Some Notes on Phaedo

4 January 2023

Some Notes on Phaedo

I finished my reading of the Enneads in January of this year.  I have decided to spend the time I devote to spiritual reading, which for me means readings in the Platonic tradition at this point in my life, on Plato’s dialogue Phaedo.  I have read it before.  But I want to do a close reading of Phaedo, spend more time with it, and see what various commentators have thought of Phaedo down through the centuries.  Here are a few notes about Phaedo:

1.  Phaedo touches on many topics in the Platonic tradition which are discussed at greater length in other dialogues.  Examples include the theory of forms and the nature of causation; there are others as well.  In this sense Phaedo is a good introduction to the scope of Platonic philosophy.

2.  Phaedo is an explicitly ascetic dialogue with famous comments on the ascetic nature of a philosophical life.  Asceticism is found in many of Plato’s dialogues, but the concentrated way in which asceticism is presented and discussed in Phaedo is, I think, especially well crafted and thought out.  This is a great plus for those of us who regard asceticism as a necessary foundation for understanding the ‘Dharma’ of Platonism.

3.  On a literary level, Phaedo is powerfully crafted.  I don’t consider this to be a side issue because this literary craftsmanship is an instantiation of beauty; it is an example of the relationship of material things with transcendental beauty.  In this way Phaedo transmits the teachings of Platonism through the nature of its writing.

4.  Platonism has a vast literature and just the dialogues of Plato are an ocean of insights and teachings.  It has been my observation that people, when confronted with such a vast library of insights and teachings, tend to focus on a few dialogues, or even one dialogue, and use that dialogue(s) as a kind of go to resource for Platonism as a whole.  In the classical period Alcibiades 1 sometimes functioned in this way.  I have noticed that for those who are fond of Proclus Parmenides seems to be a singular focus of their attention.  Others are primarily interested in the Timaeus.  Modern political theorists are often fascinated by The Republic.  And so forth . . .

For many years Phaedrus was my favorite dialogue.  I was attracted by its mysticism, the surprisingly wide range of topics, and its many unexpected insights such as the plusses and minuses of the written word.  More recently I have shifted my focus to Phaedo.  Perhaps this has to do with my becoming more aware of the allegorical nature of Plato’s writing which has allowed access to meanings that were previously unavailable to me.  And perhaps this has something to do with how I have moved into old age.  I see Phaedo as especially inspiring for those of us in the late years of our lives.  Phaedo is a kind of contemplation on, and preparation for, death; a kind of manual on how to die with dignity and grace. 

5.  Phaedo is a short dialogue.  Because of the relative brevity of Phaedo it is easier to get a sense of the arc of this dialogue, the overall structure and how the various pieces fit together to form a coherent and beautiful whole.

6.  Phaedo is about the destiny of the individual soul.  This focus is a good antidote for someone like me who for about thirty years identified as a Buddhist.  During that thirty year period I was steeped in the Buddhist doctrine of no-soul; I could present the idea of no-soul with clarity, using the standard arguments of the Buddhist heritage. 

But one day, when I was working at a prison for the criminally insane, I had the experience of directly perceiving the soul of one of the inmates; a kind of presence of a pure light, but that light had become an ember, barely perceptible, due to the negative activities of this inmate during this life.  This was a completely unexpected experience that sent me on a search for understanding what had been shown.  I won’t go into all of the twists and turns of that journey; for the purposes of this blog it is enough to say that when I turned to the tradition of Platonism I finally found a coherent explanation of soul and the soul’s connection with the transcendent and the journey of the soul from its imprisonment in materiality to its final freedom in The Good and The One.