as well. In part, he wants them to be free of anxiety over his fate, and he uses the occasion to speculate on the idea of immortality and to examine the various proofs that could be offered for immortality based on the nature of the soul.
Plato is an idealist in his philosophy, basing his view of the world on the idea that there are forms embodying this world in a state of perfection and that what we perceive in this world are only shadows of the ideal. Central to Plato's thought is the power of reason to reveal the intelligibility and order governing the changing world of appearance, with the purpose of creating, at both the political and the individual level, a harmonious and happy life. Plato seeks a harmony between reason and passion, a life of self mastery in which reason governs the will as its natural guide and source. Plato's doctrine of recollection holds that learning is the remembering of a wisdom that the soul enjoyed prior to its incarnation, another aspect of the idea that there are ideal forms "remembered" by the soul in this world, and this is actually a mythical statement of this view that neither reason nor the intelligible order that it reveals is alien to the human soul. Plato is seen as a rationalist in that he finds the good, the beautiful, and the just all contained in the true, in what can be deduced or distilled from experience by pure reason:
Thus the vision he gives us of the political community in the Republic, as well as in the Statesman and the Laws, is founded not only in currents of aestheticism and moralism. . . the political community is not only true but also good and beautiful.
In the Phaedo, Socrates presumes the existence of the soul. Proof for the existence of the soul is not offered in this dialogue. Phaedo states that Socrates does not object to dying because he believes in the existence of the soul and knows that the soul will cross over to be with the gods and with other men w...