Notes and Comments on Phaedo -- 32

10 September 2023

Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 32

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

“’After this, then,’ said he (Socrates), ‘since I had given up investigating realities, I decided that I must be careful not to suffer the misfortune which happens to people who look at the sun and watch it during an eclipse.  For some of them ruin their eyes unless they look at its image in water or something of the sort.  I thought of that danger, and I was afraid my soul would be blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and tried to grasp them with any of my senses.  So I thought I must have recourse to conceptions and examine in them the truth of realities.  Now perhaps my metaphor is not quite accurate; for I do not grant in the least that he who studies realities by means of conceptions is looking at them in images any more than he who studies them in the facts of daily life.  However, that is the way I began.  I assume in each case some principle which I consider strongest, and whatever seems to me to agree with this, whether relating to cause or to anything else, I regard as true, and whatever disagrees with it, as untrue.  But I want to tell you more clearly what I mean; for I think you do not understand now.’

“’Not very well, certainly,’ said Cebes.

“’Well,’ said Socrates, ‘this is what I mean.  It is nothing new, but the same thing I have always been saying, both in our previous conversation and elsewhere.  I am going to try to explain to you the nature of that cause which I have been studying, and I will revert to those familiar subjects of ours as my point of departure and assume that there are such things as absolute beauty and good and greatness and the like.  If you grant this and agree that these exist, I believe I shall explain cause to you and shall prove that the soul is immortal.’

“’You may assume,’ said Cebes, ‘that I grant it, and go on.’

"'Then,' said he, ‘see if you agree with me in the next step.  I think that if anything is beautiful besides absolute beauty it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes of absolute beauty; and this applies to everything.  Do you assent to this view of cause?’

“’I do,’ said he.

“Now I do not yet, understand,’ he went on, ‘nor can I perceive those other ingenious causes.  If anyone tells me that what makes a thing beautiful is its lovely colour, or its shape or anything else of the sort, I let all that go, for all those things confuse me, and I hold simply and plainly and perhaps foolishly to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful but the presence or communion (call it which you please) of absolute beauty, however it may have been gained; about the way in which it happens, I make no positive statement as yet, but I do insist that beautiful things are made beautiful by beauty.  For I think this is the safest answer I can give to myself or to others, and if I cleave fast to this, I think I shall never be overthrown, and I believe it is safe for me or anyone else to give this answer, that beautiful things are beautiful through beauty.  Do you agree?’

“’I do.’”

1.  In this passage Socrates tells us about a method he used for understanding things, both sensory, material, things and conceptions; Socrates points out that both the experiences of the senses and the experience of conceptions are ‘images.’  Interestingly, this accords with some aspects of Buddhist psychology in which six domains of experience are references: eye, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind (small ‘m’ mind).  In Western psychology the tendency is to think of mind, and mental experience, as distinct from sensory experience.  This may have been the view of Anaxagoras who we talked about earlier, because Anaxagoras seemed to think of the mind as the organizer of sensory experience.

But Socrates places the two on a more equal footing by referring to both as ‘images.’  In Buddhist psychology the small-m mind realm perceives mental objects such as ideas, conceptions, feelings, emotions, hopes, fears, etc., in the same way that the eye perceives visual things, in the same way that the ear perceives sonic things, and so forth.  For this reason, in Buddhism, mental objects and sensory objects have the same ontological status.

In a Platonic context, Socrates considers the two the ‘same’ in that both of them are ‘images’, meaning that both sensory objects and mental objects are emanations of higher, noetic, realities and are dependent upon those realities.  This is the overall causal context and experience of Socrates and forms the nourishing ground of his understanding.

2.  Socrates states that his method is ‘nothing new.’  I think that implies that Socrates is not the inventor or creator of the approach he is outlining for Cebes.  This also implies that Socrates learned about this approach, but he does not name the specific teacher, which leaves us wondering who might have transmitted to Socrates this Way of understanding?  There is no lack of candidates; it could be Diotima (see Symposium), the Pythagorean tradition as a whole (this is supported by the significant number of Pythagoreans present at the passing of Socrates), Orphism is another possible source, and there are other mystery traditions that may have presented this method.  The method Socrates refers to may have been an ancient, even archaic, approach that was part of a general, shared, understanding and therefore did not belong to a specific tradition, which might explain why Socrates does not associate this method with any specific person or philosophical school.

3.  Socrates starts by ‘assuming a principle’ and then using that principle to winnow what is true and false; that which is in agreement with the principle is true and that which is not in agreement is false.  At this point I think what is helpful to absorb is that Socrates is not starting with empirical observation and then deducing the truth.  Rather he is starting with a principle and then applying that principle to statements about material existence.  That’s the contrast.  It is a different way, almost a complete inversion, of what is recommended today for pursuing understanding.

It might be helpful to compare this approach to other activities as helpful analogies.  For example, a composer, when writing a song, decides at the start if he is going to use the major or minor scale for the song.  And then uses that decision as a principle where by the rest of the song is shaped.  Similarly, the composer will choose a time signature, like 4-4 or 6-8, and then this choice functions as a principle that shapes the rest of the song.  I know there are differences here, but in some ways I see the principle that Socrates is pointing to as a creative act, that is to say a creative act from the noetic sphere into the third hypostasis in which we dwell.

4.  Socrates explicitly states his view of causation is grounded in the understanding that there is such as things as ‘absolute beauty and good and greatness and the like.’  The importance of absolute beauty (I understand this to mean noetic beauty) for the Platonic tradition cannot be overstated.  It is a central focus in Symposium and Phaedrus.  And there are two Enneads, I.6 On Beauty, and V.8 On the Intelligible (Noetic) Beauty where Plotinus unpacks the Platonic understanding of Beauty at different hypostatic levels.  I don’t think it is an accident that the first absolute that Socrates identifies is that of beauty; my intuitive inference is that it was through beauty that the tradition that passed on this teaching most often taught its understanding and passed it on.

5.  Socrates continues that nothing else makes a thing beautiful other than absolute beauty, beauty as such, noetic Beauty.  Further, Socrates states that if someone tells him that something is beautiful because of the arrangement of its parts, that he just lets all of that go since it is beside the point.

The experience of beauty works very well in this context (that of teaching people about the existence of the noetic realities because human beings experience beauty in many different situations; beauty can be found in visual experiences, sonic experiences, beauty can be found in virtuous conduct (as Plotinus points out), beauty can be found in numbers and their relationships, and so forth.  From this wide range of experience it can then be pointed out that what Beauty means is beyond any particular sensory domain for if beauty were only a visual experience, it could not be found in sonic experience.  And if beauty were only an olfactory experience (such as incense) it could not be found in a virtue, as in a virtuous person, and so forth.  Plotinus instructs people who understand this to lift their awareness up to the source of all these instantiations of beauty and when they do so they enter the domain of Beauty as such which is the source of all material distinguishable experiences of the beautiful.  “Beautiful things are made beautiful through beauty.”

6.  It is interesting that Socrates refrains from making positive statements about how this all works, meaning, I think, how absolute Beauty is instantiated in particulars.  I read this as Socrates not wanting to get sidetracked at this point into the complexities of how emanation proceeds, rather than Socrates saying that he lacks such knowledge.  The specifics of how emanation works, the structure of higher hypostases, and the relationship between hypostases, is complex and not easy to access or understand, especially at first hearing.  If Socrates is introducing to his students this way of looking at things, it makes sense that he would refrain from spending his very limited time on such details.  Instead, Socrates uses broad strokes to get the main idea across.

7.  “For I think this is the safest answer I can give to myself or to others, and if I cleave to this, I think I shall never be overthrown . . . “ 

Notice how there is no hesitancy at this point.  His confidence is secure.  This kind of confidence grows out of experience; in this case the experience of noetic realities such as Beauty and Number.  And this security is what allows Socrates to be content with his fate as he prepares himself for his final ascent to the divine noetic domain.