he were not afraid of death in view of eternal condemnation or in view of a destruction of his own existence. If he did not fear condemnation or annihilation he would be foolish.