truth sought by philosophy.
This explains why Socrates would not fear death if it could be shown that the soul survives death. Socrates in fact states that death is a kind of dying in which the true philosopher is released from the body. The body is seen as an onerous thing which is suffered by the soul until the soul can be freed. Throughout life, the body is seen as a source of endless trouble because of its requirements to be fed, clothed, rested, and so on, all of which distract from the human quest for truth, the quest undertaken by the soul. The body is also liable to diseases which further undercut the ability of the soul to seek the truth. While this is offered as the first proof, it is not a proof at all but a reason why the philosopher would want the soul to be immortal, so after death the quest for truth could continue and now be successful without the burden of the body.
The first argument offered for the immortality of the soul is in sections 70e to 72a. Socrates argues that opposites are generated from one another, something he says can be seen all around us in this world and that is presumed to carry over into the next world. Life is always followed by death, so to preserve the symmetry of the universe, death must be followed by life.
Socrates indicates that opposites can be said to come from one another, that when something gets larger, it has first to have been smaller. He says that we should not consider this issue only with regard to man but should see that all things have their opposite, and that everything with an opposite necessarily comes to be from that opposite and from nowhere else. He sets up a number of opposites to demonstrate how each must come from the other: good-bad, large-small, better-worse, just-unjust, and so on. There is a process that connects these, a process of one becoming the other, even though we may not have a name for that process. This leads to the heart of the matte...