Affinity argument Essay Example

another Socrates’ student Cebes supports Simmias’s argument by saying that he is ready to admit that soul enters the body upon birth, but he doubts that soul can survive after physical death.

To support his position Cebes used an example of weavers and cloaks. A weaver can make a cloak which will exist after his death, on the other hands, many of cloaks made by a weaver are lost before his death. Soul is paralleled to cloaks and weavers to bodies.

This means that some souls can survive after death of the body, but sooner or later they will be dissolved so he proposes to "...rather not rely on the argument from superior strength to prove the continued existence of the soul after death." (Phaedo, 87a)

Upon careful evaluation Socrates’ argument appears to be prevailing and the argument by Cebes seems to be baseless. They actually have much similar in premises: soul exists, it can be separated from body, most often upon death and soul can exist after the body is dead.

Their only factual difference is that for Socrates the soul is immortal by nature and Cebes ascribes bodily features to soul and thinks that it is same mortal, as body. Cebes’s argument is, however, baseless, for in order for a soul to enter into body it needs to have a source.

In case it was a part of body, it would not exist without body. And as it can, it must have some outside origin. Socrates’ mentions Iyer and explains the contradiction what Cebes fails to do.

Works Cited:

Phaedo (1999), edited by David Gallop. Oxford,

Oxford Paperbacks, 144 pages