Pure Soul

Phaedo is my favorite work we have read by Plato by far. Socrates is getting ready to die, yet he explains before his death exactly why it is he is happily departing. The whole concept of the soul and striving to disassociate oneself with one's own body is exactly why Socrates says he is welcoming death. Death is the one thing that can free himself of the physical pleasure the body desires, but are not beneficial to the soul. Socrates speaks of the soul saying:
          If it is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, as it had no willing                     association with the body in life, but avoided it and gathered itself together by itself and always           practiced this, which is no other than practicing philosophy in the right way, in fact, training to           die easily.   (119)
Socrates is saying that philosophy is ridding one's soul of the body. My question is, can one ever really accomplish this task? He says the polluted soul is when nothing seems to exist except the physical, but one must attend to the body to survive. In a sense, this concept of controlling how much our physical desires rule us relates to Christianity. One could say that in Christianity, if one is controlled solely by the flesh, then their soul can be compared to Socrates definition of a "polluted soul".

Socrates addresses the polluted souls after death and how they become a visible object like the body. This theory was interesting to me because this is how he explains what phantoms are. These souls are "inferior men" to whom are "forced to wander" and are "paying the penalty for their previous bad upbringing" (120). Socrates contradicts himself almost because at first he says that souls are the invisible, and bodies are the visible; yet, souls can turn to the visible?

I commented on Briana and Nate's post.