Phaedo
Discussion of death, immortality just before
Socrates’ execution
Nature of the soul, more on recollection,
knowledge
A puzzle: if death is not a bad thing (as argued
in Apology, Crito), why is suicide wrong?
Socrates’ half-hearted reply: life is service to the
gods; so one should be grateful that the service
is over but to end it early would be like
escaping.
Body is a prison
Cebes: This argument fails. Wise people would
want to be governed by a master wiser than
themselves and should resent ending this
service.
“We are told” that the masters of the afterlife are
even better, also good people are there
Simmias: what is the evidence?
Socrates abandons the religious line of inquiry,
adopts a secular one
Philosophy, properly done, is practice and
anticipation for death
Death is separation of soul from body
True philosopher – lover of wisdom – would
view this as freeing, for the body distracts one
from the search for truth
Body is still a prison, but now emphasis no
longer on jailer
Death is separation from body; separation from
body is the only way to achieve knowledge;
knowledge is what the philosopher seeks; so the
philosopher should welcome death.
Pleasures of the body: food, drink, sex, wealth,
power, etc.
Pleasures of the soul: wisdom, knowledge
The true philosopher seeks the latter, not the
former
Moreover, the latter pleasures are superior to the
former.
(hence the term ‘Platonic’)
Notice that later Christians adopt, adapt this,
claim that body is bad, pleasure of the soul is
love of God (not wisdom)
Body, senses are no help when it comes to
knowledge. Can’t see the Good with your eyes,
hear with your ears.
Again, knowledge is of necessary truths. Unlike
true belief, knowledge must “stay put”.
Body is an impediment. Always distracting one
with its own desires, pains, etc.
Plato’s radical nativism:
All concepts are innate; we couldn’t have
meaningful experience without first having the
relevant concepts
Poverty of the stimulus argument:
I have the concept of Equality itself – perfect
equality
Nothing in this world is perfectly equal to
anything else
So the concept must not be derived from
experience but is innate
So on with perfect Beauty, perfect Goodness,
perfect Horseness, etc.
Impossibility argument:
Acquiring a concept would involve dividing the
world up into categories: e.g., here are a bunch
of things that are all similar; I’ll call them
‘dogs’.
Problem: you couldn’t see the similarities
among the members of a category unless you
knew what they all had in common, e.g.,
doghood
But then you couldn’t see the similarities in the
group unless you already had the concept dog.
Similarly for beauty, knife, doorknob, etc.
Experience triggers already existing concepts,
cannot create new concepts
The Myth of the Cave
Consider a group of people raised in a cave,
bound so that they can only see shadows on the
wall, cast by puppets, but they never see the
puppets themselves.
They would think that the shadows are the real
things, even though the shadows are fleeting and
impermanent.
They might even be able to formulate
generalizations and predictions about the
shadows.
But they would have merely true opinion, not
knowledge.
It would be painful, difficult, and disorienting to
free oneself, eyes hurt first by the light of the
fire, then more by the light of the sun.
On returning to the cave, would be virtually
blind, would look to inhabitants like one who
knows less rather than more.
Significance of the myth
Material world is like cave; we are like prisoners
We mistake images of things for the things
themselves.
A wise man (e.g., Socrates) in our midst would
look foolish; if he attempted to liberate us we
would resist.
A soul with knowledge born into this material
world would be disoriented, temporarily blinded.
(Recollection)
Beyond the material world of images, shadows
is the REAL world
The Forms:
Immaterial, eternal, unchanging
Don’t have any spatio-temporal properties
Red things are red because they participate in,
share in, the Form of redness
Objects in the world are just pale reflections of
the Forms: since the latter are eternal and
unchanging, they constitute the ultimate reality
Knowledge is knowledge of the Forms; this is
achieved while soul is disembodied, prior to
birth and after death
The one over the many again
Now a metaphysical doctrine
Any time two objects are similar, it is because
they share some property, that is, they both share
in the same Form
Similarity is partial identity, and qualitative
identity has to be understood in terms of
numerical identity
To be a horse is to have the property of
horseness, that is, to share in the Form of
horseness, and there is only one of these
Arguments for immortality
Recollection
Simplicity
Death/life
Essentially living
Argument from Recollection
1. Apparent learning during life is really just
recollection of things learned during the pre-
existence of the soul
2. If the soul exists prior to the body, then the
soul is a substance (in Descartes’ sense): i.e., a
thing that can exist by itself
3. Therefore, it can exist without the body
4. Therefore, it is possible that the soul exists
after the death of the body
(Response to Simmias’ objection that the soul
may be to the body like the music is to the lute)
Cebes’ objection: even if we know the soul can
exist without the body, if we are to look forward
to an afterlife, we’d need to know that the soul
will survive the death of this body.
Argument from recollection does not establish
immortality per se
“Plato says in the Phaedo that our ‘imaginary
ideas’ arise from the preexistence of the soul,
and are not derivable from experience---read
monkeys for preexistence.”
— Charles Darwin
Other arguments intended to show that soul
cannot die/cease to exist
Argument from simplicity:
1. Soul is simple, i.e., not composed of parts
2.Therefore, it is indivisible
3. To destroy something (by natural means) is to
break it apart, to decompose it
4. Since the soul is simple, it cannot be
destroyed by natural means
Why think the soul is simple?
No one has more or less of a soul than anyone
else.
It is impossible to have half or 2/3 of a soul
Is that really true? Might it depend on what is
meant by ‘soul’?
If ‘soul’ means ‘mind’, then perhaps it is
possible to have part of one
Plato’s tripartite soul of the Republic: desiring
part, honor-loving part, reasoning part
Argument from life and death
1. Everything comes from its opposite: large
from small, wet from dry, etc.
2. So life comes from death, and death from life.
3. If the dead stayed dead, eventually everything
would be dead.
4. So there must be eternal cycle of death and
rebirth
5. So the soul endure throughout this cycle, i.e.,
it must be eternal
What is wrong with this argument, and how can
we make it better?
Argument from essentially living nature of the
soul
1. Bodies aren’t essentially living – some of
them are dead
2. There must be something that is essentially
living, which, when added to the body, makes it
alive
3. We call this the soul
4. Therefore, the soul is essentially living
5. Therefore, the soul cannot die
What’s wrong with this argument?
Can we use it to prove that cars have souls?
The afterlife according to Plato
the deceased exists among the Forms
Is disembodied, so cannot experience bodily
pleasures.
Is just a soul, so can experience pleasures of the
soul, viz., knowledge
i.e., knowledge of the Forms