This disputation is tersely written and somewhat crudely argued. However, it shows you the level of sophistication, engagement, comprehension, and historical awareness of even my average students in an intro/philosophy class at a private liberal arts college. Makes a heart proud:

Objection 1: It seems that the soul lives after bodily death because, as the “argument from opposites” states, life comes from death. Life and death are natural opposites and all nature opposites are included in a cycle where the opposites come from each other. Death comes from life, therefore life comes from death, and since “soul” means life, the soul continues to live after bodily death.

Objection 2: Secondly, as the soul lives after death, it lives again in another body, sometimes remembering parts of its previous life, such as unlearned truths. One cannot learn true Equality from anything in the physical world, and yet everyone understands the concept of true Equality somehow.

Objection 3: Furthermore, forms are infinite and the soul is a form, so therefore the soul is also infinite, or immortal.

Appeal to Authority: On the other hand, it is warned in Matthew to “be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Argument: I answer that the soul has the possibility of living after bodily death, however, can also be destroyed, so that life is not guaranteed. The fact that souls can be destroyed comes from the idea that souls are created. In the idea of the cycle of life to death to life again, the soul is recycled in a way to create the second life; however, this does not explain a population growth where more lives are being created than there have been deaths. You cannot get millions of souls from only a handful in the beginning, you would have run out of souls for bodies very quickly. If souls are created and introduced into existence, they must also be able to permanently stop existing from some reason. It has been referred that people destroy their souls through the act of murder, or even being too obsessed with material things.

Response to Objection 1: Socrates’s argument of opposites holds, if concerned with only life and death and if soul simply means life. However, to separate the soul from the body implies that the soul is a separate entity, not simply a translation of the word life. With the soul being a separate entity giving life to the body, it has more supernatural qualities, making it supernatural, not natural. The argument of opposites, which is focused on natural opposites, therefore cannot apply to the soul since it is not “natural,” but “supernatural,” something else must apply.

Response to Objection 2: Knowing and understanding a concept such as Equality, without actually having been able to learn it from the physical world is not a matter of recollection. If one cannot learn it from the physical world, how was it learned in the first place to be remembered? Even if it was learned before life in a body, the argument only concludes that the soul existed before birth, not after death.

Response to Objection 3: Forms are infinite, but the soul can only be a form if it was concerned and surrounded by the thought of forms throughout its bodily life. If the soul was concerned with material things in the world during its material life, it would not be associated with forms after death. The “soul” that remains on the Earth, still obsessed with material things is not the soul, but the spirit, which also must be separated in essence from soul; the soul dies, the spirit remains. Even so, if the soul is concerned with forms and accepts death, not fearing it, the soul becomes a form by becoming a part of death through dying, since death is a form itself, continuing to live as death.