Plato’s Phaedo is a unique work: it is a tale of Socrates’ last day on earth; it is a philosophical treatise arguing for a thesis, namely that the soul is immortal; it is a manifesto for a new philosophical foundation that promises to extend, elaborate, and complete the Socratic project, providing it with a theory of reality, and theory of knowledge, a psychology, a cosmology, and perhaps much else besides; and it is a tragedy—the tale of the downfall and death of a noble man—that refuses to be a tragedy.
Faced with death, Socrates listens to the worries two of his followers, Simmias and Cebes. Is the soul immortal, or does it perish on death? The question, asked of an inmate on death row, could not be more urgent, more personal, or more compelling. Socrates does not shy away from the inquiry, but accepts it with relish.
He faces a gauntlet challenges. He constructs arguments to meet them one by one. First, the argument from opposites. Opposite states arise from opposite states: hot from cold, and the living from the dead. Second, the argument from recollection. We have knowledge of the world through sense experience; but we are able to judge ways in which sense experience falls short of reality. Surely, then, we must recollect truths from previous lives and previous acquaintance with Forms. If so, the soul must be immortal. Third, the argument from simplicity. Complex things are composite; they tend to decompose and break down; simple things, by contrast, being uniform, do not decompose and break down. The body is complex, the soul simple; the body decomposes and breaks down, but the soul continues on.
At this point most of Plato’s companions are satisfied, but not Simmias and Cebes. Simmias compares the soul to a harmony, which will disappear if its physical basis, the lyre for instance, is destroyed. Cebes likens the soul to a tailor who sews for himself a series of suits of clothing, which he wears one after another. But finally he dies of old age, and does not outlast his last suit. The suit is the body, the tailor the soul. How can we be sure that, even if we survive many incarnations, our soul will not give out in the end? Plato has Echecrates, who is listening to Phaedo, the narrator, recount the events of Socrates’ last day, break in and lament the devastating new objections. Phaedo tells him to take courage and listen to the outcome. The dialogue is a masterwork of suspense: will Socrates be able to defend immortality of soul against all comers as the time runs out before his execution?
Sure enough, Socrates refutes the harmony objection by pointing out how the soul’s mastery of the body precludes its being a mere by-product of bodily functions. He reintroduces the theory of Forms to establish the fact that the soul necessarily participates in Life, whereas death is the separation of the mortal body from the life-giving soul.
Socrates is seemingly inspired to go beyond the topic of death and to talk about how the whole world is organized for the best. He goes so far as to propose a quasi-religious eschatology with an underworld where souls are rewarded or punished in a kind of purgatory.
As Socrates drinks the hemlock, his fellows burst into tears and lamentations. Socrates scolds them like naughty children for making an uproar. Having drunk the cup calmly, he follows instructions, walking around, and then lying down.
Plato concludes the dialogue: “Such was the end, Echecrates, of our companion, a man, we should say, of those of his generation the best, and further the wisest and most just.”
It should not escape us that here, in the most tragic of all settings, Plato gives us something that is not a tragedy. Socrates, and Plato, tell us that while this is a most regrettable event, it is not the end of the world. A series of arguments supported by philosophical theory show us that Socrates did not die; death is not the end of life; there is no cause for weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Socrates has triumphed over death. He is a martyr for truth and goodness.
Plato has invented a new genre of writing. He has written an anti-tragedy, in which a virtuous person, a philosopher and sage, is not subject to death. Plato has, with his fellow Socratics, helped to usher in a new genre of works, the Socratic dialogue. Now his protagonist allows us to see that death is not the be-all and end-all that it is purported to be. In the Republic Plato will call on philosophers to author new kinds of literature which aim, not to entertain or to stir up the audience’s emotions, but to edify their minds and improve their character. Tragedy, he will claim, does not edify but exacerbates emotions and undermines self-control, showing noble persons and even gods behaving in an unseemly manner.[24]
Socrates is dead, but he has, by his pursuit of reasoned discourse and self-examination, freed us from being in thrall to emotions, particularly negative emotions, and showed us how to live our lives as rational beings, devoted to virtue and goodness, and superior to the bonds of death.
[24] Plato Republic III, 386a-b; 387d-388d; 395c. Unworthy actions should not be depicted or imitated in narration or drama, for fear of corrupting both the portrayers and the audience.