The Last Days of Socrates

Cebes asks for reassurance and proof that the soul does not disintegrate as it leaves the body, as many fear. Socrates argues that everything comes to be from its opposite. A big thing comes from a small one, quicker from slower, stronger from weaker, and so on (and vice versa). Since death is the opposite of life, then one must come from the other. Thus, Socrates concludes, human souls must be in Hades because death comes from life, and life comes from death.

Cebes connects Socrates’s argument of cyclicality to another of his teachings, that learning is “actually recollecting,” a process that is only possible if a soul existed prior to being contained in a body (137). Simmias asks for proof. Using a series of examples, Socrates points out that we recall things by seeing people or objects associated with them. For example, someone might see Cebes and remember Simmias or see a lyre and remember the boy who played it. Thus, things that are like and unlike can both prompt recollection. In the case of equal things, Socrates proposes that humans must be born with some received knowledge of the original equal thing—the beautiful, good, pious, everything that is (141). What is called learning, then, is recollecting the knowledge that one was born with. If humans are recollecting such knowledge, then that knowledge must exist as a thing to be known. Thus, the soul must exist prior to being born in a body, to know the things that are.

Socrates next addresses the fear that the soul scatters into pieces when it is separated from the body at death. Using examples, Socrates differentiates between the seen (things that are changeable and perceivable with the body’s senses) and the unseen (things that are unchanging and perceivable only “with the mind’s reasoning”) (146). The soul is the unseen part of the human, thus it is the part that does not change, while the body is the seeable and changeable part of the human.

In death, then, the body will change, but the soul remains immortal, eternally unchanged. From this follows that the soul does not disintegrate when separated from the body, but the body disintegrates when separated from the soul. The soul that has been purified through philosophy, practicing separation from the desires and needs of the body, in death departs from that body to be with its like, the “divine, deathless and wise” (149).

Though they are convinced of Socrates’s conclusion that the soul preexists the body, Simmias and Cebes continue to be troubled about its survival after death. Using the lyre as an analogy, Simmias notes that when it is smashed or its strings cut, its attunement, though unseeable and divine, will cease to exist, wondering if the same could be true of the soul. Cebes’s analogy is of a weaver and his cloak, wondering if bodies could eventually wear out a soul, as bodies can wear out a cloak, until, like the cloak, it finally disintegrates. In this case, death ought to be faced with fear that this might be the time the soul is finally worn out.

Phaedo interrupts his recollections to discuss Simmias and Cebes’s refutations with Echecrates, who is eager to hear how Socrates replied. Phaedo recalls how Socrates compared himself and Phaedo to Heracles and Iolaus, righting together against two opponents. First, Socrates counsels, they must guard their minds against misology, hating arguments as misanthropists hate people, but the fault may be not with arguments and people but a person’s inability to perceive what is sound about them. Thus, Socrates encourages his companions to set as their goal seeking truth, above all else.

Attunement cannot be “in a different state” from the elements that comprise it and can only follow from, not direct, its composite elements, and thus cannot act contrary to those elements. Since none of these apply to the soul, and indeed is the opposite of them, then the attunement can function neither as analogy nor objection, according to their agreed upon definition of it.

Socrates next tackles Cebes’s concern that the soul may not be immortal, even if it can outlast the body. He begins by discussing his earlier interest in natural sciences and Anaxagoras, but finding flaws in both, he embarked on his “second sailing” (172). This was to set his inquiries against his own “reasoned accounts” that “beautiful things” are so “by virtue of the beautiful” (172, italics in original). The same applies to things that are big, small, even, uneven, etc.

From these follow Socrates’s fourth argument for the soul’s immortality. Using the examples from above, he asserts that opposites cannot partake of their opposite’s nature. If something small becomes big, then it no longer participates in being small. Opposites must either submit or flee from each other. If fire encroaches on snow, cold will either submit or flee. Since soul is the entity that brings life to the body, it cannot become its opposite. It is not destructible. It must either submit, in which case in ceases to be soul, or flee, in which case it continues to exist beyond the mortal body. Therefore, he concludes, the soul is indestructible. When Socrates is accused of contradicting his earlier statement that opposites come from each other, he points out that he was previously referring to how opposites come into existence whereas here he was speaking of the nature of each opposite once it exists.

Since the soul is immortal, Socrates reasons, then humans must concern themselves with what will happen to them in the afterlife. He describes the journey of the soul traveling to the underworld, the nature of the cosmos, and the soul’s punishments and rewards. Those who have spent their lives “purifying themselves sufficiently by means of philosophy” will be blessed in the afterlife. Whether his story is factually accurate is not as important to Socrates as that it is believable and possible and, thus, people spend their time on earth increasing their “share of goodness and wisdom” (192).

After concluding, an enslaved person arrives to announce that it is time for Socrates to drink the hemlock. Crito wishes him to delay, but to do so would be to violate all that he has argued. He bathes himself to save the women the job of cleaning his corpse, meets with his children and women from his household, and drank the poison in one drink. His companions weep, and he scolds them. His final words are to order an offering to Asclepius.

Phaedo concludes the story, telling Echecrates that Socrates was the best, wisest, and most just man of his generation.