The Last Days of Socrates

by Plato

  39. belongs primarily to those of philosophic disposition: For the theory of ‘popular virtues’ and their difference from the philosopher’s virtue, see the introduction to Phaedo, ‘Popular and Socratic Morality’.

  40. you will find them illogical: Dialogues traditionally placed at the end of the early period begin to make this distinction between the popular conception of the virtues and the virtues as they ought theoretically to be, e.g. Meno 88b–c, Euthydemus c281; see also Phaedo 82a–b.

  41. sold for wisdom and purchased with it: The text here is most difficult to interpret; Burnet’s omissions in the Oxford Classical Text achieve nothing, and I have tried to translate the full manuscript text, aiming at what must be the overall sense. The reader should be aware that many different translations might be offered.

  42. courage and self-control and justice: How popular justice is similar to temperance and courage is unclear; Republic seems to suggest that in the popular view the point of fairness and cooperation between friends is to harm enemies most effectively. The archetypes of unthinking justice and temperance at 82b are bees, wasps and ants, not to mention moderate humans – those showing these ‘virtues’ within their communities but not perhaps beyond them.

  43. emblem… devotees are few: The emblem here is the narthex or fennel-rod tipped with ivy, carried by the worshippers of Dionysus; the devotees are his bacchae.

  44. The shadow of Heraclitus… throughout this section: There are reports that the Heraclitean Cratylus had been a substantial influence upon Plato in his younger days, and the radical theory of perpetual change painted by Cratylus can have left little room for anything to endure within this universe, let alone soul. Thus Plato is beginning by tackling a hostile and influential position from within, bringing out those aspects of it which are helpful for his own present position. Heracliteanism remains a moderate influence over Plato’s picture of the phenomenal world.

  45. it will nowhere amount to anything: It is important to realize the nature of the beliefs which Socrates is attempting to counter. Cebes is not suggesting that the soul becomes non-existent, but that without the body to hold it together (and being an insubstantial sort of thing) it no longer coheres and no longer forms any discernible entity. This agrees with the picture of death as a parting of soul and body, and it also marks the soul as an entity that is thought of in semi-physical terms, for at the very least its existence is spatio-temporal. What Socrates has to prove, therefore, is that the soul coheres even without the body.

  46. playing about: There is a clear reference here to The Clouds of Aristophanes, where comic terminology incorporating this idea of ‘playing about’ (adoleschia) is in evidence.

  47. an old legend, which we’ve been recalling: Probably a reference back to the ‘Orphic’ ideas of 63c and 69c, though the pluperfect tense might have made this plainer. It would also be possible to translate ‘which we (are able to) remember’. The ‘other world’ is given its conventional name of Hades by Plato, but the important thing is that there should be some location capable of housing disembodied souls.

  48. come into being from the dead: Cf. particularly Meno 81a–c, with the quotation from Pindar there, which, like the work of other inspired poets, is supposed to reflect the doctrine of certain priests and priestesses.

  49. from nowhere else: Note the proposition which Socrates feels he must prove: that there are identifiable soul-entities located elsewhere, capable of animating new bodies here.

  50. comes to be: Tredennick used the translation ‘generation’ rather than ‘coming to be’; but generation seems to apply to new subjects, not to new predicates which become true of the same subject. The Greek verb gignesthai can be used of (i) a subject coming into existence or being born, (ii) something coming to be so, and (iii) a subject becoming F where F is a predicate.

  51. opposites: Notably absent from the examples of opposites are those specially associated with the Pythagoreans, such as one and many, odd and even, limited and unlimited, yet they would not present Socrates with any special problems.

  52. Being dead: This answer seems to be hasty. Cebes ought to have said ‘being inanimate’ perhaps, for to say ‘dead’ tends to imply not just the absence of life but the absence of life from something which has previously lived. But these objections may be misdirected if the argument is being intentionally conducted in a Heraclitean framework. Firstly Heraclitus had spoken of death to various kinds of element in such a way that would not imply its animation (B36), and secondly the shifting nature of reality was such that it could always be said of any two basic physical substances, X and Y, that the X now present was dead Y and the Y now present was dead X.

  53. our souls do exist in the other world: The conclusion is scarcely justified without further argument. There may first need to be something ‘dead’ if it is to acquire the attribute ‘living’, but it has not been shown that this something is soul, nor that, if it were, it would be in Hades.

  54. Coming to life again: The ‘again’ is natural, because of the implication of a previous life in the contentious word ‘dead’. For us even the idea of ‘coming to life’ is awkward, as we think of the child as alive from the beginning. It was at birth, for the soul was traditionally associated with breath. Whether it could be thought of as ‘dead’ before it takes its first breath is less likely.

  55. dead from the living: Whether they have agreed that living souls come from dead souls is very dubious, and yet this was what they needed to prove.

  56. another way: Here begins a supplementary argument, designed to make it certain that there must be a process of rebirth opposite to the process of death.

  57. Endymion: Endymion was, according to myth, an attractive male loved by the Moon; in most versions he is blessed with eternal sleep.

  58. Anaxagoras’s “all things together”: Anaxagoras (fr. 1) began his book with this idea, which depicts a kind of primeval chaos, in which everything (except mind, the separative agent) formed an undifferen-tiated mass.

  59. If living things came from other living things: This is of course what one would naturally believe today. But if one believes in some life-force, a life-force which deserts when the creature ages and dies, one will surely want to postulate a means by which that life-force can be implanted and grow in the young. Note that there is some uncertainty concerning text and translation at this point.

  60. in the context of this work: This is surely due to Plato’s conception of ‘recollection’ as an essential element in the educational process. Like Simmias, the reader must be made aware of his forgotten inner consciousness.

  61. you have often mentioned to us: The readership is evidently supposed to be familiar with this doctrine, which had probably been outlined already in the Meno (81–6).

  62. what we call learning: ‘Learning’ is generally regarded by Plato as the acquisition of knowledge proper (not just correct opinion), as something which renders the learner able to explain what he learns, and as a result of the activities of some ‘teacher’ rather than of personal discovery.

  63. I can’t quite remember: There is deliberate play on the notion of recollection. As in the Meno it is plain that Meno himself is recollecting (being taught) something during the recollection episode, so too Simmias is ‘recollecting’ something during the recollection episode here.

  64. a correct explanation: The ‘correct explanation’ (orthos logos) is something that is considered possible for all those who have knowledge; cf. 76b.

  65. a diagram: Such a diagram had been employed in the Meno to help Meno’s slave ‘recollect’ basic facts of geometry.

  66. similar or dissimilar objects: So far Plato seems to have been wanting to remind us what it is like to be reminded of something, in order that we may ask ourselves whether we do not undergo a similar experience when we ‘learn’. It seems now, however, that he is keen to nip in the bud any sophistic objections to his ‘Recollection of Ideas’ theory based upon the same or a different dilemma. The Ideas are suc
h that they must have some qualities (e.g. being perfectly what they are) that the corresponding particulars cannot have, but nevertheless it is only to the extent that particulars resemble a given Idea that they come to acquire its ‘name’: e.g. it is only because a given circle resembles the Idea of the circle that it comes to be called a circle at all.

  67. a further step: At this point the Theory of Ideas returns.

  68. most emphatically: This is surely a natural admission for anybody with a background in Pythagoreanism and geometry to make.

  69. quite distinct from them: Socrates is here setting up a paradox: we seem to acquire knowledge of an Idea from our experience of the particulars; yet (whereas we think any concept involving predicates A, B,… N must derive from experience of things with the predicates A, B,… N) the Idea differs by at least one predicate from any particular one could name.

  70. Is it not true… another?: (i) Is Plato saying that the sticks appear equal to two different people or in two different respects or to two different things, or (with a variant textual reading) at two different times? (ii) Is Plato here seriously concerned with a lack of true equality in the physical world or in the phenomenal world? Are any two sticks automatically unequal in their own right, or is it enough for Plato that we can examine any two sticks from angles (literal or metaphorical) which will make them appear unequal? Certainly the emphasis here seems to be on different impressions which these equal things give, not on the precise reason for the two impressions being different.

  71. actually equal: The Greek actually uses the odd expression ‘the equals themselves’. Usually Plato would use such terminology in the singular to refer to the Ideas, but the Ideas seem always to be one. He could easily have taken a geometrical example such as a square or circle which would not have involved any difficulty with the implied duality in the notion itself; it is possible, therefore, that Plato hopes this example may help to teach us something additionally about metaphysics, in which case he is deliberately distinguishing between ‘equals themselves’ and ‘equality’. Therefore I am tempted by the proposal of R. S. Bluck (Phronesis 4, 1959; pp. 5–11) to see a reference here to something analogous to the ‘tallness in us’ from 102d ff., to whatever it might be about the two ‘equal’ sticks which really is equal. However, there is no immediate significance for Plato’s metaphysics; we are concerned with what anybody might or might not imagine. It is natural to envisage something about each of two roughly equal sticks which is indeed equal; but nobody would try to persuade themselves that whatever it is about them that is equal (de dicto) is really unequal. For similar impossibilities without obvious invocation of the Theory of Ideas, cf. Theaetetus b190–c. There is no need to emend the text, as Bostock does in Plato’s Phaedo (p. 82).

  72. that equality was inequality: It is true that equal sticks do not strike us as being ‘inequality’ either, and so there is no outright conflict here. For this reason translations like the present one have worried commentators, for Plato would seem to be making a point not strictly relevant to the argument. What we have here, however, is a classic case of irony designed to underline the absurdity of any such notion.

  73. alike or not: See note 66, above.

  74. don’t they fall short at all?: The way in which the particulars ‘fall short’ of the Ideas is again a matter of controversy. The notion has been prepared by the example of remembering a person from his portrait, and appreciating how close the resemblance is (73e–74a). Again I think that we should remember that the audience has a Pythagorean background, and that the principal example being used has much mathematical significance. Pythagoreans, with their love of musical theory, and mathematicians in general would have taken little convincing of the tendency of particulars to exemplify only imperfectly the concepts which they were discussing. One may mention that Bostock in Plato’s Phaedo sees a difficulty in that Plato could not have seen the number of any five coins, for instance, as being imperfectly equal to that of any five other coins, but Plato would simply have seen this as the equality of numbers, not of coins – the numbers of the two groups of coins being ‘what were actually equal’ about the groups, not their precise weight and colouring, nor even their denomination.

  75. notion of deficiency: Tredennick believed that it was the notion of equality which was referred to here, but this makes poor sense in the context.

  76. all sensible equals… falling short of it: There already (since 74d) seems to be a dynamic teleological notion of the instances in this world all striving inasmuch as they can for the perfection of their respective Ideas. For teleology, see 97c ff.

  77. perceive equals: ‘Equals’ here is not in the text, but a Greek might easily supply it.

  78. imperfect copies: Strictly it must be before we first used our senses in this comparative way that we should have had to have knowledge of the standard of comparison. Must we assume that our earliest awareness of earthly equals was such that we knew their deficiencies? Perhaps Plato is talking of our earliest recognition of equals as equals, thinking that we cannot even label two things ‘equals’ until we can measure them against equality itself; for otherwise it would be open to us to hold that our notion of equality is derived from earlier sensations of equality, such as were not accompanied by any recognition of deficiency.

  79. from the moment of birth: Certainly we had the faculties, but does Plato want to imply that we actually recognize things through them at this stage?

  80. if we obtained it before our birth… born: Commentators since R. M. Hackforth (in Plato’s Phaedo; Cambridge, 1955) recognize that this alternative is shortly to be rejected; the other alternative appears at 75e3.

  81. or greater or smaller: Commentators note problems of applying the deficiency principle (see 75a) to these examples. It is unclear how an elephant could fail to be bigger in every respect and from all angles than a mouse! However, it is not clearly required for the argument that all physical attributes should always be imperfect.

  82. explain what he knows: Tredennick with good reason interprets the Greek logon didonai(‘to give an account’) as‘to giveanexplanation’. It is sometimes interpreted more technically as meaning to give a definition or to give proof, but the Greek really falls short of either meaning, and it seems unreasonable, if I saw my brother commit murder, to say that I didn’t know this unless I can define it (what, precisely?) or prove it!

  83. no one on this earth who can give a worthwhile explanation: This pessimistic statement is often contrasted with the suggestion at 74b that we know what actual equality is. It seems here that it may only be Socrates and a few others who can pass a stringent test of knowledge, whereas human beings in general ‘know’ equality in a much weaker sense. The Theory of Recollection naturally encourages two different senses of ‘know’, one applying to the subconscious presence of prenatal ‘knowledge’, and the other used only for fully recollected knowledge. Note how at Meno 85c–86a the slave is at one moment spoken of as having right opinion (not yet knowledge), and at another as having knowledge (85d9–12). For more detail, consult J. T. Bedu-Addo, ‘Sense-experience and the Argument from Recollection in Plato’s Phaedo’, Phronesis 36 (1991; pp. 27–60), who emphasizes the harmony in Plato’s epistemology from the Meno to the Republic.

  84. they were independent of our bodies and had intelligence: Socrates is taking more than one step at a time. We have not been shown that the previous existence was non-bodily, though there would be a regress if it had been of the same bodily kind: our perceptions there too would rely on background knowledge from a previous existence. If intelligence is required to apprehend the Ideas, then of course our souls would have had to be intelligent in the life that brought them their knowledge of the Ideas.

  85. what nonsense I was talking: David Gallop in Plato’s Phaedo, p. 134, shows that Simmias’s admission of defeat is premature. There is in fact no reason why a theory of latent knowledge should have ever before been fully known; we could perhaps have acquired something akin to a dim memor
y at birth based on no prior experience.

  86. that without the one there’s not the other: How much is Socrates claiming here? That the two doctrines stand and fall together? He has only argued from the existence of (known) Ideas to the pre-existence of souls, though it is clear that immortality of souls would not be an attractive prospect for Socrates without the existence of the Ideas (and thus that his discussion would indeed be a waste of time). Could Plato have thought that it could be proven that if the Ideas don’t exist the soul must be mortal? It is more likely, I submit, that the final sentence (76e3–6) is a gloss on the previous ones, whose language it follows very closely. Simmias’s reply might have been taken by a later editor to imply the biconditionality thesis (whereas it is doubtful whether it does so), and Socrates’ question altered to imply it too.

  87. a person’s luck… calm!: The joke has some philosophical purpose, inviting the readerto reflectonthe typeofinsubstantial and fragmented entity likely to become dissipated before the similarity argument.

  88. an enchanter who understands these spells: It emerges from 114d that the ‘myth’ is the kind of enchantment which Socrates can offer for this purpose.

  89. familiar with: On this section, see the introduction to Phaedo, p. 111.

  90. not affected in this way: These assumptions underlie the physics of the atomist Democritus, whose ‘atoms’ are literally unsplittable particles, and thus the permanent material stuff of the universe.

  91. their true being which we try to describe in our discussions: It appears now that Plato is associating his Ideas with the things of which Socratic dialectic used to seek a definition. This would legitimize the attempt to see Socrates himself as an exponent of the Ideas. However, some commentators, including R. M. Hackforth, interpret the clause as a reference to proofs of existence rather than quests for definitions.