Phaedo Question 1

Primary Text:
Phaedo

Question:
What is ultimately real with regards to the human person?

Answer:

The soul.

In Phaedo, Plato argues that the soul is what is ultimately real with respect to the human person. The body belongs to the visible realm and is subject to change, decay, and death, whereas the soul belongs to the invisible, intelligible realm and is akin to what is divine, immortal, and unchanging.

Socrates explains:

“Obviously, Socrates, the soul resembles the divine, and the body resembles the mortal.

Consider then, Cebes, whether it follows from all that has been said that the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself, whereas the body is most like that which is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble and never consistently the same. Have we anything else to say to show, my dear Cebes, that this is not the case?” (Phaedo 80b)

Because the soul resembles what is divine and unchanging, Socrates argues that it is not destroyed at death:

“Then when death comes to man, the mortal part of him dies, it seems, but his deathless part goes away safe and indestructible, yielding the place to death.—So it appears. Therefore the soul, Cebes, he said, is most certainly deathless and indestructible and our souls will really dwell in the underworld.” (Phaedo 106e–107a)

Furthermore, Socrates describes philosophy itself as preparation for the separation of soul from body:

I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death. (Phaedo 64a)

Thus, in Phaedo, the ultimate reality of the human person is not the body but the soul. The true self is the soul, which survives bodily death and continues its existence in the intelligible realm.

Reference:
Plato (1997). Plato: Complete Works. Hackett Publishing. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781603846707