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In Plato's Apology (39a–42a), which fallacy does Socrates use to argue death isn't feared?

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Socrates's larger argument, that death is preferable to abandoning one's principles, is a matter of personal conviction, not some universal truth.

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Socrates's first logical fallacy is a form of post hoc ergo propter hoc—that is, after this, because of this—and is centered on Socrates's argument that his personal god or spirit, the daimonion, who normally opposes him when he does something likely to harm himself, has remained silent from the time Socrates left for the trial to its conclusion:

Probably what has occurred to me has turned out to be good. ... For there is no way that the accustomed sign [from his personal spirit] would not have opposed me unless I were about to do something good.

Socrates assumes that there exists a direct cause and effect relationship between the spirit's silence and the rightness of his actions during the trial. In other words, because the spirit fails to speak to Socrates, Socrates takes no other actions or makes further arguments to save himself, his conclusion being that...

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death cannot be bad if he was not warned to avoid it.

A second logical fallacy occurs when Socrates argues that being dead results in one of two things:

For either it is like being nothing and the dead man has no perception of anything, or else, in accordance with the things that are said, it happens to be a sort of change and migration of the soul from the place here to another place.

This fallacy is called begging the question (petitio principii), which does not mean "prompting the question" as used commonly by people who don't know its proper meaning. Begging the question means that one assumes a conclusion that is not proven. Socrates makes the argument that death is not bad because it is either nothingness, a never-ending sleep with no dreams, or one's soul migrates to Hades, the Greeks' underworld, where, after having been released by honest judges in the underworld, a good man would be free to

... associate with Orpheus, Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer, how much would any of you give? For I am willing to die many times if these things are true. ...

Here, Socrates assumes that an afterlife based on "things that are said" will be his destiny—certainly, he believes in this afterlife, but believing is not the same as knowing—and so his conclusion, based on assumption, may or may not reflect reality. Socrates's logic here is similar to someone arguing that the Bible must be true because it is the word of God—basing an argument on another argument that is a belief rather than a fact.

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What counter-arguments challenge Socrates's claim that death is not to be feared in Apology 39a-42a?

Socrates says, as he awaits his own death, that death has to be one of two things: either it is "like being nothing, and the dead man has no perception of anything," or it is a "sort of change and migration of the soul" to another place.

The first proposition can be disputed on the grounds that life is good—that being human is about perceiving and feeling and that an end to that would be tragic, something to be dreaded. In short, if to die is really to sleep forever, it is hardly the self-evident good that Socrates attempts to portray it as. Some people could reasonably not see it that way.

His second possibility is even more contentious, for he is assuming that he will be judged after his death and that his judgment will result in his fellowship with other good men. In other words, he assumes that, if his soul survives his death and he is still conscious in the afterlife, that it will be pleasant. It assumes that the injustices of the world are not present in the afterlife, that "there is nothing bad for a good man" after death, and that the "gods are not without care for his troubles."

This is, of course, entirely a matter of faith on the part of Socrates and cannot be defended by any rational argument. Beyond that, Socrates is assuming that he is good, that his death is unjust, and that he will be rewarded. What if he is fairly judged to be a bad man, worthy of punishment in the afterlife? This thought does not seem to occur to him. Ultimately, his larger argument, that death is preferable to abandoning one's principles, is a matter of personal conviction, not some universal truth.

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The first counterargument you could advance is based on Socrates' assumption about the facts of the afterlife. He argues that either it is like a deep sleep and thus pleasant or that he will meet the famous dead and converse with them. He does not raise the possibility that he may go to an unpleasant afterlife.

The other possible counterargument is one that Plato puts in the mouth of Crito in the dialogue Crito, namely that Socrates' arguments are entirely selfish. Is Socrates shirking his duty to care for his wife and his children? By not arguing more strongly against his accusers (or perhaps accepting the help of the famous speech writer Lysias), did Socrates endanger his followers who had put there trust in him?

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