9 August 2023
Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 23
This post is a continuation of my series on Phaedo. I am using the Harold North Fowler translation from the Loeb Classical Library.
“’Well then,’ said Socrates, ‘must we not ask ourselves some such question as this? What kind of thing naturally suffers dispersion, and for what kind of thing might we naturally fear it, and again what kind of thing is not liable to it? And after this must we not inquire to which class the soul belongs and lose our hopes or fears for our souls upon the answers to these questions?’
“’You are quite right,’ he replied.
“’Now is not that which is compounded and composite naturally liable to be decomposed, in the same way in which it was compounded? And if anything is uncompounded is not that, if anything, naturally unlikely to be decomposed?’
“’I think,’ said Cebes, ‘that is true.’
“’Then it is most probable that things which are always the same and unchanging are the uncompounded things and the things that are changing and never the same are the composite things?’
“’Yes, I think so.’
“’Let us then, ‘ said he, ‘turn to what we were discussing before. Is the absolute essence, which we in our dialectic process of question and answer call true being, always the same or is it liable to change? Absolute equality, absolute beauty, any absolute existence, true being – do they ever admit of any change whatsoever? Or does each absolute essence, since it is uniform and exists by itself, remain the same and never in any way admit of any change?’
“’It must,’ said Cebes, ‘necessarily remain the same, Socrates.’
“’But how about the many things, for example, men, or horses, or cloaks, or any other such things, which bear the same names as the absolute essences and are called beautiful or equal or the like? Are they always the same? Or are they, in direct opposition to the essences, constantly changing in themselves, unlike each other, and, so to speak, never the same?’
“’The latter,’ said Cebes; ‘they are never the same.’
“’And you can see these and touch them and perceive them by the other senses, whereas the things which are always the same can be grasped only by the reason, and are invisible and not to be seen?’
“’Certainly,’ said he, ‘that is true.’
“’Now,’ said he, ‘shall we assume two kinds of existences, one visible, the other invisible?’
“’Let us assume them,’ said Cebes.
“’And that the invisible is always the same and the visible constantly changing?’
“’Let us assume that also,’ said he.
“’Well then,’ said Socrates, ‘are we not made up of two parts, body and soul?’
“’Yes,’ he replied.
“”Now to which class should we say the body is more similar and more closely akin?’
“’To the visible,’ said he; ‘that is clear to everyone.’
“’And the soul? Is it visible or invisible?’
“’Invisible, to man, at least, Socrates.’
“’But we call things visible and invisible with reference to human vision, do we not?’
“’Yes, we do.’
“’Then what do we say about the soul? Can it be seen or not?’
“’It cannot be seen.’
“’Then it is invisible?’
“’Yes.’
“’Then the soul is more like the invisible than the body is, and the body more like the visible.’
“’Necessarily, Socrates.’
“’Now we have also been saying for a long time, have we not, that, when the soul makes use of the body for any inquiry, either through seeing or hearing or any of the other senses – for inquiry through the body means inquiry through the senses – then it is dragged by the body to things which never remain the same, and it wanders about and is confused and dizzy like a drunken man because it lays hold upon such things?’
“’Certainly.’
“’But when the soul inquires alone by itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this state of the soul is called wisdom. Is it not so?’
“’Socrates,' said he, ‘what you say is perfectly right and true.’
“’And now again, in view of what we said before and of what has just been said, to which class do you think the soul has greater likeness and kinship?’
“’I think, Socrates,’ said he, ‘that anyone, even the dullest, would agree, after this argument that the soul is infinitely more like that which is always the same than that which is not.’
“’And the body?’
“’Is more like the other.’
(Ibid, Fowler, pages 273 – 279, 78B – 79E)
1. The dialogue continues after the brief, and somewhat humorous, bridge. This section contains a lot of deep philosophy and could be used for contemplating metaphysical issues. A lot is brought up at this point in the dialogue.
2. I feel that behind this discussion we can find the presence of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. Heraclitus lived in the Greek city-state of Ephesus, now in Turkey, in the 6th century B.C. He was at least a century before Plato. The connection to Heraclitus is through the philosopher Cratylus who identified as a Heraclitean and with whom Plato studied briefly. Plato would write a dialogue, called Cratylus.
In Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers the author writes:
“Plato studied philosophy at first in the Academy, (Footnote: The name can refer to the grove sacred to the hero Academus, as it does here, or to the school Plato later founded there.) then in the garden at Colonus . . . , where he read the works of Heraclitus. Later, when he was about to compete for a prize in tragedy, he listened to Socrates in front of the theater of Dionysus, after which he burned his poems, saying, ‘Come hither, Hephaestus: Plato needs you now.’
“From then on, they say, having reached the age of twenty, he became a disciple of Socrates.”
(Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, translated by Pamela Mensch, Oxford University Press, New York, 2018, page 136, ISBN: 9780190862176)
2. I see Heraclitus in the background of this conversation because Heraclitus is the philosopher who depicted the world as in constant flux (‘flux’ being a superlative way of saying ‘change’). The discussion taking place at this point in the dialogue is about dispersion, about what kinds of things are subject to dispersion, or flux, and what kinds of things, if any, are not subject to dispersion/change/flux. This was the focus of the inquiries of Heraclitus.
3. I also see the presence of Heraclitus in the previous discussions about opposites and how opposites interact with each other. This is another focus of the writings of Heraclitus. And finally, in some of the fragments that remain of his work, Heraclitus depicts a cyclic cosmos where elementals transform into each other in endless cycles of becoming and begoning. All of these themes are dealt with in Phaedo.
4. We have only fragments of the book Heraclitus wrote (it seems that he wrote only one book called ‘On Nature’). Presumably Plato would have had access to the whole book. (Scholars disagree as to how much of the book we have in the surviving fragments.)
Even at the time of Plato the teachings of Heraclitus were thought of as ‘obscure’ and ‘dark.’ But they are also the kind of sayings that draw one’s attention and some of them have become very widespread. For example, one of his simplest sayings is ‘panta rhei’; everything flows. Another states that ‘you cannot step twice into the same river for other waters are moving on.’ There are many attractive aphorisms like this.
Heraclitus’s teaching of the fluid nature of the world seems to undermine any basis for truth or enduring realities. This was both disturbing and a stimulus to deeper thought about the nature of the cosmos in which we dwell.
5. A personal aside: as a young man, when I first went to college, I picked up the translation of the fragments of Heraclitus by Philip Wheelwright, which was new at that time. I was fascinated. I carried around the small paperback with me for years, diving into it and grappling with its teachings (I no longer have the copy). This was my introduction to Western philosophy.
6. The influence of Heraclitus continues to have a significant impact. In the 20th century his teachings influenced such philosophers as Bergson and Whitehead. Though Heraclitus never became dominant in Western culture in the way that Plato or Aristotle did, nevertheless his aphoristic insights remain a creative force in Western philosophy and thought.
My own understanding of Heraclitus at this time is that Heraclitus offers us fundamental insights as to the nature of the third hypostasis; the realm of soul. But he does not seem to have entered into the higher hypostases such as the noetic and the One. His insights remain valuable in the sense that they depict aspects of the third hypostasis accurately, such as that it is a realm of constant flux. This is valuable information because people are often misguided as to the nature of the material realm. But we must look elsewhere for understanding higher hypostatic realities.
7. Socrates points out that it is compounded things that are subject to dispersion, while uncompounded things are not subject to dispersion. Compounded things are ‘never the same’ (like the river of Heraclitus), while uncompounded things remain the same; they are unchanging.
Compounded things are like the body. Uncompounded things are like the soul, or the soul is an uncompounded ‘thing.’ Therefore the soul is not subject to change – that is, ultimately, the answer to the question that Cebes raises about the soul’s possible dispersion at death. As I understand it, Socrates is saying that the soul cannot suffer dispersion because it is uncompounded.
8. Socrates also reflects on the situation the soul finds itself in by the soul’s association with the body. Socrates states that when the soul makes an inquiry that is guided by, or stimulated by, the senses then it is ‘dragged’ into the realm where nothing ever remains the same; that is to say, into the material realm.
On the other hand, when the soul remains ‘alone’ with itself (which I take to refer to a turning within during contemplation), “it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal, and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this state of the soul is called "wisdom.”
I find this passage one of the most beautiful in the dialogue, and possibly in the whole Platonic corpus. I say this because it unpacks the meaning of wisdom, as in ‘love of wisdom,’ with elegance and precision. Wisdom means communion with the immortal and the changeless. Communion means having experiential knowledge of the subject; in other words, experiential knowledge of the transcendental.
9. Notice how Socrates points out that in this state the soul ‘rests from its wanderings’. I think this points to the transcendence of rebirth, that Socrates is referring here to union with the Good and the One that is beyond becoming and begoning, beyond samsara, beyond genesis.
10. Although this was not an issue at the time Plato was writing, later Platonists split over the issue of whether the soul remained ‘in communion’ with higher hypostases; some, like Plotinus and Porphyry, argued that the soul did remain in communion, or at least in contact, with the noetic and the One. Others, such as Iamblichus and Proclus argued that the soul was what they referred to as ‘fully descended’ into the material realm and was disconnected from higher hypostases. This passage from Phaedo seems to me to strongly support the view of Platonists like Plotinus; that the soul always remains in communion with higher hypostases.
11. I want to point out that the way in which Socrates proceeds with his argument in this passage is through what Plotinus refers to as ‘comparisons’. Socrates is not using syllogistic, or at least not primarily using syllogistic. Notice how Socrates asks “. . . to which class do you think the soul has greater likeness and kinship.” This is an argument from simile, a type of comparison.
Those who are raised in contemporary types of analytic philosophy will not grant an argument from simile much power, or consider it to be ‘valid’ in a deductive sense. But the Platonic tradition uses arguments by comparisons (which I call ‘metaphorical inference’) in a way that suggests that classical Platonists considered these arguments to be efficacious.
I think that this is derived from their understanding of the relationship between forms and material things. Material things are related to forms by ‘likeness’; that is how the process of emanation and of instantiation proceeds. So when Socrates suggests that Cebes consider a likeness he is pointing to the great unfolding of the One by differentiation into the material realm and that material things retain contact with their forms through likeness. From this perspective, arguments based on simile, metaphor, and allegory not only make sense, but they are also a necessary tool for comprehending the metaphysical source of the ever changing, always in flux, material things.
12. Again, this is a sublime passage. A passage like this is worth reading and rereading, a guide to the immortal, to the Good and the One.
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