Few dialogues are as deeply disturbing and perplexing as the Phaedo, and though all the dialogues concern themselves with what it is to be human, and what the human life looks like, no dialogue explores the consequences of these questions like the Phaedo. For the Phaedo is about dying, being dead, and the preparation for death; since man is mortal, and if he is to live in the truth, he must confront his mortality. And since philosophy claims to be the best life, she must justify herself in the face of death. Given the fact of our imminent doom, why should we spend our days in philosophy? Does not the fact of death make such speculation, especially on such abstract, abstruse subjects like metaphysics, vain? In the words of the Philosopher-King, "he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. This too is vanity."
Socrates rejects this line of thought, the fears that characterize his young companions' questioning into the soul. For since, reason they, philosophy might not even prolong one's life but might (as the case of Socrates suggests) on the contrary prematurely shorten it, is not a live dog better than a dead lion? But Socrates reassures his friends: the soul is immortal, and after death we shall continue to be what we are now. This knowledge, for which ample proofs are given, reassures his friends and provides Socrates with the courage to face death and show his young friends that he is the "wisest and justest of all men." In the face of a constantly changing, hostile world, the soul persists always, giving the philosopher hope in the most hopeless of circumstances. This has some fairly significant implications: since we are, properly speaking, our soul, we should neglect the passions of the body and care only for the soul; the soul is, in reality, 'imprisoned' by the body, and since knowledge is of spiritual things, the body is of no help in the search for wisdom. The philosopher therefore is a hater of bodily things.
Such a view of the Phaedo is hardly original. This is the standard, conventional interpretation of the Phaedo, and one encounters it everywhere - encyclopedias, articles, and introductory philosophy courses at the university. But - if one rereads the Phaedo with sufficient care, one begins to see the extraordinarily conflicted nature of the dialogue. Socrates claims the philosopher is a hater of bodily things, but he has children in his very old age, presumably enjoying the prior, accompanying pleasures; he spends not a little time rubbing his leg prior to his attack on bodily pleasures; and he idly plays with Phaedo's beautiful hair (as, we learn, he was in the habit of doing). Further, we know from the Symposium that he drank more wine than anyone else, never got drunk, and enjoyed himself more than anyone present. Such actions are not the actions of a man convinced that the body is vain. Socrates is neither a Christian ascetic, sacrificing good things as penance for the kingdom of heaven, nor a Buddhist monk, convinced of the vanity of all desire.
Far more disturbing, however, is the treatment of the soul. To be sure, Socrates lays out four arguments for the immortality of the soul. Unfortunately, all of them fail, containing patent logical errors. A great thinker is apt to err in first principles, but not usually in minor steps of logic; Spinoza's Ethics might not be absolutely true, but few would deny it is internally consistent. But even more grievous; the arguments Socrates advances strip the soul of everything personal, which ignores our primal fear of death and longing to live forever: we want ourselves, what makes us us, to persist, not some abstract Form or Intellect, which has no knowledge of individual things nor memory of our life. In short, we long for what Christ promises; for our perfected person, body and soul, our self, to rise again and have life everlasting. Whether such a thing be possible - that is the leap of faith. That the Christian message has proved so powerful is in part because it addresses man's most primal, urgent longings; precisely the longings Socrates betrays in his Four Arguments (consider the opening of the Second Argument and how it moves from the particular to the universal until nothing of the particular is left).
Though Socrates teaches falsehood for the sake of comforting his companions and inspiring them to seek out philosophy, there is no indication that he himself is convinced by his sophisms - rather, the contrary. It seems therefore that he did not think what these arguments proved had been sufficiently demonstrated, and from this two conclusions might be drawn: one, that Socrates did not think the personal immortality of the soul could be known through reason. Two, that Socrates positively affirmed the personal mortality of the soul. I myself prefer the first option, for it is more in line with his gentle skepticism (he does not say, "I shall not believe it till you prove it to my satisfaction," but "How can that be? Let us investigate it together"), more confident the possibility of future inquiry, and it preserves the fundamental difficulty resulting from the failure of his earlier arguments: why philosophize if you cannot know, but can only hope (and scarcely have a reasonable hope, at that), that the soul is immortal? Is not everything vain again?
Unfortunately, the Phaedo does not provide sure, open answers to these questions. Matters thus look very bleak, a cause for the deepest despair. But some consolation might be present in the Allegory of the Cave and reflecting upon courage. For there is no question that for those who have truly tasted it, the philosophic life is superior to that of all others (the challenge of revelation is for the time being set aside). Once one has seen knowledge, to live in ignorance is intolerable, at least for those few souls who love wisdom, but even men living in ignorance wish to think their ignorance the truth (Cipher's decision to re-enter the Matrix is the clearest modern example of this). And courage is the perseverance in a judgment which reason knows to be true - in this case, that philosophy is the best life. For even if death is the end, philosophy remains the best life, and one should take even more care over one's soul, because it is the most precious of all things. Abandoning this for a life of hedonistic despair and nihilism would be weak and shameful, the willing enslavement to the bodily passions which is so fatal to philosophy (Socrates, remember, was famous for his temperance). Still, this is far less reassuring than it might have been, for Socrates seems to suggest that only courage separates us from despair.
Socrates rejects this line of thought, the fears that characterize his young companions' questioning into the soul. For since, reason they, philosophy might not even prolong one's life but might (as the case of Socrates suggests) on the contrary prematurely shorten it, is not a live dog better than a dead lion? But Socrates reassures his friends: the soul is immortal, and after death we shall continue to be what we are now. This knowledge, for which ample proofs are given, reassures his friends and provides Socrates with the courage to face death and show his young friends that he is the "wisest and justest of all men." In the face of a constantly changing, hostile world, the soul persists always, giving the philosopher hope in the most hopeless of circumstances. This has some fairly significant implications: since we are, properly speaking, our soul, we should neglect the passions of the body and care only for the soul; the soul is, in reality, 'imprisoned' by the body, and since knowledge is of spiritual things, the body is of no help in the search for wisdom. The philosopher therefore is a hater of bodily things.
Such a view of the Phaedo is hardly original. This is the standard, conventional interpretation of the Phaedo, and one encounters it everywhere - encyclopedias, articles, and introductory philosophy courses at the university. But - if one rereads the Phaedo with sufficient care, one begins to see the extraordinarily conflicted nature of the dialogue. Socrates claims the philosopher is a hater of bodily things, but he has children in his very old age, presumably enjoying the prior, accompanying pleasures; he spends not a little time rubbing his leg prior to his attack on bodily pleasures; and he idly plays with Phaedo's beautiful hair (as, we learn, he was in the habit of doing). Further, we know from the Symposium that he drank more wine than anyone else, never got drunk, and enjoyed himself more than anyone present. Such actions are not the actions of a man convinced that the body is vain. Socrates is neither a Christian ascetic, sacrificing good things as penance for the kingdom of heaven, nor a Buddhist monk, convinced of the vanity of all desire.
Far more disturbing, however, is the treatment of the soul. To be sure, Socrates lays out four arguments for the immortality of the soul. Unfortunately, all of them fail, containing patent logical errors. A great thinker is apt to err in first principles, but not usually in minor steps of logic; Spinoza's Ethics might not be absolutely true, but few would deny it is internally consistent. But even more grievous; the arguments Socrates advances strip the soul of everything personal, which ignores our primal fear of death and longing to live forever: we want ourselves, what makes us us, to persist, not some abstract Form or Intellect, which has no knowledge of individual things nor memory of our life. In short, we long for what Christ promises; for our perfected person, body and soul, our self, to rise again and have life everlasting. Whether such a thing be possible - that is the leap of faith. That the Christian message has proved so powerful is in part because it addresses man's most primal, urgent longings; precisely the longings Socrates betrays in his Four Arguments (consider the opening of the Second Argument and how it moves from the particular to the universal until nothing of the particular is left).
Though Socrates teaches falsehood for the sake of comforting his companions and inspiring them to seek out philosophy, there is no indication that he himself is convinced by his sophisms - rather, the contrary. It seems therefore that he did not think what these arguments proved had been sufficiently demonstrated, and from this two conclusions might be drawn: one, that Socrates did not think the personal immortality of the soul could be known through reason. Two, that Socrates positively affirmed the personal mortality of the soul. I myself prefer the first option, for it is more in line with his gentle skepticism (he does not say, "I shall not believe it till you prove it to my satisfaction," but "How can that be? Let us investigate it together"), more confident the possibility of future inquiry, and it preserves the fundamental difficulty resulting from the failure of his earlier arguments: why philosophize if you cannot know, but can only hope (and scarcely have a reasonable hope, at that), that the soul is immortal? Is not everything vain again?
Unfortunately, the Phaedo does not provide sure, open answers to these questions. Matters thus look very bleak, a cause for the deepest despair. But some consolation might be present in the Allegory of the Cave and reflecting upon courage. For there is no question that for those who have truly tasted it, the philosophic life is superior to that of all others (the challenge of revelation is for the time being set aside). Once one has seen knowledge, to live in ignorance is intolerable, at least for those few souls who love wisdom, but even men living in ignorance wish to think their ignorance the truth (Cipher's decision to re-enter the Matrix is the clearest modern example of this). And courage is the perseverance in a judgment which reason knows to be true - in this case, that philosophy is the best life. For even if death is the end, philosophy remains the best life, and one should take even more care over one's soul, because it is the most precious of all things. Abandoning this for a life of hedonistic despair and nihilism would be weak and shameful, the willing enslavement to the bodily passions which is so fatal to philosophy (Socrates, remember, was famous for his temperance). Still, this is far less reassuring than it might have been, for Socrates seems to suggest that only courage separates us from despair.
