Phaedo

Phaedo (see above), dialogue by Plato in which Phaedo narrates the discussion that took place between Socrates and his friends during the last hours of his life, and the manner of his dying. The dialogue starts from the remark of Socrates that the genuine philosopher is one who is willing to die because it is his affirmation of the principles by which he has lived; the philosopher will be convinced that after his death the soul of the just man will be under the care of good and wise gods no less than before—and perhaps in the company of the best men of the past; moreover, death is the release of the soul from the body, and it has been the philosopher's aim during his lifetime to make the soul independent of bodily vicissitudes. Cebēs’ objection that the soul may not survive death leads to the series of arguments which make up the core of the dialogue and which, as they develop, are intended to vindicate Socrates' belief in the immortality of the soul. The reader is presented with the argument that learning is recollection of knowledge possessed in a former existence (an argument prominent in Meno also) and therefore the soul must have existed before its present incarnation. The reader also meets the theory of Ideas or Forms by which a particular thing is what it is (e.g. by which a beautiful thing is beautiful) by partaking of the Idea of e.g. beauty. It is also argued that soul, which imparts life to the body, cannot admit death, and is therefore immortal. Socrates introduces this last section by giving an account of his intellectual history, memorably describing his conceptual difficulties with the kind of explanation of the physical world offered in the natural sciences (including the explanation of Anaxagoras; see PHILOSOPHY 1) and the evolution of his own method of enquiry based on the formulation of successive hypotheses. The argument is rounded off with a myth which gives a speculative picture of the afterlife and the judgement of departed souls. Belief in ‘either this or something like it’ is said to be a noble risk. The dialogue ends with the moving description of Socrates' fearless acceptance of the cup of hemlock. This is the work from which Cato (of Utica) is said to have drawn strength on the night before he committed suicide.