Sorglose Nacht

Overview

Socrates, on his deathbed, lays down four arguments for the immortality of the soul to his group of disciples and friends.

The Setup

Phaedo recounts the story of Socrates’ death. Socrates’ death took place so long after his trial because of an Athenian holy season, in which the city was not allowed to be “polluted by executions.” Many friends were present at Socrates’ deathbed, but Plato, apparently, was ill.

1. RHAPSODIZING

   1. The discussion starts with Socrates casually remarking on light things - the apparent attachment of pleasure to pain and why he’s suddenly taken to writing verse since he’s been in jail (he was told to in a dream!).
   2. Socrates then sends an envoy to the philosopher Evenus: Come along! Cebes, befuddled, asks Socrates why “a man ought not to take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow the dying”. Socrates claims that
      1. Our lives are the possessions of the Gods, and therefore we have no right to take them ourselves.
      2. However, a philosopher should not grieve at his death, as the rewards of the afterlife certainly make the experience of death a “far better thing for the good than for the evil.” He goes on to explain (c):
   3. Death is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body. Now, the philosopher should care not for the pleasures of the body, and hence, the wise man desires nothing more than to enact this very separation of the soul from the body.
      1. The senses deceive us when it comes to the quest for knowledge. The body is a hindrance, not a help.
      2. The philosopher gets the work of knowledge done best with the mind alone; the soul can attain truth best as revealed to her in thought.
      3. Further, our eyes cannot behold absolute (justice|truth|beauty|etc.) Again, our bodies hinder our souls’ progress toward truth. Thus, “either [absolute] knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.”
      4. Hence, he who repines at death is hardly a philosopher. For at the end, all the vagaries of courage and temperance in the face of death (especially for the philosopher!) should be subsumed by the promises of wisdom in the afterlife.
   4. Cebes, thus, poses the question: “many arguments are required in order to prove that when the man is dead the soul yet exists, and has any force of intelligence.” Socrates is ready to respond.

2. THE FIRST ARGUMENT (THE CYCLICAL ARGUMENT)

   1. Socrates starts with an appeal to a Greek belief in reincarnation. However, in the same breath, he admits that there is no verification of this. So, he suggests starting with a broader appeal. Aren’t all opposites generated reciprocally? (aka. no good without evil).
      1. And this generation is actually “a passing from one to the other” - aka. heating and cooling, division and composition - that is, any opposites require an intermediate process.
   2. So, by analogy to sleep:waking, we are to understand death:life. The process of generation of sleep is falling asleep, and of waking is waking up.
   3. If this is true, by inference (and extension), we can believe in the birth of the dead to the world of the living. And hence the souls of the dead must continue to exist.

3. THE SECOND ARGUMENT (THE RECOLLECTIVE ARGUMENT)

   1. Cebes now offers that Socrates’ favorite doctrine of recollection seems to presuppose a previous time in which we learned what we can come to recollect. Cebes reminds us of the proof of this doctrine (from the Meno) of Meno’s slave remembering geometry.
   2. Socrates offers a second proof of this argument:
      1. If the image of one thing can bring to mind another (your lover’s garment, i.e.), and thus if recollection can be triggered either by things like or unlike.
      2. Extrapolating from here, if seeing particular pieces of wood and stone, and in identifying them as in some way equal, we are recollecting absolute equality, which we have never seen.
      3. Further, if things can only be understood sensually, we must have known about things like absolute equality before we were born, because we certainly haven’t seen/touched/smelled it in this lifetime. This implies absolutely that all knowledge is recollection.
      4. And the ability to access this knowledge implies an uninterrupted medium in which it was stored. This leads to only two possible conclusions. Either we had this knowledge since birth, and continued to know it throughout life, or else we received it after birth, and then lost it immediately, which doesn’t make any sense.

4. THE THIRD ARGUMENT (THE AFFINITY ARGUMENT)

   1. Now, everyone is sufficiently convinced that we’re born from the dead, but apparently not that when we die our souls don’t blow away in the wind and scatter. Socrates suggests here that it might be instructive to know something about the nature of the soul.
   2. Namely, Socrates wants to show that the soul is “uncompounded” and hence “indissoluble.”
      1. The aforementioned essences (Forms), it is agreed, must always be the same (unchanging). And the particulars that partake of Form F are contrawise always changing. Further, you can see and touch the particulars but not F.
      2. So, let’s assume that there are two sorts of existences, the seen and the unseen; these correspond to the changing and the unchanging.
      3. Now, if we are two parts, body and soul, and the body has a clear affinity to the changing/visible realm, meanwhile the soul is obviously unseen. The soul, we have argued, trapped by the body, only finds her home realm of the unchanging in wisdom. Hence, it seems that the soul has an affinity with the unchanging.
      4. Nature orders the soul to rule over the body, a nice analogy to the divine ruling over the mortal. Now, if all this is true, it must be admitted that the soul is “almost or altogether indissoluble.”
   3. This discussion now degrades into some crazy speculation about what kinds of animals the souls of the wicked will be reincarnated as. (Proportional justice: Drunkards as asses and pigs, etc.) Additionally, only philosophers are allowed to attain nirvana, with the Gods, and not be passed back into a new body.
   4. Cebes and Simmias both have some concerns with this line of argument, but are reticent to put them to Socrates. Socrates assures them that it’s cool. Simmias goes first. He poses the possibility that soul:body may be more like harmony:lyre. It seems to Simmias that if somebody cuts the lyre’s strings, it pretty much kills the harmony at the same time.
   5. Cebes then poses the problem that soul:body may be something like weaver:coat: That is, the soul may weave many bodies, and outlast them, but still it will die. He needs Socrates to prove that the soul is absolutely immortal to have any confidence.

5. THE FOURTH ARGUMENT: THE ARGUMENT FROM THE FORMS

   1. Socrates begins with Simmias: He takes umbrage starting with the idea that harmony is a compound. If “the soul is a harmony which is made out of strings set in the frame of the body,” it cannot be prior to the elements that compose it. But, granting (3) above, the soul must be prior to the body. Thus the analogy is false (harmony is made last and vanishes first).
      1. Additionally, harmony is absolute (not measured by degrees). So, if the analogy were true, souls would all be equally good (harmonious), as opposed to some being good, some being bad, etc.
      2. Finally, if the soul were a harmony generated by the physical, it wouldn’t caution us against the lusts of the bodily.
   2. So much for Simmias and Harmonia. Now on to Cebes and Cadmus. Socrates will argue from generation and decay. He will premise his argument on the existence of absolute beauty, goodness, etc. The Forms. He first attempts to set up his premises:
      1. He introduces the argument of Causality: Things that are F (other than the F) are F by virtue of partaking of the F. [Clearly stated, 100]
      2. He introduces the argument of Separation: The F is itself by itself, at least in the sense of being separate from, and hence not identical with, the things that partake of it. [end of 102]
      3. He introduces Impurity-S: Sensible things are impure inasmuch as they can (and, in fact, often do) have contrary properties. (Simmias is both tall and short.) This is also the corrolary to:
      4. Purity-F: Forms cannot have contrary properties. [74] (Whereas sensible things that are equal are also unequal, the equal is not unequal, and hence the equal is not identical to any equal sensible thing.)
      5. Also, Self-Predication: For any property F, the F is F. [100, 102] (Largeness)
   3. So, if all this is true, and things can reject a form completely, but not oppose it as such (3 rejects oddness), then G’s simple participation in F doesn’t necessarily mean that F is that whose inherence is essential to the being of G. So, since the soul brings life, as established above, it must participate in the Form of Life. And by Purity-F, this means that the Soul cannot participate in death. Now, the opposite of death is immortality, and if the soul does not admit death, then the soul is immortal.
      1. “The preceding argument shows that the soul will not admit of death…any more than three or the odd number will admit of the even, or fire…of the cold.”

6. CRAZY UNCLE SOCRATES’ GEOGRAPHY LESSONS

   1. Everyone is pretty happy with that, so now Socrates goes off on a wistful rant about the nature of heaven and earth. This includes:
      1. The earth is a round body in the center of the heavens.
      2. The earth is actually at the bottom of a sea of aether (the heavens), and we are deceived that we dwell atop the earth. If we could fly we could see the true earth/heaven.
      3. Rivers circle this true earth, going underground under the deserts, and this is purgatory.
   2. It is basically a charming overture to purity. After which, he goes to take a bath. Crito is sad. Socrates drinks the poison with good cheer. Everyone is sad.

Overview

Meno wants to know how virtue is learned (by teaching, practice).

Context

1. Platonic: The Meno is an early-Middle Platonic dialogue. It’s question, how - if at all - virtue is learned, is also addressed in Protagoras, with opposite results.

2. Contemporary: The Meno is also an important historical precedent with regard to the question of the Value of Knowledge. After all, if a true belief about the correct way to Larissa is surely of just as much practical use as knowledge of the way to Larissa — both will get us to our destination (7, below) — why do we find it so much more valuable?

   Plato’s thought seems to be that knowledge, unlike mere true belief, gives one a confidence that is not easily lost, and it is this property that accounts for the distinctive value of knowledge over mere true belief.

Outline

1. Socrates suggests that we’d have to know what virtue is before we know how it can be learned. He asks Meno to explain to him what he thinks virtue is.
   1. Meno says:
      1. A man’s virtue is his duty to the state, to help his friends and himself, and harm his enemies.
      2. A woman’s virtue is her duty to the house, and to obey her husband.
      3. Virtues are limitless, and each is relative to who we are (”actions and ages”).
   2. Socrates notes that this is no kind of definition of what “virtue” is. It is just a list of virtues. (Bees, health, strength analogies) He prods Meno tell him “a common nature” which makes virtues virtues.
   3. Meno feels that virtue is a special case.
2. Socrates lures Meno in with a plausible-sounding common denominator: “…can either house or state or anything be well ordered without temperance and without justice?”
   1. Forced into providing one definition, Meno suggests that, “virtue is the power of governing mankind.”
   2. Socrates: “Is virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno? Can the child govern his father, or the slave his master; and would he who governed be any longer a slave?”
   3. Socrates then suggests that perhaps “the power of governing justly” is the right track.
   4. Meno, ever thick, goes back to reciting virtues: Justice, temperance, magnanimity, which Socrates compares to (particular) shapes and colors: roundness, whiteness.
   5. Now, Socrates agrees to define his analogy (figure), if Meno will define virtue. He suggests that figure is “the limit of solid.”
   6. Meno now stalls; he demands Socrates define color before he (Meno) defines virtue.
      1. Socrates defines color as “colour is an effluence of form, commensurate with sight, and palpable to sense.” This is derivative from Gorgias and Empedocles, it is “orthodox”.
      2. Socrates finds it worse than his definition of a figure; Meno, inured to orthodox thinking, finds the opposite. (*Clarifying why may be instructive.)
3. Mutatis mutandis, Meno offers a quote from “the poet”, “Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.”
   1. Socrates notes that this implies that some men desire good, and some desire evil. He asks Meno whether all men don’t desire good. Meno replies in the negative.
   2. Meno admits that some men mistakenly desire evil, thinking it is good.
   3. Meno must also admit that those who desire evil unmistakenly seem to be desiring to be miserable and ill-fated. (Evils being “hurtful to the possessor of them”). He must admit it seems unlikely that anyone would desire to be miserable and ill-fated.
   4. Socrates now notes that, the desire of good being common to all, Meno’s definition of virtue is reduced to the power of attaining good.
   5. Socrates now seems to equivocate between “the good” and “goods”. He asks Meno if the power of acquisition of goods by unjust means is virtuous, to which Meno must reply again in the negative.
   6. Socrates can now say that if Meno wants to keep his definition of virtue, he’s going to require some additional criteria: justice, temperance, etc. And with that, we’re back where we started.
   7. Actually, though, Socrates takes the tack that since we’ve already understood these to be parts of virtue (figures, e.g.): “can any one who does not know virtue know a part of virtue?” (Can we understand the universal simply by means of appeal to the particulars?) To which again Meno must reply no.
   8. Meno is now exhausted, and Socrates is ready to begin his positive investigation. Before that though, Meno introduces a question to Socrates, which we call:
4. Meno’s Paradox: “how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?”
   1. Socrates then notes that Meno is occluding all possibility of enquiry, as if one knows something, one has no need to enquire, and if one doesn’t know something, one can’t know the subject for enquiry. Meno, needled to the point of witlessness by Socrates, will take this. But of course, Socrates won’t let him.
   2. Socrates appeals to those who speak wisely of divine matters, and further of an immortal soul in which all knowledge is already immanent, if nascent - enquiry and learning then, for Socrates, are matters of recollection.
   3. Meno isn’t buying it, and asks Socrates to prove it. Socrates calls over one of Meno’s (unlearned) attendants, and goes over some geometry, prodding the boy to do some deductions and teaching him terminology, during which he claims the boy is remembering pre-learned geometry, and not learning it. “Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions?”
      
      This is the diagram Socrates draws and uses to get the boy to remember his geometrical theorems.
   4. Now, Socrates implicitly compares the intellectual enrichment the boy just underwent at Socrates’ puzzling him to Meno’s own, and presents his apology for the Socratic method:
      

      …that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;- that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.

5. Agreed to sally forth and enquire into the nature of virtue, Meno once again sets forth his initial question, and this time, Socrates reticently concedes to discuss it without knowing first the essence of virtue.
   1. Socrates hypothesizes here that knowledge alone is taught, so only if virture is knowledge will virtue be taught.
   2. The minor premise of Socrates’ syllogism here is that virtue is good. To which Meno agrees. This leads Socrates to the conclusion that “if knowledge embraces all good,” then virtue must be knowledge.
   3. Then by a piece of rather dubious argumentation, Socrates suggests a second syllogism: p1) that virtue makes us good, p2) that all good things are profitable, so c) virtue is profitable.
   4. Socrates notes that many of the things we think of as being profitable (health, strength, beauty and wealth) may also sometimes lead us to harm. Further the “goods of the soul” (temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension, memory, magnanimity, etc.) can equally be both profitable and hurtful - depending on whether they are practiced under the guidance of wisdom or folly.
   5. “If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is admitted to be profitable, it must be wisdom or prudence” (e.g. that thing that tempers the goods of the soul). “And thus we arrive at the conclusion that virtue is either wholly or partly wisdom”.
   6. Unfortunately for Meno, Socrates now suggests that a) the good are made good by instruction, and b) if “virtue is knowledge, there can be no doubt that virtue is taught”, and c) that to be taught something needs teachers. Socrates’ experience doesn’t suggest that these teachers exist.
6. At which point, Socrates brings ANYTUS (whose father is a paragon of Greek virtue) into the conversation.
   1. Socrates asks Anytus whether it makes sense to send someone looking to learn a skill to one who professed to teach it (an apprenticeship). Anytus agrees that it does.
   2. Socrates now then reminds us that those who profess to teach virtue are called the Sophists. Anytus recoils: “By Heracles, Socrates, forbear!”
   3. Socrates here plants the idea that “Of all the people who profess that they know how to do men good, do you mean to say that these are the only ones who not only do them no good, but positively corrupt those who are entrusted to them, and in return for this disservice have the face to demand money?”
   4. Now Socrates and Anytus engage in a coversation about THEMISTOCLES, a man they agree was a virtuous man. They end up agreeing (in that Socratic way) that his son was not quite the man his father was, despite his apparent capacity. Other examples are cited. Particular note is made that while these good men teach their sons things like music, gymnastics and horseback riding, they don’t seem to be able to teach them virtue.
   5. Socrates concludes thus that virtue cannot be taught. But, paradoxically, virtuous men appear to have knowledge of right and good action. At any rate, they must /perform/ right and good action, definitionally.
7. Socrates suggests that the answer to this problem is that “true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge.” (Example of the guides to Larissa). Further, he suggests that knowledge is just right opinion, but bound through recollection (anamnesis) - that is, giving an account of its truth. It is in this way that knowledge attains its “stabilizing” character (contra true belief).
   1. They now just agree (with no argument) that right opinion is not given by nature (is not innate).
   2. Now, all his arguments established, Socrates delivers his opinion:
      1. Virtue is not knowledge since it can’t be taught.
      2. Since it’s not knowledge, it must stem from right opinion.
      3. Right opinion doesn’t come from nature.
      4. Thus, virtue comes neither from nature nor is it acquired, rather, it seems to be “divined” - that is, given by God to the virtuous.