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Socrates offers four arguments for the soul's immortality: The Cyclical Argument, or Opposites Argument explains that Forms are eternal and unchanging, and as the soul always brings life, then it must not die, and is necessarily "imperishable". As the body is mortal and is subject to physical death, the soul must be its indestructible opposite.
The discussion of rhetoric, the proper practice of which is found to actually be philosophy, has many similarities with Socrates's role as a "midwife of the soul" in the Theaetetus; the dialectician, as described, is particularly resonant. To practice the art, one must have a grasp of the truth and a detailed understanding of the soul in order ...
Socrates warns the excitable Hippocrates that Sophists are dangerous. He tells him that the words of the Sophists go straight into the soul (psychē) and can corrupt a person straightaway. Socrates says that buying wisdom from a Sophist is different from buying food and drink at the market.
Then Socrates goes on to demonstrate the contrary of the commonly accepted part using the law of non-contradiction. According to Gregory Vlastos, [8] the method has the following steps: Socrates' interlocutor asserts a thesis, for example, "Courage is endurance of the soul", which Socrates considers false and targets for refutation.
Socrates secures his interlocutor's agreement to further premises, for example "Courage is a fine thing" and "Ignorant endurance is not a fine thing". Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, these further premises imply the contrary of the original thesis; in this case, it leads to: "courage is not endurance of the soul". Socrates ...
Plato's theory of the soul, which was inspired variously by the teachings of Socrates, considered the psyche (Ancient Greek: ψῡχή, romanized: psūkhḗ) to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how people behave. Plato considered this essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of a person's being.
Gorgias admits under Socrates' cross-examination that while rhetoricians give people the power of words, they are not instructors of morality. Gorgias does not deny that his students might use their skills for immoral purposes (such as persuading the assembly to make an unwise decision, or to let a guilty man go free), but he says the teacher ...
Whether Socrates was a practicing man of religion or a 'provocateur atheist' has been a point of debate since ancient times; his trial included impiety accusations, and the controversy has not yet ceased. [129] Socrates discusses divinity and the soul mostly in Alcibiades, Euthyphro, and Apology. [130]