Plato's view of immortality Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Plato's view of immortality - Essay Example lato believes that only a soul of a philosophical lover of knowledge and virtue is worthy of traveling beyond the process of rebirth to ultimate fulfillment. Plato believed in the immortality of the soul and the overall. Plato believed that the body played no real role in who we are as people; the only thing that shows who we are is our soul. Plato even suggests that death could be like an eternal sleep, where none of the senses are active. However, Plato says that it would be better to travel to a place where one could converse with all the great thinkers of the past. Plato argues that our soul is immortal because we are born with some form of intelligence within us. He argues that since things are supposedly born from opposites, life can only be birthed from death.[Plato, Republic] Plato denies that fever, or any other disease, or the knife put to the throat, or even the cutting up of the whole body into the minutest pieces, can destroy the soul, until she herself is proved to become more unholy or unrighteous in consequence of these things being done to the body; but that the soul, or anything else if not destroyed by an internal evil, can be destroyed by an external one, is not to be affirmed by any man.[Plato, Republic] Soul cannot be destroyed by an evil whether inherent or external, must exist forever, and if exists forever is immortal. Plato, in Republic asserts that the immortality is demonstrated by the previous argument, and there are many other proofs; but to see it as what it really is, not as we now behold it, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate it with the eye of reason, in its original purity; and then beauty will be revealed, and justice and injustice and all the things which we have described will be manifested more clearly. Thus far, we have spoken the truth concerning as it appears at present, but we must remember also that we have seen it only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god,