The Function of Death in the Search for Knowledge

Since the object of my study throughout the various texts in this course was how to search for knowledge and what to do with it once found, it is important for me to highlight the role of death in this inquiry. Many thought that in order for a person to be acquainted with a certain matter, he should be alive and should exert some effort to be able to get to the information or to the truth. However, this is not entirely right, as a person may and will get to knowledge by means of recollection only. What is recollection and what does it have to do with being dead? Is dying the end of the journey? Is it the obstacle or simply the way out of ignorance and to enlightenment? Do we learn anything at all in life? Or the body is such a strong obstacle that it has the full ability to prevent us from acquiring the simplest knowledge? Here are the questions that arise from the problematic one at the very beginning that induced us to jump into the functions of death without even trying to find a meaning or a sense to it first. Luckily, "death" has a positive connotation when it comes to knowledge. This statement will be explained and backed up a lot more when I endorse it with examples and reasons from the texts studied. This composition aims to examine Plato's approach to the concept of death through Socrates' dialogues with Meno and Phaedo, and how the same figures later in Rene Descartes' Discourse on the Method.

In the Meno, the theory of recollection, also called Amnesis, explains a little how death, or in this case the non-existence, has functions in the search for knowledge. Anything that a person has knowledge of or comes to know in his entire lifetime he had already known since the very beginning, before he even came to life. Here is when the immortality of the soul explains this statement. The human being's spirit was there all along through many other lives and had collected all the knowledge there was to finally deliver it to him once it occupies his body which is thus simply served with this knowledge once it recollects it. The example of Meno's slave might support this part pretty well, since Socrates proved to his other interlocutor that by asking questions only he gives the slave the chance and space to recollect what his soul already used to know, but never found the opportunity to apply in real life. That was a suitable opportunity for it to emerge. The knowledge this kid proved he had was by no means taught to him by Socrates, as there is no such thing called as teacher of knowledge. Socrates' only role here was to push the slave towards remembering what he had in himself before now. This is also shown in the part where the slave starts mistaking, and Socrates to his turn never corrects him by saying the right answers, but instead keeps on asking questions that encouraged the slave to find the right ones.

The theory of recollection is not actual death as the person is not born yet to die, but it is a simple way to show how one can gather and bring together some knowledge without being alive. It is as though there were two steps and this, being the first, leads the body and soul to the second phase: once one is dead.

Now, the body, which is mortal and therefore does not exist anymore, leaves once again the rest of the query to the soul. Since it had started it before the person's birth, it might as well finish it after his death. In the Phaedo, Socrates developed many arguments proving that since the body is mortal and is subject to death, the soul must be its indestructible opposite. This can be referred to as the proof among