HOW CAN I SUM THIS ALL UP? If things come from their opposites then everything that exsist must have an opposite. How can a soul have an opposite?The soul comes from the dead (cycle between Earth and underworld 70c), and to show this, Socrates demonstrates that all things come from their opposite
smaller from larger (he says yes) and there are then two processes, the increasing and the decreasing –> therefore if there are two opposites they come from each other (he proves this by giving lots of examples)
since dead is the opposite of alive, therefore, they come from each other and the souls of the dead must be somewhere such that they can return
also, if everything that were to die were not to be immortal and return, eventually everything would be dead
Objection: The lecture addressed some objections to the argument, namely that alive/dead are not necessarily opposites (a rock is not alive, but we wouldn’t call it dead), and that something can become alive from having been not alive, but not necessarily dead (i.e., could come from the void). assuming that this theory of recollection is correct, it necessarily implies that our souls exist somewhere before we do
further twist to this argument: when you see two sticks that want to be equal but aren’t quite, clearly you cannot derive from them the idea of Equality but rather you must have prior knowledge of the form of the Equal–>must have that knowledge prior to realizing that all objects strive and fail to be Equal
Socrates says (76b) we must have this knowledge from before we were born –> either we recollect it in life or know it all along, but we don’t first acquire it in life
He is here an anti-empiricist, because this argument from recollection only works if one assumes we cannot learn from perception
Moreover, the soul not only exists before birth but continues to exist after life (see also the response to Cebes, below)
soul will be scattered if it is composite
two sorts of existence, visible and invisible–>invisible remains the same, visible doesn’t and the soul is invisible, the body visible
soul resembles the divine in that it rules the body
well–prepared soul is pure and leaves with no bodily accoutrements and so is divine and invisible and not composite (81b)
no one joins the gods except he who lead a philosophically pure life
the soul is therefore immortal because it shares in the properties of the eternal forms, namely, it is divine, invisible, incomposite, and invariable
philosopher must keep his soul from believing that things which cause passionate feelings are true (83c)
pleasure/pain are likes nails riveting the body and soul together
Objections
Simmias counters: is body:harp::soul:harmony, going with the visible/invisible dichotomy, then the soul will be destroyed with the body, as the harmony is destroyed with the harp (86a)
Cebes counters: body is like a cloak in that the soul wears out many of them but might perish before the last body perishes (old man who dies before his cloak is worn out has still worn out many cloaks over the course of his life)–>soul damaged by association with body.

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