Phaedo

“How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they are never present to a man at the same instant, and yet he who pursues either is generally compelled to take the other; their bodies are two, but they are joined by a single head.”

Socrates begins the last day’s lesson by contemplating the mutuality of opposites and the futility of chasing after pleasure—especially since pain is always required to instigate it. The more people search for the one, the more of its opposite they get.

“For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all.” 

If the body hinders the philosopher with its yearnings and inaccurate senses, then death isn’t to be feared but anticipated, since in that realm the soul will be able to perceive the essence of reality without the obscuring presence of physical necessity.

“For there are pleasures which they are afraid of losing; and in their desire to keep them, they abstain from some pleasures, because they are overcome by others; and although to be conquered by pleasure is called by men intemperance, to them the conquest of pleasure consists in being conquered by pleasure. And that is what I mean by saying that, in a sense, they are made temperate through intemperance.” 

Socrates points out the contradiction in trying to resist some pleasures to enhance others. Either way, the person is trapped by desires; resisting one pleasure simply increases the yearning for others.

“Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites? I mean such things as good and evil, just and unjust—and there are innumerable other opposites which are generated out of opposites.”

Opposites make for a contrast, but they also go together everywhere and always. Life cannot exist without death any more than up can exist without down. Large and small, warm and cool, light and dark: each pair of opposites is inextricably tied to itself.

“[T]he soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and that the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintellectual, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.” 

The changeable body, like all things with properties that can change, grow, and deteriorate, comes to an end in death. The soul, unchanging, indescribable, and indefinable, has nothing death can attach itself to. The soul visits the world and its finite things, then it returns to the timeless, pure world beyond death, and eventually returns to the world in the form of new life.

“But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the purposes of his lusts,—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy;—do you suppose that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed?” 

Though souls are essentially divine, they can succumb to the temptations of life. Weighed down by such evils, they remain anchored to the world until one day they move into a new body—asses, for example, if they were wanton gluttons, or wolves and hawks if they were violent.

“[N]othing is more uncommon than a very large or very small man; and this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white: and whether the instances you select be men or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes, but many are in the mean between them.” 

A few examples of dishonesty, for example, do not prove that all people are dishonest. Likewise, a few badly argued defenses of controversial ideas don’t prove that all controversial concepts are false.

“Now the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. And the difference between him and me at the present moment is merely this—that whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me.” 

Socrates doesn’t want to win an argument; he wants to bounce ideas off others until they all arrive at the truth. He defends his points against attack either until he’s convinced by the other’s points and abandons his own or until the other accepts his arguments. The point is to find the truth, not to revel in a social victory.

“Admitting the soul to be longlived, and to have known and done much in a former state, still she is not on that account immortal; and her entrance into the human form may be a sort of disease which is the beginning of dissolution, and may at last, after the toils of life are over, end in that which is called death.” 

Even if a human soul is an ancient thing, this doesn’t prove it’s immortal. Perhaps entering human bodies, over and over, wears it out. Socrates must present an argument that overcomes these problems; later, he does so by asserting that the soul is of a nature that cannot die.

“‘Then when death attacks a man, the mortal portion of him may be supposed to die, but the immortal retires at the approach of death and is preserved safe and sound?’ ‘True.’ ‘Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world!’” 

This is Socrates’s final argument in favor of the soul’s immortality. The soul’s nature makes it impossible for a soul to die because it contains the quality of life, which is essential and unremovable, just as the number three contains oddness, a quality that cannot be removed from it.

“I may add that first principles, even if they appear certain, should be carefully considered; and when they are satisfactorily ascertained, then, with a sort of hesitating confidence in human reason, you may, I think, follow the course of the argument; and if that be plain and clear, there will be no need for any further enquiry.” 

Thinking is hard, and it’s easy to make mistakes. The attitude of caution and humility when dealing with the great questions—taking great care when reasoning about them and moving forward only when the basic assumptions have been proven—is a hallmark of the Socratic method.

“If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls. But now, inasmuch as the soul is manifestly immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom.” 

The soul’s immortality imparts a responsibility on all sentient beings to behave well, lest their souls become trapped in unpleasant afterlives. This passage reflects Socrates’s belief that virtuous souls are rewarded while evil souls are punished for the crimes, an idea that endures to this day in the Christian concepts of heaven and hell.

“Those too who have been pre-eminent for holiness of life are released from this earthly prison, and go to their pure home which is above, and dwell in the purer earth; and of these, such as have duly purified themselves with philosophy live henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer still which may not be described, and of which the time would fail me to tell. Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought not we to do that we may obtain virtue and wisdom in this life? Fair is the prize, and the hope great!” 

Socrates believes that the good, especially those who have devoted themselves to study and virtue, will be rewarded lavishly in the afterlife, making their earthly struggles well worth the bargain. This belief informs his conviction that death is not something a philosopher should fear.