Notes and Comments on Phaedo -- 15

9 July 2023

Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 15

I am continuing with my series on Phaedo.  I am using the Harold North Fowler translation published by the Loeb Classical Library.

“’Now,’ said Socrates, ‘I will tell about one of the two pairs of which I just spoke to you and its intermediate processes; and do you tell me about the other.  I say one term is sleeping and the other is being awake, and being awake is generated from sleeping, and sleeping from being awake, and the processes of generation are, in the latter case, falling asleep, and in the former, waking up.  Do you agree, or not?’

“’Certainly.’

“’Now do you,’ said he, ‘tell me in this way about life and death.  Do you not say that living is the opposite of being dead?’

“’I do.’

“’And that they are generated from each other?’

“’Yes.’

“’Now what is it which is generated from the living?’

“’The dead,’ said he.

“’And what,’ said Socrates, ‘from the dead?’

“’I can say only one thing – the living.’

“’From the dead, then, Cebes, the living, both things and persons, are generated?’

“’Evidently,’ said he.

“’Then,’ said Socrates, ‘our souls exist in the other world.’

“’So it seems.’

“’And of the two processes of generation between these two, the one is plain to be seen; for surely dying is plain to be seen, is it not?’

“’Certainly,’ said he.

“’Well then,’ said Socrates, ‘what shall we do next?  Shall we deny the opposite process, and shall nature be one-sided in this instance?  Or must we grant that there is some process of generation the opposite of dying?’

“’Certainly we must,’ said he.

“’What is this process?’

“’Coming to life again.’

“’Then,’ said Socrates, ‘if there be such a thing as coming to life again, this would be the process of generation from the dead to the living?’

“’Certainly.’

“’So by this method also we reach the conclusion that the living are generated from the dead, just as much as the dead from the living; and since this is the case, it seems to me to be a sufficient proof that the souls of the dead exist somewhere, whence they come back to life.’

“’I think, Socrates, that results necessarily from our previous admissions.’

(Ibid, Fowler, pages 247-251)

1.  In this part of the conversation Socrates narrows the focus from opposites in general to the single example of living and being dead.  This is what the conversation is really about, but before Socrates addresses the question of the relationship between life and death he points to how this pair of opposites, life and death, behave the same way as other pairs of opposites.  What Socrates is implying is that the relationship between life and death is not unusual and that this relationship can be illuminated by seeing it in the context of other, similar, relationships; such as being awake and sleeping.

2.  The other, larger, context that applies to this presentation, and which will be touched on later, is the nature of the third hypostasis as the region of cyclic existence.  The cycles of the moon, of the sun, of the seasons, the cyclic patterns of the planets, illustrate a similar type of relationship as that between life and death.  In Platonic cosmology, the cosmos is considered to be everlasting, but also always in process.  Everlastingness is a changing image of eternity; it has the constancy of eternity, but it is subject to the limitations of time and number.  This is what generates the cyclic nature of the third hypostasis, the hypostasis of soul; and it is soul that is the subject of the discussion.

3.  “Then our souls exist in the other world.”  The other world is not accessible to our senses, just as the sun is not accessible to our senses at night, just as the moon is not accessible to our senses when it is the dark of the moon, just as grass is not accessible to our senses in winter.  The process of opposites is that one part of the process slips into the beyond, meaning beyond access to our senses, as the other part becomes available.  As Socrates says, nature is not ‘one-sided’ and this moving from manifest to unmanifest and then back again, is the nature of things in the third hypostasis.