Plato on Understanding Allegories

23 March 2023

Plato on Understanding Allegories

Two days ago, 21 March 2023, in my post titled ‘Karma’, I quote Socrates talking about what happens to the soul after death.  In this quote Socrates describes the consequences of the activities of our lives are, as the soul encounters its fate in the life hereafter. Right after this quote from Phaedo Socrates continues the discussion with comments on how to understand the elaborate allegory he has just given voice to:

“But, Simmias, because of all these things which we have recounted we ought to do our best to acquire virtue and wisdom in life.  For the prize is fair and the hope great.

“Now it would not be fitting for a man of sense to maintain that all this is just as I have described it, but that this or something like it is true concerning our souls and their abodes, since the soul is shown to be immortal, I think he may properly and worthily venture to believe; for the venture is well worth while; and he ought to repeat such things to himself as if they were magic charms, which is the reason why I have been lengthening out the story so long.  This then is why a man should be of good cheer about his soul, who in his life has rejected the pleasures and ornaments of the body, thinking they are alien to him and more like to do him harm than good, and has sought eagerly for those of learning and after adorning his soul with no alien ornaments, but with its own proper adornment of self-restraint and justice and courage and freedom and truth, awaits his departure to the other world, ready to go when fate calls him.”

(Plato, Phaedo¸ Plato I: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, translated by Harold North Fowler, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1914, pages 391-393, 114D -115, ISBN: 0674990404)

 

1. Socrates states that it ‘would not be fitting to maintain that all this is just as I have described it.’  In other words, Socrates is telling us not to take him literally.  The inclination in modernity is to take such statements literally, which leads to a kind of fundamentalist approach to religious scripture.  Because we lack experience in working with allegories it is not easy for people today to understand that there are other ways of reading than the literal way.  It is true that people will read fiction; but they regard fiction as untrue from an historical and material perspective.  But Socrates is not saying that his allegory is untrue.

2.  Socrates follows up by suggesting how to approach his allegory, “. . . but that this or something like it is true concerning our souls and their abodes . . “  When Socrates uses the words ‘something like it is true’ Socrates is entering the realm of simile and metaphor, what Plotinus will collectively refer to as ‘comparisons’.  I might put it this way; Socrates is suggesting that his description of the afterlife journey is ‘close enough’ to be useful and beneficial; it is a kind of gift he is leaving his students which will benefit them both in this life and in their next between-lives journey.

3.  I am intrigued by Socrates’s suggestion that his description be used repeatedly and that these repetitions are like magic charms (as if they were magic charms).  Notice that, once again, the use of simile, a type of comparison, as the foundation for his suggestion.  I also wonder if there is some suggestion here that his followers regularly read, recite (possibly chanted in the way magic charms are chanted), copy, and give reverence to the teachings found in Phaedo, and perhaps the specific description of the post-death realms.  At this moment, only a few short moments before his own passing, the spirit of Socrates is already residing in the realm that lies beyond; he is acting as a kind of gate, or portal, to that other realm, a kind of guide for those of us left on this side of the great divide.  I have no definite answer regarding these questions.  On the other hand, for thousands of years people have found these teachings valuable and helpful to them when their own time of transition has arrived.

4.  Passages such as this re-enforce my view that the heart of Platonism is found in the allegories, and other types of comparisons, found in the Dialogues.  Further, that reason in Platonism should be placed at the service of the allegories.  In other words, allegories are not illustrations of deductive arguments.  Allegories in Platonism are the gate to understanding the cosmos in which we dwell, the source of that cosmos, and the ascetic ideal that leads us to the source.  Reason unpacks the allegories; reason is the servant of the allegories.