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Socrates and his students use examples to explain their concepts; many of these take the form of analogies. The purpose is to clarify a concept that might otherwise be too cerebral to understand; the analogy makes it vivid. Cebes, for example, describes a tailor who makes many coats, one of which outlives him, to suggest that a soul might inhabit many bodies, yet one body might outlast it. Socrates compares good souls and their community spirit to bees and ants, which devote their lives to their fellows; he goes so far as to declare that such souls sometimes reincarnate into those very insects.
Socrates also describes his vision of the afterlife—a vision he admits may or may not be true—in which the good are rewarded and the wicked punished. Punishments are determined by the bad souls’ victims. This imagery also serves as a slyly crafted depiction of the kind of justice Socrates would like to see meted out during life on earth.
By Plato
Allegory Of The Cave
Allegory Of The Cave
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Apology
Apology
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Crito
Crito
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Euthyphro
Euthyphro
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Gorgias
Gorgias
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Ion
Ion
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Meno
Meno
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Phaedrus
Phaedrus
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Protagoras
Protagoras
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Symposium
Symposium
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Theaetetus
Theaetetus
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The Last Days of Socrates
The Last Days of Socrates
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The Republic
The Republic
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