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Plato's Phaedo - Selections - Comments

Translator Hugh Tredennick [and Benjamin Jowett]. In classical times this dialog was also known as "On the Soul", and was classified as an "ethical" dialog (Diog. L. iii, 58).

This dialog presents the Platonic (in contrast to the historical) Socrates' last hours before death, with Plato's proofs of the soul's immortality based on the argued-for premise of the recollection of Absolutes, without which they could not be known, for "Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?" Then ought you to allow yourself to be distracted by sense perception? The body is merely a source of endless trouble to the philosopher.

Outline of this page ...


Introduction to the Phaedo

My comments are written from the viewpoint of what I have called logic of language, the aim of which is to preserve the distinction between meaning and nonsense in philosophical discussions. In this dialog Plato presents his arguments -- or perhaps proofs, because his conclusions are derived from axioms (Phaedo 99e) -- not only that the soul survives the death of the body but also that the soul pre-existed the body and that the soul is immortal.

Plato pictures the soul as a ghost or spirit (81c-d), an invisible something that is distinct from the body in which it dwells. That is, Plato talks about the soul as if the word 'soul' were the name of an object. (In Plato's thinking "all words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for, whether an object or phenomenon, visible or invisible, concrete or intangible", but I do not think that is the reason for his having the picture of the soul as a ghost.) However -- and this is, I think, the key to understanding this dialog -- Plato does not start with that picture and then try to argue that the soul is immortal on the basis of it. Indeed, we cannot start with the picture of the soul as a ghost and then prove anything by means of it; it is a dead end. But Plato does not start there. He begins by reasoning that there must be such a ghost (an entity distinct from the body) because we must have learned things before we were born into the body -- that is, because learning is recollection (namely the recollection of what are called "absolutes" in this dialog). And once Plato thus establishes that there is such a ghost, he goes on to ask, What must be the nature of that ghost?

Plato says that if learning is not recollection then we are wasting our time with these arguments (76d-e). But whether learning is recollection depends on the nature of what Plato calls 'Forms'. If our concept-formation can be explained by what can be perceived by the senses, then there is no need for recollection. But to Plato's thinking everything we perceive is an imperfect copy (75b) of an "Absolute" (or Form or Pattern or Archetype; I will use the word 'Ideal' here); but we never perceive an Ideal in the world, and therefore where could our notion of the Ideal have come from?

The principle problem is that Plato's Forms -- or, in other words, the common natures that are the meaning of common names -- are for us simply linguistic conventions, although some concept-formation appears to us to be clearly dependent on certain general facts [or regularities] of nature (PI § 142; OC § 617b). However, for Plato all concepts, if they are concepts, that is to say names of Forms, are (1) themselves facts of nature (2) whose existence must be explained by facts of nature (That is his project in philosophy). But when Plato looks he finds that we do not see the ideal Forms themselves anywhere in the world (Phaedo 65d); and therefore he concludes that they must be invisible. But if the Forms are invisible and if we nonetheless know of them despite not using the body's senses of sight, hearing, and so on, then our knowledge must come from our having existed before we were born into the body and the limitations of its senses. If it is granted that therefore learning is recollection, then Plato says that we can prove that the soul is imperishable.

"We must seek as though we were about to find" (Augustine). But that is difficult if we don't believe that there is anything that philosophy can find for us. But Plato says that we must never lose faith in argument (90e).

Who is the Phaedo who tells Plato's story of Socrates' final hours?

57a-b - ECHECRATES: Were you there with Socrates yourself, Phaedo, when he was executed ...? ... it is a long time since we had any visitor from there [Athens] who could give us any definite information, except that he [Socrates] was executed by drinking hemlock. Nobody could tell us anything more than that.

Plato in 58a-c does not say how long Socrates was imprisoned after his trial, only that a long time passed before he was executed due to the mission Athens sent to Delos every year. Xenophon says that it was thirty days (Memorabilia iv, 8, 2). In 59b-c Plato names those who were present at Socrates' death (Among them is the Hermogenes who was Xenophon's source), but Plato himself was not present (but he says that Antisthenes and Euclides of Megara were). There is a very short chapter about Phaedo himself in Diogenes Laertius

Phaedo of Ellis in Diogenes Laertius

Phaedo was a native of Elis, of noble family, who on the fall of that city was taken captive and forcibly consigned to a house of ill-fame. But he would close the door and so contrive to join Socrates' circle, and in the end Socrates induced Alcibiades or Crito with their friends to ransom him; from that time onwards he studied philosophy as became a free man. (Diog. L. ii, 105; cf. ii, 31: "He [Socrates] made Crito ransom Phaedo who, having been taken prisoner in the war, was kept in degrading slavery, and so won him for philosophy.")

The OCD 2e (1970) says that Phaedo was born circa 417 B.C. and founded the philosophical school of Elis; he seems to have taught only ethics.

Socrates, his wife Xanthippe and the children

In Diogenes Laertius the dialog named after Phaedo is also referred to as On the Soul (iii, 58). In 59d-e Plato says that the prison where Socrates was held was close to the court house where Socrates' trial was held, and that Socrates was kept in chains there until the day of his execution. In 60a Socrates asks Crito to have Xanthippe taken home, but later must chide even his companions for giving way to womanly emotions when he drank the poison (117d-e).

In 116b it says that Socrates had "two little sons and one big boy" [Jowett: "two young sons and an elder one"; Church: "two sons quite little, and one grown up"]; but if that is true and if Socrates was 70 years old at his death, then wouldn't Xanthippe have had to be some thirty to forty years younger than her husband? And therefore this note seems not to be an historical but a philosophical note? How did Plato intend it to be understood?

When Crito asks if Socrates has no directions for his friends about his children, Socrates replies "Nothing new" (115b), only that his friends live as he has taught them to, because if they do not then nothing he could say would be of any use. "The just man is the man who does good both to himself and to all other men." -- That is how Socrates has taught his friends and companions to live. If they are just men -- i.e. men who live justly -- then Socrates need not worry about the family he leaves behind. (And therefore the word 'just' here does not mean simply 'fair', but appears to mean 'virtuous' -- i.e. living in a way that is in accord with the excellences that are proper to man -- and above all others being wise -- i.e. knowing what is good. If Socrates' friends seek what is the good for his sons, then all will be fine, for Socrates himself could do no more than that for his children.)

58d - PHAEDO: Nothing gives me more pleasure than recalling the memory of Socrates, either by talking myself or by listening to someone else. [Jowett: "PHAEDO: For to me too there is no greater pleasure than to have Socrates brought to my recollection; whether I speak myself or hear another speak of him."]

[60d - In prison Socrates had given to some of Aesop's fables a lyrical form.] 60e-61a - [Plato says that Socrates often had a dream] appearing in different forms at different times, but always saying the same thing, "Socrates, practice and cultivate the arts". [I had thought, Socrates says, that the dream] was urging me on to what I was doing already, that is practicing the arts, because philosophy is the greatest of the arts, and I was practicing it. [But since his trial he thought that his dream might have intended him to be practicing the art of poetry, and that was why he had selected] some verses in honor of the god [Apollo] whose festival it was [and] some of Aesop's fables which were ready to hand and familiar to me [and these he rewrote as poetry, but "not very skillfully" according to Diog. L. ii, 42].

The Philosopher and Death (Plato's ideas about "the future life")

61d-e - I suppose that for one who is soon to leave this world there is no more suitable occupation than inquiring into our views about the future life, and trying to imagine what it is like. [Jowett tr.: "... as I am going to another place, I ought to be thinking and talking of the nature of the pilgrimage which I am about to make."]

When he was nearing death Wittgenstein told Drury that he was not thinking about a "future life" but only about this life and the writing he was still able to do (Recollections p. 169). Wittgenstein had reduced philosophy to logic-of-language and, in that depreciated form, for philosophy "The riddle does not exist". All that "exists" are pictures, ways of life, and Plato simply did not understand the logic of our language: the eternal questions that he pondered were not questions at all. Wittgenstein told Drury that he was deeply disturbed by the photographs he had seen in two shop windows (ibid. p. 112), but Wittgenstein did not see himself as part of that "decline of the human spirit", and yet his own photograph might be added to the former gallery and contrasted to Plato's noble vision of philosophy. Even if Plato did not understand the logic of our language, and I don't believe that he did, nonetheless there ought to be a worthier heir to his treatment of man's questions without answers, of life's riddles.

[61e-62a - If death might be a good, might indeed be better than life in some connections ("that sometimes and for some people death is better than life"), then why must we not kill ourselves? According to Xenophon's account, being spared the deterioration of old age was, in Socrates' view, a good (and a good reason to prefer his execution to exile); that is, according to Xenophon who looked at our life in the context of "this-world". For Plato, who took an "other-worldly" view of death, the good of death was for the soul that had lived a good life to join the company of other good souls and the gods; thus 63b is half-way consistent with the skepticism of the Apology with respect to an afterlife, which is that at death Socrates expected (if not a sleep without dreams, then), if the story that some tell is true of a removal to another place, that he would "enter the company, first, of ... wise and good gods, and secondly of men now dead who are better than those who are in this world now". However, Plato adds, that if Socrates did not have this expectation then "it is true that I [Socrates] should be wrong in not grieving at death" (63b), although in the Apology Socrates says that being afraid of death is a case of thinking one knows what one does not know (29a).] 62b - The allegory which the mystics tell us -- that we men are put in a sort of guard post, from which one must not release oneself or run away -- seems to me to be a high doctrine with difficult implications. [Jowett tr.: "There is a doctrine uttered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away; that is a great mystery which I do not quite understand."]

Contrary to Plato, Epictetus, on the other hand, said: "Remember that the door is always open. So if you choose to stay, you must not complain" (Discourses i, 24). Which of these two views is the Socratic, which the Platonic? But if Socrates did not run away from prison because, according to Plato, he was under the rule of law of the Athenian way of life [Crito 51c], then would he run away from life when he was under the rule of the gods: "the gods are our keepers [i.e. we are their possession]" (62b), if the gods do indeed require that man stay (and it can only be the case that the gods require what is good -- for, contrary to what Plato says, the gods are not "our masters" (62d), because both man and gods are ruled over only by the good -- but Plato presents no argument that it is good; certainly, appealing to his belief about the gods is not an argument)? Something that you "do not quite understand" is something that must be shown to stand up against refutation in dialectic.

There is no place for "a doctrine uttered in secret" in philosophy, because as Socrates taught his companions philosophy, philosophy is thoroughgoing use of the tests of experience [Plato notwithstanding] and reason (The Eleusinian Mysteries, faith as in God is one thing, philosophy another; both have their place in man's thinking, just not the same place). Further, if Plato believes that the body is the prison of the soul, denying the soul knowledge of the good and the true, then oughtn't he to argue that the philosopher will seek to put an end to his life in the body -- that is, a self-chosen death to escape his imprisonment, as a prisoner seeks his freedom? But Plato presents no argument but only a military metaphor for why the philosopher should "remain in the body", likening it to a soldier's assigned post which he must not abandon (62b).

The Phaedo first struck me forty years ago as a betrayal of the Socrates of thoroughgoing reason, i.e. the Socrates of the Apology (and of Xenophon, as I was to learn years later). And I am sorry to say that by reading the Phaedo just after reading the Apology, which had made a deep (and lasting) impression on me, I was put off reading more of Plato's work for decades.

"The Phaedo is more Plato than Socrates." That was what I first thought on first reading it, and now believe I know.

But I did not understand then that the Socrates of Plato is a literary invention that has been allowed to float free of the historical Socrates, that Plato was even more-so a follower of the ideas of Heraclitus (and later the Eleatics) than of Socrates.

But studying Plato as Plato (rather than as Plato's account of the historical Socrates) only after I had first studied Wittgenstein's logic of language for many years allows me to see much more in Plato's work than I could have as a young student (I have in mind the Sophist in particular).

63a - [Pleased by the persistent questioning of Cebes of Thebes, Socrates] said, You know, Cebes is always investigating arguments, and he is not at all willing to accept every statement at its face value.

63e-64a - ... I want to explain to you how it seems to me natural that a man who has really devoted his life to philosophy should be cheerful in the face of death, and confident of finding the greatest blessing in the next world when his life is finished.

Death as the soul leaving the body, the body "giving up the ghost"

64c - Is death nothing more or less than this, the separate condition of the body by itself when it is released from the soul, and the separate condition by itself of the soul when released from the body? Is death anything else than this? [Cf. Gorgias 524a-c; what is the essence of man?]

No, [Simmias, who was also from Thebes, answered,] just that.

64b - ... in what sense true philosophers are half dead ...

The Philosopher, Knowledge and Life in the Body

64d-65a - Do you think that it is right for a philosopher to concern himself with the so-called pleasures connected with food and drink?... And what about the other attentions we pay to our bodies? Do you think that a philosopher attaches any importance to them ...?... So it is clear first of all in the case of physical pleasures that the philosopher frees his soul from association with the body, so far as is possible, to a greater extent than other men?

Knowledge and Sense perception

65a-c - Now take the acquisition of knowledge. Is the body a hindrance or not, if one takes it into partnership to share an investigation? What I mean is this. Is there any certainty in human sight and hearing, or is it true ... that we neither hear nor see anything accurately?... Then when is it that the soul attains to truth? When it tries to investigate anything with the help of the body, it is obviously led astray.... Is it not in the course of reflection, if at all, that the soul gets a clear view of the facts?

I think Plato took that notion from Parmenides: for Parmenides says do not be governed by "an aimless eye, an echoing ear", but let your understanding decide the issue. Surely it is "in the course of reflection" that one "gets a clear view of the facts". Take for example Kant's insight into percepts and concepts, or indeed Wittgenstein's logic of language; both are the products of reflection. However, they are reflections about the facts of experience -- i.e. about what is shown to us by eye and ear. But is that not also what Plato means? Are Plato's Forms so different from Kant's innate categories of the mind; are not both claimed to be necessary preconditions of human knowledge? Plato's notion of another world is based on his reflections about this world. One closes one's eyes to "see" more clearly; 'see' of course = 'understand' here. Note that when Plato says in 67a-b that to attain knowledge the philosopher must avoid association with the body, is the knowledge he has in mind philosophical [i.e. discursive, what can be put into words] or mystical [i.e. not discursive]?

65d - Do we recognize such a thing as absolute uprightness?... And absolute beauty and goodness too? [And absolute tallness and health and strength? (Jowett also uses the word 'absolute' in his translation.)]

Of course [replied Simmias].

Why "of course"? Is it because the argument for the existence of Absolutes (cf. Forms or Patterns) has been given and accepted by Plato in prior dialogs ["There is nothing new, he said, in what I am about to tell you; but only what I have been always and everywhere repeating in the previous discussion and on other occasions" (tr. Jowett) (100b)], or is it because to Plato their existence seems indisputable [because if they do not exist, then it must be that nothing whatever is intelligible to us (because, as Heraclitus has said, all perceptible things are really in flux), and therefore that nothing whatever is knowable, and therefore that all speech is nonsensical]? I don't know.

65d - Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?

Certainly not, said he.

Much of a muchness (or absolute "much"), and Plato

It's not possible to see nonsense (if by 'nonsense' we mean 'an undefined word or combination of words'). "Have you ever so much as seen a muchness?" Alice is asked (There is an English characterization "much of a muchness", meaning simply 'little or nothing to choose between'). That muchness (for muchness is the essence of much: what all "much" has in common and which distinguishes "much" from everything else, and thus, in Plato's earlier dialogs, the very Form of "much" itself) is Plato's "absolute largeness". For note that the concept 'largeness' is a relational concept, not an absolute one: the words 'large', 'larger' are defined relative to 'small', 'smaller', and vice versa. If there were a concept 'absolute tallness' it would be logically possible to describe how that expression is to be used, e.g. to what it is to be applied (cf. Plato, Parmenides 132a, 133c). (Or do you imagine that every possible combination of words just somehow must a have meaning?) "... did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness!" (Alice in Wonderland vii) Were there such a drawing it would show that 'absolute much' (i.e. "muchness") was a logical possibility. But, again, any drawing that illustrated our use of the word 'much' would have to include 'less', because 'much' is also a relational concept.

Plato's thinking here is "metaphysical" in the way Wittgenstein characterizes metaphysics: "The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations" (Z § 458; an outstanding example of this is the work of Thomas Aquinas on the fundamental principles of reasoning) -- Plato wants to, and imagines that he does, investigate reality, whereas all he might do here is to try to give a true account of the "grammar" or "logic" (in Wittgenstein's jargon) of various words of our language. If we say that something essentially cannot be seen (i.e. that it is in no way whatever perceptible to the senses with or without the aid of instruments such as e.g. the telescope), we are not talking about the existence of anything; cf. 'God cannot be seen' is a statement about how we use the word 'God' (which is a conceptual investigation), not about the nature of God (which would be a factual investigation).)

"Knowledge of equality cannot be derived from mere approximations to equality"

The basic assumption of the doctrine [i.e. Plato's theory of Forms or doctrine of Ideas] is that the imperfect by itself could never lead us to knowledge of the perfect. No two things in the world are exactly, mathematically equal. If then we have a definable idea in our minds of the true meaning of the word 'equal', we cannot have gotten it merely from an examination and comparison of sticks which we see or lines which we draw. These physical approximations ... (W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle (1950), v, p. 95-96)

"Things in the world may approximate perfect equality, but none are in fact perfectly equal." How does Plato know that, if he knows that? Or is this a Platonic preconception ("could never lead us"), a requirement, not the result of an investigation of experience? (Why could it never lead us?)

Why we have so little time to give to philosophy

66c-d - [Now follows the passage, (tr. Jowett), "For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake us ... it fills us full of loves and lusts and fears and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery ... money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body", and thus "so long as we keep to the body"] we are slaves in its service. That is why, on all these accounts, we have so little time for philosophy.

Knowledge comes not through the body

67a-b - It seems that so long as we are alive, we shall continue closest to knowledge if we avoid as much as we can all contact and association with the body, except when they are absolutely necessary, and instead of allowing ourselves to become infected with its nature, purify ourselves from it ... Something to this effect, Simmias, is what I imagine all real lovers of learning must think themselves and say to one another. Don't you agree with me?

To say as in 66c that the body "fills us with loves and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense" is one thing. To say that the body is a distraction, like an illness, from our ability to think about philosophy and that its desire for pleasures draws us from thinking about philosophy is one thing. However, to say that human sight and hearing are of no use in the acquisition of knowledge, being "inaccurate", as 65a-b claims, is quite another. But Plato conflates the two. Which is prior -- the "inaccuracy" or the Forms? Why must there be "absolutes" (as in 'absolute tallness')? Plato has said why: because that notion is a foundation of his thinking: without absolutes (things that don't change) knowledge is impossible (Philosophical Grammar i § 81, p. 126-7); it is an axiom, and Plato's method is axiomatic.

[An opposite view of the senses to Plato's is found in the Book of Wisdom, namely that "the beauty [excellence] of God is known by the beauty of the things he has made" (13.5). Plato's view is also the reverse of Socrates' method, that man derives the concept 'largeness' by induction and abstraction from sensible things.]

Plato has asked: "Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?" What you cannot reply to Plato is that: if we separate ourselves from the body (like Descartes shutting off his senses), then we have no way of knowing whether the notion of "absolute beauty" (65d) is simply the product of imagination -- or indeed whether it is not simply a nonsensical combination of words -- or something in some way verifiable. Not the standard "provable by argument" -- i.e. propositions derived from other propositions -- but the standard verifiable by experience (That is the distinction between rationalism and empiricism). But Plato will not accept that standard in all cases [83a - but only "unless it is necessary to do so"], because obviously Socrates and Phaedrus do use that standard when they decide to "turn off here and walk along the Ilissus; then we can sit down in any quiet spot" (Phaedrus 229a), as do we all, but also not in all cases: we do not e.g. verify a calculation in maths by experience. But, then, in which cases and according to which criteria for deciding which standard to use, does Plato use reason alone as the standard of truth and falsity? "Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?" (65d); and yet they must exist -- but in which sense of 'must'? The only "must" in maths is the rules of the game. But when Plato say that "absolute tallness" exists, he is not talking about rules for using words; he is not conducting a conceptual investigation. (It is important here to recall that Plato does not regard his Forms as simply belonging to the human frame of reference, as I believe Kant regarded his categories; for Plato the Forms are absolute reality, the same for gods as for men.)

"Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?" (65d), meaning that there is an invisible reality that can be known only by reasoning to it. Why does he believe that? Because in his way of thinking the Forms are not conceptual categories; they are "ontological categories". He says that the only way for a thing to be tall is for it to "partake" of absolute tallness, but no one has ever seen absolute tallness.

How does Plato distinguish between sense and nonsense; how does he separate insight from delusion? Reason only goes so far and there are reasons for going in the other direction as well. But he does not allow that to turn him away from argument (89c ff.): instead he seeks out the best arguments [reasons], but is always ready to be refuted if better arguments [reasons] are found. Well, is that any different from what we do in logic of language? Is that not indeed the philosophical way? So I do not think Plato's way of thinking can be attacked from the point of view of "Is the existence of absolutes verifiable or not?" because Plato has already said that it is certainly not. If Plato is mistaken it must be because of conceptual, not empirical [factual], confusion -- e.g. is the combination of words 'ontological categories' or 'categories of reality' sense or nonsense.

Why Plato's philosopher seeks death in life (Phaedo 67e-68a)

But to say that we cannot see the Forms is not the same thing as to say that our body prevents us from seeing them, unless the body is the barrier to "the eye of the soul" which without that barrier would "see" the Forms (or whatever it is that reason may demonstrate reality to be). How do we know that there are Forms? Because there must be. This is a foundation of Plato's way of thinking, a way of thinking derived from Parmenides who, with Heraclitus, was Plato's first teacher in philosophy: reality is -- i.e. must be -- unchanging, whereas all the eye of the body ever reveals to man is the constantly changing appearances of reality.

"Where there is a prospect of attaining wisdom"

67a-b -- [If it is true that purifying oneself of the body in this life prepares one to acquire knowledge after death,] there is good reason for anyone who reaches the end of this journey which lies before me to hope that there, if anywhere, he is will attain the object to which all our efforts have been directed during my past life.

67e-68a - ... true philosophers make dying their profession, and that to them of all men death is least alarming.... Would they not naturally be glad to set out for the place where there is a prospect of attaining the object of their lifelong desire -- which is wisdom -- and of escaping from an unwelcome association [namely, with the body]?

68c - So if you see anyone distressed at the prospect of dying, said Socrates, it will be proof enough that he is not a lover of wisdom but of the body.


The Philosopher is not driven by fear of something worse or by desire for greater pleasures

68d-69a - Isn't true that when a brave man faces death [rather than running away] he does so through fear of something worse [namely, being thought a coward]?... So in everyone except the philosopher courage is due to fear and dread, although it is illogical that fear and cowardice should make a man brave.... What about temperate people? Is it not, in just the same way, a sort of self-indulgence that makes them self-controlled? We may say that this is impossible, but all the same those who practice the simple form of self-control are in much the same case as that which I have just described. [Jowett: "And are not the temperate exactly in the same case? They are temperate because they are intemperate -- which may seem to be a contradiction, but is nonetheless the sort of thing which happens with this foolish temperance."] They are afraid of losing other pleasures which they desire, so they refrain from one kind because they cannot resist the other. Although they define self-indulgence as the condition of being ruled by pleasure, it is really because they cannot resist some pleasures that they succeed in resisting others ["And though they call intemperance the being governed by pleasures, yet it happens to them that, being mastered by some pleasures, they master others", tr. Marshall], which amounts to what I have said just now -- that they control themselves, in a sense, by self-indulgence.

"... what Socrates calls temperance through intemperance ... giving up the brief and dangerous pleasures so that you may enjoy the safe and lasting ones" (Marshall). Plato's criticism -- is it criticism or only a way of looking at things? Because just as everything a human being does can be regarded as motivated by selfishness, so too pleasure or fear may be seen as the motive for everything man does. And the same applies to the other vices ("What really motivates the actions of man is ...") Classes are defined (categories created) into which everything can be fitted.

Suppose it were said that in the case of the philosopher, self-control is a question of not letting the body escape from the control of reason (the "soul"), the body being like a child [cf. Gorgias 521e-522a] that is unable to judge what is beneficial or useful for it [the body] and what is not, nor what is useful or harmful to the ethical soul? Is that not (at least part of) the view of Socrates in Xenophon?

Suppose we said that a man controls himself out of self-respect (for as Democritus of Abdera says: self-respect is happiness)? Or because he believes self-control to be the excellence (areté) proper to the reasoning being, as does Heraclitus?

Why should we not say that Plato's philosopher disassociates himself from the body from fear of not finding the knowledge he seeks? Why should we not say that he is motivated by fear of folly rather than by desire for wisdom, that he is running away from something rather than running towards something?

What this is, is a way of looking at things, and you can certainly look at everything from that point of view; however, there are many other points of view. Here the question is not one of truth and falsity.

69a-c - ... it is not the right method to exchange one degree of pleasure or pain or fear for another. [They should only be exchanged for] wisdom. In fact, it is wisdom that makes possible courage and self-control and integrity or, in a word, true goodness, and the presence or absence of pleasures and fears and other such feelings makes no difference at all ... The true moral ideal [Jowett: "true virtue"; "and is not true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may attend her."], whether self-control or integrity or courage, is really a kind of purgation from all these emotions, and wisdom itself is a sort of purification [of the soul of its association with the body].


Does the Soul exist Before and After the Birth and Death of the Body?

"What is the soul?" What might we mean by that combination of words -- are we asking for a definition of the word 'soul', i.e. a description of how we normally use that word -- or are we asking for an hypothesis or theory about what the nature of the soul really is?

What is the soul? By the word 'soul' we normally mean 'the aspects of man (e.g.) mind and heart, thoughts and feelings, which we contrast with the body'. We might use the word 'mind' instead; however, by 'mind' we often mean only 'intellect' or 'reason' (as did Socrates). But if we use the word 'soul' we include the emotions, the whole personality of the human being. Thus defined, the word 'soul' (like the word 'mind') is not the name of an object, either of a visible or of an essentially invisible object.

Plato, however, has a metaphysical (i.e. non-empirical) picture of the soul -- the picture of the soul as a ghost, as if the personality of man were an invisible object separable from the body. And he tries in this dialog to demonstrate (prove) that this invisible object must exist (otherwise it is impossible to account for our knowledge of things that we have never experienced "while in the body", as in 65d).

70a-b - [Cebes says that] I fancy that it requires no little faith and assurance to believe that the soul exists after death and retains some active force and intelligence.... [That what Socrates has said about the soul leaves him] with great misgivings that when it [the soul] is released from the body it may no longer exist anywhere, but may be dispersed and destroyed on the very day that the man himself dies, as soon as it is freed from the body, that it emerges it may be dissipated like breath or smoke, and vanish away so that nothing is left of it anywhere.

Do those who fear death fear "oblivion" [non-existence]?

The Generation of Opposites from Opposites

70e-71d - Let us consider whether it is a necessary law that everything which has an opposite is generated from that opposite and from no other source. For example, when a thing becomes bigger, it must, I suppose, have been smaller first before it became bigger?... And similarly if it becomes smaller, it must be bigger first, and become smaller afterward?... And the weaker comes from the stronger, and the faster from the slower?... waking comes from sleeping and sleeping from waking ...

How is folly generated from wisdom? Must one ever have been wise in order to now be foolish? Must one ever to have been strong in order to now be weak? But Plato is conducting a conceptual -- i.e. grammatical -- investigation, although he supposes it to be a factual one: the question is one of antitheses: e.g. "it is nonsense to say that all is vague, nothing clear". Again: "metaphysics" obliterates that distinction (Zettel § 458). For Plato philosophical investigations = factual investigations: we are investigating phenomena: life and death, the soul. But a proposition deduced from grammatical rules is only another grammatical rule (grammatical proposition); what else could it be? But one might say, "Rules are deduced from rules in axiomatic geometry, and yet we learn from such deductions"; however, is natural language an axiomatic system like geometry?

71d - Now you tell me in the same way, he went on, about life and death. Do you not admit that death is the opposite of life?... And that they come from one another?... Then what comes from the living?

[Cebes:] The dead.

And what, asked Socrates, comes from the dead?

I must admit, he said, that it is the living.

"On the Soul." Is the soul an invisible object? Is the word 'soul' the name of an invisible object?

Asking whether the soul is an invisible object is different from asking if the word 'soul' is an abstract term. And yet there is a relationship: Are the names of abstract objects -- if that's what "abstract terms" are -- the names of things whose nature is not clear to us?

Wittgenstein: "We are investigating, not a phenomenon, but a concept and therefore the use of a word." E.g. [the word, or, concept] 'thinking' versus [the phenomenon] thinking (PI § 383). But why -- why aren't we investigating the phenomenon of thinking? Because "Our investigations get their light from the philosophical problems" (ibid. § 111). Those are what direct our investigation; they must tell us what to investigate; because it is possible to be interested in a thing from a variety of points of view (ibid. § 108). Is our ignorance here of the nature of the soul or of the concept 'soul'? (What is the distinction here?)

What would an investigation of the phenomenon of thinking look like -- would it be a "real definition of thinking" (i.e. an hypothesis or theory about the cause of thinking), or would it be simply a description of the various phenomena that are called 'thinking'? We do not define the word 'thinking' by pointing to an object, even if we do point to teach someone the meaning of 'thinking', there is no object we point to named 'thinking'. Do we point to the phenomena, then, and isn't it the phenomenon that interests Plato rather than a description of how we normally use the word 'thinking' or 'soul'? Why isn't it the phenomenon that is the subject of philosophy? (It's a nice question to ask Wittgenstein.) Note, however, that we use the words 'thinking' and 'soul' differently: the word 'soul' is not the name of a phenomenon (but Plato has the picture of the soul as the place where the phenomenon of thinking takes place. And where would that place be except, at least temporarily, in the body? But what is 'place in the body' to mean if there is no such place: an invisible place is no place).

Investigating a concept (i.e. the use of a word) versus investigating "facts of nature that can explain concept-formation" (ibid. II, xii, p. 230a). What we investigate must be determined by the philosophical problems; those alone are the limit of philosophy. But, on the other hand, philosophy is not a natural science: hypothesis-making about e.g. possible physiological causes of thinking is an investigation for the sciences, not for someone walking along the seashore (i.e. not for philosophy). Unlike Socratic philosophy, Platonic philosophy allows itself to float free of the test of experience, relying on the test of reason alone -- but what does Plato's reason test, various things that can be done with our concepts (language), fantasy pictures of reality that it is possible to draw?

Is there a phenomenon of "the soul" as Plato uses the word 'soul' (meaning 'ghost' or 'spirit')? That is the topic of Phaedrus 263a-b -- the different types of words. Some words name phenomena, some words name objects, but others do neither. (Is there a "real definition of the soul"? No more than there is a real definition of God.) There are many different types of words, parts of speech, categories of meaning, e.g. some words are names, but most words are not. [The word 'name', like the words 'concept' and 'phenomenon', is too vague by far, unless we select a meaning for it to have.] Of names: some names are names of objects, others are names of phenomena {i.e. some words belong to the grammatical category 'names-of-objects', others to the category 'names-of-phenomena'}. But other words are not names of anything at all (It is very confusing to call such words 'abstractions', because that suggests that they are names of "abstract objects", which is the mistake Nominalism makes: unable to break free of the picture that all words are names, it is therefore forced to suppose that where there is no visible object to bear the name, there must be an invisible one. It is much clearer to call the category of words that are not names simply 'non-name-words').

Why "philosophical investigation -- conceptual investigations"? Wittgenstein's thesis was that philosophical problems all show themselves to be conceptual rather than factual ("empirical") problems. Was he correct? We would need an anomaly to disprove his thesis. But is it a thesis or is it a "project in philosophy"? But the project would have no point if it were not based on that thesis. Or is his thesis anomaly-proof? But in that case it is not a thesis, but only a way of looking at things -- but what way? From the point of view of grammar and sense and nonsense. That is the foundation of Wittgenstein's point of view. Is "philosophical investigation -- conceptual investigations" a thesis? Only if it makes sense to speak of 'the real definition of an abstraction' -- or less confusingly: 'the real definition of a non-name word'. (If we substitute 'non-name word' for 'abstraction', then our question acquires a clear sense. The word 'abstraction', too, is too vague by far.)

That is the question: whether there are real definitions in philosophy.

Wittgenstein: shouldn't our concern be with the facts that can explain concept-formation (PI II, xii, p. 230a)? However, in what follows Plato's concern is not with the facts -- but with what can account for the facts. The Phaedo asks: what is the "reality behind the facts" that can explain the facts -- i.e. what is the reality behind reality (because the facts are what we normally mean by the word 'reality')?

Forms and Recollection

74a-b - We admit, I suppose, that there is such a thing as equality -- not the equality of stick to stick and stone to stone, and so on, but something beyond all that and distinct from it -- absolute equality.... Where did we get our knowledge? Was it not from the particular examples that we have mentioned just now? Was it not from seeing equal sticks or stones or other equal objects that we got the notion of equality, although it is something quite distinct from them? [Jowett (74a-b): "[Shall we] affirm that there is such a thing as equality, not of wood with wood, or stone with stone, but that over and above this, there is equality in the abstract?... And do we know the nature of this abstract essence?... and whence did you obtain this knowledge?"]

What does Plato mean by 'equality'? Not sticks of equal length or stones of equal sizes, but instead the common names 'stick' and 'stone', I think. How do we explain our knowledge of common names, because e.g. two pieces of wood are not equal = identical in all respects and yet we call both of them 'wood'. Why are there common names in our language and not just proper names? Where comes our concept 'equality' ('class' or 'category') or 'absolute equality', because in the world we perceive only similarities among things and not their equality? Is this Plato's question? (The Theory of Forms or Theory of Absolutes might also be called the Theory of (the meaning) of common names.)

The discussion is in the context of Plato's "theory of recollection". And what is Wittgenstein's view about the source of the notion of equality? -- what is the source of our concept 'equality' (or, in other words, our use of the word 'equality' -- or does anyone really to suppose that 'equality' is the name of an invisible object)? Here I think Wittgenstein would say, "I make no hypotheses". That is what I myself would say, or rather: Whence comes our ability to form the concept 'equality'? I don't know, and perhaps that is because I don't understand that question -- i.e. I don't know what would count as an answer to it. In practice we point to similarities and the child either learns to play this game ("as in language-game") or it does not. Wittgenstein: "And do we know any more about it ourselves" than what we tell the child? (PI § 208)

"Facts that can explain concept-formation." -- But Plato says these facts are not to be found in the things we see in the world (65d) and therefore we must argue our way to facts (or, to the truth; Tredennick uses 'theory') that we cannot see; and "recollection" would be such a fact: it can explain concept-formation.

Of course "recollection" cannot be verified by experience, but only established or refuted by argument, but Plato is fully aware of that. I say: Plato invents a picture -- but here there is a great divide: Some will say that Plato's picture is idle, but others will say that it is not idle because such speculation is a search for the truth (at least in so far as we can know it "while we keep to the body").

So again, what do you want from philosophy? What interests me is the "grammar" or the rules for using the word 'equality', not how it is possible for us to form the concept 'equality' -- if 'possible' here means something speculative. Of course, the question for logic of language is: Are Plato's arguments sense or nonsense?

74e-75a - Then we must have had some previous knowledge of equality before the time when we first saw equal things and realized that they were striving after equality, but fell short of it.

The Soul in the Phaedrus

For only the soul that has beheld truth may enter into this our human form -- seeing that man must needs understand the language of Forms, passing from a plurality of perceptions to a unity gathered together by reasoning, and such understanding is a recollection ... (Phaedrus, tr. R. Hackforth, 249b-c)

The empiricist desires only what we can see and what we can hear, and above all what we can use sight and hearing to measure. Whereas the rationalist believes that what we can perceive is inadequate to explain itself, that there is a reality beyond what we can perceive, and that we can investigate this through argument. The empiricist is satisfied to say "I don't know" when he reaches the limits of perceptions, but the rationalist is not.

(Statements like that show the worth of the categories "rationalist" and "empiricist", of the "isms" and "ists" of the classifying academic; such simplifications give us the illusion of knowledge rather than knowledge. Philosophy must be studied in the particular not in generalizations.)

How did Plato understand the claim of Heraclitus that "Everything is in flux"? Was it that all visible things are striving after the Forms but fall short of them (Phaedo 74e-75a)? Plato obviously was not blind: he saw that some things are in flux and others at rest; and therefore in what sense of 'flux' did he mean that everything perceptible is in flux? (One cannot say to Plato: "Ah, you make the word 'flux' meaningless when you deprive it of its antithesis", because, following Parmenides' identification of the Real with the Unchanging, Plato replies that the imperceptible Forms are at rest.)

What does Plato mean by 'absolute' (to use the word of his translators) as in 'absolute equality'? Whether two objects are identical or not belongs to grammar: we gives rules or criteria for applying the word 'identical' or 'equal'. However, Plato does not think that way; instead, he asks: if we have never seen any two objects that were in all respects identical ("absolutely equal"), then how could we have the concept 'absolute equality'? If we have a concept such as 'absolute tallness' (and I don't know if we do), then it must come from somewhere, and if it does not come from our experience of this world, then we can deduce that it comes from our recollection of what we experienced prior to coming into this world. And, therefore, Plato deduces, learning must be recollecting our knowledge of the Forms, because we have never seen those Forms with our eyes in this world.

"Convincing arguments" and Philosophy

Who now finds Plato's arguments -- whether that opposites are generated from their opposites (life from death, and death from life) or that learning is really only recollection -- convincing? But what would 'convincing' mean here? Is it that you can refute his arguments or offer better ones -- or that what he says is nonsense (mere undefined combinations of words) or a misunderstanding of the logic of our language? The universal generation of opposites from opposites is I think refuted by comments I made above. However, I do not know if "recollection" can be refuted; it is instead a picture which one may or may not be drawn to, I think (Finding a picture or, better, drawing of something plausible).

76a - So, as I maintain, there are two alternatives. Either we are all born with knowledge of these standards [or "absolutes"], and retain it throughout our lives, or else, when we speak of people learning, they are simply recollecting what they knew before. In other words, learning is recollection.

The first alternative would be consistent with Aquinas' "naturally known first principles" or Kant's "categories of all thought and perception, which are inherent to the human mind" or Wittgenstein's "forms of life" (N.B. in the sense of 'life forms', not only 'ways of life') or indeed with our contemporary scientific study of learning: what is the nature of the mind that the human being is born with: what does it make possible for the human being to perceive and conceive (learn)? Is the second alternative ("learning is recollection") consistent with the identification of all mental phenomena with, "at least in principle", traceable events in the central nervous system -- for, some say, that identification would necessarily preclude the very possibility of a pre-life. Because if the mind is nothing more than a product of the brain [-- But would that proposition follow even if there were a one-to-one correlation makeable between every mental phenomenon (Ha, as if "mental phenomenon" were an easily defined notion!) and the central nervous system? --], then when the brain does not exist neither can the mind exist. Well, something like this.

Plato has a picture of the soul as existing independently of the body -- as an "object" of an essentially different nature from the body -- despite the soul's being entombed in the body. Again, can perfect correlations be made between every mental phenomenon and the nervous system? I don't know. If someday such correlations are made (for they are not made now), would that make Plato's picture of the soul impossible to sustain? Not at all! For to claim that such correlations, which would be matters of fact, would make Plato's picture impossible to sustain is to confuse a theory -- by 'theory' we mean 'a way of looking that the facts' -- with the facts themselves; if Plato's picture can account for all the selected data of experience and organize it in a satisfying way ... And there's the rub: if the theory be satisfying (for that is what every theory aims to be) -- but satisfying to whom?

[Is reality confined to what is in principle perceptible to the senses? If not, then need all mental phenomena have their origin in the brain? It is certainly logically possible that they do not, just as it is logically possible that they do. Whether the notion of "perfect correlation" can be defined in this case (for there are parallel vocabularies here) -- is a question of concept-formation (which, I think, is the limit of science).]

But we know that there were "materialists" in Plato's day (Sophist 246a-b), just as in our day there are those who are certain -- certainly not objectively certain -- that mind is the product of brain and nothing more than that. So I do not think Plato's picture of the soul arises out a sense of wonder of this sort: "There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, the earth and every common sight to me did seem appareled in celestial light, the freshness and the glory of a dream." Because even in Plato's time: "Shades of the prison house begin to close about the young boy." Why are we not amazed that a mighty oak can grow from a tiny acorn, or the most colorful flowers from a dull little seed? Or was that the way that the existence of concepts struck Plato -- "What is their origin?" he asked in amazement. But what sort of amazement, that of a child or of a reflective philosopher? ("Philosophy begins in wonder". Where there is no perplexity, neither is there seeking to understand or to know. There is instead sleep, as in Apology 31a.)

75d - ... because "to know" means to retain the knowledge which one has acquired, and not lose it. Is not what we call "forgetting" simply the loss of knowledge, Simmias?

I have place double-quotes around the words 'to know' and 'forgetting' because Plato does not imagine that he is defining words here but "defining things", the "things" here being knowledge and forgetting. -- I.e. Plato sees these as "real definitions", not as logic-of-language definitions (conventions).

We say that we do not find Plato's arguments in this dialog convincing. But what does that mean, to say that 'we do not find them convincing'? Are the arguments formally invalid, for example? Or are they simply so contrary to the common sense of the "community of ideas" we have been brought up in, that we reject them out of hand (i.e. without due philosophical consideration) as absurd -- such that we are unable to take them seriously and thus don't even feel a need to try to refute them? What I would most certainly not say is what Wittgenstein said to Pinsent, as recorded 30 May 1912, when Wittgenstein was about 23 years old.

[Wittgenstein] has only just started systematic reading: and he expresses the most naïve surprise that all the philosophers, he once worshipped in ignorance, are after all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting mistakes! (A Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Young Man: from the diary of David Hume Pinsent, 1912-1914 (Blackwell, 1990), p. 4-5)

Do Plato's arguments -- if they are arguments -- (despite the meaning of their language's being obscure) in the cases of "opposites being generated by their opposites" and of "no two objects being absolutely equal" consist only of deriving grammatical rules from other grammatical rules? If they are not nonsense what else would they be? Nonetheless, it does seem very important that we are disinclined to accept the notion of "learning as recollection" despite any argument that might be presented to us. -- Is this a "stupid" prejudice (PI § 340) or not that we reject this type of philosophizing?

On the other hand, suppose Plato's proofs for a pre- and after-life are valid (cf. proofs of the existence of God), what then -- i.e. what follows from that? For one man such proofs would be nothing more than idle curiosities, whereas for another man: a "theory", a way of looking at things, may indeed affect the way a man thinks about and therefore lives his life ("we are discussing no small matter, but how to live") -- even if the "theory" consists of nothing but tautologies showing the inter-relationships of rules of grammar (I am alluding here to Plato's argument about what the good man does, and does not do in Republic 335e). But about the theories or "pictures" of the Phaedo -- what is to be said: are they valid or invalid arguments -- or are they not arguments at all (but e.g. merely conceptual muddles)? (What we might ask is whether any particular man's indifference to that question is due to the "misology" -- i.e. to lack of confidence in philosophical argument -- Plato speaks of in 89c-90c?)

To say that you find an argument convincing is surely to say that you do not see any difficulties or problems with it [Socratic dialectic], but also that it sets your mind at rest (that you are at peace with it). This should not be the same as: what you are inclined to believe.

[Why don't we say that Plato has a theory of (or, about) learning? Because his picture cannot be verified, because it is a "philosophical theory"? But can any theory be verified -- i.e. how are we using the word 'theory' if we are not contrasting it with the word 'fact'? A 'theory' accounts for all the selected facts, organizing them in a self-consistent way; a 'theory' is not itself a fact: a theory is imagination added to fact: facts plus imagination.]

[Plato says in Phaedrus 272d-e, tr. Hackforth, that] In the law courts nobody cares a rap for the truth about these matters, but only about what is plausible. And that is the same as what is probable ["likely to be believed"], and is what must occupy the attention of the would-be master of the art of speech. - 273a-b - Does he maintain that the probable is anything other than that which commends itself to the multitude?

PHAEDRUS: How could it be anything else?

But of course in philosophy we are not trying to persuade (91a); we are trying to find the truth; our objective is not to find something "convincing" or "unconvincing" -- that is to say, to find what we are inclined or disinclined to accept.


"Knowledge of the Absolutes"

76a - So, as I maintain, there are two alternatives. Either we are born with knowledge of these standards [or "absolutes" or "absolute standards" (75c) or "absolute realities" (76d)] ...

Compare Euthyphro 6d-e: what is the standard of 'holiness'? We do not know, Socrates says; but Plato says that we do know, because, although we cannot "give an account" of what we know and although our vision of the standard is dimmed "while we keep to the body", we ... are acquainted with the notion of absolute this, that and the other. We know what Socrates means by 'to know' (i.e. being able to give an account [76b-c]), but what does Plato mean by it? The Theaetetus reaches no conclusion about "what knowledge is". But to assert that "absolute tallness" exists -- is that not to say that one knows it exists? Yes, but does "absolute tallness" exist -- i.e. how do you know? Is not its existence deduced from facts of our experience for Plato -- so that if you can deduce something from those facts then you 'know' that as well as you know the facts? But also for Plato, 'knowledge' is the ability to do something, e.g. to recognize a copy of an absolute (76c), even if you cannot explain how you are able to do it.

76a - So, as I maintain, there are two alternatives. Either we are born with knowledge of these standards [This is rejected in 76c-d], and retain it throughout our lives, or else, when we speak of people learning, they are simply recollecting what they knew before. In other words, learning is recollection. - 75c-d - [Examples of these standards are] absolute beauty, goodness, uprightness, holiness ... and all those characteristics which we designate in our discussions by the term 'absolute'. So we must have obtained knowledge of these standards before our birth.

76c - [If this is correct] Then our souls had a previous existence, Simmias, before they took on this human shape. They were independent of our bodies, and they were possessed of intelligence. [The argument goes back to 75b: "So before we began to see and hear and use our senses we must somewhere have acquired the knowledge that there is such a thing as absolute equality. Otherwise we could never have realized, by using it as a standard of comparison, that all equal objects of sense are desirous of being like it, but are only imperfect copies."]

Is this like saying that there must be an "absolute game", because otherwise we could not group things together as games? But do we need such a Pattern for games to be copies of; do we need an absolute standard of comparison?

'To know' = 'To be able to explain what you know to others'

76b-c - What do you think about this? Can a person who knows a subject thoroughly explain what he knows? [That is the Socratic standard, the selected meaning of 'know', in Xenophon's Memorabilia iv, 6, 1 and in Laches 190c.]

Most certainly he can.

Do you think everyone can explain these questions about which we have just been talking?... So you don't think, Simmias, that everyone has knowledge about them?

Far from it.

Then they just recollect what they once learned.

76c-d - [Simmias suggests that we acquire this knowledge "at the moment of birth". But Plato replies] but just tell me, what other time is there to lose it [this knowledge]? We have just agreed that we do not possess it when we are born. Do we lose it at the same moment we acquire it? [The idea being that if learning is recollection, then if one acquires this knowledge at the moment of birth, when is it that one loses this knowledge that has to be recollected -- i.e. is that also at the moment of birth? Simmias replies that he must have been "talking nonsense" when he suggested that (76d).]

76d-e - If all these absolute realities, such as beauty and goodness, which we are always talking about, really exist, if it is to them, as we rediscover our former knowledge of them, that we refer, as copies to their patterns, all the objects of our physical perception -- if these realities exist, does it not follow that our souls must exist too even before our birth, whereas if they [the Patterns] do not exist, our discussion would seem to be a waste of time?

Well, this is it. Does the combination of words 'absolute beauty' or 'absolute tallness' have any meaning? And if it has, where does that meaning come from if not from rules of grammar that we have ourselves made? Can Plato say: but these rules were not arbitrarily made but the explanation of this concept-formation can be explained by general facts of nature. We do not learn these the meaning of these words by being shown what they name (because no one has ever seen them), but instead we learn to use them by deducing the existence of what these words name from what we do see and experience. Since the source of these concepts cannot be what we see in this world (life), their source must be found in an earlier life. We learn the meaning of these words by recollecting the objects which they name.

Nonetheless, Plato's way of speaking -- or his translator's -- is very confusing: there is a Pattern in another world which the objects in this world which are copies of that Pattern desire to be like but fall short (75b); we know that they fall short -- but how do we know? Rather than "Absolutes" might Plato speak of "Perfect Patterns" of which we find only imperfect copies in this world; but if we find only imperfect copies, then how do we know that they are imperfect because we have never seen the Perfect Pattern in this world of which they are imperfect copies? But why must there be Perfect Patterns? Does Plato believe this to be obvious (65d), not requiring proof (argument)? How do we know that we are not "wasting our time"? Cf. the Platonic-Socratic requirement of common natures (or essences)? Why must all shapes have something in common which distinguishes them from all other things -- why must there by Absolute Shape?

Is this a case for Ockham's razor: what is not necessary should be dispensed with [discarded]? But Plato believes that it is necessary. And when Plato asks for a standard of holiness in the Euthyphro, is it not because of his, as well as Socrates', deep conviction that the good and the true are not "relative to each man" (Protagoras) but absolute? That is, you cannot simply say that Plato misunderstands the logic of our language, that all his confusion arises from his supposing that all words are names of objects, either of visible objects or invisible ones.

There is more at issue here than Plato's supposing that words that "name" concepts are the names of "invisible objects". But Plato does have that picture: concepts (which he calls "Absolutes" or "Patterns" or "Forms") are not merely rules for using words; they are categories of a reality that explain concept-formation. [But in many cases they only explain human concept-formation: e.g. a sword is only a sword in human, not in canine, eyes].

But Plato goes beyond saying the there are true categories of reality -- i.e. that not all language is based on mere convention. -- He also says that the members of a category are copies of the Category itself -- i.e. that the category-name itself names an object (although not a visible one). Aristotle will criticise Plato for this, and later philosophers will discuss "the problem of universals" and will divide themselves into Realists (those who share Plato's view) and Nominalists (those who share Socrates' view [Metaphysics 1078a]), although both groups will make Plato's fundamental mistake of regarding all words as names ("and so of not really describing their use" [PI § 383]).

Plato does not think of himself as investigating language ("grammar") but as investigating reality. Is he mistaken?

What is invariable is invisible, and what is invisible can only be known by thought (not by sight)

78d-e -- Does absolute equality or beauty or any other independent entity ["absolute reality"] which really exists ever admit change of any kind?...

They must be constant and invariable, Socrates, said Cebes.

Well, what about the concrete instances of beauty -- such as men, horses, clothes, and so on -- or of equality, or any other members of a class corresponding to an absolute entity? Are they constant, or are they, on the contrary, scarcely ever in the same relation in any sense either to themselves or to one another?

With them, Socrates, it is just the opposite; they are never free from variation.

For Plato, as for Parmenides, only what is invariable (or unchanging) can be an object of knowledge, and only what is invariable (as opposed to the variable which is always in flux) "really exists".

79a -- And these concrete objects [78d] you can touch and see and perceive by your other senses, but those constant entities you cannot possibly apprehend except by thinking; they are invisible to our sight.... So you think that we should assume two classes of things, one visible and the other invisible?... The invisible being invariable, and the visible never being the same?

79b - Well, now, said Socrates, are we not part body, part soul? [And then Plato goes on to say that the body is visible, the soul invisible to men.]

[And is the soul seen or not seen?

Not by man, Socrates. (79b, tr. Jowett)]

But is this not like saying that the mind ("soul", "spirit"; the Greek word is psyche) is invisible, whereas the word 'mind' is not the name of either a visible or an invisible object; that is not that word's use in the language, its grammar (although the mind is seen). How is the grammar of the word 'soul' different?

The spirits of the dead

We can certainly conjure up a picture if we want, e.g. of a ghost, or, as Greek potters did, a miniature man with large bird-like wings.

A dead spirit hovering about a Greek tomb. Detail of a vase image.
"Offerings to the dead, whose spirits may be seen hovering round the tomb" (detail)
From a painting on a white vase.
(C.E. Robinson, Hellas (1955))

But does that picture have to do with our normal use of the word 'mind'? And if we conjure up a picture of the soul, what relationship does that picture have to reality? Of course, if it is a picture of something invisible, there is no possibility of comparing it with what it is said to picture, i.e. reality, and therefore we called it "idle metaphysics" or myth-making because it is not an empirical hypothesis -- and we took no other seriously. (But, on the other hand, is the picture of the soul merely like a religious picture that may guide our life or our thinking?) There we find a fundamental rejection of "rationalism" = metaphysics, but obviously it is not rejected by Plato nor by most philosophers. Should we say: Plato has a picture -- or that Plato is talking nonsense. We would not say that as Plato uses it 'soul' is a superstition-word, as Wittgenstein calls it with reference to James Frazer.


The philosopher's soul seeks freedom from the body

79c - ... when the soul uses the instrumentality of the body for any enquiry, whether through sight or hearing or any other sense -- because using the body implies using the senses -- it is drawn away by the body into the realm of the variable ...

But of course this is not a case of "implying" but of defining the combination of words 'to use the instrumentality of the body'.

79d - [But when the soul] investigates by itself it passes into the realm of the pure and everlasting and immortal and changeless, and ... when it is once independent and free from interference, consorts with it always and ... remains in that realm of the absolute, constant and invariable ... And this condition of the soul we call wisdom.

Maybe we could say that the body knows only percepts, while the soul knows concepts, and wisdom lies in concepts, not in blind percepts. (Then you might say that Plato is investigating our concepts -- but that for Plato 'concept' does not mean 'rules for using a word' but instead 'the name of a thing'; concepts are real for Plato, not conventions, maybe we could say.)

80e-81a - If at its release the soul is pure and carries with it no contamination of the body, because it has never willingly associated with it in life ... in other words, if it has pursued philosophy in the right way and really practiced how to face death easily -- this is what "practicing death" means, isn't it? ... if this is its [the soul's] condition, then it departs to that place which is, like itself, invisible, divine, immortal, and wise, where, on its arrival, happiness awaits it, and release from uncertainty and folly, from fears and uncontrolled desires, and all other human evils, and where ... it really spends the rest of time with God.

Question: who is this "God"? The answer I think is in 80d where Plato says "the good and wise God"; in this case the god would be Hades, or whoever the god is of "the true Hades or unseen world". That would seem to be "who" is meant by 'God' in Tredennick's version. [Jowett has that "the soul when using the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses) -- will we not say that the soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable ... the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence". Jowett using 'changeable' (and 'changing') and 'unchangeable' (and 'unchanging') rather than 'invariable' and 'variable'. And Jowett has: "departs to the invisible world -- to the divine and immortal and rational; thither arriving, she lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, the fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells ... in company with the gods".]

81b - [The unphilosophical or the foolish soul or the unwise soul] has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment ...

[Jowett: "Until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste and use for the purpose of his lusts ..." Rather than 'visible' and 'invisible' Jowett uses 'seen' and 'not seen', and in his translation it says that "the philosophical soul has no bodily taint, having never voluntarily had connection with the body, which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into herself; for such abstraction has been the study of her life". Here 'abstraction' is not a reference to the "theory of abstraction" but instead to our methods of investigation, in which F.H. Bradley wrote we "disregard certain aspects [of reality] when we work"; every point of view must do this.]

81c-d - [Plato appears, or "perhaps appears", to have believed in the ghosts which hover] above tombs and graveyards. [These] shadowy apparitions which have actually been seen there ... are not the souls of the good, but of the wicked [i.e. those beguiled by the body] ... They continue wandering until at last, through craving for the corporeal which unceasingly pursues them, they are imprisoned once more in a body. - 82a - ... it is easy to imagine into what sort of animals [the souls of the wicked will be imprisoned in]. - 82a-b - I suppose the happiest people [to whom this happens] are the ones who have cultivated the goodness of the ordinary citizen -- what is called self-control and integrity -- which is acquired by habit and practice, without the help of philosophy and reason.... Because they will probably pass into some type of social and disciplined creature like bees, wasps, and ants ...

But is not that -- i.e. the life of "self-control and integrity" -- what for the Socrates of Xenophon precisely is the good life for the human being, for man? But can a good life be acquired solely by habit and practice -- that is, can it be acquired without the help of philosophy? -- Because, before one can practice doing what is good, one must first determine what is the good -- because making that determination is part of a good life, which is a life guided by reason and which pursues wisdom --, and that is what we use philosophy for, what we do in philosophy; the good life is not an accident. So that self-control and integrity are not enough; we must also include among the virtues wisdom (which is knowledge of the good). Besides which, as I wrote before, a man may be self-controlled but may, through ignorance of the good, use his self-control to bad ends rather than to good ends. And so "the goodness of the ordinary citizen" is not the good life for the Socrates of Xenophon.

83a-b - [Philosophy] points out that observation by means of the eyes and ears and all the other senses is entirely deceptive, and [it] urges the soul to refrain from using them unless it is necessary to do so, and encourages it ... [to trust] nothing but its own independent judgment upon objects considered in themselves, and attributing no truth to anything which it views indirectly as being subject to variation, because such objects are sensible and visible but what the soul itself sees is intelligible and invisible.

Why does Plato put his own ideas in the mouth of Socrates?

When in 83e Plato gives the reason for the philosopher's "self-control and courage", it appears to be saying that the reward of virtue is not as Epictetus says ("Seems it to you so small a thing and worthless, to be a good human being"); instead, Plato seems to view this as a matter of the reward that the philosopher will receive in Hades. But is not the Socratic view -- or in any case, the view of the Socrates of Xenophon -- the view of Epictetus: even if there is naught but this life, to live according to what is the good is the good life, the way of life [excellence] that is appropriate to man. In my judgment, for what that's worth -- and I am not a scholar -- in the Phaedo it is Plato alone who speaks although "he puts everything into the mouth of Socrates" (Diog. L. ii, 45): "As for you, if you will take my advice, you will think very little of Socrates, and much more of the truth" (91b), and this is what Plato does (although why he uses Socrates to speak for him, I do not know; it may be, as in Cicero's On Old Age, "in order to lend his words more weight").

Plato is -- i.e. Plato's dialogs are -- philosophy, not biography. Plato's aim was not to be Socrates' biographer. According to Diogenes Laertius other companions of Socrates did write to present Socrates as he was; but their works are no longer extant. How close Plato, the aristocrat, ever was to Socrates, I don't know; would a close companion have been absent at Socrates' death, or written about that death putting all his own ideas into Socrates' mouth?


Confidence in Philosophical Argument

85c-d - [Simmias says,] I think, just as you do, Socrates, that although it is very difficult if not impossible in this life to achieve certainty about these questions, at the same time it is utterly feeble not to use every effort in testing the available theories, or to leave off before we have considered them in every way, and come to the end of our resources.

That is what I have called in these pages "thinking things all the way through". Note that where Tredennick uses the word 'theory', Jowett uses the word 'argument'.

85d - ... that is, assuming that we cannot make our journey with greater confidence and security by the surer means of a divine revelation.

That -- i.e. "divine revelation" -- looks like an interpolation. In any case, that was the view of Descartes. Very much of Medieval Christian theology seems to have come directly out the of the Phaedo, although recollection and the pre-existence of the soul were rejected.

Misology and misanthropy

89c-d - [Socrates says that] there is one danger that we must guard against. [Namely the danger of] becoming misologic, he said, in the sense that people become misanthropic. No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing a dislike for argument. Misology and misanthropy arise in just the same way.

90b-c - [Misology arises] when one believes that an argument is true without reference to the art of logic, and then a little later decides rightly or wrongly that is it is false, and the same thing happens again and again -- you know how it is, especially with those who spend their time arguing both sides -- they end by believing that they are wiser than anyone else, because they alone have discovered that there is nothing stable or dependable either in facts or in arguments, and that everything fluctuates just like the water in a tidal channel, and never stays at any point for any time.

In Republic 3.411d, trans. Shorey, Plato uses the expression "a misologist and a stranger to the Muses". (Callicles in Plato's Gorgias is an example of a misologist.)

90c-d - Well, then, Phaedo, he said, supposing that there is an argument which is true and valid and capable of being discovered [but that because of his experience of fluctuation someone] attached no responsibility to himself and his lack of technical ability, but was finally content ... to shift the blame from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life loathing and decrying them, and so missed the chance of knowing the truth about reality -- would it not be a deplorable thing?

90e - We must not let it enter our minds that there may be no validity in argument. On the contrary we should recognize that we ourselves are still intellectual invalids, but that we must brace ourselves and do our best to become healthy -- you and the others partly [because you too will die one day] with a view to the rest of your lives ...

The Thoroughgoing use of Reason

Contrast this with Wittgenstein's "whereof one cannot speak". I would like to call Wittgenstein an anti-philosopher (an enemy of philosophy). How noble in contrast is Socrates' confidence in the thoroughgoing use of reason in ethics, and Plato's confidence in the ability of argument to discover even whether there is life before and after the body's death. Wittgenstein does not even ask: Which is man's final disposition -- an afterlife or a sleep without dreams? By "can be said" or "put into words" the TLP means: what can be stated in the language of natural science: "the propositions of natural science, i.e. something which has nothing to do with philosophy" (6.53). I do not know that Wittgenstein's view ever changed; he writes only about what can be seen and heard and touched (because the meaning of language is public), maintaining silence about what he himself identified as what is most important in our life (The recovery of philosophy). Did Plato simply fail to understand the logic -- and that means the limits -- of our language? (Note that Xenophon's Socrates is very different, at least on my account, from Plato's Socrates in this respect.)

Philosophers may say absurd things ("The riddle does not exist", "To be is to be perceived"); but what they say are not commonplace absurdities (i.e. stupidities); they strike you as what they are -- a new point of view. But their statements are sometimes accepted as insights, at other times rejected as delusions that were mistaken for insights.

Philosophy is about or is reason, which is to say reasons; it is concerned with reasons for and against. About that there is no disagreement here.

91a - ... but I directly in view of my death, because at the moment I am in danger of regarding it [the immortality of the soul as opposed to its extinction at death] not philosophically but self-assertively. You know how, in an argument, people who have no real education care nothing for the facts of the case, and are only anxious to get their point of view accepted by the audience? [Jowett: "For the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question [i.e. the rights of the question to nothing less than the truth, to be decided by the better rather than the worse reason], but is anxious only to convince his hearers."]

The truth above Socrates

91b - As for you, if you will take my advice, you will think very little of Socrates, and much more of the truth. [Jowett: "And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates."] If you think that anything I say is true, you must agree with me; if not, oppose it with every argument that you have.

In 91b Plato denies any place to authority in philosophy [cf. Plato, Symposium 201c]; it marks the difference between a philosophical teacher and a religious master. None should accept as true -- much less, that it is clear in meaning -- what a philosopher -- or anyone else, or even a god (Plato, Apology 21b) -- says merely because he is said, even by the most learned of scholars, to be a wise man (ibid. 21c), even the wisest of men (ibid. 21a).

Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words
No undue credence. (Euripides, Bellerophontes 293; cf. Aristophanes, The Frogs 971)

But in Plato's dialog Socrates is concerned that his friends not agree with him out of friendship (given that he is soon to die): a falsehood must be refuted, regardless of who speaks it or when it is spoken. That is the method and spirit of philosophy: reason acknowledges no authority but itself (and, for Socrates, though not for Plato, the test of experience). But again, why does Plato make Socrates speak for him?

Attunement - Argument by Analogy

92b-d - [This is Plato's argument against "the soul is an attunement" (Note that where Tredennick uses the word 'attunement', Jowett uses the word 'harmony'), that if learning is recollecting [91e-92a - "we asserted that learning is recollection, and that, if this is so, our souls must have existed somewhere else before they were confined in the body"], then the soul existed before it entered the body; however, in the case of attunement the] instrument and the strings and their untuned notes come first. The attunement is the last of all to be constituted and the first to be destroyed.

92c-d - [Simmias says that the "theory" (argument) that "the soul is an attunement"] appealed to me, without any proof to support it, as being based on plausible analogy, which is why most people find it attractive. But I realize that theories which rest their proof upon plausibility are impostors, and unless you are on your guard, they deceive you properly, both in geometry and everywhere else. [Jowett: "... the proposition that knowledge is recollection ... has been proven to me on trustworthy grounds" whereas the proposition "that the soul is a harmony ... has not been demonstrated at all, but rests only on probable and plausible grounds; and I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are impostors ... apt to be deceptive ..."] On the other hand, the theory of recollection and learning ... surely stands or falls with the soul's possession of the ultimate standard of reality [i.e. knowledge of the absolutes] ...

Does Socrates use the method of argument by analogy when he talks about "the cobblers, builders and metal workers" (Xenophon, Memorabilia i, 2, 37)? And an analogy is not a proof, but only a comparison, which if truly applicable ("A word is like a tool -- in such-and-such respects", or "The soul is to the body what harmony is to a musical instrument"), one may or may not choose to make use of. Are arguments by analogy only "plausible" -- i.e. only what you are inclined or disinclined to accept (Yes, a valid comparison can be made, but you needn't make it, and countless other valid comparisons may also be made). Is it clear what I am saying here? Without examples, e.g. of Socrates arguing by analogy, not in the least. But is Plato here accusing that method of being a mere impostor of a method of proof? But Plato himself uses that method.

92e ff. - [Plato offers another argument against the soul as attunement, but I am not able to follow it. However,] 94a -- ... by strict reasoning no soul will contain any share of badness, if it [the soul] is an attunement, because surely since attunement is absolutely attunement and nothing else it can never contain any share of discord.

The idea appears to be that if the soul is harmony, then it cannot be at the same time disharmonious. An instrument which is in tune excludes any disharmony. But if the soul is simply the working together of various elements, then why must it be the case that those elements always work well together; as we know, that is not the case with the body -- but a man who limps or hobbles along still walks, even if he does not walk well; and a man who is ill or ignorant still lives, even if he does not live well. Suppose one said that the soul is the condition of an instrument when that instrument is more or less in tune? Suppose one drew most any picture one liked ... "The soul is like ..." Are we dealing here with arguments or with pictures?

94b-e - [Plato observes that the soul and body are frequently in disharmony, with the soul opposing the body, for example in not drinking even though it is thirsty and not eating even though it is hungry.] It directs all the elements of which it is said to consist, opposing them in almost everything all through life, and exercising every form of control -- sometimes by severe and unpleasant methods ... "Endure, my heart; still worse hast thou endured." [Odyssey 20.17 ff.]

Either there is life in a body or there is not life in a body. Beyond that, what do I or anyone else know? So says the Socrates of the Apology, I think. The question of the "the soul", of its life before or after death, is not a question for medical science, surely. Is it not a question without an answer? Not in Plato's view; in his view we can discover the truth about these things by means of argument; whether we succeed or not, we must not lose faith in argument (90c-e). Well, isn't that what Wittgenstein does with his "private language argument"? Isn't that what all philosophers try to do: to discover that truth by means of argument, by reason alone? But Wittgenstein argues about concepts; Plato -- in some sense of 'fact' -- tries to argue about facts (and not mere uses of words).


The Platonic Socrates' Criticism of Anaxagoras' Failure to Attribute Causality to Mind

96a - When I was young, Cebes, I had an extraordinary passion for that branch of learning which is called natural science ["physics"]. I thought it would be marvelous to know the causes for which each thing comes and ceases and continues to be.

96e-97a - I cannot even convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other. I find it hard to believe that, although when they were separate each of them was one and they were not two, now that they have come together the cause of their becoming two is simply the union caused by their juxtaposition [i.e. by their being placed side by side].

That is, "just by their juxtaposition" would mean: simply by convention, I think. Again, Plato's view that Unity and Duality are not mere concepts (rules for using words); they are realities (Forms, Absolutes),and one cannot admit the presence of the other (cf. 101b-c, 103b-c).

[Socrates had heard someone say that Anaxagoras had written "that it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything" (97b-c), but when Socrates himself read the book he "discovered that the fellow made no use of mind and assigned to it no causality for the order of the world" (98b).] - 98c-99b - [It would be as if Anaxagoras had said] The cause of everything that Socrates does is mind -- and then, in trying to account for my several actions, said first that the reason why I am lying here now is that my body is composed of bones and sinews ... Or again, if he tried to account in the same way for my conversing with you, adducing causes such as sound and air and hearing and a thousand others, and never troubled to mention the real reasons --

Why Socrates is in prison (reason in contrast to the body)

-- which are that since Athens has thought it better to condemn me, therefore I for my part have thought it better to sit here, and more right to stay and submit to whatever penalties she orders. Because ... I fancy that these sinews and bones would have been in the neighborhood of Megara or Boeotia long ago -- impelled by a conviction of what is best! -- if I did not think that it was more right and honorable to submit to whatever my country orders rather than to take to my heels and run away. But to call things like that causes is too absurd. If it were said that without such bones and sinews and all the rest of them I should not be able to do what I think is right, it would be true. But to say that it is because of them that I do what I am doing, and not through choice of what is best -- although my actions are controlled by mind -- would be a very lax and inaccurate form of expression.

Body versus mind (Reason versus instinct)

Socrates while he is in prison says in effect that: If it were for my legs ["these sinews and bones" (Phaedo 99a)], I would not be here [my body would have fled into exile]: the body represents instinct; the mind represents reason acting to counter instinct, e.g. courage is the mind going forward where instinct would hold one back (cowardice), and stopping where instinct would drive one further (foolhardiness) [the mind overcoming instinct]. Foolhardiness and cowardice -- according to Aristotle's ethics the first over-reaches and the second under-reaches the excellence (virtue) that is proper to man, namely courage -- are an obeying rather than an acting despite instinct.

The excellence that is both unique and proper to man is reason, not instinct (In contrast, for the nest-building bird it is instinct). When the reasoning mind rather than instinct and impulse takes control, man is ruled by the rational rather than the animal part of himself (as in Aristotle's Man is a rational animal).

Plato's Axiomatic Method in Philosophy

99d-100a - ... I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether. So I decided that I must have recourse to theories, and use them in trying to discover the truth about things.... I started off in this way, and in every case I first lay down the theory which I judge to be soundest, and then whatever seems to agree with it -- with regard either to causes or to anything else -- I assume to be true, and whatever does not I assume not to be true.

[Jowett: "... I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of the senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better have recourse to ideas, and seek in them the truth of existence.... this was the method which I adopted: I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this ... and that which disagreed I regarded as untrue."]

Plato does not make this comparison, but his model of reasoning resembles that of geometry. Because, like Euclid, Plato has "common notions" and axioms from which he deduces philosophical propositions (theorems). And thus, as equivalent to "Rationalism" (which is a priori reasoning), we could speak of an "axiomatic philosophy" or an "axiomatic method of philosophizing": Plato starts off with the principles that seem correct to him and follows these to wherever they go, despite any empirical evidence [evidence of the five senses] to the contrary.

Plato begins with the principles that (1) all visible things are in flux (Heraclitus), but that (2) the only things that can be known are things that are not in flux (Parmenides), and, therefore what can be known must be invisible, because everything we perceive is in flux (Change is the apparently essential characteristic of everything perceived with the body's senses).

Neither of those two principles is derivable from experience (neither is verifiable by the senses; they are, to use Drury's expression, "fact-proof" as in "waterproof"). And Heraclitus' proposition does not describe how we normally use the expression 'in a state of change' (The word 'changing' when applied to the phenomena of experience -- and how else is it to be applied? -- requires its antithesis 'unchanging', if it is not to be without meaning).

Why does Plato never ask: Have ever seen anything that is unchanging? to which the answer is, if we use the word 'unchanging' as we normally do, that 'change' is a relative or relational concept, not an absolute concept. But Plato assumes it to be an absolute concept; cf. 'largeness', which is also a relational concept Plato presumes to be absolute.

Plato follows the principle which seems to him strongest or true here despite any and all evidence of the senses (sense perception) to the contrary. For example, the principle that "The meaning of a common name is a common nature" -- even if there is no evidence that a particular common name -- Wittgenstein's example is the common name 'game' -- does in fact name a common nature. Plato's principle is that there must be a common nature which is the meaning of a common name -- and therefore there is such a nature (regardless of whether it is perceptible to the senses or not).

Plato next gives an illustration of his method.

100b-c - As I am going to try to explain to you the theory of causation which I have worked out myself [Jowett: "I want to explain to you the nature of that cause which has occupied my thoughts"], I propose to make a fresh start from those principles of mine which you know so well -- that is, I am assuming the existence of absolute beauty and goodness and magnitude and all the rest of them. If you grant my assumption and admit that they exist ...

Certainly I grant it, said Cebes....

... see whether you share my opinion [Jowett: "whether you agree with me"]. It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from absolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality?

Yes, I do.

Of course, the problem for us is not only that we do not think as Cebes does, but also that we do not even know what clear meaning can be given to the combination of words 'absolute beauty'. It certainly does not mean e.g. 'pattern' or 'archetype' in any sense of those words I am aware of.

100c-d - Well, now that is as far as my mind goes; I cannot understand these other ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that the reason why a given object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous color [Jowett: "bloom of color"] or shape or any other attribute, I disregard all these other explanations -- I find them all confusing -- and I cling simply and straightforwardly and no doubt foolishly to the explanation that the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it or association with it, in whatever way the relation comes about, of absolute beauty. I do not go so far as to insist upon the precise details -- only upon the fact that it is by beauty [Absolute Beauty] that beautiful things are beautiful.

100e-101c - [I] refuse to accept that statement that one man is taller than another "by a head", and that the shorter is man is shorter by the same. [The only view I] can hold is that whatever is taller than something else is so simply by tallness, that is, because of tallness [Absolute Tallness] -- and that what is shorter is so simply by shortness ... and that it is unnatural that a man should be made tall by something short [namely, "a head"].... Suppose next that we add one to one. You would surely avoid saying that the cause of our getting two is the addition ... [but] that you know of no other way in which any given object can come into being except by participation in the reality peculiar to its appropriate universal [Jowett: "its own proper essence"], and ... you recognize no other cause for the coming into being of two than participation in duality [Absolute Two-ness] ...

In 101c-d Plato repeats the statement he made in 100a, of first laying down the principle which he judges to be soundest; that he holds fast to his principle [or, foundation] and only accepts what follows from it, if what follows from it -- i.e. its consequences are consistent with one another (If Plato has such a criterion -- apparently of demanding non-contradiction -- for putting a principle to the test, then there is justification for using the word Tredennick uses, namely 'hypothesis', where Jowett uses 'principle', although I would not). If called on to justify his principle, he looks for a more fundamental principle yet.

I think that is a correct reading of what Plato says. Is it the same as Wittgenstein's "I must begin with the distinction between sense and nonsense. Nothing is possible prior to that. I cannot give it a foundation" (PG i § 81, p. 126-7)? Yes, but only when Plato arrives at his most fundamental or basic, elementary or ultimate (although they come first), principles.

The distinction between sense and nonsense -- what type of principle is that? It belongs to Wittgenstein's method of reasoning -- but not only that, because one may ask: But don't sense and nonsense really exist -- i.e. don't we as a matter of fact not simply make noises but instead talk sense or nonsense? And so is it a factual principle (rather than a comparative principle, like the game (as in "language-game") metaphor)? But remember that Wittgenstein selected one meaning of 'meaning' from among many others; and, therefore, although it is factual, it disregards many facts (e.g. the many other meanings of 'meaning').

The Immortality of the Soul

102a-b - PHAEDO: I think that when Socrates had got this accepted, and it was agreed that the various Forms [Jowett: "ideas"; I have capitalized the word 'Form' and the word 'Three' below, although Tredennick does not] exist, and that the reason why other things are called after the Forms [Jowett: "derive their names from them"] is that they participate in the Forms, he next went on to ask ...

104d - You realize, I suppose, that when the Form of Three takes possession of any group of objects, it compels them to be odd as well as three.

Certainly.

I don't think it would be possible to be farther away from Wittgenstein's understanding of how our language works than these notions of Plato's. Certainly in this case you cannot appeal to certain very general facts of nature which may (but then they also may not) explain concept-formation (PI II, xii, p. 230a). We ask: what are the grammatical rules for using the words 'three' and 'odd'? But suppose someone asked questions like: Is it the nature of three to be odd? Is two even by nature? What could we reply except that we do not understand these questions (i.e. these combinations of words suggest no meaning to us). Our general principle: we define words not things -- but not as if "things" such as three and odd really had real definitions (hypotheses about their natures) which simply did not interest us. The words 'three' and 'odd' are not the names of phenomena e.g.

Can we say that for Plato all statements are statement of fact (that there are no grammatical propositions)? Plato recognizes conventional, or, verbal, definitions in the Cratylus. From which arises the question, however, of how Plato knows whether a word names a Form or not, because surely not all words name Forms (for are there no delusions in our language?) and some words name the same Form -- i.e. their use is simply a matter of convention?

The soul is life itself

105c-e - Then tell me, what must be present in a body to make it alive?

Soul.

Is this always so.

Of course.

So whenever soul takes possession of a body, it always brings life with it?... Does it not follow, then, from our earlier agreement ["Five will not admit the Form of even, nor will ten, which is double five, admit the Form of odd. Double has an opposite of its own, but at the same time it will not admit the Form of odd" (105a); three is always accompanied by the opposite of even, namely odd (104e): "Not only does an opposite not admit its opposite, but if anything is accompanied by a Form which has an opposite, and meets that opposite, then the thing which is accompanied never admits the opposite of the Form by which it is accompanied" (105a); two and three are not opposites but they are accompanied by the opposites even and odd which will not admit one another (104b-c)], that soul will never admit the opposite of that which accompanies it?.... And what do we call that which does not admit death?

Immortal.

And the soul does not admit death [because soul is always accompanied by life (as three is always accompanied by oddness)]?

No.

So the soul is immortal.

Is the soul not capable of sleep? And why should there not be a sleep that is eternal? The soul does "admit" sleep, and sleep is akin to death -- that is, a sleeping soul continues to exist, but why need it ever awaken?

Plato has a picture of the soul as that which makes a body alive. Is that not the picture of a ghost? Could we say, Well, if the soul is such a ghost, then the soul is immortal? Is the argument circular (i.e. does it assume the very thing it claims to prove), because is not soul equated with life -- i.e. doesn't 'soul' = 'life' here? But by 'soul' Plato means far more than 'life', he also means for example 'intellect'; but not all living things have intellect. "Does all intellect have life?" Do you understand that question (Does that combination of words have a meaning, a use in our language)?

106c-d - So now in the case of the immortal, if it is conceded that this is also imperishable, soul will imperishable as well as immortal....

If what is immortal [said Cebes] and eternal cannot avoid destruction, it is hard to see how anything else can. [Jowett: "if the immortal, being eternal, is liable to perish, then nothing is imperishable."]

We would say that these are obvious tautologies or "rules of grammar" (or verbal definitions) -- i.e. being imperishable is what we mean by the words 'immortal' and 'eternal'. And so why was this not obvious -- if it is obvious -- to Plato; why does he treat these statements (106c-d) as if they were a matter of facts [non-linguistic facts]? In some cases things are only obvious once someone has been explained them to us; and the understanding of language that we now have (if we have such an understanding) developed over many centuries.

106e - So it appears that when death comes to a man, the mortal part of him dies, but the immortal part retires at the approach of death and escapes unharmed ...

Plato says (106a) that although cold withdraws at the approach of heat, snow does not but instead melts, although in melting it ceases to be snow. It appears therefore that some essences are destructible -- although their Absolutes are not: this particular snow may perish but the Absolute of snow cannot, if there is an Absolute of snow (and Plato does not say that there is; presumably there is a Form of snow, however).

107b - [Simmias says that now after hearing what Socrates has said, he has no doubts [Jowett: sees any "room for uncertainty"].] All the same, the subject is so vast, and I have such a poor opinion [Jowett does not use this word or an equivalent] of our weak human nature, that I can't help feeling some misgivings.

Quite right, Simmias, said Socrates, and what is more, even if you find our original assumptions convincing [Jowett: "first principles, even if they appear certain"], they still need more accurate consideration. If you and your friends examine them closely enough, I believe that you will arrive at the truth of the matter, in so far as it is possible for the human mind to attain it ...

"... in so far as it is possible for the human mind". But on the one hand, that is the usual "mystery of faith" dodge -- i.e. that it is the facts ("reality") that mystify us rather than we who mystify ourselves: "... for we ourselves made it an insoluble mystery" (cf. Z § 259). And on the other hand, can we say that about the question of life after death, and the other riddles of existence? I don't know. But when Simmias says "I have no doubts", what he means is that he cannot think of any grounds for doubt at the present time, not that none will suggest itself later, and Plato says that this is the nature of philosophy.

Care of the Soul

107c - If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked ... [But because the soul is immortal] it can have no escape or security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can [Jowett: "there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom"]. For it [the soul] takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training [Jowett: "nurture"] ...

In a word, 'to care for the soul' means: to live the most ethical life possible. About this both Socrates and Plato agree, despite their different "conceptions of the soul" (By 'soul' Socrates means no more than 'the ethical aspect of man', which is a definition the word 'soul' -- not a metaphysical theory of "what the soul is in itself"). As to the question of a blessed or cursed afterlife, for the Socrates of Plato's Apology and of Xenophon to be an ethical human being is the goal of our life regardless of what death is: to be ethical is the good for man, whether in this life and in any other.

Would it only be a boon for those who have done very wicked deeds? I wonder if it would it not be a boon for everyone? Because what can ever erase an evil deed? The fact of the wrong-doing, of the ugliness that we have created, exists for us always -- because can history be undone?

As his last words Socrates asks that a rooster be sacrificed to the god of healing -- "Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius" (118a) -- as if death were a healing from the illness of life-in-the-body. Thus there could not be a clearer example of Plato's treating Socrates as a literary figure than the Phaedo. Even when describing the death of his teacher, Plato does not hesitate to ascribe his own views to Socrates. The Socrates of Xenophon, as well as the Socrates of Plato's Apology, does not deprecate "life in the body".

Plato says, "Think more of the truth than of Socrates" (91b), but again I ask: but then why use Socrates as your mouthpiece? We do read that Chinese potters signed their own work with the names of great potters of the past; for them this was an act of reverence to those from whom they had learned. But would something like that be the case with Plato?

The Socrates of Plato's Apology goes to his death knowing not whether that is the end of his existence or not, while the Socrates of the Phaedo is quite the opposite, confident that the soul is a thing immortal -- and that if one did not believe that it were then death would be something to be grieved over (63b-c; cf. 91b), which I think amounts to: to be feared (Apology 29a). But Socrates does not say that in the Apology; that Socrates has lived for the sake of the good (goodness): the search for the true and the realization of the good in one's own life ("growing in goodness" by each day choosing the better rather than the easier way) is what makes living in this world or in any other worthwhile; and that, according to Xenophon, it is only when the debilities of old age make the pursuit of wisdom impossible that death is to be desired.

The reasoned calm with which Socrates faces his death -- i.e. the very end of the Phaedo -- is nonetheless consistent with what we know -- i.e. everything else we read. (Socrates covered his face at the end. He was an old man with a paunch and a face like a satyr, but there is instead a famous and extremely vulgar painting of this scene by Jacques Louis David which was, unhappily, used as the cover for the Tredennick translation of Xenophon's Memories of Socrates and Symposium.)

Care for the soul is care for all time

107c - But there is a further point ... which deserves your attention. If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time. [Jowett: "if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her from that point of view does indeed appear to be awful."]

107d - This is how the story goes. When any man dies, his own guardian spirit [Jowett: "the genius of each individual"], which was given charge over him in his life ...

Cf. Crossley's note to Epictetus: "To the Stoics the Guardian Spirit was each man's Reason." Which notion is more Socratic? Socrates had a "sign" or daemon warning him against harmful acts, and even in Xenophon the gods are concerned for human well-being. Nonetheless, I think the Socrates of Plato's Apology is closer to Epictetus: a man's guardian in this life is his reason.

109b - ... we live round this sea like ants or frogs round a pond ... [Jowett: "we who dwell ... along the borders of the sea, are just like ants or frogs about a marsh ..."]

115c-d - [Crito asked] But how shall we bury you?

Any way you like, replied Socrates, that is, if you can catch me and I don't slip through your fingers. ... I can't persuade Crito that I am this Socrates here who is talking to you now and marshaling all the arguments. He thinks that I am the one whom he will see presently lying dead, and he asks me how he is to bury me!

115e-116a - Believe me, my dear friend Crito, misstatements are not merely jarring in their immediate context; they also have a bad effect upon the soul. No, you must keep up your spirits and say that it is only my body that you are burying, and you can bury it as you please, in whatever way you think is most proper. [F.J. Church (rev. Cumming): "For, dear Crito, you must know that to use words wrongly is not only a fault in itself; it also corrupts the soul."]

Did Plato "redefine death"?

Is that what Plato does in the Phaedo? But the Greeks already had Homeric pictures of the shades in Hades. But, then again, the shades' existence was miserable, the mere shadow of human life, whereas Plato imagines that good and wise souls have a good, even divine, afterlife. Of course, if Plato does "redefine death", that would be a real re-definition of death. That is, it would not be a "misstatement" (115e) -- i.e. an incorrect (false) account of the grammar of our language, but a correct statement of fact and therefore the correct view of death according to Plato. That is, whatever he does, Plato does not redefine the word 'death'.


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