Your Body Is a Factory for the Soul

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The body is not a prison for the soul, but a factory. Souls were not placed in flesh as a type of sentence but as a vehicle to help complete work. Life is not a punishment; it is more like a job. According to Socrates' views as expressed in Plato's Phaedo, Socrates believed the body is a prison for the soul. He asserts that "she is fast bound in the body, and fastened to it; she is unable to contemplate what is, by herself, or except through the bars of her prison house, the body" (82 e). The people who spend their time "forming and molding their bodies" (82 d) are not to be followed and all should stay as far away as possible from those. The five senses that bodies include are filled with deception and falseness. Although I do agree with some aspects of his argument, I believe a factory is a better analogy for the body.

One does not stay at the factory for eternity. As questioned in Phaedo, "For if the soul exists in a previous state and if, when she comes into life and is born, she can only be born from death, and from a state of death, must she not exist after death too, since she has to be born again?" (77 d). In this instance, the factory is much like a prison; existence does not begin nor end at the factory just as it does not begin nor end at the prison. As people have lives outside of their work; the soul has existence outside of the body. I do not disagree with Socrates that the soul's visit in the body is merely that - a visit.

If the body is indeed a prison, then it seems men have nothing to do sit and bide their time until they are released from these walls. "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" (64 a). It seems very shallow to spend one's life only practicing for the departure. If that is what the aim is supposed to be, why even have life? Life is not meaningless, everyone has a purpose. God created man, because He had a plan for us to accomplish.

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