In the Phaedo two theories emerged, The Cycle of Opposites and The Exclusion Opposites. Plato claimed that everything had an opposite: Cold is the opposite of hot, small is the opposite of large and ultimately, life is the opposite of death. However, he hasn't exactly pinned 'opposite' down. If 'S' is small and 'L' is large the theory holds up. But if 'L2' is also large, and larger, in fact, than 'L', then 'L' is not only large, but also small. All of Plato's examples work on a relatvie basis; there will always be a colder imaginable to make the original extreme seem warm. His point in opposites was to say that life is the opposite of death, and living people come from dead people, (by begging the question of immortality of the soul). Another flaw in this idea is that living people coming from dead people puts a limit on the amount of people.
Next he brought up his argument of The Exclusion of Opposites. In this argument he says that where there is one thing, its opposite cannot be. He was trying to get to the point that where there is life, there cannot be death. Again his argument is flawed. In my previous example of 'S' 'L' and 'L2', 'L' invariably takes part in the form "large" and the form "small", already shooting the argument down. But Plato goes on to use an analogy:
heat:fire=cold:snow ; soul:life=?:death
In Plato's world life is the opposite of death because death, as a property has the idea "no life". But what is the opposite of soul? Surely it cannot be "no soul", for large is the opposite of small, not "no small". But there is nothing to take the place of '?'. Plato never complted this analogy, nor has any other philosopher been able to. |
