Plato: Phaedo

Echecrates asks Phaedo whether he was present in prison when Socrates drank the poison; Phaedo confirms and Echecrates requests an account. Phaedo explains the delay between condemnation and death: the Athenians' ship to Delos, tied to Theseus's voyage and a vow to Apollo, had been crowned, making the city unpolluted by executions. Phaedo describes his mixed feelings and names those present—Apollodorus, Critobulus, Crito, Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Ctesippus, Menexenus, and strangers Simmias, Cebes, Phaedondes, Euclid, and Terpison; Plato was ill, Aristippus and Cleombrotus in Aegina. On the last morning the jailer reports the Eleven are removing Socrates's chains. Xanthippe cries out and is led home at Socrates's instruction to Crito. Socrates, rubbing his leg, remarks on pleasure and pain following one another. Cebes relays Evenus's question about Socrates writing verse; Socrates explains a recurring dream bidding him to make music and tells Cebes to bid Evenus follow him. Simmias comments; Socrates says the philosopher will be willing to die but not take his own life. Cebes asks why suicide is wrong; Socrates, citing Philolaus, argues men are possessions of the gods. Cebes and Simmias object that a wise man should not wish to leave good rulers. Socrates agrees to defend himself. Crito relays the attendant's warning against talking. Socrates argues the true philosopher pursues death, defined as separation of soul from body, despises bodily pleasures and senses, and attains truth—absolute justice, beauty, good—through mind alone, expecting pure knowledge only after death, and expressing hope.

Socrates says he departs with hope, defining purification as the separation of the soul from the body and death as that same separation. Simmias agrees. Socrates argues that true philosophers study to release the soul, so death is least terrible to them, and that repining at death marks a lover of the body, money, or power. He discusses courage and temperance, claiming that non-philosophers are courageous from fear and temperate through intemperance, and that wisdom is the one true coin for which virtue is exchanged. He cites the founders of the mysteries and the saying about thyrsus bearers and mystics, then answers the charge that he does not grieve at leaving Simmias and Cebes. Cebes objects that men fear the soul may vanish like smoke at death. Socrates proposes an inquiry, mentioning the comic poets. He argues from the ancient doctrine that the living come from the dead, that opposites are generated from opposites, illustrating with sleeping and waking, then life and death and revival. He invokes Endymion and the chaos of Anaxagoras, concluding that souls of the dead exist. Cebes adds the doctrine that knowledge is recollection. Simmias asks for proofs; Cebes cites questioning and diagrams. Socrates develops recollection through the examples of a lyre, garment, and Simmias reminding of Cebes, then argues for absolute equality, known before birth, extending to beauty, goodness, justice, and holiness. He concludes souls existed before birth with intelligence. Simmias accepts pre-existence but says survival after death remains unproven, still fearing the soul may be scattered.

The span opens with a question about whether the soul, though generated elsewhere and existing before entering the body, might be destroyed after leaving it. Cebes states that the soul's prior existence has been proven, but its existence after death still needs proof. Socrates replies that combining this with the earlier argument—that everything living is born of the dead—supplies the proof. He suggests that Cebes and Simmias, like children, fear the wind may scatter the soul; Cebes says a child within them fears death as a hobgoblin. Socrates advises daily charming, and when asked where to find a charmer, tells Cebes to seek one throughout Hellas and among themselves. Returning to the argument, Socrates distinguishes the compounded (dissoluble, changing) from the uncompounded (indissoluble, unchanging). He and Cebes agree essences are always the same, while beautiful things change; the unchanging is invisible, the seen is changing. Body is akin to the seen, soul to the unseen. Soul rules, body serves; soul resembles the divine, body the mortal. Socrates concludes the soul is nearly indissoluble. He notes bodies, even embalmed in Egypt, may last long. The pure soul departs to the invisible divine world; the impure soul, engrossed by the corporeal, lingers as ghostly apparitions and passes into animals matching its nature—gluttons into asses, the violent into wolves. Philosophers alone reach the gods. Socrates describes philosophy releasing the soul glued to the body. After silence, Simmias raises an objection: the soul may be like a harmony of the lyre, perishing when the body's elements are disturbed. Socrates invites Cebes to speak. Cebes admits the soul's prior existence is proven but its survival after death remains unproven.

Socrates introduces a figure to answer Cebes: an old weaver who dies, whom someone claims must still be alive because a coat he wove remains whole. The claimant asks whether a man or a coat lasts longer, and, told a man lasts longer, thinks he has proven the man survives. Socrates tells Simmias this is nonsense, since the weaver outlived many coats but was outlived by the last. He applies the figure to soul and body: the soul wears out many bodies, and when the soul perishes it wears its last body, which survives it. He states he would not rely on this to prove the soul exists after death, since the soul, though born many times, may weary and perish in one of its deaths; whoever is confident in death is foolish unless he can prove the soul immortal and imperishable. Phaedo reports that the listeners felt unpleasant and shaken. Echecrates agrees, saying the harmony doctrine attracts him. Phaedo says he admired Socrates most then, comparing him to a general rallying a broken army. Socrates, playing with Phaedo's hair, speaks of shaving locks and the Argives' oath, and of Heracles and Iolaus. He warns against becoming misologists, comparing this to misanthropy, both arising from ignorance; he explains that extremes are few and most lie in the mean. He urges seeking health in argument, distinguishing himself from the partisan. Socrates restates Simmias's and Cebes's positions, both agreeing. He establishes with Simmias that a harmony cannot precede its elements, so the recollection doctrine and the soul-as-harmony doctrine conflict; Simmias keeps recollection. Socrates argues a harmony follows its elements and admits degrees, while souls do not, so souls could have no vice or virtue. Simmias agrees these consequences are inadmissible. Socrates asks whether the soul agrees with or is at variance with the body's affections.

Socrates observes that when the body is hot and thirsty the soul inclines against drinking, and against eating when hungry, one instance of the soul opposing the body. He recalls the acknowledgment that a harmony cannot oppose its strings, yet the soul leads and coerces the desires, citing Homer's Odyssey where Odysseus reproaches his heart; he concludes the soul is not a harmony. Turning from Harmonia to the Theban Cadmus, Cebes praises the reply to Simmias. Socrates warns against boasting, then restates Cebes's objection: proof is wanted that the soul is imperishable and immortal, since longevity does not imply immortality. Cebes agrees. Socrates, after pausing, recounts his youthful desire for Natural Science and his questions about growth, blood, air, fire, and the brain, and his eventual bewilderment over greater and less and how one added to one makes two. He describes hearing Anaxagoras's book claiming mind orders all, his delight, and his disappointment when Anaxagoras invoked air, ether, and water; he distinguishes cause from condition, noting Athenian condemnation as the true cause of his sitting. He announces a second-best method: recourse to ideas, assuming absolute beauty, goodness, and greatness, so beautiful things are beautiful by participation in beauty, and two by participation in duality. Simmias and Cebes assent. Echecrates and Phaedo exchange praise. Phaedo resumes: Socrates shows Simmias is great and small by size, not by being Simmias, and that opposites in us do not become their own opposites. An objector notes contradiction with earlier claims; Socrates distinguishes concrete from essential opposites. Using heat, cold, fire, snow, odd, and even, he argues that three, five, ten, and certain ratios reject opposing ideas. Cebes agrees.

Socrates proposes beginning again, asking for a new kind of answer rather than the old safe one, offering examples: fire (not heat) makes a body hot; fever (not disease) makes a body diseased; the monad causes odd numbers. The interlocutor understands. Socrates establishes that the soul brings life, that death is life's opposite, and that the soul never receives the opposite of what it brings. Through a series of exchanges about the odd, the unmusical, and the unjust, he concludes the soul does not admit death and is therefore immortal, which the interlocutor calls abundantly proven. Socrates argues that if the immortal is imperishable, the soul cannot perish when attacked by death, using examples of odd, snow, and fire. He states all men, and gods, agree the immortal never perishes. Cebes is convinced; Simmias voices only lingering uncertainty from human feebleness. Socrates urges care for the immortal soul and describes the soul's journey after death, its guiding genius, judgment, and the many partings of the road, citing Aeschylus's "Telephus." He then describes the earth: round, at the heavens' center, held by equipoise; humans dwell in hollows between Phasis and the Pillars of Heracles like ants around a marsh. He describes the true upper earth's colors, jewels, and inhabitants; the subterranean rivers and Tartarus, citing Homer; and names Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. He explains the judgment and fates of souls—the ordinary, the incurable, the pardonable, and the holy. He urges Simmias to seek virtue and wisdom, notes his own approaching death and intention to bathe first. Crito asks for commands and how to bury him.

Socrates tells Crito to get hold of him and prevent him walking away, then smiling explains that Crito thinks he is the body he will soon see, asking how to bury him. He asks the listeners to be surety that he will not remain but depart, so Crito grieves less; false words infect the soul. He bathes with Crito, sees his children and the women, dismisses them, and returns. The jailer bids him farewell weeping; Socrates returns good wishes and calls for the cup. Crito urges delay; Socrates refuses. He drinks calmly; the others weep, Apollodorus cries out, Socrates rebukes them. He grows cold, tells Crito he owes a cock to Asclepius, and dies; Crito closes his eyes.