Phaedo Study Questions

1. How does Socrates argue that philosophy is a preparation for death?  What kind of light does this argument shed on his understanding of what the soul is?

Thesis: Simply put, Socrates believes that philosophy is preparation for death and the afterlife because philosophy aims to purify the soul from the body. The soul is immaterial and lasts, along with its desires, beyond death, and so we desire in this life remains as what we will desire in the next life. So let’s first understand why Socrates considers philosophy preparation for death and then look at what this claim tells us about nature of the soul for Socrates.  

So philosophy is preparation for death. This is because death is the separation of the soul from the body. But philosophy is the practice of separating the soul from the body, so philosophy aims at death. You are probably now asking yourself, how, then, does philosophy aim at separating the soul from the body? Well, philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge, and the object of knowledge is the forms which are immaterial and eternal, and not the body. When we know the world around us, Plato thinks that our immaterial soul is unified with those forms, and the body, through our various desires and distractions, impedes that knowing. It pulls us down and away from the forms. But the true philosopher, or lover of the forms, is able to overcome these distractions and become one with the forms despite the body. He aims to be fully immaterial, because what is impure and material cannot attain what is pure: as long as we have a body we cannot be perfect. But this answer presumes that the soul itself is a certain kind of form that is eternal. But what if the soul dies along with the body? This raises the question, “What is the nature of the soul?”

The rest of the dialogue is about answering whether the soul is immortal, since if the soul were not, then the philosopher would be practicing for nothing. But at this point, we know that Socrates thinks it is immaterial. But the soul, even as immaterial, values certain things. The soul can get in a habit of choosing what is also immaterial and lasting – the forms – or it can choose what is below that – the pleasures of the body and those things that are not eternal. Socrates believes that what we habitually choose in this life affects what we will desire in the next life, and for eternity: a sort of heaven if we choose the forms, and a sort of hell if we choose the body.  

Conclusion. So in summary, Socrates believes that philosophy is preparation for death because philosophy helps purify the soul from the body, allowing it to act in the way that it will act in the next life when the soul is not attached to a body. What we love in this life affects what we will love in the next, and if we don’t choose to love what is immaterial and true, we will find ourselves disappointed after death.

2. What are the main features of Plato’s Theory of Forms as it is presented in the Phaedo?

Thesis: Plato’s Theory of Forms plays a fundamental role in advancing his arguments for immortality in the Phaedo. There are two points about the forms I will discuss. First, I’ll give a general explanation of Plato’s Theory of Forms in the Phaedo. Second, I’ll outline the main features of the forms: they are unchangable, indivisible, intelligible rather than perceptible, divine.  

The Theory of the Forms is central to Plato’s thought, but is nowhere explicitly stated or argued for. Rather the theory is introduced unceremoniously and agreed upon by his interlocutors. The Phaedo and The Republic are the best sources to piece together this hypothesis. The theory postulates that abstract objects, or forms, answer the question “what is x?,” and exist, independent of the mind, as the only answer to such a question. This existence is called subsistence. In other words, these forms are not present in the world because of mere convention, but rather because the form of justice and threeness, for example, subsist, as the ultimate and true reality of each, and are actually present in x in some degree. Forms ultimately explain why we can call many individual trees by the same name, “tree.” They all particiate in the form “treeness.”

These forms have various features which Plato lists at 80b, and throughout the Phaedo. The Forms are:

• Unchangeable. Equality can never be anything other than equality, and can never become inequality. Since forms cannot change, the forms are also eternal.
• Indivisible. The form of justice cannot be divided, there is only one ultimate justice, and that one justice explains all of the instances of it that we find in the world. In other words, the form of justice is one over many. One form explains all of the instances that are more or less just.
• Intelligible, rather than perceptible. Ideas are perceptible only with your mind, not with your eyes ears or nose. Plato takes this to an extreme, believing that the senses gets in the way of understanding these ideas, while Aristotle says that the senses are the door to understanding ideas. 
• Divine. If something is unchangeable, indivisible, intelligible and explains all of its instances, this is rather like a god. Thus forms are like the divine.

Conclusion: Forms explain how we can have one name for many things. Forms are put to their most significant use in Plato’s final argument for the immortality of the soul, where they are presented as teleological causes. The best reason why anything in the sensible world is the way it is will always be given through an appeal to the Forms it participates in. The Theory of Forms is the hypothesis from which all of Plato’s arguments follow, and itself is taken for granted. Thus, Forms serve as the ground for everything Plato says, and must then necessarily imply the Theory of Recollection and the immortality of the soul. They are divine, immortal, intellectual, uniform, indissoluble, and unchanging. 

3. What is Socrates’ first argument for the immortality of the soul?  How does Plato criticize it in this same dialogue?

Thesis: The idea is that all things come into being from their opposites, since nothing can spontaneously come into being or cease to be. If death is the opposite of life, then death and life must be in a constant cycle, one coming into being out of the other. At the end of our lives we become dead, but analogously this means that at the beginning of our lives we come into being from out of an underworld of dead souls. In the end Socrates actually criticizes this same argument. His characteristic style is to begin with arguments that he considers the least convincing and, through dialogue, ascend the “divided line” towards the most convincing, but most difficult to understand arguments.  

The argument proceeds like this:  

• • Everything comes to be from its opposite. For example, for an object to become bigger, it must have been smaller beforehand. And for an object to become smaller, bigger.
  • The opposite of “being alive” is “being dead,” and the opposite of “being dead” is “being alive.”
  • It follows that dead things go from being living to being dead through the process of dying, and that similarly, living things must go from being dead to being living through the process of coming to life.
  • If this were not the case, then everything would remain dead always. That is, if all living things died, but new living things were not made from those that had died, the number of dead would soon very quickly supercede and overwhelm the number of the living. If the living could only be made out of other living beings, there would only be a limited stock of living beings before they all run out.

Conclusion: In summary, since opposites “being alive” and “being dead” come from one another, and since some underlying principle is necessary for this to occur, then the immortal soul, as that principle, must be presupposed as what undergoes the change. This is criticised later by…

4. What is Socrates’ argument for immortality from Recollection?  What difficulty do Cebes and Socrates recognize for this argument?

Thesis: The argument from recollection is simple: if all our knowledge of forms comes from remembering, and if the body did not give us any of the perfect forms we already remember, then we must have known forms before we had a body. If we knew them before we had a body, the soul existed before the body and therefore does not depend on it to exist. Let’s look at this in more detail.

We can’t have come to know equality itself through the senses, although it starts with the senses. We are aware that the length of sticks or stones fall short of being perfectly equal but can approach being equal. But to be aware that they fall short of being perfectly equal, we must already have an idea of what it means to be perfectly equal; that is, we must already know the Form of Equality. So when we sense equal sticks or equal stones, our senses merely remind us of what we already knew: the form of equality. The senses themselves do not give us the form, but rather remind us of what our soul already possessed.

And if this holds true of Equality, it should hold true of all the other Forms as well. It would seem that we lose knowledge of these Forms at birth, or forget, and it is through a process of learning that we come to recollect them and know them again. This is why Socrates claims that all learning is recollection. If we knew these forms from before we had a body then the soul must not be tied to a body, and be immortal.

But this argument has some problems. First, we need the senses to recollect the forms, but philosophers somehow are supposed to separate themselves from the body which is a prison, even in this life. How can we then recollect the forms if we are dead? This raises other questions. How did we come to know anything at all in the first place, even before we were born. The ideas were implanted in us? If there was a beginning to our knowing, then why can’t there be an end? This leads into Simmias’ later point.

Conclusion: In short, the argument from recollection is this: We must have had knowledge of the forms before birth because we can’t know equality itself by the sense perception of the body (for things in the world are deficient from true equality). If we didn’t get it from the body we must have gotten it from something other than the body and before birth. The body just reminds us of what we knew in a prior life, and forgot at birth.

5. What is Socrates’ “third” argument for immortality, namely the argument from dissolubility and indissolubility?  Does Socrates hold that all souls are incorporeal?  Why or why not?

Thesis: The third argument for immortality in the Phaedo is perhaps the most convincing of them all, but we must note that even it is not intended as a proof. It is sometimes called the argument from affinity. The claim: the soul is immortal because the soul belongs to the class of things which are invisible and uncomposed and not to the class of things visible and composed. Visible and composed things, like trees and elements, corrupt (break apart), while invisible and uncomposed (simple) things remain forever, like the number three. 

The argument has three stages:

Soul is Simple

• Composite things are destructible and noncomposite things are not. Composite things are those things made of parts, and parts can come apart or change, but things without parts do not fall apart or change, but are eternal like the forms. For example,
• Sensible things are composite. In other words, the change is only given to us by the senses, and the mind gives us those things that are unchanging. Although we can imagine something we know that changes, this is ability comes from the senses.
• As a result, sensible things are destructible, and invisible things (if they are real) are not destructible.
• The soul is an invisible thing, not a sensible thing. It is also not made up of parts because if it were it would not be able to know things that are unchanging – the forms. Therefore the soul always exists and is indestructible.

Soul is Divine

• Further, since the soul commands the body and, since what commands is like the divine, the soul is like the divine.

Soul is Lasting

• Further, since the body doesn’t corrupt quickly after death (like a mummy) (and since the soul is less dissoluble than it) the soul is more lasting.

• Finally, those who are most attached to their bodies and its desires will be weighed down to earth – eternal wandering in hell (82), and those that are most attached to knowledge of the forms will be happy with God.

Socrates does hold that all souls are incorporeal because

Conclusion: To summarize, the argument says that since composite things corrupt and incomposite or simple things do not, and since the body is composite and the soul is not, the body corrupts and the soul does not.

6. What is Simmias’ objection to Socrates’ argument for immortality?  Why does it seem likely?  How does Socrates respond to him?

Thesis: Simmias objects that perhaps the soul is like a harmony: it is merely the effect of the strings of a lyre or similar instrument. If the strings break, the harmony dies with it. Likewise, if the body breaks down, the soul dies with the body. 

Simmias objects to Socrates’ first argument this way: The soul is not like a subject that persists through changes between opposites, but rather it is an effect of the body. For example, the harmony that results from a guitar or a lyre is an effect of the tuned material elements of the lyre. But the harmony dies when the lyre dies. So in this way, the soul could die when the body dies.  

This particular objection probably seems very powerful to us. In fact, it represents the materialist position that is common today: matter is the only cause of life. This seems likely to us because we know that if the body does not possess the proper balance of elements (for example, if it lacks water or food or any other things) life ends and we do not see the soul after that.

Socrates in response, however, catches Simmias in a contradiction. He makes use of the fact that his interlocutors now agree that knowing is a recollection. If the soul comes to know by recollection of the forms and if this is only possible if they soul pre-exists the body so as to be in contact with those forms, then either 1) the soul is immortal by recollection as initially proposed and preceding the body, or 2) it is a harmony, just as Simmias had suggested. If it is a recollection, then the soul can’t possibly be an effect of the body, just as harmony can’t exist before the strings exist.

Socrates offers three more arguments against the analogy with the lyre given by Simmias.

• First, he points out that a lyre can be more or less well-tuned, and so can have more or less attunement. A soul, on the other hand, cannot be even remotely more or less soul than any other soul, and in this way is unlike attunement.
• Second, Socrates points out that some souls are good while others are bad, and makes Simmias agree that a good soul may be seen as analogous to an instrument in tune, and a bad soul as to one out of tune. But since an instrument in tune has more attunement than one out of tune, and since Socrates and Simmias have already agreed that no soul has more soul than any other soul, this analogy does not hold. If every soul is an attunement, no soul is in discord, and every soul is equally good.
• Last, if the soul were a harmony, it wouldn’t be able to oppose its strings. But the soul can oppose the body. Therefore the soul is not a harmony but rather it is the cause of the body.

Conclusion: In summary, Simmias objects that perhaps the soul does not cause the body, but rather the body causes the soul. As soon as the body dies or loses its proper “tuning”, the soul goes with it. But Socrates gives us four reasons to think that the soul is different from the attunement of an instrument: (1) the soul can exist before the body is made, (2) there are no degrees of soul like there are degrees of attunement, (3) if the attunement argument were correct, it would imply that no souls were better or worse than any other souls, and (4) the soul is master of the body.

7. What is Cebes’ objection to Socrates’ argument? How does Socrates respond to Cebes?

Thesis: Cebes rightly claims that even if the soul existed before birth, that doesn’t require that it always exist after death. Socrates responds by acknowledging the forcefulness of this objection, and warning his interlocutors that he must now go into great depth on the subject to satisfy them.

Cebes used an analogy. A cloakmaker who wears the cloaks that he makes might outlast two or three cloaks throughout his life, but he will outlast all cloaks, since he will die wearing one. Likewise, the soul might outlast two or three bodies, but perhaps the soul will not live beyond the last body that lives in. In other words, Cebes asks, even if the soul outlasts a few bodies, that does that mean it will last forever?

Socrates finds Cebes’ argument very compelling and acknowledges that in order to answer it, he will have to discuss in detail the reasons for generation and destruction. Socrates admits this is a monumental task, goes through his intellectual history, and then spells out the final argument, which I cover in detail below.

Conclusion: In sum, Cebes’ objection suggests that the soul is perhaps strong enough to last past death, but perhaps the soul is not strong enough to last forever. In response, Socrates must give the interlocutors an outline of the Theory of the Forms, before providing a final argument.

8. What are the three steps of Socrates’ philosophical development as presented in the Phaedo?  How does this development shed light on the arguments of the Phaedo?

Thesis: There are three stages of Socrates’ intellectual history, and I’ll take you through each. The three stages of Socrates philosophical development are Democritus’ atomism and materialism, Anaxagorus’ belief in “intelligence” as cause of order, and Socrates’ own theory of the forms. Let’s explore each.

At first, Socrates was attracted to Democritus’ theory that only atoms exist, which combine and recombine in various ways, and by chance. This very similar to modern materialism. These atoms form all the things we see around us by combining and recombining. But Socrates later recognizes that these explanations only fix the laws governing the behavior of materials, and do not lay out any sort of reason for why they behave as they do. In other words, just saying that “atoms combine and recombine because its a law that they behave like that” is not really an explanation for why they do. As Socrates notes, atomists are unable to give an account of complex organisms such as human beings, much less why there is any order in the world at all.

As a result, Socrates became attracted to Anaxagorus’ ideas, who offered a teleological explanation from an “orderer” (mind), in addition to a material explanation. A teleological explanation answers the question “why”. So, for example, one might take into account the principle that fire rises and then provide a reason for it, explaining why rising should be the end goal of fire. But according to Anaxagorus, the matter in the universe is all organized in accordance with “intelligence,” which remains distinct from the material elements. Anaxagorus didn’t go far enough for Socrates though, since this order was still rather arbitrary and based on the whim of “mind,” and not on what is “best.”

In the final stage of his intellectual history, Socrates recognizes that Anaxagorus’ theory still relies too much on material explanation and does not recognize that things behave for what is best (teleologically). Socrates then launches into his explanation of his theory of causation. Things are large because of largeness and small because of smallness, not because of shape or what stuff they are made of. Further, fire behaves like fire, moving up rather than down, because that is what is best for fire. Man desires and eats food, because eating food is what is best for man. These are the forms’ explanatory power, and the basis for what Socrates thought was a proof for immortality.

Conclusion: When Socrates first became interested in the causes of natural phenomena, he thought that order comes from chance arrangement of elements or atoms. Then he was inspired by Anaxagorus to think that this order is not by chance, by rather from a mind arranging matter. But this mind did not necessarily arrange things for what is best, but rather still haphazardly. In the end Socrates holds that the forms are what really and truly exist, and incline things for what is best.

9. How does Socrates criticize the common conflation of necessary conditions with causes?

Thesis: To support his criticism of Anaxagorus, Socrates uses an example of sitting in prison, in order to distinguish between a cause and a necessary condition,  

Socrates deemed Anaxagorus’ theory inadequate because he did not distinguish between the “cause” from the “conditions without which”. For instance, an Anaxagorean explanation of “why Socrates is presently sitting” would only note that his bones, sinews, and muscles are in certain positions, and an account of why he is speaking to his interlocutors would deal with sound and air and hearing. But none of Anaxagoras’ theories would adduce the true reasons for Socrates’ sitting and talking–that he was sentenced to death and thought it just to face the sentence rather than attempt an escape. After all, Socrates notes, his bones and sinews would be in a very different place right now had he judged it better to attempt an escape! Socrates’ body being the way it is provides the conditions without which the reasons for his being here would not be possible, but the reasons themselves have more to do with Socrates’ intelligence and his sense of what is best.

Conclusion: To conclude, there is a difference between the fire, and the wood that makes that fire possible. Fire is the cause of more fire, but wood is a condition for there being fire in the first place. It would be absurd to say that wood is the cause of fire, just because it seems to always be found when there is fire. Ultimately this will mean that soul is the cause of life, not the material parts that are necessary for the soul to move the body.

10. What is Socrates’ last argument for the immortality of the soul, and how does it depend on his theory of Forms?

Thesis: The argument claims that the soul is deathless because the soul’s essence is to bring life, and a thing that has life essentially cannot admit life’s opposite: death. This is how Plato constructs a final argument for immortality, to counter the objection that a given soul might be inhabiting its last body.

First, forms which are separate from things explain the the properties of the same things. So for example, the form of tallness explains why Simmias is tall.

Second, each form has an opposite form. For example, shortness is the opposite of tall.

Third, the forms themselves cannot become their opposite. Tallness cannot become shortness, and visa versa. Neither can tallness and shortness both be present in the same thing at the same time and respect.

Fourth, Socrates recognizes that some forms inhere in things non-essentially, and others inhere essentially. Forms inhere nonessentially when the thing can remain what it is, despite losing the form. For example, a horse can remain a horse, even if it loses the form of strength. But Some things have forms “essentially.” For example: three and oddness are two distinct things, and three must always be odd if it is to retain its nature. And while Two and Three are not opposites, they are invariably connected with Evenness and Oddness, respectively, which are opposites, and so Two can never become Three without losing its own nature. Likewise, snow can never lose the form of cold without losing its nature as snow.

• Then Socrates launches into his last argument for the immortality of the soul. 1. The soul always brings life to the body into which it enters at birth. The soul is life. 2. So, the soul excludes the opposite of life: death. 3. So, the soul does not admit death. 4. So, the soul is deathless. 5. What is deathless is indestructible. 6. So, the soul is indestructable.

But there seem to be certain problems with this argument. For example, is the soul itself a form? How are souls individuated after death? If there is only the form of life, and not the form of “Bob” and “Joe,” then wouldn’t immortality be an illusion? If there is the form of “Bob” and “Joe,” then why go through this long argument?

Conclusion: To summarize, since the soul is living by its very form which cannot be separated from it (just like odd cannot be separated from three), the soul is the kind of thing that does not admit death. Instead, the soul is always alive.

11. Does Socrates think that Crito will be the one who buries him?  (This is a trick question.)  Why is this important for the dialogue’s theme?

Thesis: There are many important aspects to how the Phaedo ends, and I will name three.

First, Socrates does not care who buries him, because if he did that would mean that he cares about his body. Crito asks Socrates how he would like to be buried. Socrates replies, do what you will – ultimately meaning “I don’t care, because my body is not me.”