7 July 2023
Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 14
“When Socrates had finished, Cebes answered and said: ‘Socrates, I agree to the other things you say, but in regard to the soul men are very prone to disbelief. They fear that when the soul leaves the body it no longer exists anywhere, and that on the day when the man dies it is destroyed and perishes, and when it leaves the body and departs from it, straightway it flies away and is no longer anywhere, scattering like a breath or smoke. If it exists anywhere by itself as a unit, freed from these evils which you have enumerated just now, there would be good reason for the blessed hope, Socrates, that what you say is true. 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.’
“’What you say, Cebes, is true,’ said Socrates. ‘Now what shall we do? Do you wish to keep on conversing about this to see whether it is probably or not?’
“’I do,’ said Cebes. ‘I should like to hear what you think about it.’
“’Well,’ said Socrates, ‘I do not believe anyone who heard us now, even if he were a comic poet, would say that I am chattering and talking about things which do not concern me. So if you like, let us examine the matter to the end.’
“’Let us consider it by asking whether the souls of men who have died are in the nether world or not. There is an ancient tradition, which we remember, that they go there from here and come back here again and are born from the dead. Now if this is true, if the living are born again from the dead, our souls would exist there, would they not? For they could not be born again if they did not exist, and this would be a sufficient proof that they exists, if it should really be made evident that the living are born only from the dead. But if this is not so, then some other argument would be needed.’
“’Certainly,’ said Cebes.
“’Now,’ said he, ‘if you wish to find this out easily, do not consider the question with regard to men only, but with regard to all animals and plants, and, in short, to all things which may be said to have birth. Let us see with regard to all these, whether it is true that they are all born or generated only from their opposites, in case they have opposites, as for instance, the noble is the opposite of the disgraceful, the just of the unjust, and there are countless other similar pairs. Let us consider the question whether it is inevitable that everything which has an opposite be generated from its opposite and from it only. For instance, when anything become greater it must inevitably have been smaller and then have become greater.’
“’Yes.’
“’And if it becomes smaller, it must have been greater and then have become smaller?’
“’That is true,’ said he.
”’And the weaker is generated from the stronger, and the slower from the quicker?’
“’Certainly.’
“’And the worse from the better and the more just from the more unjust?’
“’Of course.’
“’Then,’ said he, ‘we have this fact sufficiently established, that all things are generated in this way, opposites from opposites?’
“’Certainly.’
“’Now then, is there between all these pairs of opposites what may be called two kinds of generation, from one to the other and back again from the other to the first? Between a larger thing and a smaller thing there is increment and diminution and we call one increasing and the other decreasing, do we not?’
“’Yes,’ said he.
“’And similarly analysing and combining, and cooling and heating, and all opposites in the same way. Even if we do not in every case have the words to express it, yet in fact is it not always inevitable that there is a process of generation from each to the other?’
“’Certainly,’ said he.
“’Well, then,’ said Socrates, ‘is there anything that is the opposite of living, as being awake is the opposite of sleeping?’
“’Certainly,’ said Cebes.
“’What?’
“’Being dead,’ said he.
“’Then these two are generated from each other, and as they are two, so the processes between them are two; is it not so?’
“’Of course.’
1. This is one of the formal arguments that Socrates presents that Socrates thinks back up the view that the soul survives death. Here the focus is on how opposites interact with each other and then asserting that life and death, a pair of opposites, interact in the same way. I think of this as an argument by ‘metaphorical inference’, meaning that Socrates is pointing to a resemblance between life and death and other pairs of opposites and that this resemblance is then considered to be meaningful. I don’t think this is a ‘formal’ argument in the way that contemporary philosophers, particularly analytic philosophers, or those influenced by analytic philosophy, but I do think it is ‘formal’ in the sense that it has a recognizable structure.
2. I think it is helpful to list the pairs of opposites that Socrates mentions in this part of Phaedo:
Also unifying each pair is that each pair is on scale where something can be more or less X, rather than X or not X, what Socrates calls ‘increment and diminution.’ These are not examples of the excluded middle. A person can be more or less noble, a metal door handle can be more or less warm, etc. Does this apply to living and being dead? I think Socrates is suggesting it does. Recall that the philosopher practices separating the soul from the body and that this practice is a kind of skill that can be cultivated. For this reason, the soul can be more or less separated from the body during life which, metaphorically, means more or less dead. In a sense we can be alive and dead at the same time.
3. The idea being presented here, as I understand it, is that these opposites generate each other. Socrates refers to this view as an ‘ancient teaching’ when applied to life; though the ancient teaching might refer to the mutual generation of opposites generally. In other words opposites are not mutually exclusive of each other; they are intimately linked, they are phases of a cycle of becoming and begoning. Becoming and begoning is the nature of the third hypostasis and here Socrates is suggesting that becoming and begoning is an example of that overall metaphysical reality.
4. This argument is suggestive; by that I mean it invites us to look at the world around us and see how opposites actually relate to each other, how they are linked to each other, how they ‘generate’ each other. The argument is also helpful in understanding manifest and unmanifest realities and how they are linked; and that there exists an unmanifest reality that nourishes, supports, and is necessary for the existence of manifest reality.
This invites us to practice, to the best of our ability, the separation of soul from the body so that we can experience the manifest and unmanifest cycle of birth and death.
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