Author: Plato
Number of pages: 156
What I’m watching: TV: The League, Portlandia, The X-Files, Family Feud, Seinfeld,
Modern Family, X-Play, Dexter’s Laboratory, Futurama, Community,
Powerpuff Girls, Daria, Sherlock, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The IT Crowd, Archer,
Sabrina: The Teenage Witch, Bones
Movies: The
Frighteners, Glengarry Glen Ross, Resident Evil, Big Fish, The Count of Monte
Cristo, Frozen, Saving Mr. Banks, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Stardust, Insomnia
What I’m playing: Skyrim, Dead Island, Journey, Morrowind, Oblivion,
Crackdown, Sleeping Dogs, Elder Scrolls Online, Alan Wake, Fallout: New Vegas,
Deadlight
I’ve
been enjoying too many of my books lately, so I tried to picking out one that I
thought I’d like to get rid of. Enter: Plato.
Not this kind, though, because that’d
be fun. The Ancient Greek, student of Socrates, kind. And not just one, but five pieces by Plato lumped together
into one book. And once you combine Plato pieces, it’s rarely a good thing.
Okay,
I admit, I’m already critical before I even started. To be honest, I used to
have a copy of Plato’s Phaedo, which
I read for a class. Reading that Plato left something of a bad taste in my
mouth.
Why was I compelled after that to buy a
collection of Plato’s writing? I can only assume temporary insanity. Or maybe I
knew that someday…I’d have to return to face my horror…
Five Dialogues: this book is a
collection of five Socratic dialogues. “Socratic” because they all focus on the
philosophy of Socrates (mixed in with Plato’s own ideas), and “dialogues”
because Plato wrote in the style of a conversation, using Socrates and other
real historical figures like characters in a script. And these five all focus
mainly on Socrates’ trial, imprisonment, and death. Sound exciting?1
Alright,
first dialogue up is…
EUTHYPHRO
Every
dialogue gets a nice handy-dandy little summary at the start to roadmap
Socrates’ conversation. Socrates meets his friend Euthyphro2 outside
the court. Socrates has been accused of corrupting youth and not believing in
gods. Euthyphro is there as prosecutor against his own father, on a count of
murder. His father tied up a murderer and left to find some help, during which
time the murderer died. The question is whether or not it is pious to prosecute
his father, and the big philosophical debate is the meaning of piety.
Their
dialogue focuses heavily on the relationship between piety and godliness.
Euthyphro makes a good point, mentioning that Zeus fought his father Cronus.
Cronus was eating all his children, and Zeus’s stopped him, so actions against
one’s father can be godly (7). Their working definition is that pious actions
are ones that please the gods. This is pretty much the Ancient Greek version of
divine command theory, which holds that morality is based on God’s will.
However, Socrates brings up the fact that they believe in a lot of gods and a
lot of the gods disagree with each other. So, “punishing [a] father may be pleasing
to Zeus but displeasing to Cronus” (9-10). A lot of people nowadays use what
they believe is God’s will to base their moral standings, but back then it
must’ve been pretty tough for Ancient Greeks because they worshipped a ton of
gods.
Socrates
spends his time questioning Euthyphro and punching holes in his argument.
Throughout the discussion, Socrates comes off as a bit condescending and seems
to talk down to Euthyphro. Euthyphro tries to follow along with Socrates, but
when he fails to follow Socrates’ train of thought, Socrates replies “So you
did not answer my question, you surprising man” (9). Socrates rebuts divine
command theory by asking, “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is
pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (12). I think that is a
clear enough question – either an action inherently is good and therefore loved
by the gods or since the gods love it, that makes it good. Euthyphro doesn’t
understand it, but the more Socrates tries to explain it, it actually gets less
clear and more muddled for me:
We speak of something carried and
something carrying…there is also something loved and – a different thing –
something loving…Tell me then whether the thing carried is a carried thing
because it is being carried, or for some other reason…and the thing seen
because it is being seen?...It is not being seen because it is a thing seen but
on the contrary it is a thing seen because it is being seen; nor is it because
it is something led that is being led but because it is being led that it is
something led; nor is something being carried because it is something carried,
but it is something carried because it is being carried. Is what I want to say
clear, Euthyphro? (12)
Huh? It’s like Socrates seems to enjoy
spinning words around people’s heads until they’re dizzy so he can say, “Looks
like you’re not as smart as you thought”:
SOCRATES: Tell me what the pious and the
impious are.
EUTHYPHRO: But Socrates, I have no way of telling you what I have in
mind, for whatever proposition we put forward goes around and around and
refuses to stay put where we establish it…
SOCRATES: I think you are making unnecessary difficulties, I am eager as
you are to find a way to teach me about piety, and do not give up before you
do. See whether you think all that is pious is of necessity just.
EUTHYPHRO: I think so.
SOCRATES: And is then all that is pious just? Or is all that is pious
just, but not all that is just pious, but some of it is and some is not?
EUTHYPHRO: I do not follow what you are saying, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Yet you are younger than I by as much as you are wiser. As I say,
you are making difficulties because of your wealth of wisdom. Pull yourself
together, my dear sir, what I am saying is not difficult to grasp. (14-15)3
Socrates, Father of the Backhanded Compliment.
So
now they’re taking about justice and how that relates to piety. They still
haven’t defined piety, so I don’t know how throwing justice in the mix is going
to help. And on some level, Socrates has got to be just making stuff up.
Without defining either justice or piety, how does Socrates know which one fits
into the other? I see this kind of like squares and rectangles: all squares are
rectangles, but only some rectangles are squares, and others are not. When did
Socrates show which of piety and justice is the square? He chose justice, but
why couldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t know. Maybe that’s not
helpful…Basically, sometimes it seems like Socrates will make a leap in his
argument without logic or throw in some incorrect assumption to make a point.
Somehow,
they end up back with divine command theory, and again Socrates circles back to
the main question:
SOCRATES: So we must investigate
again from the beginning what piety is, as I shall not willingly give up before
I learn this. Do not think me unworthy, but concentrate your attention and tell
the truth. For you know it, if any man does, and I must not let you go, like
Proteus, before you tell me. If you had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety
you would never have ventured to prosecute you old father for murder on behalf
of a servant. For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk
lest you should not be acting rightly, and would have been ashamed before men,
but now I know well that you believe you have clear knowledge of piety and
impiety. So tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not hide what you think it is.
EUTHYPHRO: Some other time, Socrates, for I am in a hurry now, and it is
time for me to go. (20)
I bet Socrates heard that a lot. So
after all that, no one learns anything, except maybe I learned that Socrates is
a condescending prick.
Good
Lord, that was only the first dialogue…
APOLOGY
The
Apology is the speech given by
Socrates at his trial for his defense. It’s more of a monologue interspersed
with minor responses from Meletus, his main opponent. Socrates tells the men at
the trial that Apollo’s oracle told a friend that no one is wiser than Socrates.
Socrates says that he isn’t wise, but since this was a message from the gods,
he wanted to investigate. So, Socrates took it upon himself to find somebody
wiser:
I went to one of those reputed wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I
could refute the oracle…Then, when I examined this man…I thought that he
appeared wise to many people and especially to himself, but he was not. I then
tried to show him that he thought himself wise, but that he was not. As a
result he came to dislike me, and so did many bystanders. So I withdrew and
thought to myself: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us
knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not,
whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be
wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not
know.” After this I approached another man, one of those thought to be wiser than
he, and I thought the same thing, and so I came to be disliked both by him and
by many others.
After that I proceeded
systematically…So even now I continue this investigation as the god bad me – I
go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise. Then if I
do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is
not wise. (26-27)
Now that is what I call a dick move.
Socrates makes it his life goal to prove to everyone how dumb they are. Not
only that, it’s a mission from god: “Apollo said I’m wise, so now I have to
show that you’re all idiots.” And how does he show them? Probably like in Euthyphro, by trapping them in an
inadequate definition of some lofty abstract noun. Socrates is an asshole. I’m
not surprised he’s unpopular.
Later
on, Socrates is trying to make the point that these allegedly corrupt youth
wouldn’t listen to Socrates if they were being corrupted. He bases this on the
assumption that “does the man exist who would rather be harmed than benefited by
his associates? Answer, my good sir, for the law orders you to answer. Is there
any man who wants to be harmed? – Of course not” (30). First off, everything is
so absolute with Socrates and his arguments. It’s common sense that people
choose something beneficial rather than harmful, but can that be applied to all
the people all the time? I don’t think so. Bill Murray’s character from Little Shop of Horrors comes to mind:
Human behavior is probably one of the
least absolute things there is. And second, maybe these youth don’t realize
they’re being corrupted. It’s not like no one ever mistakenly made a decision,
thinking it was for the right, but then turned out wrong. It’s kind of like
Socrates is shifting any blame onto them: “If I’m such a bad influence, they
should know better than to listen to me.”
Socrates
explains why he continues his investigation even though that path led him to a
possible death sentence. He says that it’s better to stick to your guns and
live morally rather than base everything on self-preservation. He also makes a
decent point that “No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all
blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of
evils” (33). It’s true that death is a mystery, even though our experience with
it is generally on the awful side. Of course, Socrates throws that in their
faces, saying he’s wiser than all of them for figuring that out. But just in
case a death sentence isn’t a gift, Socrates tries persuading the court members
against it because it’s in their best interest. He says to them a warning “to
prevent you from wrongdoing by mistreating the god’s gift to you by condemning
me; for if you kill me you will not easily find another like me” (35). Ego
much? He literally believes himself to be god’s gift to Athens.
Socrates
talk about some other shit for awhile, but the jury ultimately finds him
guilty, and “Meletus asks for the penalty of death” (39). Some much for all
that, Socrates. It’s up to him now to persuade the jury for a better sentence.
Socrates argues that he deserves something different than death:
What counter-assessment should I
propose to you, men of Athens? Clearly it should be a penalty I deserve, and
what do I deserve to suffer or to pay because I have deliberately not led a
quiet life…Nothing is more suitable, gentlemen, than for such a man to be fed
in the Prytaneum – much more suitable for him than for any one of you who has
won a victory at Olympia with a pair or a team of horses. The Olympian victor
makes you think yourself happy; I make you be happy. Besides, he does not need
food, but I do. So if I must make a just assessment of what I deserve, I assess
it as this: free meals in the Prytaneum. (40)
Ballsy move, Socrates: “Instead of
killing me, give me free food.” If he’s going to throw a Hail Mary, might as
well go for it.
Famous
quote alert! “The unexamined life is not worth living” (41). Every now and
then, Socrates will say something meaningful. It’s like a diamond, buried
underneath so much crap. But, the jury remains unswayed and sentence Socrates
to death. He responds by condemning them:
You will acquire the reputation and the
guilt…of having killed Socrates, a wise man…If you had waited but a little
while, this would have happened of its own accord. You see my age, that I am
already advanced in years and close to death. I am saying this not to all of
you but to those who condemned me to death. (41-42)
He’s pretty much saying, “Way to go,
guys. I hope you’re proud of yourself, killing an old man.” And he’s right. But
then he goes on to practically lay a curse on them:
Now I want to prophesy to those who
convicted me, for I am at the point when men prophesy most, when they are about
to die. I say, gentlemen, to those who voted to kill me, that vengeance will
come upon you immediately after my death, a vengeance much harder to bear than
that which you took in killing me…There will be more people to test you, whom I
now held back, but you did not notice it. They will be more difficult to deal
with as they will be younger and you will resent them more. You are wrong if
you believe that by killing people you will prevent anyone from reproaching you
for not living in the right way…With this prophesy to you who convicted me, I
part from you. (42-43)
Okay, so it’s not the greatest curse:
“Kill me, and I’ll be replaced be a bunch of younger Socrates.” I take it back,
that sounds terrible. It would’ve been almost bad-ass of Socrates to end his
Apology right there, and walk out, but he monologues for another couple boring
pages. I think Five Dialogues should
include another apology for the reader:
I don’t know what inhumane purpose
brought you to this book,
But I am so very sorry.
CRITO
This
dialogue is a scene between the imprisoned Socrates and his friend Crito. Crito
organized Socrates’ escape to another country. Socrates refuses to go, even
though he could probably get away with it.
Crito
explains to Socrates that if he doesn’t escape, it will reflect poorly on
Crito, saying, “many people who do not know you or me very well will think that
I could have saved you if I were willing to spend money, but that I did not
care to do so” (47). That’s his opening argument? Nothing about keeping
Socrates alive; it’s all about Crito. Crito is more worried about preserving
his own reputation than Socrates’ life. Jerk. Socrates answers that one
shouldn’t care what the majority thinks, which is a good answer, and Crito
answers back that Socrates has been condemned to death by the will of the
majority, which is also a good answer.
A
little later, Crito comes up with an argument that doesn’t make him sound like
a selfish prick:
Moreover, I think you are betraying
your sons by going away and leaving them, when you could bring them up and
educate them. You thus show no concern for what their fate may be. They will
probably have the usual fate of orphans. Either one should not have children,
or one should share with them to the end the toil of upbringing and education.
(48)
By accepting his death, Socrates is not
only abandoning his friends, but also his family. And the worst part, what I
found unbelievable, is that Socrates really
actually doesn’t show any concern for his own children:
As for those questions you raise about
money, reputation, the upbringing of children, Crito, those considerations in
truth belong to those people who easily put men to death and would bring them
to life again if they could, without thinking; I mean the majority of men. For
us, however, since our argument leads to this, the only valid consideration, as
we were saying just now, is whether we should be acting rightly in giving money
and gratitude to those who will lead me out of here, and ourselves helping with
the escape, or whether in truth we shall be wrong in doing all this. (51)
Socrates doesn’t even think his
children are worth arguing about. He just lumps them in with Crito’s other
arguments and says those are topics for other men to discuss. Socrates sounds
like he’s not even talking about his own children, but some hypothetical
situation involving the concept of children. He doesn’t care, and that upsets
me. All he cares about is the justness of escaping because he believes a life
corrupted in any way by unjust actions is not worth living.
The
remainder of the dialogue is Socrates again stretching reason to build an
argument based on linking together a number of assumptions. Essentially,
Socrates takes the position of the city’s government. Socrates says that by
choosing to live in the city, he made a commitment to adhere to the city’s
laws. All citizens then have an inherent agreement to follow all the demands of
the city. So, if the city sentences a person to death, that person wanting to
escape would be breaching the agreement, thereby harming the city. And since
doing harm is unjust, harming the city and its laws is unjust. Socrates calls a
person like that “act[ing] like the meanest type of slave by trying to run
away” (55). Goddammit, Socrates ended up building an argument for slavery:
“It’s the law, and if the law says you’re a slave, then that’s where you
belong."
Somewhere along Socrates’ line of
reasoning, it got wonky. It might be the assumption that all law is just and
therefore right to follow. I mean, government and laws are all human
constructs, so they are bound to be imperfect. But, Socrates would rather let
his children be orphans than himself be “a destroyer of laws” (56). He also
compares the city to parents, saying a person should never disobey parents. I
guess Socrates forgot his conversation with Euthyphro when he said the
opposite! Fuck! This book is frustratingly stupid. So now, according to
Socrates, I guess if your parents say you deserve to die and they’re going to
kill you, then just let it happen.
Socrates tells his friends what he hopes
to achieve in death:
Not in this universe, anyway.
4. I haven’t given up hope yet on that
Tarantino marathon happening.
I
think Crito’s final words say it best:
CRITO:
I have nothing to say, Socrates. (57)
MENO
Sigh…three
down and I’m only a third through the actually book. And it’s all been shit so
far…Now there’s Meno. Meno and
Socrates discuss the nature of virtue, and whether or not it can be taught. The
introduction states that “the dialogue is best remembered, however, for the
interlude in which Socrates questions Meno’s slave about a problem in geometry
– how to find a square double in area to any given square” (58). What?! “Guided
by Socrates’ questions, the slave (who has never studied geometry before) comes
to see for himself, to recognize, what the right answer to the geometrical
problem must be. Socrates argues that this confirms…that the soul is immortal
and that at our birth we already possess all theoretical knowledge” (58-59).
WTF?! Somebody figuring out a math problem is proof of soul’s immortality? You’ve
got to be kidding me! “Let me put it this way…Plato, Socrates: morons!”
Chronologically,
Meno actually comes at the beginning,
before his trial. The editor notes that its ideas about knowledge and the soul
liken this dialogue to Phaedo. Now, I
enjoy non-linear storytelling4 but I think if Meno was the first dialogue, then it and Phaedo would’ve made a nice frame for the whole book.
In
a way, this is similar to Euthyphro,
but instead of piety, they are trying to pin down the nature of virtue. Meno
tries a definition:
First, if you want the virtue of a man,
it is easy to say that a man’s virtue consists of being able to manage public
affairs and in so doing to benefit his friends and harm his enemies and to be
careful that no harm comes to himself; if you want the virtue of a woman, it is
not difficult to describe: she must manage the home well, preserve its
possessions, and be submissive to her husband. (60-61)
Ugh – this is coming from a text of one
whom supposedly is one of the great ancient philosophers? I feel exhausted by
all the frustrating shit from Plato: the discarding of children, the
pseudo-endorsement of slavery, the fallacious arguments, and now: sexism. At
least Socrates kind of refutes Meno’s definition, saying that men and women
both share strength, and “strength is no different as far as being strength,
whether in a man or a woman” (62). I’d like to think that Socrates is promoting
equality between men and women.
Socrates
and Meno then go on to talk about shapes. Meno describes different virtues but
is unable to say what virtue is. Socrates compares that to saying that round
and straight are different shapes, but they aren’t a sufficient definition of
shape. Then Socrates makes a joke about Meno:
SOCRATES: Even someone who was blindfolded would know from your
conversation that you are handsome and still have lovers.
MENO:
Why so?
SOCRATES: Because you are forever giving orders in a discussion, as
spoiled people do, who behave like tyrants as long as they are young. And
perhaps you have recognized that I am at a disadvantage with handsome people.
(65)
Like
I said before, the occasional diamond of truth hidden in a crap piece of coal.
Or more like a nugget of gold in a pile of shit. Plus, a self-deprecating joke.
Meno
makes another attempt to define virtue, which is “the power of securing good
things…for example, health and wealth…and to acquire gold and silver, also
honors and offices in the city” (68). That’s one of the dumbest thing I’ve
heard someone in these dialogues say. If you’re poor or sick, then you can’t be
virtuous. What a terrible thing to say! Meno is essentially blaming the poor
for their poverty, saying they should have the power to overcome it, otherwise
they’re iniquitous.
Again
like Euthyphro, the argument draws on and the two men circle back to earlier,
when Meno was describing different virtues instead of defining it. These
dialogues remind me of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s On First? Except NOT funny.
SOCRATES: Answer me again then from the beginning: What do you…say that
virtue is? (69)
MENO: What are you asking me for?
SOCRATES: I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. What is virtue?
MENO: I don’t know.
SOCRATES: He’s on third.
ME, READING: I don’t care!
Strangely enough, Meno himself makes a
joke at this point:
I think you are bewitching and
beguiling me, simply putting me under a spell, so that I am quite perplexed.
Indeed, if a joke is in order, you seem, in appearance and in every way, to be
like the broad torpedo fish, for it too makes anyone who comes close and
touches it feel numb, and you now seem to have had that kind of effect on me,
for both my mind and my tongue are numb, and I have no answer to give you. Yet
I have made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand
occasions, very good speeches as I thought, but now I cannot even say what it
is.
Plato’s philosophy sucks, and so does
his comedy.
Well,
now I’ve come to the mathematical interlude. Socrates starts grilling a servant
of Meno about the area of a square: “How many feet is twice two feet? Work it
out and tell me. – Four, Socrates” (73). Math: finally questions from Socrates
that someone can answer. In fact, Socrates makes the questions so easy that the
servant barely does any work:
SOCRATES: Now the line becomes double its length if we add another of
the same length here? – Yes indeed.
SOCRATES: And the eight-foot square will be based on it, if there are
four lines of that length? – Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, let us draw from it four equal lines, and surely that is
what you say is the eight-foot square? – Certainly.
SOCRATES: And within this figure are four squares, each of which is
equal to the four-foot square? – Yes.
SOCRATES: How big is it then? Is it nor
four times as big? – Of course.
SOCRATES: Is this square then, which is four times as big, its double? –
No, by Zeus.
SOCRATES: How many times bigger is it? –
Four times.
SOCRATES: Then, my boy, the figure based on a line twice the length is
not double but four times as big? – You are right. (73-74)
Yes, Socrates is right. When the editor said the guy was “guided by
Socrates,” he wasn’t kidding. Socrates led the servant through every answer.
This whole section with the servant is supposed to show how knowledge is
innate, but all his knowledge came straight from Socrates. He feeds the servant
every answer. Socrates says the square is four times as big, so should I be
impressed when two questions later, the servant says the square is four times
as big? I call bullshit. And this goes on for awhile. And then Socrates goes
and cracks a joke at Meno’s expense, saying that the servant before probably “thought
he could easily make many fine speeches to large audiences about the square of
double size and said that it must have a base twice as long” (75). What a dick!
After
the mathematical questioning is all done, Socrates debriefs with Meno:
SOCRATES: What do you think, Meno? Has he, in his answers, expressed any
opinion that was not his own?
MENO: No, they were all his own. (77)
No! Bullshit! They were all Socrates’.
SOCRATES: These opinions have now just
been stirred up like a dream. (77)
More like hypnotic suggestion.
So
the servant supposedly figuring out the math by himself serves Socrates’
argument that the soul exists before birth and contains innate knowledge. I
think the argument is terrible, but Socrates says something that kind of
redeems himself as a worthwhile philosopher:
I do not insist that my argument is
right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs in both word and
deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we
believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if
we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we
must not look for it. (78)
I don’t agree with Socrates’
conclusions, but I do agree with his urge to seek the truth. He understands he
may not have the right answers, but he wants to find them. I respect that. So here
is another good moment for Socrates/Plato.
It
doesn’t last long, though, because Dull and Duller are back to repetitive circular
arguing. They get interrupted by Anytus, a man who later is one of Socrates’
accusers. For now, he is only a jerk prejudiced against sophists, a group of
teachers:
SOCRATES: Has some sophist wronged you, Anytus, or why are you so hard
on them?
ANYTUS: No, by Zeus, I have never met one of them, nor would I allow any
one of my people to do so.
SOCRATES: Are you altogether without any
experience of these men?
ANYTUS: And may I remain so.
SOCRATES: How then, my good sir, can you know whether there is any good
in their instruction or not, if you are altogether without experience of it?
ANYTUS: Easily, for I know who they are, whether I have experience of
them or not.
SOCRATES: Perhaps you are a wizard5, Anytus, for I wonder,
from what you yourself say, how else you know about these things. (84)
Anytus reminds me of a racist. Or
homophobe. Or An intolerant person in general – because he is. I like Socrates’
response, though.
Nothing
much else happens in the rest of the dialogue. In the end, Socrates gives a
final thought on the nature of virtue, concluding that “if we were right in the
way in which we spoke and investigated in this whole discussion, virtue would
be neither an inborn quality nor taught, but comes to those who possess it as a
gift from the gods” (92). That’s the answer? A person can only be virtuous if
the gods decide it? That’s terrible! All the immoral people could just say
they’re immoral because the gods made them that way, and there’s no use trying
to change because virtue cannot be taught. After all that going round and round
about virtue, with the breaks about math and sophists, Socrates and Meno end up
somewhere else entirely. At least they ended up somewhere, unlike in Euthyphro, when Euthyphro got tired of
it all and left.
PHAEDO
My
God, all that and I still have the longest dialogue remaining, the one I’ve
been dreading. Phaedo tells the story
of Socrates’ final hours in prison and his death. A bunch of his friends show
up and they mostly debate the immortality of the soul and Socrates talks about
eternal Forms. I’m not exactly sure how much of the philosophy in all these
dialogues are actually from Socrates or from Plato using Socrates as a vehicle,
but people say that Phaedo leans way
to the Platonic side.
So,
here we go…Phaedo…Isn’t it funny how
the title sort of rhymes with the author? Phaedo
by Plato…Okay, for real. I can do this…
This
dialogue is a little different because it’s one guy relating to another what has
already happened with Socrates. If Phaedo
were staged for some ungodly reason, the character Phaedo would be speaking for
like half an hour at a time, interrupted occasionally by Echechrates. Phaedo
would be reenacting Socrates’ conversation with his friends. Speaking of
rhyming names, one of the people with Socrates in his final hours was named
Cebes from Thebes. If he were the son of a king, he would be Cebes, Prince of
Thebes.
So,
all the guys go to Socrates’ cell, and what’s the first thing that happens?
They kick out Socrates’ wife:
[We] go in. We found Socrates recently
released from his chains, and Xanthippe – you know her – sitting by him,
holding their baby. When she saw us, she cried out and said the sort of thing
that women usually say: “Socrates, this is the last time your friends will talk
to you and you to them.” Socrates looked at Crito. “Crito,” he said, “let
someone take her home.” And some of Crito’s people led her away lamenting and
beating her breast. (97)
Women, right? Always expressing
emotions when their husbands are about to die. Can’t live without ‘em, but at
least you can die in peace!
Socrates
at one point calls “the art of philosophy…the highest kind of art” (98). I
wonder what’s the lowest kind of art?
Socrates talks about how to be a good
philosopher. He says that practicing philosophy is a preparation for death
(101). He talks about keeping the soul pure from bodily corruption by avoiding
bodily pleasures like food, drink, and sex. Aww! Instead, people should focus
on knowledge and thinking about eternal Forms such as “the Just itself…the
Beautiful, and the Good…Bigness, Health, Strength, and, in a word, the reality
of all things, that which each of them essentially is” (102-103). This concept
of the eternal or Ideal Form is introduced in Meno. Socrates talked about the one thing that all bees share. They
share the trait of “being bees” (61). In Phaedo,
he might say they have Beeness.6 There is a pure Form of the bee,
and every bee that exists is simply an imperfect physical manifestation of a
true Bee. The theory of Forms also works with abstract concepts like Courage
and Temperance, which Plato talks about in The
Republic. I’ve read part of that, including his famous Allegory of the Cave, and that was actually pretty good. Why do I
hate Five Dialogues so much?
Socrates
condemns the desire for wealth, saying “only the body and its desires cause
war, civil discord, and battles, for all wars are due to the desire to acquire
wealth, and it is the body and the care of it, to which we are enslaved, which
compel us to acquire wealth, and all this makes us too busy to practice
philosophy” (103). Suddenly I want to listen to some Pink Floyd.
Many men, at the death of their lovers,
wives, or sons, were willing to go to the underworld, driven by the hope of
seeing there those for whose company they longed, and being with them. Will
then a true lover of wisdom, who has a similar hope and knows that he will
never find it to any extent except in Hades, be resentful of dying and not
gladly undertake the journey thither? One must surely think so, my friend, if
he is a true philosopher, for he is firmly convinced that he will not find pure
knowledge anywhere except there. (105)
Myself, I’d prefer reuniting with
friends and loved ones in death over finally understanding Bigness. Socrates, on
the other hand, doesn’t concern himself with his kids and doesn’t care to share
his final moments of life with his wife.
All
of Socrates’ friends are still worried about death, however, so Socrates uses
reason to convince them that the soul is immortal. Socrates brings up how
everything in nature has opposites. An object can go from being small to large
by growing, or it can change from large to small by shrinking. There is also
being awake and asleep, with waking up and falling asleep as the “two processes:
from one to the other and then again from the other to the first” (108). He
gives a bunch of examples, and then says that life and death follow the same
rule because they, too, are opposites. That’s not how it works! He can’t just
say that since it works for a few things, it must be an absolute law of nature.
He asks “Is nature to be lame in this case?” (109) The right answer is Yes!
Otherwise, we’re talking about zombies. Not every natural process has an
opposite, anyway. There’s no un-pooping.
Socrates
starts again on his idea about a soul already possessing knowledge, and that
during life, it recollects its knowledge, like he did in Meno. He doesn’t explain why we lose all our knowledge at birth.
Then Socrates describes the difference between the “two kinds of existence, the
visible and the invisible” (117). In other words, the physical and the intangible;
the body and the soul. Socrates makes the case that “the invisible always
remains the same, whereas the visible never does” (117). He calls the soul
“most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always
the same as itself” (118). However, Socrates goes on to talk about how the
soul’s state is changeable:
The soul, the invisible part…if it is pure when it leaves the body…makes
its way to the invisible, which is like itself, the divine and immortal and
wise, and arriving there it can be happy…[and] truly spend the rest of time
with the gods…
But I think that if the soul is polluted and impure when it leaves the
body, having always been associated with it and served it, bewitched by
physical desires and pleasures to the point at which nothing seems to exist for
it but the physical, which one can touch and see or eat and drink or make use
of for sexual enjoyment…do you think such a soul will escape pure and by
itself?
Impossible, [Cebes] said. (119)
If the soul can be changed by physical
pleasure, it doesn’t sound so “indissoluble” or “always the same as itself.” And
there’s Socrates using leading questions again: “Will an impure soul be pure?”
Of course not.
Next,
Socrates is talking about reincarnation. He predicts “those who have esteemed
injustice highly, and tyranny and plunder, will join the tribes of wolves and
hawks and kites” (120). Really? Be reborn as a wolf or bird of prey because of
acting unjustly? That sounds like an awesome punishment. What about the good
people? “The happiest of these, who will also have the best destination, are
those who have practice popular and social virtue, which they call moderation
and justice…because it is likely that they will again join a social and gentle
group, either of bees or wasps or ants” (120). Bees, wasps, and ants – gentle?
Obviously, Socrates never read any Animorphs.
Given the choice of plundering what you want in life and being reborn as a hawk
or living a life in moderation and coming back as an ant, who would pick the
latter?
There
are two of Socrates’ friends who propose opposing ideas about the immortality
of the soul. One guy wonders if the body and soul are like an instrument and
its music. Music is invisible but can’t exist without its instrument. The other
guy asks if maybe the soul and body are like a man and a coat. A man goes
through many coats in a lifetime, but still dies in the end; the soul might
similarly go through bodies and lives, outlasting many but still die in the
end. Socrates refutes their arguments, restating his logic and they’re
convinced.
Then
Socrates talks about how he used to study math, but then he got tripped up over
1+1=2. I’m not kidding. I wish I were. He knew that 1+1=2, but he didn’t know how
or why:
I am far, by Zeus, from believing that
I know the cause of any of those things. I will not even allow myself to say
that where one is added to one either the one to which it is added or the one
that is added becomes two, or that the one added and the one to which it is
added become two because of the addition of the one to the other. I wonder
that, when each of them is separate from the other, each of them is one, nor
are they then two, but that, when they come near to one another, this is the
cause of their becoming two, the coming together and being placed closer to one
another. (135)
So, amongst all the great philosophical
questions tackled by Socrates: How does one lead a good life? What does it mean
to be happy? Where do we go when we die? Socrates struggles over why 1+1=2.
After
that surprise mathematical interlude, Socrates circles back to talking about Forms
again:
I no longer understand or recognize
those other sophisticated causes, and if someone tells me that a thing is
beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore
these other reasons – for all these confuse me – but I simply, naively, and
perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other
than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its
relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the
precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful
by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or
anyone else. And if I stick to this I think I shall never fall into error.
(138)
I think Socrates’ argument shares a
relationship to Dumbness.
Next
Socrates ties the Evenness and Oddness of numbers to his argument of life and
death. Odd numbers are never even, even numbers are never odd, ergo a living
soul is never dead. Done. And that’s pretty much his final argument for the immortal
existence of the soul.
With
all that said and done, Socrates decides to tell everyone how he imagines the world
to be. Essentially, he describes the earth as three-tiered: the lowest level is
the water and all life contained within it, in the middle is us and everything
else living in this air zone, and above us is a higher plane existing in the
ether, in which everything is more pure and true. If someone somehow managed to
reach “the upper limit of the air…then just as fish rising from the sea see
things in our region, he would see things there and…he would know that there is
the true heaven, the true light, and the true earth” (147). Again, it’s like
the Allegory of the Cave, with
somebody finding a new, truer experience of existence. It’s not so incredible a
notion to conceive, given the time, though it is kind of funny to think of
people trying to “swim” their way to top of air and breaking its “surface.”
Then Socrates describes the lowest tier in greater detail, going on about all
these different rivers going in and out and every which way through the center
of the world. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it because here is where
Socrates lost me a bit. He throws Hades in there somewhere.
Socrates
and his friends get ready for his death and ask about funeral preparation type
stuff. First he reprimands someone’s improper word-usage, saying “to express
oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some
harm to the soul” (151-152). It does hurt my soul seeing adults mix-up
their/they’re/there or hear them say “supposably.” Then they all start crying,
and Socrates reprimands everyone, calling them women. Socrates drinks his
hemlock and dies.7
Whew!
I made it through Five Dialogues.
This took FOREVER. This whole book was filled with frustratingly stupid
arguments that circled around on themselves and Socrates acting like a dick,
but he was being a dick while searching for the truth, and every now and then,
he’d say something worthwhile. The editors include some suggested further
reading on Socrates, but fuck that.
Verdict (Is the book staying or going?): Going. And the worst part of all is how
little shelf-space I’m getting.
Notes
1. Don’t count on it.
2. Ha. His name sounds like “Urethra.”
3. I’m reminded of Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks.
5. That would take on a different
meaning if Anytus and Socrates were discussing black people, not sophists, and
were not in Ancient Greece.
6. Sounds dirty.
Works
Cited
Plato. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, and Phaedo. 2nd
ed.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002. Print.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002. Print.
