The Republic is a different dialogue with different arguments.

There is no mention of proportions in Simmias' argument in the Phaedo.

Pythagoras does not say that harmony is not mixture or ordered arrangement.

A mixture or ordered arrangement is a mixture or ordered arrangement irrespective of "proportions".

If the text says "mixture", "blend", "composite thing", then it is totally wrong to claim that it does not say that.

Ditto, if the text defines "attunement" as "composite thing composed of the features of the lyre as the soul is composed of the features of the body when these are held taut" (92a - b), then it is unacceptable to say that this is not the case.

On Simmias' account the attunement is not separate from the lyre, in the same way the soul is not separate from the body but is made of bodily elements, air, fire, earth, water, and their properties (86b).

If the attunement is like the soul which Simmias says is composed of bodily elements, then the attunement is composed of the elements of the lyre, i.e. body of the lyre, strings, etc.

Were this not the case, the comparison would be invalid from the start and would not stand for even a second.

Plus, Simmias eventually dismisses his own argument and chooses recollection and immortality of the soul as the correct argument (92d - e).

What could possibly go wrong? — TheMadFool

Are you implying that Ivanka knows something that we don't? :smile:

It's gonna be weird looking across the table eating your Cheerios the next morning, but maybe it was worth it. — Hanover

I think that's an interesting point that also raises the question of "inbreeding" that is often cited as a reason for objecting to incest.

But suppose a person may decide to marry or enter into sexual relations with a close relative that is unlikely to result in children being born, for example, if both partners are of the same sex, beyond a certain age, or otherwise unable or indeed unwilling to conceive or procreate.

Should incest and/or marriage be allowed or disallowed in such cases?

Absolutely correct.

I think that it is imperative not to make things up or insert things into the dialogue that are not there.

The fact is that Simmias’ argument is based on his comparison of soul with harmony or attunement (harmonia).

Comparison of soul with attunement means that if the soul is like the attunement, then the attunement is like the soul.

For the attunement to be comparable to the soul, it must have the same features F as the soul.

The soul according to Simmias has F1 viz., “being composite like the body” and F2 viz., “being a blend of the things in the body (86d) when these are held taut (92b)”.

Similarly, the attunement has F1 viz., “being a composite thing (syntheton pragma) (92b)” and F2 viz., “being a blend of the things in the lyre, body of the lyre, strings, and notes when these are tuned (86a, 92c).

Therefore, the “harmony” is simply the attunement or compound of its material constituents.

As observed by scholars and ancient authors, Greek harmonia comes from harmozo, “to fit together”. Therefore harmony or attunement here means “being in tune”, hermosthai. This is precisely why Simmias speaks of a “blend” or krasis (86d) and Socrates calls attunement “composite thing”.

Greek harmonia is closer to Greek krasis than to English “harmony”. Modern Greek for "wine" is krasi, literally "mixture" because wine already at the time of Socrates was mixed or tempered with water. And krasis is used here by Simmias himself to describe the soul and, by analogy, the attunement, hence a "mixture" or "blend".

I tend to think of evil as negative energies, or tendencies destructiveness. Aside from any religious worldviews, — Jack Cummins

I quite agree with that. I think destructiveness is the key to understanding evil.

The world we live in seems to be characterized by a certain order. When we act in ways that interfere with and disturb that order, for example, by causing injury, taking someone's life for no good reason, committing mass murder, destroying the environment, or spreading ideologies that promote evil, then this is destructive behavior that amounts to evil.

One needs not hold any religious views in order to regard something as evil, i.e. harmful and reprehensible.

1. Simmias claims that the soul is a composite thing like the harmony or attunement of a lyre:

we believe the soul to be something after this fashion; that our body is strung and held together by heat, cold, moisture, dryness [i.e. the properties of the four elements], and the like, and the soul is a mixture and a harmony of these same elements (86b).

And:

The soul, being a mixture of the elements of the body, is the first to perish in death (86d).

2. Socrates reminds Simmias of his argument:

You must, my Theban friend, think differently, if you persist in your opinion that a harmony is a compound and that the soul is a harmony made up of the elements that are strung like harpstrings in the body. For surely you will not accept your own statement that a composite harmony existed before those things from which it had to be composed, will you?”
“Certainly not, Socrates.” (92a – b)

3. Socrates points out to Simmias that his argument is flawed and that he must choose between “soul as harmony” and “knowledge as recollection”:

“Well,” said he, “there is no harmony between the two theories. Now which do you prefer, that knowledge is recollection or that the soul is a harmony?”
“The former, decidedly, Socrates,” he replied (92c)

4. The primary meaning of Greek harmonia is “a joining together”. Harmonia here does not mean a harmony in the sense of melodious sound, but the state of the lyre, brought about by a combination of things, that enables it to produce a certain sound:

The word translated as ‘attunement’ (harmonia) is often given as ‘harmony’. But the associations of that word in modern music are misleading, and the forthcoming argument will focus mainly upon the tuned state of the instrument

- D. Gallop, Phaedo, p. 91

5.. Socrates dismisses Simmias’s harmony argument.

6. Simmias’ acknowledges that his argument was based on mere probability and was deceptive and flawed.

7. No “Form of Harmony” is mentioned anywhere in the dialogue.

8. Harmony being a composite thing (syntheto pragma), i.e., a thing made of parts joined together in an orderly fashion, it reflects the properties of order. Therefore the corresponding universal would be Order.

9. Either way, Socrates’ arguments for the immortality of the soul are indisputably accepted in the dialogue.

10. There is no evidence whatsoever that Socrates, or Plato, teaches atheism.

1. Republic 531c is part of a criticism of Pythagoreans and musicians.

2. Simmias does not use the word harmonia in the sense of musical harmony but in the sense of “a joining together”:

… we believe the soul to be something after this fashion; that our body is strung and held together by heat, cold, moisture, dryness [i.e. the properties of the four elements], and the like, and the soul is a mixture and a harmony of these same elements, when they are well and properly mixed … Now what shall we say to this argument, if anyone claims that the soul, being a mixture of the elements of the body, is the first to perish in what is called death?” (86b, 86d)

Here is Simmias’ argument black on white:

“The soul, being a mixture of the elements of the body, is the first to perish in death”

Ergo harmonia = “mixture” or “joining together” in an orderly fashion = ordered arrangement = order.

Therefore the universal is Order.

Right, I think Fooloso4 is reaching for straws here, going outside the argument. and I don't see the point. — Metaphysician Undercover

Absolutely. It is imperative to understand that there is no point using English words like “harmonious” to analyze a dialogue when they make no sense whatsoever in Greek.

If we want to understand Plato, we need to be able to put what we believe to be a “Platonic concept” into Greek. If we were to literally put English “harmonious” into Ancient Greek, we would end up with harmonikos.

Where does Plato use harmonikos? Certainly not in the Phaedo. In the Phaedrus, he writes:

… if he met a man who thought he understood harmony [literally, harmonikos]because he could strike the highest and lowest notes … (Phaedrus. 268d)

A harmonikos is someone who has an understanding of musical scales (or music in general), not a “harmonious person”!

So, depending on the context, and whether it is an object or person, you would need to use “well-fitted” or “arranged”, “well-ordered”, “just”, etc., and in the Platonic framework this would come under the category or universal of order, justice, beauty, and ultimately, good.

For example, you could translate English “harmonious” back into Greek as tetagmenos, arranged in orderly manner from tasso, to arrange or place in order, for which the universal would be taxis, order. Even if you were to use euarmostos, well-joined, from harmozo, join together, it would still have the sense of order.

It follows that “Form of Harmony” is complete and utter nonsense and is just part of Fooloso4's usual repertoire of Straussian diversion and evasion tactics.

In any case, the bottom line is that people need to choose between reading Plato’s dialogues or their own dialogues. They can’t do both.

You are of course right about justice as a type of order. We need to bear in mind that God created the world by establishing order out of disorder (chaos) in order to manifest the Good. So Order as a manifestation of the Good is certainly fundamental in the Platonic framework.

The question of the soul imparting life to the body is a complex one but Socrates definitely rebuts Simmias' Pythagorean theory and this clearly is Plato's intention here.

Russia, nominally Socialist, but ruled by Oligarchs. — Gnomon

I agree that Russia is largely ruled by oligarchs, but only with permission from the state. And the Russian state is not socialist and has not been since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 when the ruling Supreme Soviet disbanded itself.

Incidentally, Russia could have made a deal with the Rockefellers like China did, but it chose to get involved in Afghanistan and after Reagan stopped the flow of US cash and technology in the 1980's, the regime simply collapsed and gave up.

The new government tried to reintroduce capitalism but in order to do so it was forced to privatize all state-owned assets. And that meant selling everything at dumping prices to anyone who had the cash, like the World Bank, big multinational corporations, and local oligarchs ....

What they really want to transition to is no different than what Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany wanted to "transition" to; viz., world domination. — charles ferraro

Of course there is no transition to communism, because communism as described by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, does not and can not exist in the real world.

However, world domination a la China will be domination of the world by the Communist Party of China (CPC). Communism has failed to take over the world for the simple reason that it is unable to match capitalism in economic terms. But once the CPC has become the dominant power by means of communist-controlled state capitalism, there will be nothing to prevent it from imposing communist rule, i.e. dictatorship of the Communist Party, on the whole world.

I think you are being taken for a ride. There is no "Form of Harmony".

The terms “harmonious body” or “harmonious” anything do not occur in the dialogue. There is harmonia, “attunement”, but that is Simmias’ Pythagorean theory that has nothing to do with Socrates’ or Plato’s Theory of Forms.

There is no “Form of Harmony” in Plato for the simple reason that what we call “harmonious” in Modern English, is “rightly-ordered” or “just” (depending on the context) in Plato. So, the corresponding Form would be Justice, not “Harmony” which does not exist.

In Plato, the proper functioning of a whole, be it a city or a human, is not harmony but justice or righteousness (dikaiosyne). Dikaiosyne is the state of the whole in which each part fulfills its function:

Plato finds justice in the city to consist in each part “having and doing its own,” and since the smaller is just like the larger, justice in the individual consists in each part of the psyche doing its own work.

Justice as a Virtue - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Plato's dialogues are not about harmony but about justice or righteousness, i.e. proper or right order as a reflection of the cosmic order which in turn is a manifestation of the Good.

I don't see the point here. What you are referring to is the theory of participation, which I believe comes from the Pythagoreans. — Metaphysician Undercover

Good point. There is a very obvious agenda behind straw men like "Form of Harmony".

1. To being with, the Ancient Greek word harmonia is not the same as modern “harmony”. The primary meaning of harmonia was “arrangement” or “joining together” of separate things, for example, a linear succession of musical notes or scale.

A “harmony” would at the most be a good and/or beautiful arrangement or order as opposed to a bad one, not a separate class of things requiring an universal.

Even the Pythagorean harmony of the heavenly spheres was based on the concordant intervals between astronomical bodies.

For Plato, “harmony” is simply a form of Justice (or Proper Order). What we call “harmonious” city is a just city in Plato. “Harmonious” man is a just man, i.e., a man in whom the virtues such as temperance, courage, and wisdom, function properly and in the right proportion, etc.

2. Therefore there is no need for a “Form of Harmony” when there is a Form of Justice, i.e., Right Order and Proportion.

3. The theory of harmony is a Pythagorean one, here represented by Simmias.

4. Socrates rebuts the Pythagorean theory of soul as harmony by showing that the soul is not like the harmony of a musical instrument.

Good post. But I wouldn't say that China is "communist in name only".

The basic ideology of China’s Communist Party is Marxism-Leninism laced with “Xi Jinping Thought”. So, internally, the leadership is communist.

However, having learned the lesson from the economic collapse of Communist Russia, the regime has introduced Lenin’s “state capitalism” doctrine of the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Lenin was a close collaborator of Britain’s Fabian Socialists who advocated a “third way” between capitalism and communism as a means of attaining socialism. Weeks before the Revolution, he announced that state capitalism is a step toward socialism. In 1918 he wrote:

Only the development of state capitalism, only the painstaking establishment of accounting and control, only the strictest organization and labor discipline, will lead us to socialism. Without this there is no socialism … If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism in Russia, that would be a victory.

Lenin Collected Works - Internet Archive (Vol. 27, pp. 279 ff.)

Just a few years later Lenin was dead, possibly bumped off by Stalin who became Russia’s own Hitler.

In the 1970's the Rockefellers were expanding their worldwide oil and banking empire. Kissinger and David Rockefeller payed a visit to China and suggested US-China economic cooperation as part of the Rockefellers' East-West rapprochement plan. So, the Chinese communists started introducing state capitalism, i.e. capitalism controlled by the communist state with the help of the Rockefellers and other big bankers and industrialists.

So, internally, the CCP is Marxist-Leninist but externally it advocates national socialist policies (including state capitalism) as a means to achieve socialism and, ultimately, communism.

It is important not to forget that in Marxism-Leninism, socialism is a phase of transition to communism and is defined as “dictatorship of the proletariat” i.e. dictatorship of the Communist Party as “representative” of the proletariat.

Under President Xi’s national socialist regime, China has been pursuing an increasingly aggressive and expansionist foreign policy reminiscent of 1930’s Germany.

It [China] has “garrisoned the South China Sea, imposed party rule on Hong Kong, threatened Taiwan, skirmished with India and has tried to subvert Western values in international bodies” such as the UN ... A senior Biden administration official has admitted that China seeks “to assert its authority globally” and that “We're dealing with a country that is perhaps less interested in coexistence, and more interested in dominance”

Joe Biden is determined that China should not displace America | The Economist

Meantime, America, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and other nations including NATO members, have identified China as responsible for hostile action such as malicious cyber activity.

The group of nations said Monday that the Chinese government has been the mastermind behind a series of malicious ransomware, data theft and cyber-espionage attacks against public and private entities, including the sprawling Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year.

U.S., U.K., Allies Tie Chinese Government to Microsoft Hack – Bloomberg

I think it is becoming increasingly clear that China is turning itself into a rogue state that is posing a growing threat to international peace and stability, as well as freedom and democracy. The pandemic is just the beginning. Therefore, the regime needs to go now, before things get worse.

I think that the question as to what or who causes the body is an interesting one.

As related in the Timaeus, in the beginning God created the World as a living being endowed with a soul and reason. He next created the Cosmic Gods, i.e., the Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars and other heavenly bodies as living creatures (38e), from whom were born Cronos and Rhea, Zeus and Hera, and the other Gods (41a). After this, he commanded the Gods to fashion men and other living creatures and endow them with souls he himself created from the same substance he had used to make the soul of the world and the Gods.

He placed a number of souls on each Star and, after the Gods fashioned the bodies of mortal creatures, they implanted the immortal souls in them. And God ordained that those who have lived their appointed time well shall return to their native Star and gain a life that is blessed and congenial but those who have failed to do so shall be reborn into inferior shapes after the similitude of their own nature until they once again become as pure and good as before (42c).

On this account, the human body is created by the Gods from some material substance (e.g. the four elements, air, fire, earth, water, to which may be added ether). So, the Gods would seem to be the efficient cause of the body.

The soul simply imparts life and motion to the body.

However, Plato’s intention in the Phaedo seems to be to present his own theory of soul as more consistent than that of the Pythagoreans who apparently held contradictory views concerning the soul, one view stating that the soul is imprisoned in the body, another that the soul transmigrates and another stating that the soul is the harmony or attunement of the four elements constituting the body.

Simmias’ own conflicting views may be a reflection of those of the Pythagoreans. If so, Plato (via Socrates) successfully rebuts inconsistent Pythagorean doctrines.

We cannot say that the fundamental parts are bodies because we do not understand what these parts are. — Metaphysician Undercover

The body here is thought of as consisting of the four elements:

And I fancy, Socrates, that it must have occurred to your own mind that we [Simmias, Echecrates, etc.] believe the soul to be something after this fashion; that our body is strung and held together by heat, cold, moisture, dryness, and the like, and the soul is a mixture and a harmony of these same elements (86b – c).

The elements and their properties were represented by a diagram with one square inscribed in the other, with the corners of the main one being the elements air, fire, earth, water, and the corners of the inscribed one being the properties hot, dry, cold, wet. When the properties are read diagonally across the inscribed square, they are “hot – cold” and “dry – wet”.

Four Classical Elements – Wikipedia

Being non-composite, the soul of course cannot be made of any elements. Therefore it cannot be a harmony of elements or parts. Therefore Simmias' analogy fails.

You don't seem to be grasping the issue. The body only exists as an arrangement of parts, you said so yourself, above. — Metaphysician Undercover

The truth of the matter is that there is no interest, desire, or intent to grasp the issue.

Socrates in the dialogue explains how things come to be from their opposites - from cold to hot, from asleep to awake, from being alive to being dead and from being dead to being alive, etc. (71b - d).

If we apply this to this thread, how did it come about?

It came about from its opposite, viz. my thread on Reincarnation.

Someone didn't like my thread because it implied belief in the soul and they commissioned this thread to "demonstrate" - by means of Straussian sophistry and nihilism - that belief in soul is unfounded:

At Banno’s suggestion I am starting a thread on Plato’s Phaedo. — Fooloso4

In other words, this thread is not about Socrates or Plato but about some people's atheist agenda.

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

Correct. And nor must we forget that the dialogue's author is Plato who uses his Theory of Recollection to establish the validity of his Theory of Forms.

The basic argument from recollection is as follows:

(A). On seeing something that reminds us of something else, there is a case of recollection (anamnesis) (Phaedo 73c – 74a).
(B). On seeing things that are equal, e.g., sticks, and thinking “these sticks are equal”, we intuitively think of Equality, i.e., the Form of Equal (Phaedo 74a – c).
(C). This cognitive act corresponds to the one described in (A), hence it is a case of recollection (74c – d).
(D.) As we can recollect only things that were previously known to us (73c), the Form of Equal was previously known to us (74d - 75a).
(E). But the knowledge of it was not acquired at any time between birth and the present act of recollection (75a - 76c).
(F). Nor was it acquired at birth (76c - d).
(G). Therefore it was acquired before birth (76c).
(H). Therefore our soul existed before birth, and possessed knowledge or wisdom, including knowledge of the Forms (76c).

It may of course be argued that what Socrates calls “recollection of Forms” is simply the result of pattern recognition produced by neural activity in the brain. However, research has shown that humans are capable of pattern recognition within days of being born and, to some extent, even whilst in the womb, which brings us very close to the concept of knowledge as a result of previous existence (see Ian Stevenson and others).

In any case, the existence of Forms remains a possibility, quite independently of pre-existence. Certainly, we know from Diotima’s teachings in the Symposium that the Form of the Beautiful does appear to the philosopher who has learned how to look at it.

In connection with learning how to see, Socrates in the Phaedo makes some important observations.

Through the use of our senses, we start regaining our lost knowledge of the Forms (75e).
In normal circumstances, the soul is dragged down into the world of material particulars whose ever-changing nature leaves it disturbed and giddy as if drunk (79c).
But when the soul is detached from the body and the material world, and is alone by itself, it perceives immaterial things that are pure, eternal, and immortal like itself (79d).
Therefore the true philosopher distances himself from the body and turns toward the soul (64e).
The philosopher releases his soul as much as possible from its association with the body (65a).
The Forms cannot be grasped through the bodily senses. Only those who train themselves most and with the greatest precision to think about each thing investigated as an object in its own right, will come closest to knowing each of them (65e).
The man who will hit upon reality is he who attempts to hunt down each real thing alone by itself and unalloyed, by using thought alone by itself and unalloyed, and separated as far as possible from eyes and ears and virtually from his entire body (66a).
To have pure knowledge of something we must be separated from the body and view things by themselves with the soul by itself (66e).
Full wisdom can only be acquired when we are dead because that is the only time when the soul will be alone by itself apart from the body (67a).
However (as philosophy is the practice of being dead, i.e., being detached from the body), we will be closest to knowledge even whilst living if we do not associate with the body except to the extent absolutely necessary, and we retain that state of purity until the God himself releases us (67b).

It can be seen that in order to acquire knowledge of the Forms, in addition to living a pure life, we need to detach ourselves from the body and sensory perception, and try to grasp reality first with our reason and then with our soul (nous).

Detachment from the body, and focus on the soul and on a higher reality by means of our thought alone, and without the assistance of sensory perception, can only refer to a contemplative or meditative state.

So, without going into details, my feeling is that a Buddhist or Hindu may be in a better position to understand Plato than a Straussian atheist.

In any case, some key lessons to draw from the Phaedo are:

Philosophy = Separation from Body
Separation from Body = Death
Death = "Retreating" to or Rejoining the Intelligible World
The Intelligible World = The Realm of Eternal Realities like Soul and Forms
Knowledge of the Realm of Eternal Realities = Knowledge of Reality, including Forms

As already stated, additional pointers occur in other dialogues, such as Symposium:

“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).

The Beautiful here stands for the Good or Truth itself and seeing the Good is identical with being with the Good and part of the Good. (As later Platonists would say, being one with the Good.)

Similarly, in the Republic we find the Analogy of the Sun where the Good is compared with the Sun (508a ff.).

Here again, we can learn something from Strauss himself:

Plato 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

- On Plato’s Symposium, pp. 201, 277

The analogy can only mean that the Good is a divine being like the Sun. We know that Plato’s theology has a hierarchy of divine beings proceeding from (1) the Gods of the City of Athens to (2) the Cosmic Gods like the Sun to (3) the Supreme God (the Good, the Creator of the Universe, the Universal Intelligence/Consciousness) who is the Ultimate Reality.

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).

Where the Republic describes the hierarchy of sensible realities ascending from sensible objects to sight, light, and the source of light (the Sun) itself, and of intelligible realities ascending from intelligible objects to knowledge, truth, and their source (the Good), the Phaedo and the Symposium explain how the true philosopher may learn to obtain the vision of the highest.

In sum, quite aside from the arguments' ultimate validity, and considering that all Platonic logoi can only be pointers, the dialogue certainly presents valuable advice for the philosophical and spiritual life.

Socratic dialogues usually end with "see, it just proves we don't know anything. have a good night.", — stoicHoneyBadger

I don't think this is really true. Socrates is not a skeptic. He certainly uses logic to demonstrate established beliefs such as immortality, reincarnation, and the other world, as in the Phaedo.

The point Socrates is making is not that we should hold no beliefs (on the grounds that we know nothing) but that we should avoid holding unexamined beliefs.

In the course of recounting his conversations with others, Socrates says something enigmatic: “About myself I knew that I know nothing” (22d; cf. Fine 2008). The context of the dialogue allows us to read this pronouncement as unproblematical. Socrates knows that he does not know about important things. Interpreted in this manner, Socrates does not appear to be a skeptic in the sense that he would profess to know nothing. Even though some readers (ancient and modern) found such an extreme statement in the Apology, a more plausible reading suggests that Socrates advocates the importance of critically examining one’s own and others’ views on important matters, precisely because one does not know about them (Vogt 2012a, ch. 1). Such examination is the only way to find out.

Ancient Skepticism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Yes, Hochschild makes a good point.

However, authors like Strauss are a different matter. Strauss is not a trained classicist. He studied al-Farabi and Maimonides who lived in Muslim-occupied Spain - when philosophers had to be very careful about what they said - and developed the theory that all ancient philosophers had “secret teachings”. As a political philosopher and atheist, he believes that Plato’s dialogues have a hidden political message and he makes no effort to see anything metaphysical in the dialogues. In fact, he positively resists the idea just as he ridicules Plato’s theory of Forms.

Strauss does make a valid observation, though:

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.

The Forms, of course, do not seem to be a myth in the dialogues. On the contrary, they represent a logical attempt to reduce the number of fundamental principles to the absolute minimum. Whether they actually exist as such, is an open question. Plato, in any case, does not think that they are a figment of imagination.

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

Socrates advances several arguments against Simmias’ harmony analogy.

One of them is that the soul pre-existing the body, it cannot be compared to the harmony of the lyre that only comes into being after its components have been assembled. (92c)

But there are others, for example:

The soul being devoid of degrees, it cannot be compared to a harmony that has degrees. (93b)

The soul leading the body, it cannot be compared to a harmony that depends on the body of the instrument. (94d)

And, of course, the soul being non-composite, it cannot be compared to a harmony that is composite in the first place.

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.

This is precisely why Socrates smiles at the analogy (86d) and Cebes points out that it failed to withstand Socrates’ first attack of it (95b)

Scepticism' in Plato's culture, is not the same as today's 'scientific scepticism'. — Wayfarer

Unfortunately, this would seem to be the case ....

The question as to why Socrates is not afraid of dying arises early in the dialogue.

Socrates provides several reasons for his calm attitude in the face of imminent death:

The soul is different from the body and death is nothing but the separation of soul from body. (64c)

A virtuous soul will enjoy a happy life in the other world (Hades), which is a much better place, ruled by better and wiser Gods and inhabited by more noble souls. (63c)

Socrates also makes some important statements regarding philosophy:

The philosophical life is a preparation for death. (64a, 67e)

Philosophy encourages the separation of soul from body through the acquisition of wisdom and direct access to non-physical realities represented by the Forms. (65a -d)

Now true philosophers (those who truly love wisdom) practice dying. They are at odds with the body and desire to have the soul alone by itself. It would be extremely irrational for them not to cheerfully go to that place where they hope to attain the object of their life-long love, namely, wisdom (phronesis). (67e – 68a), etc., etc.

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. ... 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?

- L Strauss, On Plato's Symposium, p. 199

then the whole project of attempting to understand Plato goes out of the window.

I think the Phaedo is a very interesting and very important dialogue if one wants to correctly understand Plato. As long as one avoids reading it through the eyes of anti-Platonists like Leo Strauss, that is .... :smile:

Not all statements being made here are correct. For example, the statement "At 107b Socrates tells them to keep investigating, to not be content with the arguments as they stand" is a Straussian straw man.

What Socrates actually says, is that they should consider the hypotheses more clearly and if they do this well enough they will follow the argument and when the argument becomes clear they will have nothing further to seek:

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.

And just a few lines down, at 107c, Socrates says :

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 ...

Correct:

[Socrates] Then, my good friend, it will never do for us to say that the soul is a harmony (94e) … [Cebes] you conducted this argument against harmony wonderfully and better than I expected. For when Simmias was telling of his difficulty, I wondered if anyone could make head against (95a) his argument; so it seemed to me very remarkable that it could not withstand the first attack of your argument …. (95b)

But in connection to other comments that have been made here, I think it is important to note that at 70a Cebes requests “reassurance (paramythia) and proof (pistis)” and this is exactly what Socrates provides throughout the dialogue: he successfully uses both reasoned arguments and myths to make his point. In addition to reasoned argument, he uses exhortation (παραμυθία paramythia from παρά para + μῦθος mythos), i.e. speech or narrative for the purpose of persuading.

The arguments (1) from opposites, (2) from recollection, (3) from affinity, and (4) from the Form of Life are all accepted in the dialogue.

Immortality or existence of the souls of the dead, the cycle of death and rebirth or reincarnation, the souls’ existence in Hades, are accepted as facts as early as 72d:

… “I think, Cebes,” said he, “it is absolutely so, and we are not deluded in making these admissions, but the return to life is an actual fact, and it is a fact that the living are generated from the dead and that the souls of the dead exist …

Well, the difficulty is that if the soul is non-composite as Socrates says, then it cannot be a harmony.

The epistemological issue is that this principle of unity is not something that exists on the objective plane; it is not an object of perception; it can't be discerned objectively. It is conceptually nearer to 'harmony', as has been discussed in relation to the analogy of the lyre, in the sense that it is a consequence of the dynamic balance of a number of otherwise discrete factors to generate a (transcendent) whole, allegorically like the sounding of a chord (hence the allegory.) — Wayfarer

Sure. However, the allegory does not refer to the sound. Harmonia here does not have the sense of sound but of state or condition (of being joined together), that renders the instrument capable of producing sound, i.e. a harmony of the component parts of the lyre.

Simmias' mistake is to hold that the soul is a harmony of the constituent parts of the body. It is this that leads him to make the analogy.

That this is how harmonia is intended is clear from Socrates’ statement at 92a - b:

And Socrates said: “You must, my Theban friend, think differently, if you persist in your opinion that a harmony is a compound and that the soul is a harmony made up of the elements that are strung like harpstrings in the body. For surely you will not accept your own statement that a composite harmony existed before those things from which it had to be composed, will you?”
“Certainly not, Socrates.”

The soul pre-existing the body, it cannot be compared to the harmony of the lyre that only comes into being after its components have been assembled.

The soul being non-composite, it cannot be compared to a harmony that is composite.

The soul being devoid of degrees, it cannot be compared to a harmony that has degrees, etc., etc.

Simmias’ theory fails from the start. That’s why Socrates mocks the idea at 86d.

Then Socrates, looking keenly at us, as he often used to do, smiled and said: “Simmias raises a fair objection. Now if any of you is readier than I, why does he not reply to him? For he seems to score a good point.

But according to my Liddell and Scott, psyche is breath. Seeing spirit in it seems 'vaporous'. — Gary M Washburn

Well, I think my LSJ shows very clearly that the primary meaning of ψυχή psyche is “life” and, by extension, “soul” exactly as Socrates says.

In addition:

Hom. usage gives little support to the derivation from ψύχω 'blow, breathe'; “τὸν δὲ λίπε ψ.” Il.5.696 means 'his spirit left his body', and so λειποψυχέω means 'swoon', not 'become breathless'

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=yuxh%5Cn&la=greek&can=yuxh%5Cn0&prior=th\n&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0169:text=Phaedo:section=64c&i=1#Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=yuxh/-contents

But here are some examples from the Phaedo:

1. “Then,” said he, “when does the soul attain to truth?” 65b
2. “if we are ever to know anything absolutely, we must be free from the body and must behold the actual realities with the eye of the soul alone” 66d – e
3. “But perhaps no little argument and proof is required to show that when a man is dead the soul still exists and has any power and intelligence.” 70b
4. “And such a soul is weighed down by this and is dragged back into the visible world, through fear of the invisible and of the other world” 81c
5. “philosophy, taking possession of the soul when it is in this state, encourages it gently and tries to set it free … and exhorting it to collect and concentrate itself within itself, and to trust nothing except itself and its own abstract thought of abstract existence; and to believe that there is no truth in that which it sees by other means” 83b

So, in your opinion, "breath" attains to truth; we behold with the eye of "breath"; "breath" has power and intelligence; "breath" fears the invisible and the other world; philosophy takes hold of the "breath", etc, etc.?

In the Greek original ψυχή psyche “soul” occurs about 80 times:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/searchresults?q=yu%2Fxw&target=greek&doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0169&expand=lemma&sort=docorder

IMHO even if it were used in the sense of “soul” just in the five examples above, this would still indicate that it was used by Socrates in the sense of “soul”.

Ideas transcend the subject-object distinction, in that they’re neither ‘in the word’ nor ‘in the mind’ but are facets of the intelligible nature of reality, structures of thought. Not private or personal thinking but the way the mind operates on a more general, inter-subjective level. — Wayfarer

I think one way of looking at it is as a hierarchy of awareness or experience:

1. Consciousness (individual) perceives physical objects in sensory perception.

2. Consciousness (individual) conceives of objects or thoughts mentally.

3. Consciousness (cosmic) is aware of the world as its own emanation.

4. Consciousness (cosmic) is aware of itself.

The Ideas or Forms could exist in a latent state at level (4) after which they are activated in order to emanate the world.

Socrates does indeed speak of something like "soul", but, for goodness sake, don't confuse this with the Christian era notion. Whatever he calls it, it should probably be rendered in the usual term "shade", something that even at the time was conceived, even by its most fervent believers, as barely a toehold of being real at all, — Gary M Washburn

The term psyche or "soul" was initially used by Homer in the sense of “departed soul, ghost. But it was also used with reference to “conscious self”, “various aspects of the self”, “moral and intellectual self”, “primary substance and source of life”, “spirit of the universe”, etc.:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0058:entry=yuxh/

The soul may have been a "shade" at the time of Homer. However, this changed with the development of the concept of paradise-like locations like the Elysian Fields and the Isles of the Blessed whose inhabitants engage in leisure activities such as playing games, holding friendly contests, and playing music. Of course, this was reserved for the select few, the vast majority would be destined for a shadowy existence in the underworld.

What Socrates describes certainly sounds like much more than a "shade".

See also:

By the end of the fifth century — the time of Socrates' death — soul is standardly thought and spoken of, for instance, as the distinguishing mark of living things, as something that is the subject of emotional states and that is responsible for planning and practical thinking, and also as the bearer of such virtues as courage and justice. Coming to philosophical theory, we first trace a development towards comprehensive articulation of a very broad conception of soul, according to which the soul is not only responsible for mental or psychological functions like thought, perception and desire, and is the bearer of moral qualities, but in some way or other accounts for all the vital functions that any living organism performs. This broad conception, which is clearly in close contact with ordinary Greek usage by that time, finds its fullest articulation in Aristotle's theory.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/

But would it be any different in AnMarxistan like say, Communist Russia or China?

Apparently in China they torture dogs before they eat them.

The Soviet Union was propped up by US investments and loans from 1917 to the 1980s. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan found out and stopped all technical and financial assistance to Russia. Russia’s Communist regime collapsed soon after.

In 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Ford started mass-producing Fordson tractors. Because of the Civil War in Russia, it could only start selling them in 1920 after which it exported tens of thousands of Fordsons to the Soviets. After 1924 Ford licensed the production of tractors and trucks in Russia itself.

From then on, there was a steady transfer of US cash and technology to Russia into the 1980s. The groups involved were the Rockefellers (chief financers of Fabianism) and associates through banking and industrial corporations like Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Bank of America, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Manufacturers Hanover, and Ford Motor Company as well as organizations like the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology (SCST) and the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council (USTEC) which was headed by Rockefeller executives and associates.

David Rockefeller was the leader of the US financial assistance effort to Communist Russia. In the early 1970s he started to overtly finance Russia and China. In 1973 he opened a Chase Manhattan branch in Moscow and visited China to negotiate US-Chinese economic cooperation.

Rockefeller also started to promote a worldwide policy of East-West rapprochement through his close friend and collaborator and US Government adviser Henry Kissinger and through the Rockefeller-funded UN. Rockefeller’s activities saved Communist Russia and China from economic collapse.

Meantime, Ronald Reagan had been studying the Soviets for a long time and he knew that communist economy was not a functional system. When he came to power in 1981, he immediately ordered an investigation into how the Soviets financed themselves and this was when he found out that they were assisted by US finance and technology.

In May 1982 Reagan went public with his plan. Speaking at his alma mater, Eureka College, he predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy … will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.”

He directed his top national security team to develop a plan to end the Cold War by winning it. The result was a series of top-secret national security decision directives.

In particular, Reagan adopted a policy of attacking a “strategic triad” of critical resources –financial credits, high technology and natural gas – essential to Soviet economic survival. Author-economist Roger Robinson said the directive was tantamount to “a secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union.”

When Reagan increased US military expenditure by 13%, the Soviets barely reacted because they simply could not afford to keep up.

The Soviets whose economy depended on oil exports also went through an oil crisis caused by a fall in oil production and prices.

The Soviets knew that they were finished and just gave up exactly as predicted by Reagan. After seventy years of communism or Fabianism, they were forced to reintroduce capitalism and feed themselves instead of relying on capitalist aid.

To get an idea of the situation, in 1970, the Soviet Union bought 2.16 million tons of grain. By 1985 this had risen to 44.2 million tons (a 20-fold increase). There were similar increases in meat imports and other products. Basically, the Soviet State had become incapable of feeding its own people.

D. Rockefeller, Memoirs

Fordson – Wikipedia

How Ronald Reagan Won the Cold War | The Heritage Foundation

Reagan’s Secret Directive NSDD-75 Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

I agree that it may not be a good critique, but the bottom line is that the Soviet system was to a significant degree dependent on the capitalist West and it eventually collapsed after Ronald Reagan stopped US financial and technological assistance in addition to expelling a large number of spies which was followed by other Western countries.

In the final analysis, it failed without capitalist support.

Maoist China would have gone down the same road had it not been for the Rockefellers and other big bankers and industrialists to save the regime with investments and loans from the 1970's onward.

Yes. I meant that people often conceive of Plato's ideas as some kind of mental "objects" when in fact they are part of the subject. Though not the individual subject but the Cosmic Intellect or "Mind of God".

Presumably,

OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

and

ECP = Economic Calculation Problem

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth

But what if participation is by departure? — Gary M Washburn

Well, if things exist by virtue of their participating in their distinctive being or Form (Phaedo 101c), then the soul becomes more real after death than in life by virtue of departing the world of sensibles and returning to the world of intelligibles where it is closer to its own being which is the Form of Life and thus more real than ever before.

This is why philosophical life according to Socrates is a preparation for death and the philosopher must aim to detach his soul from the body as far as possible in anticipation of his departure to the realm of higher realities which is the only place where true knowledge and wisdom may be attained (66e - 67a).

That's why I've always been interested in the reality of intelligible objects - like numbers. — Wayfarer

My theory is that intelligible objects like numbers or like Plato's Ideas are too close to the subject that thinks about them to be perceived as objects.

But if we assume that Plato was committed to a reductivist approach that sought to reduce the number of fundamental principles to the absolute minimum, then he was very close to it. I think it makes sense to say that when consciousness organizes itself in order to generate cognition, it would start with the most basic universals such as number, size, shape, color, distance, etc. which it would use as building blocks of experience.

I think the reliability of economic data from a secretive dictatorship like the USSR is rather doubtful. Plus, the Soviets received a lot of financial and technological assistance from the West in addition to what they stole through worldwide industrial espionage operations, etc. This may be among the factors that account for it.

Well, that's right. Belief or doxa can certainly have different meanings. To begin with, there is ordinary belief or opinion and right belief or opinion. The latter is what we hold to be true or is true on the basis of what we know from others, for example. What we know through reason is episteme and what we know through personal experience is gnosis. Higher forms of knowledge include noesis and sophia, intuitive knowledge and wisdom.

Contemplative insight is an interesting concept. Some accounts of Socrates in the dialogue seem to lend themselves to the interpretation that Socrates was something of a contemplative. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing what exactly it was that he was contemplating. Perhaps the Forms or some other metaphysical realities? In any case it does not sound as if he was simply pondering something, though he must have done quite a bit of thinking to come up with all those ideas of his.