Summary

The version I read was translated by George Grube.

Shitty one-sentence summary

Phaedo is about the soul and what comes after death.

Characters

• Phaedo
• Echecrates
• Socrates
• Simmias
• Cebes
• Crito

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Major themes and concepts

To practice philosophy is to practice for dying and death. Further, if one is to ever attain true knowledge, one must escape the body and observe things with the soul by itself.

All things come to be in this way: opposites from opposites. Thus, the dead must come from the living, and vice versa; meaning that the soul must be somewhere where it can come back again.

Learning is nothing but recollection; therefore, our soul must have existed before we were born. This statement only holds true if realities like the Just and Beautiful and Good exist, but their existence is evident.

The soul resembles the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself; the body resembles the human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never the same. However, if the soul is impure, it will become heavy and dragged to the visible realm. The destination of one's soul will conform to the way in which they behaved, and the pure soul is that which keeps away from pleasures, desires, and pains.

Before we begin our response, we should be careful to avoid becoming misologues; those who put their trust in an argument as being true and then false often conclude that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or argument, and that all that exists fluctuates; but we should rather believe that it is we who are not yet sound.

To Simmias' objection, it requires that the soul is a harmony (and therefore a composite) of elements in the body, but a composite cannot exist before its constituent parts (and we established that the soul exists before the body because learning is recollection). Further, a harmony does not direct, but is directed by its components, but the soul directs the man. Therefore, it is wrong to say that the soul is a harmony.

When he was younger, Socrates was interested in the natural causes of generation, destruction, and existence. He heard that Anaxagoras wrote that Mind is the cause of everything, but found that he did not make any mention of Mind as a cause, but rather material things like air and ether. After this, he wearied of investigation and began to investigate truth by means of words instead, assuming the existence of a Beautiful, in and of itself, and a Good and a Great and all the rest. And through these axioms, he will show the soul to be immortal.

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Reading notes

Echecrates (E): Were you with Socrates when he drank the poison?

• Phaedo (P): I was there myself.
• E: What did he say before he died? And how did he die?
• P: Being there was an astonishing experience. He appeared happy and died nobly without fear. I felt a strange mix of pleasure and pain as I reflected that he was about to die — we all did.
• E: What was the conversation about?
• P: I will try to tell you from the beginning.

We gathered early at the prison, because the ship from Delos had arrived, signaling that Socrates would die today. When we went into his cell, he was released from his chains and Xanthippe (his wife) cried out, saying that this would be the last time that Socrates and us will speak. Socrates told Crito to have someone take her home, and she was led away crying.

Socrates (S): (rubbing his leg) What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with pain! A man cannot have both at the same time; yet, if he pursues and catches one, he is bound to catch the other also. This seems to be happening to me: my bonds caused pain in my leg, and now pleasure seems to be following. Cebes (C): You reminded me: Evenus asked me what caused you to write poetry after you came to prison, when you never had composed any poetry before, putting Aesop's fables into verse and composing a hymn to Apollo. S: My dreams told me: "Socrates, practice and cultivate the arts". In the past, I believed that it was telling me to do what I was doing: practicing the art of philosophy (the highest kind of art). But after my trial, I thought that in the case that my dream was telling me to practice popular art, I should obey and compose poetry.

• I realized that a poet must compose fables, not arguments. Because I'm no teller of fables, I took Aesop's and put them into verse.
• It seems that I am dying today; tell Evenus that if he is wise, he will follow me as soon as possible. If he is a philosopher, he will be willing; yet perhaps he will not take his own life, for people say that is not right. C: Why do people say that it isn't right for one to kill themselves? S: There is the explanation that is put into the language of the mysteries; that men are put in a kind of prison, and that one must not free oneself nor run away.
• This is not easy to understand fully; however, wouldn't you say that the gods are our guardians and we are one of their possessions?
• And wouldn't you be angry if one of possessions killed itself without your permission, and wouldn't you punish it?
• Then, one shouldn't kill oneself before a god indicates some necessity to do so, like in this occasion. C: That makes sense. But that philosophers should be ready and willing to die seems strange — that the wisest of men should not resent leaving this service of the best of masters, the gods, because a wise man cannot believe that he would look after himself better when he is free.

Socrates seemed pleased at Cebes' argument.

To practice philosophy is to practice for dying and death. Further, if one is to ever attain true knowledge, one must escape the body and observe things with the soul by itself.

S: I should be wrong to not resent dying if I didn't believe that I would first go to other wise and good gods, and then to men who have died and are better than these here. I have hope that some future awaits men after death, as we have been told for years; a much better future for the good than for the wicked.

• I am afraid that people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.
• If this is true, it would be strange if they were eager for this all their lives and then resented it once it is time.
• But never mind them; do we believe that there is such a thing as death? Simmias (Sim): Yes. S: Death is nothing else than the separation of soul from the body.
• A philosopher should not be concerned with the pleasures of the body; it is an obstacle in the search for knowledge. It is in reasoning that reality becomes clear to the soul.
  • The soul reasons best when it is as far removed from the bodily senses as possible in the search for reality.
  • And we say that there are such things as the Just, the Beautiful, and the Good; have you ever grasped any of these with your eyes? If anyone grasps these things, it would be he who approaches them with thought alone.
  • All these things would make true philosophers believe that there is something like a path to guide us out of our confusion, because as long as we have a body, we shall never attain what we desire — the truth.
  • Only the body and its desires cause war, civil discord, and battles; and worst of all, if we do attend to the body, it makes itself present everywhere in our investigations and prevents us from seeing the truth.
  • So, if we are ever to attain true knowledge, we must escape the body and observe things with the soul by itself.
• If it's impossible to obtain pure knowledge with the body, either
  • (a) we can never attain knowledge, or
  • (b) we can only do so after death — for only then is the soul apart from the body.
• And while we live, we should refrain from association with the body as much as possible; for it is not permitted for the impure to attain the pure.
• Then, there is good hope that I will acquire true knowledge where I'm going, if anywhere.
• Further, isn't purification to separate the soul as far as possible from the body — and this separation is death? And this separation is also the preoccupation of the philosophers?
  • So, it would be ridiculous for a man to train in life for a state as close to death as possible, and then resent it when it comes.
  • In fact, those who practice philosophy in the right way fear death least of all: would a true lover of wisdom, who knows he would never find it until after death, not gladly die? Any man who resents death was not a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the body.
• The qualities of courage and moderation are strange among those who do not practice philosophy and consider death a great evil.
  • The brave face death for fear of greater evils: fear and terror make them brave.
  • The moderate fear to be deprived of other pleasures which they desire.
• But I fear that his is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasure, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for less like coins, but that the only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom. With this we have real courage and moderation and justice and, in a word, true virtue, with wisdom, whether pleasures and fears and all such things be present or absent.

All things come to be in this way: opposites from opposites. Thus, the dead must come from the living, and vice versa; meaning that the soul must be somewhere where it can come back again.

C: Everything else you said was excellent; but men would find what you said about the soul hard to believe: they think that after it leaves the body, it is destroyed and dissolves. S: Let's examine this matter in this manner: whether or not the souls of men who have died exist in the underworld.

• Recall the ancient theory that souls arriving in the underworld come from here, and souls arriving here come from the underworld. This implies that our souls must exist there.
• However, if this theory is not true, let us see if this is true: that all things come to be from their opposites (if they have one) and nowhere else.
  • For example, something smaller must come from something larger; the weaker comes from the stronger; the swifter from the slower.
  • All things come to be in this way — opposites from opposites.

This seems like very dualist thinking; also, not all processes are reversible

• Furthermore, between each of these pairs of opposites, there are two processes: from one to the other and from the other to the one.
• Therefore, if there are opposites, they come to be from one another.
• Then, being dead is the opposite of being alive, implying that they come to be from one another.
  • Living things come from the dead.
  • Therefore, our souls exist in the underworld: there must be an opposite process to dying, which is becoming (coming to life again), meaning that the soul must be somewhere where it can come back again.
• If the two processes of becoming did not always balance each other out as if they were in a circle, but rather proceeded in a straight line, ultimately everything would be in the same state and cease to become, and everything would ultimately be dead.

I'm reminded of the heat death hypothesis of the universe and of entropy for some reason

There is a cycle of life (dying and becoming), but in a physical / biological sense

Learning is nothing but recollection; therefore, our soul must have existed before we were born. This statement only holds true if realities like the Just and Beautiful and Good exist, but their existence is evident.

C: Furthermore, if the theory that you often mention is true — that learning is nothing but recollection, our soul must have existed before it took on this human form¹.

• There is an excellent argument for this theory: that when men are questioned correctly, they always give the right answer of their own accord. They could not do so if they did not possess the knowledge inside of them. S: If anyone recollects anything, he must have known it before.
• When a man perceives one thing and also thinks of another, he recollects the second thing.
• This recollection can be brought about by both similar and dissimilar things.
• When it is caused by similar things, one must also consider whether the similarity is deficient or complete.
• Consider the case when we say two things are Equal.
  • We acquired the knowledge of Equal from seeing things that appear (but are not actually) equal — this is deficient and not the Equal.
  • However, one must have prior knowledge of that to which he says something is like, but deficiently so.
  • Therefore, we must have possessed knowledge of the Equal before the time when we saw equal objects and realized that all objects strive to be like the Equal but are deficient in this.
  • This conception derives from sense perception and cannot enter the mind in any other way.
  • Then before we begin to perceive, we must have possessed knowledge of the Equal, but we begin to perceive right after birth; so, we must have possessed it before birth, and learning is the recovery of this knowledge and should be called recollection.

Why do these concepts have to exist before humans have thought of them? Also, what about information / "knowledge" passed on evolutionarily / through genetics?

• So, one of two things are true:
  • (1) we are born with true knowledge, and all of us know it throughout life, or
  • (2) those who learn are really only recollecting.
• Not everyone has knowledge of these things, so they recollect what they once know.
• Our souls must have acquired this knowledge before we were born; thus, our souls must have existed apart from our body and it must have had intelligence.
• If the realities like the Beautiful and the Good and the like do not exist, then our argument is futile, but it is evident that these do exist.

The soul resembles the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself; the body resembles the human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never the same. However, if the soul is impure, it will become heavy and dragged to the visible realm. The destination of one's soul will conform to the way in which they behaved, and the pure soul is that which keeps away from pleasures, desires, and pains.

Sim: I think sufficient proof has been given that our soul has existed before we were born; but it is not yet proven that it will continue after we die. S: You're right. It can be shown from what we stated before that every living thing must come from the dead. Thus, the soul must be born again, and thus must exist after death.

• However, it appears that you'd like to discuss the matter more fully; you seem to fear that the wind would really dissolve and scatter the soul.
• Let us ask what kind of thing is likely to be scattered, then examine to which class the soul belongs.
  • That which is composite is likely to be split, and that which is non-composite is not.
  • Things that remain the same are likely to be non-composite, and things that change are likely to be composite.
  • The real, each thing in itself (the Equal, the Beautiful, the Good) always remains the same; the particulars always change.
  • You can grasp the particulars with the senses, but the real can only be perceived with the reasoning power of the mind.
  • Thus, there are two kinds of existences: the visible and the invisible. The invisible remains the same, while the visible never does.
  • The body is like the visible; the soul is like the invisible.
  • When the soul is in contact with the body, it strays and becomes confused; but when it investigates by itself it passes into the realm of the pure, immortal, and unchanging, and this experience is called wisdom.
  • Then, the soul is more like that which exists in the same state rather than like that which does not.
• Look at it another way: the nature of the divine is to rule and that of the mortal is to be ruled.
  • The soul resembles the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself; the body resembles the human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never the same.
  • Then, the body dissolves easily and the soul is nearly indissoluble.
• If it is pure, the soul makes its way to the invisible, but the impure soul is heavy and dragged to the visible realm. These are the souls of inferior men, who wander until their longing for the physical imprisons them in a body, bound to such characters as they have practiced in their life.
  • The destination of one's soul will conform to the way in which they behaved. No one will join the company of the gods who has not practiced philosophy and who is not completely pure when he departs from this life.
  • The lovers of learning see that the soul is imprisoned in the body due to desires, and the true philosopher keeps away from pleasures and desires and pains as much as he can. Every pain and pleasure provides another nail to rivet the soul to the body and weld them together.
  • The soul of the philosopher is calm, follows reason, and contemplates the true and divine.

This reminds me of reincarnation and the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism

Simmas' and Cebes' objections

S: Do you think there is something lacking in my argument? Sim: Both Cebes and I have been in difficulty for some time, but hesitated to bother you because of your present misfortune. S: (laughs quietly) You seem to think me inferior to the swans in prophecy — when they realize that they must die, they sing most and most beautifully, for they rejoice that they are about to depart and join their god. I, too, am dedicated to the same god and am not despondent of leaving life. Sim: Well said. I will tell you my difficulty, and Cebes his.

• It seems to me that one may make the same argument about harmony, the lyre, and strings: harmony is invisible, beautiful, and divine, and the lyre and strings are physical, bodily, and mortal. Then, if someone breaks the lyre, your argument would imply that the harmony must still exist and not be destroyed because the lyre and strings still exist, and it is impossible for the divine or immortal to be destroyed before the mortal.
• What should we say to those who deem the soul to be a mixture or harmony of bodily elements and the first to perish in death? C: As for I, I do not deny that it has been elegantly and sufficiently proved that our soul existed before it took on this present form, but I don't believe the same applies to its existing somewhere after our death. The argument might say, "don't you see that when the man dies, the weaker part continues to exist, and the more lasting part must be preserved during this time?"
• But I think this argument is as if one said at the death of a weaver that he had not died, and the existence of his cloak was offered as proof — for a man lasts longer than a cloak.
• A man may wear out many cloaks, and perish after many of them, but before the last. Thus, the soul may wear out many bodies, but it is not known which death and dissolution of the body brings about the destruction of the soul.

P: When we heard this, we were quite depressed, for we were convinced by Socrates' argument, but they had confused us again and seemed to drive us to doubt. But I have never admired Socrates more than in this moment, due to the kind way he received the argument, how sharply he was aware of its effect on us, and how well he healed our distress.

Before we begin our response, we should be careful to avoid becoming misologues; those who put their trust in an argument as being true and then false often conclude that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or argument, and that all that exists fluctuates; but we should rather believe that it is we who are not yet sound.

S: Phaedo, if I were you, I would swear to not let my hair grow before I defeated the argument of Simmias and Cebes.

• But before we begin, we should be careful to avoid becoming misologues, as people become misanthropes: when one without knowledge or skill places great trust in someone and finds him out to be wicked and unreliable, one comes to hate all men and think no one is sound.
  • But actually, the very good and the very wicked are both quite rare, and most men are between these two extremes; the same with the tall and short, swift and slow, and ugly and beautiful.
  • Arguments are not like men in this way, but rather in that when one who lacks skill in arguments puts his trust in an argument as being true and then believes it shortly after to be false — as is often the case with those who study contradiction — believe themselves to have become wise and that they alone have understood that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or argument, but that all that exists fluctuates and does not remain in place.
  • This is what we should guard against; we should rather believe that it is we who are not yet sound.
• As we proceed, give little thought to Socrates, but much more to the truth.

To Simmias' objection, it requires that the soul is a harmony (and therefore a composite) of elements in the body, but a composite cannot exist before its constituent parts (and we established that the soul exists before the body because learning is recollection). Further, a harmony does not direct, but is directed by its components, but the soul directs the man. Therefore, it is wrong to say that the soul is a harmony.

• Simmias fears that the soul predeceases the body, being a kind of harmony. Cebes agrees that the soul lasts longer than the body, but worries that no one knows whether the soul often wears out many bodies and then, upon leaving the last body, is then destroyed.
• Do you still agree that learning is recollection and that, if this is so, our soul must exist elsewhere before us? (Yes.) - But Simmias, you must change your opinion; for you believe that the soul is a harmony (and therefore a composite) of elements in the body, but surely a composite cannot exist before its constituent parts. - Which do you prefer then, that learning is recollection, or that the soul is a harmony? Sim: The former. Therefore, I cannot accept the theory that the soul is a harmony either from myself or anyone else. S: How about this: a harmony or composite is not in a different state nor can be acted upon in a different way from the elements from which it is composed.

What about emergence?

• Therefore, a harmony does not direct, but is directed by its components.
  • Harmonies can be more or less harmonized, but one soul is no more or less fully a soul than another, meaning that if the soul is a harmony, each soul has been harmonized to the same extent.
  • Wickedness is a disharmony and virtue is a harmony; but this would imply that one soul would not have more wickedness than another, which doesn't make sense.
• Furthermore, the soul rules the man more than any other part, and it does so by opposing the body. But, if the soul were a harmony, it would not be out of tune with its composite elements; rather, it would follow them.
• Therefore, it is wrong for us to say that the soul is a harmony.

When he was younger, Socrates was interested in the natural causes of generation, destruction, and existence. He heard that Anaxagoras wrote that Mind is the cause of everything, but found that he did not make any mention of Mind as a cause, but rather material things like air and ether. After this, he wearied of investigation and began to investigate truth by means of words instead, assuming the existence of a Beautiful, in and of itself, and a Good and a Great and all the rest. And through these axioms, he will show the soul to be immortal.

S: Cebes, the sum of your argument is that to prove that the soul is divine and has existed before we were born does not show the soul to be immortal — only long-lasting. (Socrates pauses for a long time, deep in thought) This is no unimportant problem, for it requires a thorough investigation into the cause of generation and destruction.

• When I was young, I was very interested in the natural sciences and the causes of everything: why things come to be, why things perish, why things exist.
• But I became convinced that I have no natural aptitude for this kind of investigation — it made me blind to those things which I thought I knew before. I thought it was obvious that men grew through eating and drinking, and that 10 was more than 8, and a two-cubit length is larger than a cubit.
• But now, I am far from believing that I know the cause of these things — I will not even allow myself to say that where 1 is added to 1, whether the latter or the former becomes two, or both. I no longer believe that I know why anything comes to be, perishes, or exists by the old method of investigation, but I have my own method.

This reminds me very strongly of Kafka's [[Franz, Kafka; Investigations of a Dog (1922)|Investigations of a Dog]].

• I heard someone reading from a book of Anaxagoras, saying that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. This delighted me, and I thought that if this were so, the directing Mind would arrange each thing in the way that was best. Then, if one wishes to know the cause of a thing, one had to figure out the best way for it to be, or be acted upon, or act.

This reminds me of teleology and Aristotle's final causes.

• So, I acquired Anaxagoras' books and read them as quickly as I could.
• But, my hopes were dashed when I realized that he made no use of Mind, but rather air and ether and water and other things as causes. This seemed to me like saying that Socrates' actions are due to his mind, but then that the reason I am sitting here is because my body consists of bones and sinews that enable me to bend my limbs.

This reminds me of Aristotle's material causes.

• To call these causes is absurd; if one said that without these, I would not be able to do what I decided, he would be right, but to say that this is the cause of what I do is to speak carelessly.
• After this, I had wearied of investigating things, and I thought that I must be careful to avoid the experience of those who watch an eclipse of the sun, for some of them ruin their eyes unless they watch its reflection in water or some such material. I feared that my soul would be blinded if I tried to grasp things with my senses, so I thought that I must investigate the truth of things by means of words (but perhaps this analogy is inadequate, for I do not admit that one who investigates things by means of words is dealing with images any more than one who looks at facts).
• I took the most compelling hypothesis and what agreed with it as truth, and what did not as untrue. In other words, I assumed the existence of a Beautiful, itself by itself, of a Good and a Great and all the rest. If you grant me this, I hope to show you the cause and to find the soul to be immortal.

S: If there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than it shares in the Beautiful.