Notes and Comments on Phaedo -- 31

8 August 2023

Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 31

Continuing with my series on Phaedo, I am using the Harold North Fowler translation published by the Loeb Classical Library:

“’Then one day I heard a man reading from a book, as he said, by Anaxagoras, that it is the mind that arranges and causes all things.  I was pleased with this theory of cause, and it seemed to me to be somehow right and that the mind should be the cause of all things, and I thought, “If this is so, the mind in arranging things arranges everything and establishes each thing as it is best for it to be.  So if anyone wishes to find the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of a particular thing, he must find out what sort of existence, or passive state of any kind, or activity is best for it.  And therefore in respect to that particular thing, and other things too, a man need examine nothing but what is best and most excellent; for then he will necessarily know also what is inferior, since the science of both is the same.”  As I considered these things I was delighted to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of things quite to my mind, and I thought he would tell me whether the earth is flat or round, and when he had told me that, would go on to explain the cause and the necessity of it, and would tell me the nature of the best and why it is best for the earth to be as it is; and if he said the earth was in the centre, he would proceed to show that it is best for it to be in the centre; and I had made up my mind that if he made those things clear to me, I would no longer yearn for any other kind of cause.  And I had determined that I would find out in the same way about the sun and the moon and the other stars, their relative speed, their revolutions, and their other changes, and why the active or passive condition of each of them is for the best.  For I never imagined that, when he said they were ordered by intelligence, he would introduce any other cause for these things than that it is best for them to be as they are.  So I thought when he assigned the cause of each thing and of all things in common he would go on and explain what is best for each and what is good for all in common.  I prized my hopes very highly, and I seized the books very eagerly and read them as fast as I could, that I might know as fast as I could about the best and the worst.

“’My glorious hope, my friend, was quickly snatched away from me.  As I went on with my reading I saw that the man made no use of intelligence, and did not assign any real causes for the ordering of things, but mentioned as causes air and ether and water and many other absurdities.  And it seemed to me it was very much as if one should say that Socrates does with intelligence whatever he does, and then, in trying to give the causes of the particular thing I do, should say first that I am now sitting here because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints which divide them and the sinews can be contracted and relaxed and, with the flesh and the skin which contains them all, are laid about the bones; and so, as the bones are hung loose in their ligaments, the sinews, by relaxing and contracting, make me able to bend my limbs now, and that is the cause of my sitting here with my legs bent.  Or as if in the same way he should give voice and air and hearing and countless other things of the sort as causes for our talking with each other, and should fail to mention the real causes, which are, that the Athenians decided that it was best to condemn me, and therefore I have decided that it was best for me to sit here and that it is right for me to stay and undergo whatever penalty they order.  For, by the Dog, I fancy these bones and sinews of mine would have been in Megara or Boeotia long ago, carried thither by an opinion of what was best, if I did not think it was better and nobler to endure any penalty the city may inflict rather than to escape and run away.  But it is most absurd to call things of that sort causes.  If anyone were to say that I could not have done what I thought proper if I had not bones and sinews and other things that I have, he would be right.  But to say that those things are the cause of my doing what I do, and that I act with intelligence but not from the choice of what is best, would an extremely careless way of talking.  Whoever talks in that way is unable to make a distinction and to see that in reality a cause is one thing, and the thing without which the cause could never be a cause is quite another thing.  And so it seems to me that most people, when they give the name of cause to the latter, are groping in the dark, as it were, and are giving it a name that does not belong to it.  And so one man makes the earth stay below the heavens by putting a vortex about it, and another regards the earth as a flat trough supported on a foundation of air; but they do not look for the power which causes things to be now placed as it is best for them to be placed, nor do they think it has any divine force, but they think they can find a new Atlas more powerful and more immortal and more all-embracing than this, and in truth they give no thought to the good, which must embrace and hold together all things.  Now I would gladly be the pupil of anyone who would teach me the nature of such a cause; but since that was denied me and I was not able to discover it myself or to learn of it from anyone else, do you wish me Cebes,’ said he, ‘to give you an account of the way in which I have conducted my second voyage in quests of the causes?’

“’I wish it with all my heart,’ he replied.”

(Ibid, Fowler, pages 334-343, 97C-99D)

1.  This section is largely about the influence that Anaxagoras had on Socrates when he was a young man, and how Socrates overcame that influence.  Anaxagoras lived from about 500 BCE to 428 BCE.  Socrates lived from 470 BCE to 399 BCE; this means that Anaxagoras was an older contemporary of Socrates. 

Anaxagoras was from the city of Clazomenae which was a Greek city in Southern Italy.  He studied philosophy in Athens around 456 BCE (according to Diogenes Laertius).  Anaxagoras was a successful teacher and attracted students.  His books appear to have been widely read and among their readership was Socrates.  Unfortunately, only a small number of fragments remain from these books so that it is difficult to gain clarity as to what the teachings of Anaxagoras were.

In Diogenes Laertius there is a quote from the ‘beginning’ of his treatise, “All things were together; then mind came and set them in order.”  This accords with how Socrates described the teachings of Anaxagoras and how Anaxagoras viewed mind.  It does not seem to be the case that Anaxagoras was an early example of Idealism, rather when Anaxagoras refers to ‘mind’ he is referring to the way mind sets things in order, how the mind brings order to observation.  It does not seem to be the case that Anaxagoras thought of mind as having a transcendental dimension.

If this is correct, and it seems to be what Socrates is saying about Anaxagoras, then Anaxagoras would be an early example of a naturalist, and perhaps a materialist as well (though that is more difficult to infer).  For example he said that the sun is a mass of burning iron, that animals were produced from moisture, heat, and earth; things like that.  This implies that Anaxagoras view of causation was strictly limited to material observation. 

But there is another dimension of the life of Anaxagoras that is relevant to our reading of Phaedo.  And that is that Anaxagoras was indicted at Athens, charged with impiety which was a capital offense similar to, perhaps identical with, charges brought against Socrates.  Anaxagoras was put in prison, but was later released, perhaps because he had friends in high places.  Some accounts say he left Athens and died at Lampsacus.  Other accounts suggest that Anaxagoras took his own life due, perhaps, to the humiliation he had suffered and the fact that two of his sons had passed away while he was in prison.  I don’t see any way of determining which account might be true.  (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, translated by Pamela Mensch, edited by James Miller, Oxford University Press, 2018, pages 63-69, ISBN: 9780190862176)

This earlier example of a philosopher clashing with Athenian law is not explicitly spoken of in Phaedo.  But everyone present would have known about it, since it happened less than 30 years before.  The young students of Socrates were likely not alive at that time, but it is the kind of story that they would have heard of.

This also tells us how strongly Athenian culture demanded allegiance to their civic religion.  Yet, paradoxically, at the same time Athens was the place where challenges to civic religion were taking place. 

2.  The critique by Socrates of the philosophy of Anaxagoras is that it lacks any understanding of non-material causation.  Socrates uses the example of how he is now talking to his students in prison and that Anaxagoras would say that the cause of that is the air carrying the sounds made by their vocal cords.  But this is beside the point; the real reason they are all gathered is that decision by the Athenians based on what the Athenians judged was best.  But this kind of judgment is an abstraction, it is not reducible to material factors, nor is it illuminated by a materialistic analysis.

3.  Socrates sums up his critique by pointing out that material explanations of causation give no thought to the good, ‘which must embrace and hold all things together.’  Here Socrates is referring to the Good and the One, that is to that which is pure unity.  From a Platonic perspective, the reason there are things, and not nothing, is that all things participate in the Unity of the One and the Good.  This is the ultimate cause of the cosmos in which we dwell and the World Soul which orders all things in material existence.  This way of thinking is absent from Anaxagoras. 

It is interesting to speculate as to how much Socrates had studied these kinds of teachings as a young man and how he was able to apply what he had learned in his critique of Anaxagoras.  But that would only be speculation.  What Socrates is doing is instructing his followers that causation has its origin in a transcendental source and that it is this transcendental source which makes the cosmos, and the noetic, and the fully transcendental, comprehensible.