Note that in the middle of the dialogue is the problem of misologic. At 107b Socrates tells them to keep investigating, to not be content with the arguments as they stand. — Fooloso4
“All, I think,” said Socrates, “would agree that God and the Principle of life, and anything else that is immortal, can never perish.” — 106d
“But my friends,” he said, “we ought to bear in mind,[107c] that, if the soul is immortal, we must care for it, not only in respect to this time, which we call life, but in respect to all time, and if we neglect it, the danger now appears to be terrible. For if death were an escape from everything, it would be a boon to the wicked, for when they die they would be freed from the body and from their wickedness together with their souls. But now, since the soul is seen to be immortal, it cannot escape [107d] from evil or be saved in any other way than by becoming as good and wise as possible.
For the soul takes with it to the other world nothing but its education and nurture, and these are said to benefit or injure the departed greatly from the very beginning of his journey thither. And so it is said that after death, the tutelary genius of each person, to whom he had been allotted in life, leads him to a place where the dead are gathered together; then they are judged and depart to the other world [107e] with the guide whose task it is to conduct thither those who come from this world; and when they have there received their due and remained through the time appointed, another guide brings them back after many long periods of time. And the journey is not as Telephus says in the play of Aeschylus; [108a] for he says a simple path leads to the lower world, but I think the path is neither simple nor single, for if it were, there would be no need of guides, since no one could miss the way to any place if there were only one road.
But really there seem to be many forks of the road and many windings; this I infer from the rites and ceremonies practiced here on earth. Now the orderly and wise soul follows its guide and understands its circumstances; but the soul that is desirous of the body, as I said before, flits about it, and in the visible world for a long time, [108b] and after much resistance and many sufferings is led away with violence and with difficulty by its appointed genius. And when it arrives at the place where the other souls are, the soul which is impure and has done wrong, by committing wicked murders or other deeds akin to those and the works of kindred souls, is avoided and shunned by all, and no one is willing to be its companion or its guide.
And if you analyze them completely, you will, I think, follow and agree with the argument, so far as it is possible for man to do so. And if this is made clear, you will seek no farther.”
“That is true,” he said.
But now, since the soul is seen to be immortal, it cannot escape from evil or be saved in any other way than by becoming as good and wise as possible. For the soul takes with it to the other world nothing but its education and nurture, and these are said to benefit or injure the departed greatly from the very beginning of his journey thither. And so it is said that after death, the tutelary genius of each person, to whom he had been allotted in life, leads him to a place where the dead are gathered together; then they are judged and depart to the other world ...
Don't forget Egypt. Hindus, of course, believed in Karma, but the Egyptian concept of a soul living after death was closer to home for Athenians, and explicitly referenced in at least one dialogue of Plato (Timeus). — Gary M Washburn
- L Strauss, On Plato's Symposium, p. 199Why Plato thought of this apparently fantastic doctrine [of the Forms] is a very difficult question. ... According to an interpretation which I read in certain writers, Plato teaches that there is an idea of everything which is designated by a term which is not a proper name. There is no idea of Socrates. But whenever you find a noun or an adjective, there is surely an idea conforming to that. My favorite example is the third undersecretary of the Garment Workers Union. Even if there exists only one of those, there could exist an indefinite number, and therefore there is is an idea of it. Somehow this sounds like an absolutely absurd doctrine. What is the use of such a duplication?
But he seems, in the end, to believe, himself, in the immortality of the soul, even if it cannot be proven. — Wayfarer
I won’t put my heart into making what I say seem to be true to those present, except as a side effect, but into making it seem to be the case to me myself as much as possible.” (91a).
“ For I am calculating - behold how self-servingly!- that if what I’m saying happens to be true, I’m well off believing it; and if there’s nothing at all for one who’s met his end, well then, I’ll make myself so much less unpleasant with lamenting to those who are present during this time, the time before my death.” (91b) — Fooloso4
“I myself have no remaining grounds for doubt after what has been said; nevertheless, in view of the bigness and importance of our subject and my low opinion of human weakness, I am bound still to have some lingering distrust within myself about what we have said.” (107b)
“Not only that, Simmias. What you say is good, but also our very first hypotheses - even if to all of you they’re trustworthy - must nevertheless be looked into for greater surety. And if you sort them out sufficiently, you will, as I think, be following up the argument as much as its possible for human beings to follow it. And should this very thing become sure, you’ll search no further.” (107b)
“No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief—for the risk is a noble one—that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places …” (114d)
The one thing that seems certain is that he is not afraid to die. — Fooloso4
There is a limit we human beings cannot go beyond. That limit occurs at death. The search ends only with surety, but surety cannot be found in life. — Fooloso4
But because of the massive influence of Christianity on Western culture, the distinction between believing and knowing in respect of metaphysics has been blurred or even obliterated. And post-enlightenment culture will naturally understand Plato's metaphysics through that lens - positively for those favourable to Christian Platonism (e.g, Thomists, often Catholic), negatively to those who are sceptical about anything they deem religious (for example, philosophical naturalists). I think that's a powerful undercurrent in all of these debates, unstated but implicit. — Wayfarer
Scepticism' in Plato's culture, is not the same as today's 'scientific scepticism'. — Wayfarer
The harmony is the tuning. — Fooloso4
The organic body is an arrangement of parts. They do not first exist in an untuned condition and subsequently become tuned. A living thing exists as an arrangement of parts. An organism is organized. — Fooloso4
The assumption is that the mind or soul exists independently of the body. That is what is in question. All of the arguments for that have failed. — Fooloso4
Yes, that is the argument, but it assumes the very thing in question, the existence of the soul independent of the body, that they are two separate things. (86c) The attunement argument is that they are not. But Simmias had already agreed that the soul existed before the body. It is on that basis that Socrates attacks that argument. In evaluating the argument we do not have to assume the pre-existence of the soul. — Fooloso4
I fully agree. It's just that when people take for their model the likes of Strauss who wrote:
"Why Plato thought of this apparently fantastic doctrine [of the Forms] is a very difficult question. .." — Apollodorus
among all the kinds of forms which can be signified by terms, according to Aquinas, there is no one uniform way in which they exist. The existence of the form “sight,” by which the eye sees, may be some positive presence in the nature of things (which biologists can describe in terms of the qualities of a healthy eye that gives it the power to see), but the existence of the form 'blindness' in the blind eye need be nothing more than the nonexistence of sight‒the form of blindness is a privation of the form of sight and so not really an additional form at all.
In general, distinguishing and qualifying the different ways there can “be” a form present in a thing goes a long way toward alleviating the apparent profligacy of the (Aristotelian) realist account of words signifying forms. ...
Aquinas’s famous thesis of the unicity of substantial forms is an example of another strategy: linguistically I may posit diverse forms (humanity, animality, bodiliness) to account for Socrates being a man, an animal, and a body, but according to Aquinas there is, in reality, just one substantial form (Socrates’ soul) which is responsible for causing Socrates to be a man, an animal, and a body. In this and other cases, ontological commitment can be reduced by identifying in reality what, on the semantic level, are treated as diverse forms. — Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong with Ockham?
Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired.
Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble. In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.
The argument is that a harmony, or "attunement", whatever you want to call it, requires a cause. The cause is prior to the harmony, in time, and therefore existed independently of it at that prior time. The body is analogous to the harmony, as an organized arrangement of parts. The soul is the cause of that organized arrangement of parts. Therefore the soul was independent of the body at that prior time. — Metaphysician Undercover
There is an infinite literature on the Platonic myth. They all suffer, as far as I know, and I don’t know all of them, from the fact that the scholar himself decides what is a myth, a most unscholarly procedure. One has to find out from Plato what a myth is. In other words, I would regard only that as a myth of which Plato or his characters say it is a myth.
For you which you think that the text offers no real explanation? — Wayfarer
“ For I am calculating - behold how self-servingly!- that if what I’m saying happens to be true, I’m well off believing it; and if there’s nothing at all for one who’s met his end, well then, I’ll make myself so much less unpleasant with lamenting to those who are present during this time, the time before my death.” (91b) — Fooloso4
“...to be dead is one of two things: either the dead person is nothing and has no perception of anything, or [death] happens to be, as it is said, a change and a relocation or the soul from this place here to another place .”(40c).
“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not.”
There is certainly nothing of what we would accept as empirical proof, but that says as much about our beliefs and standards as it does about Socrates'. But he thinks it is 'fitting' - suitable, reasonable - even if it can't be proven to a 'sensible' man. — Wayfarer
Now, Socrates' argument is that the soul is what directs the parts in such a way as to be an harmonic arrangement of parts — Metaphysician Undercover
For I certainly suppose, Socrates, that you've gathered that we take the soul to be just this sort of thing - that while our body is strung and held together by warm and cold and dry and wet and the like, our soul is as it were, a blend and tuning of these very things, whenever, that is, they're blended with one another in a beautiful and measured way. (86c)
The argument is that a harmony, or "attunement", whatever you want to call it, requires a cause. — Metaphysician Undercover
The problem that must be faced in the Phaedo is fear of death. — Fooloso4
For when they argue about anything, they do not care what the truth is in the matters they are discussing, but are eager only to make their own views seem true to their hearers. And I fancy I differ from them just now only to this extent: I shall not be eager to make what I say seem true to my hearers, except as a secondary matter, but shall be very eager to make myself believe it. For see, my friend, how selfish my attitude is. If what I say is true, I am the gainer by believing it; and if there be nothing for me after death, at any rate I shall not be burdensome to my friends by my lamentations in these last moments. And this ignorance of mine will not last, for that would be an evil, but will soon end.
Nothingness is nothing to fear, but it's only one of the possibilities, no more certain than the alternative. — Wayfarer
I bolded the passages in order to dispel the notion that Socrates believes that the soul is immortal. — Fooloso4
there are differences — Valentinus
Socrates doesn't have a lot of time left. He does not seem interested in making some last minute deals. — Valentinus
The conventional view was that Phaedo presents four arguments for the soul's immortality, and I see no reason to doubt that Socrates believes them to be true. — Wayfarer
The passage about misologic is simply a warning not to be too easily convinced by false arguments, so as to become cynical. — Wayfarer
Phaedo:
“ Who knows, we might be worthless judges, or these matters themselves might even be beyond trust.” (88c)
Echecrates:
“'What argument shall we ever trust now?” (88d)
… when someone trusts some argument to be true without the art of arguments, and then a little later the argument seems to him to be false, as it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t, and this happens again and again with one argument after another. And, as you know, those especially who’ve spent their days in debate-arguments end up thinking the’ve become the wisest of men and that they alone have detected that there’s nothing sound or stable - not in the realm of either practical matter or arguments - but all the things that are simply toss to and fro, as happens in the Euripus, and don’t stay put anywhere for any length of time.” (90b-c)
I have benefitted a lot from this thread, as it has made me pay much more attention the text. — Wayfarer
Although, as Apollodorus pointed out to me, 'the argument from harmony' is actually dismissed in the dialogue. — Wayfarer
Socrates’ argument does not depend on the pre-existence of soul. Even if the soul's pre-existence is not assumed, Simmias’ analogy still fails. — Apollodorus
That is not Simmias' argument. Note the following: — Fooloso4
That is not what Simmias' argument says. And according to Socrates' argument, the soul does not cause the body that is strung and held together by warm and cold and dry and wet and the like — Fooloso4
turn it around to produce the opposite conclusion — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, Socrates does argue this. The soul directs the parts — Metaphysician Undercover
And that it is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body? And that being dead is this: the body's having come to be apart, separated from the soul, alone by Itself, and the soul's being apart, alone by itself, separated from the body? Death can't be anything else but that, can it?(64c)
... what you say about the soul induces a lot of distrust in human beings. They fear that the soul, once she is free of the body, is no longer anywhere, and is destroyed and perishes on that very day when a human being dies; and that as soon as she’s free of the body and departs, then, scattered like breath or smoke, she goes fluttering off and is no longer anywhere. Of course, if she could be somewhere, herself by herself, collected together and freed from those evils you went through just now, there'd be a great hope - a beautiful hope - that what you say, Socrates, is true. (70a)
What you say is true, Cebes, but now what should we do? Or do you want us to tell a more thorough story about these things to see whether what we’re saying is likely or not? (70a-b)
“ … do the souls of men exist in Hades when they have died, or do they not? Now there's an
ancient doctrine, which we've recalled, that they do exist in that world, entering it from this one, and that they re-enter this world and are born again from the dead; yet if this is so, if living people are born again from those who have died, surely our souls would have to exist in that world? Because they could hardly be born again, if they didn't exist; so it would be sufficient evidence for the truth of these claims, if it really became plain that living people are born from the dead and from nowhere else; but if that isn't so, some other argument would be needed.'”(70c-d)
“ 'Well now, you know what happens to lovers, whenever they see a lyre or cloak or anything else their loves are accustomed to use: they recognize the lyre, and they get in their mind, don't they, the form of the boy whose lyre it is? And that is recollection. Likewise, someone seeing Simmias is often reminded of Cebes, and there'd surely be countless other such cases.'(73b-d)
Then we must previously have known the equal, before that time when we first, on seeing the equals, thought that all of them were striving to be like the equal but fell short of it. (75a)
“If those realities we are always talking about exist, the Beautiful and the Good and all that kind of reality, and we refer all the things we perceive to that reality, discovering that it existed before and is ours, and we compare these things with it, then, just as they exist, so our soul must exist before we are born” (76d-e).
“ 'Now these things you could actually touch and see and sense with the other senses, couldn't you, whereas those that are constant you could lay hold of only by reasoning of the intellect; aren't such things, rather, invisible and not seen?'
'What you say is perfectly true.'
'Then would you like us to posit two forms of things that are - the Visible and the Unseen?'
'Let's posit them.'
'And the unseen is always constant, whereas the seen is never constant?'” (79a)
And if the non-hot were of necessity indestructible, then whenever anyone brought heat to snow, the snow would retreat safe and unthawed, for it could not be destroyed, nor again could it stand its ground and admit the heat?—What you say is true.” (106a)
The conventional view was that Phaedo presents four arguments for the soul's immortality, and I see no reason to doubt that Socrates believes them to be true. — Wayfarer
“It neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes … nor again will the beautiful appear to him [the philosopher] like a face or hands or any other portion of the body … or piece of knowledge … but itself by itself with itself existing for ever in singularity of form” (Symp. 211a ff.)
“In that state of life above all others, a man finds it truly worth while to live, as he contemplates essential Beauty […] there only will it befall him, as he sees the Beautiful through that which makes it visible, to breed not illusions but true examples of virtue, since his contact is not with illusion but with truth” (211d – 212a).
- On Plato’s Symposium, pp. 201, 277Plato never chooses an example at random. The example always means more than just an example … Let us not forget that the Sun is a cosmic God
Come then, and join me in this further thought, and do not be surprised that those who have attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves with the affairs of men, but their souls ever feel the upward urge and the yearning for that sojourn above. For this, I take it, is likely if in this point too the likeness of our image holds (Rep. 517c – d).
In this case he did more than just turn it around. Simmias' argument did not include a separate soul. Socrates does not deal with Simmias' argument because the result would be that the soul does not endure. — Fooloso4
Directing the parts does not mean creating the parts. The soul does not cause the body. — Fooloso4
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