Plato on Body and Soul: the Cyclical Argument

Mortimer J. Snerdnick (a former student)

In this paper I want to discuss Plato's theory of the immortality of the soul, and whether the Cyclical Argument provides a good justification for the theory. I will take the theory of the immortality of the soul to claim that (i) the human person is an embodied soul, (ii) the 'soul' (mind, will) is the essence of the person and different from the body, and (iii) the soul can exist separate from the body. I will argue that the Cyclical Argument fails to support the key thesis (iii), and its contribution to the claim that the human soul is immortal is interesting, but not really what Cebes and the others are looking for--a proof that their individual souls are immortal.

The argument can be summarized as follows:

1. Opposites come from opposites

2. The alive and the dead are opposites (as are dying/coming back to life)

3. Therefore the dead come to be from the living (as is evident), and the living must come back from the dead, i.e. souls must continue to exist, after death, so they can be reborn.

4. Thus human souls can exist separate from the body.

This is the essence of the argument. It does not really 'prove' that souls are immortal, but seems to require a further claim, that if souls can exist separate from the body, they are immortal. But let's assume that this is not too unreasonable a claim, and ask if the proof works for what it claims. I say it does not.

This argument is formally valid, but both premise #1 and premise #2 can be criticized. The most obvious criticism is of premise #1, namely that while in many situations, opposites come from opposites or something like opposites, e.g. hot from cold (via not-cold, tepid), in the critical case in question, they do not: as the presence of Xanthippe would have made clear, life comes from life!

Premise #2 can also be criticized. Are 'alive' and 'dead' really opposites? Does the argument presuppose there is an underlying thing (the soul) which has the properties of being alive (embodied) or being dead (disembodied)? If so, it begs the question, by presuming the existence of the soul in order to prove it! In fact, being alive refers to the existence of living things, dead to their non-existence, not to properties they have (like being hot or cold, asleep or awake). These are not opposite properties of an underlying substance, which continues to exist when there is a transition from one to the other, but very different from that.

In fact, Plato seems to realize that in the case of living individuals, it might be that there is no 'cycle' of life, but that nature is "lame" (cf. )--that it moves in one direction: from birth to death.

Is there anything that might be salvaged from this argument, which could contribute to the idea that the human is somehow connected to the divine or immortal? I think there is, but it is not what Cebes and Simmias are looking for. When Socrates says they should consider not only human beings, but animals and even plant life, he drops a big hint. There IS a way in which life comes from death, namely the living do come from the ancestral dead--and this is true of plants and animals and humans. The seeds of former oak trees gave birth to the present oak tree, the seed of former, now-dead animals gave birth to the present living animals, the seed of former humans (e.g. great-great-grandparents) gave birth to present living humans. There is an immortality of the species, which is created through the erotic biological drive, which is present in each living human being. Through eros and procreation, we participate in and may contribute to the 'immortality of the species'. Plato seems to think of this as a 'divine' order in the cosmos, and of the erotic-reproductive drive as not mere sex, but pro-creation, participation in the everlasting life of one's own kind. So, the human soul through sexual love 'partakes' of immortality.

Unfortunately, however, this is really not what Cebes and Simmias and the other companions want. They want Socrates to prove that he--his personal soul--is immortal, and that each of them is immortal, too. They want proof of personal immortality, not the immortality of the species. Thus even if we admit that there is a way in which the human soul 'partakes' of immortality and if we consider anything that is 'immortal' -- such as the human species -- to be 'divine', we still cannot say that the individual human soul is immortal or that it is divine. Socrates' first argument for the immortality of the human soul thererfore fails.