Plato’s cycle of opposites argument Flashcards
How may you structure this argument in a paragraph
P1. Every change from one state to another must involve a cycle of opposites. E.g. something becoming ‘smaller’ must be cycling away from ‘bigger’. A quality which has an opposite comes into being from its opposite.
P2.This cycling involves two opposite processes; e.g. increasing and decreasing. If these processes were not equally balanced, everything would be eternally getting bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller.
P3. Something dying is cycling away from the process of coming into life. Therefore, something coming into life must be cycling away from the process of death.
P4.This process must be balanced otherwise there would be only dead things or no dead things.
C1. There must be a soul which is cycling between life and death
Cycle of opposites criticism
Arguably ‘life’ and ‘death’ are not objective qualities but just descriptions of different arrangements of atoms. Objectively they cannot be opposites, therefore.
Arguably the universe is getting bigger and bigger, and has been doing so since the big bang, not for eternity. So Plato’s argument fails because he could not have been aware of the discoveries of modern physics
