Because Phaedo is an account of Socrates’s final discussion before his execution, the majority of the dialogue is concerned with the notion of mortality. As friends and fellow philosophers Cebes, Crito, and Simmias crowd around Socrates, they express how sad they are that he’s about to die. Socrates, however, is at peace, explaining that it would be foolish to mourn his death, which—he argues—is merely physical. He makes a distinction between the body and the soul, arguing that the body is inferior to the soul because it often leads a person astray with desire This is why intelligent philosophers like himself “free the soul from association with the body as much as possible.” This theoretical separation between the body and soul allows Socrates to develop several arguments that prove—to his mind—that the soul is immortal. These arguments enable him to embrace his own death without hesitation, insisting to his friends that both he and they have nothing to worry about, for he has lived a virtuous life that has prepared him for what’s to come. In turn, the points he makes about the soul’s immortality suggest that the fear and bitterness most people feel at the end of their lives are actually unnecessary.
To prove the immortality of the soul, Socrates begins by defining death as nothing more than “the separation of the soul from the body.” The body and the soul, he believes, are two different entities, and when one dies, these entities are finally disentangled. However, he complicates this point by saying that intelligent philosophers divest themselves from the whims of the body, which they believe distract people from what matters most: the attainment of wisdom. “The philosopher more than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much as possible,” Socrates asserts, saying that the senses often “deceive” a person and interfere with the soul’s ability to “reason.” He adds that intelligent people “approach” all things “with thought alone” because “the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom.” Going on, he says, “[…] if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves with the soul by itself.” If this is the case, then only in death—in the lifting away from the body—can a person find true “wisdom,” since the body will no longer be a distraction. Simply put, Socrates doesn’t fear the prospect of death, because separating from his body will allow him for the first time to actually “acquire what has been [his] chief preoccupation” in life—namely, the attainment of knowledge and truth. In this way, he frames death not as a tragedy, but an opportunity.
Socrates’s listeners agree with his reasoning, but not all of them are convinced that the soul is immortal. This is an important point, since the immortality of the soul is what allows Socrates to see death as something to embrace. To convince his friends that they need not worry about him, he outlines four arguments for the soul’s immortality. First, he uses what’s commonly referred to as The Cyclical Argument, upholding that “all things […] come to be […] from their opposites.” This means that the living come from the dead, that the process of being (or becoming) alive “comes to be from being dead.” If this is the case, then the soul lives on through each death and birth. Next, Socrates sets forth what’s known as The Theory of Recollection, drawing upon the concept of learning he explains in his dialogue Meno—namely, that people don’t acquire new knowledge, but simply recollect wisdom they’ve already learned in a past life (thereby implying that the soul is immortal). Socrates then makes The Affinity Argument, in which he suggests that the soul—unlike the body—shares properties with a certain kind of elevated existence that is noncorporeal and immortal, meaning that it too is deathless. Lastly, Socrates gives what’s known as The Final Argument, which maintains that because something can never “admit its opposite” (i.e. cold cannot be cold if it is also hot), then the soul can never die, since the soul brings about life, and death is the opposite of life.
Using these four arguments, Socrates approaches his own death by minimizing the finality of death more generally. Taken together, the arguments enable Socrates and his friends to see his execution not as the tragic conclusion of his life, but as an inevitable—and even happy—transition away from corporeality.
It’s worth noting that the way Socrates thinks about death in Phaedo differs from his approach in Apology. When he addresses the jury in Apology, he says he isn’t afraid of execution because fearing death is the same thing as thinking oneself wise when one is not, since “no one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man.” In keeping with this, he says that people should live “without a thought for death.” In Phaedo, though, he actually thinks quite a lot about death. Philosophers and scholars attribute this discrepancy to Plato himself, who infused Phaedo with his own ideas but wrote Apology as a historical account of Socrates’s specific beliefs. At the same time, though, Socrates does—in a certain way—acknowledge his new approach in Phaedo, prefacing his ruminations by saying that “it is perhaps most appropriate for one who is about to depart yonder to tell and examine tales about what we believe that journey to be like.” With those words, readers see a somewhat transformed Socrates, a man on the verge of death who remains untroubled by his own mortality but is nonetheless newly curious about the nature of the afterlife. In turn, the dialogue that follows captures both Socrates’s intellectual wonder regarding immortality and his willingness to embrace death, which he believes is nothing but a metaphysical transition.
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Immortality, the Body, and the Soul Quotes in Phaedo
However, Cebes, this seems to me well expressed, that the gods are our guardians and that men are one of their possessions. Or do you not think so?
I do, said Cebes.
And would you not be angry if one of your possessions killed itself when you had not given any sign that you wished it to die, and if you had any punishment you could inflict, you would inflict it?
As for what you were saying, that philosophers should be willing and ready to die, that seems strange, Socrates, if what we said just now is reasonable, namely, that a god is our protector and that we are his possessions. It is not logical that the wisest of men should not resent leaving this service in which they are governed by the best of masters, the gods, for a wise man cannot believe that he will look after himself better when he is free. A foolish man might easily think so, that he must escape from his master; he would not reflect that one must not escape from a good master but stay with him as long as possible, because it would be foolish to escape. But the sensible man would want always to remain with one better than himself. So, Socrates, the opposite of what was said before is likely to be true; the wise would resent dying, whereas the foolish would rejoice at it.
Simmias and Cebes, I should be wrong not to resent dying if I did not believe that I should go first to other wise and good gods, and then to men who have died and are better than men are here. Be assured that, as it is, I expect to join the company of good men. This last I would not altogether insist on, but if I insist on anything at all in these matters, it is that I shall come to gods who are very good masters. That is why I am not so resentful, because I have good hope that some future awaits men after death, as we have been told for years, a much better future for the good than for the wicked.
Is the body an obstacle when one associates with it in the search for knowledge? I mean, for example, do men find any truth in sight or hearing, or are not even the poets forever telling us that we do not see or hear anything accurately, and surely if those two physical senses are not clear or precise, our other senses can hardly be accurate, as they are all inferior to these. Do you not think so?
I certainly do, he said.
When then, he asked, does the soul grasp the truth? For whenever it attempts to examine anything with the body, it is clearly deceived by it.
True.
Is it not in reasoning if anywhere that any reality becomes clear to the soul?
Yes.
And indeed the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, […] when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality.
It really has been shown to us that, if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves with the soul by itself. It seems likely that we shall, only then, when we are dead, attain that which we desire and of which we claim to be lovers, namely, wisdom, as our argument shows, not while we live; for if it is impossible to attain any pure knowledge with the body, then one of two things is true: either we can never attain knowledge or we can do so after death. Then and not before, the soul is by itself apart from the body.
Socrates, [Cebes] said, everything else you said is excellent, I think, but men find it very hard to believe what you said about the soul. They think that after it has left the body it no longer exists anywhere, but that it is destroyed and dissolved on the day the man dies, as soon as it leaves the body; and that, on leaving it, it is dispersed like breath or smoke, has flown away and gone and is no longer anything anywhere.
Let us examine it in some such a manner as this: whether the souls of men who have died exist in the underworld or not. We recall an ancient theory that souls arriving there come from here, and then again that they arrive here and are born here from the dead. If that is true, that the living come back from the dead, then surely our souls must exist there, for they could not come back if they did not exist, and this is a sufficient proof that these things are so if it truly appears that the living never come from any other source than from the dead. If this is not the case we should need another argument.
Of the two processes one is going to sleep, the other is waking up. Do you accept that, or not?
Certainly.
You tell me in the same way about life and death. Do you not say that to be dead is the opposite of being alive?
I do.
And they come to be from one another?
Yes.
What comes to be from being alive?
Being dead.
And what comes to be from being dead?
One must agree that it is being alive.
Then, Cebes, living creatures and things come to be from the dead?
So it appears, he said.
Then our souls exist in the underworld.
There is one excellent argument, said Cebes, namely that when men are interrogated in the right manner, they always give the right answer of their own accord, and they could not do this if they did not possess the knowledge and the right explanation inside them. Then if one shows them a diagram or something else of that kind, this will show most clearly that such is the case.
Consider, he said, whether this is the case: We say that there is something that is equal. I do not mean a stick equal to a stick or a stone to a stone, or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the Equal itself. Shall we say that this exists or not?
Indeed we shall, by Zeus, said Simmias, most definitely.
And do we know what this is? — Certainly.
Whence have we acquired the knowledge of it? Is it not from the things we mentioned just now, from seeing sticks or stones or some other things that are equal we come to think of that other which is different from them? Or doesn’t it seem to you to be different?
Consider then, Cebes, whether it follows from all that has been said that the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself, whereas the body is most like that which is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble, and never consistently the same. Have we anything else to say to show, my dear Cebes, that this is not the case?
One might make the same argument about harmony, lyre and strings, that a harmony is something invisible, without body, beautiful and divine in the attuned lyre, whereas the lyre itself and its strings are physical, bodily, composite, earthy, and akin to what is mortal. Then if someone breaks the lyre, cuts or breaks the strings and then insists, using the same argument as you, that the harmony must still exist and is not destroyed because it would be impossible for the lyre and the strings, which are mortal, still to exist when the strings are broken, and for the harmony, which is akin and of the same nature as the divine and immortal, to be destroyed before that which is mortal; he would say that the harmony itself still must exist and that the wood and the strings must rot before the harmony can suffer.
Like Simmias, I too need an image, for I think this argument is much as if one said at the death of an old weaver that the man had not perished but was safe and sound somewhere, and offered as proof the fact that the cloak the old man had woven himself and was wearing was still sound and had not perished. If one was not convinced, he would be asked whether a man lasts longer than a cloak which is in use and being worn, and if the answer was that a man lasts much longer, this would be taken as proof that the man was definitely safe
and sound, since the more temporary thing had not perished. But, Simmias, I do not think that is so, for consider what I say. Anybody could see that the man who said this was talking nonsense. That weaver had woven and worn out many such cloaks. He perished after many of them, but before the last. That does not mean that a man is inferior and weaker than a cloak. The image illustrates, I think, the relationship of the soul to the body
But rather, Simmias, according to correct reasoning, no soul, if it is a harmony, will have any share of wickedness, for harmony is surely altogether this very thing, harmony, and would never share in disharmony.
It certainly would not.
Nor would a soul, being altogether this very thing, a soul, share in wickedness?
How could it, in view of what has been said?
So it follows from this argument that all the souls of all living creatures will be equally good, if souls are by nature equally this very thing, souls.
I think so, Socrates.
Does our argument seem right, he said, and does it seem that it should have come to this, if the hypothesis that the soul is a harmony was correct?
Not in any way, he said.
Answer me then, he said, what is it that, present in a body, makes it living? —A soul.
And is that always so? — Of course.
Whatever the soul occupies, it always brings life to it? — It does.
Is there, or is there not, an opposite to life? — There is.
What is it? — Death.
So the soul will never admit the opposite of that which it brings along, as we agree from what has been said?
Most certainly, said Cebes.
[…]
Very well, what do we call that which does not admit death?
The deathless, he said.
Now the soul does not admit death? — No.
So the soul is deathless? — It is.
It is right to think then, gentlemen, that if the soul is immortal, it requires our care not only for the time we call our life, but for the sake of all time, and that one is in terrible danger if one does not give it that care. If death were escape from everything, it would be a great boon to the wicked to get rid of the body and of their wickedness together with their soul. But now that the soul appears to be immortal, there is no escape from evil or salvation for it except by becoming as good and wise as possible, for the soul goes to the underworld possessing nothing but its education and upbringing, which are said to bring the greatest benefit or harm to the dead right at the beginning of the journey yonder.
Those who are deemed to have committed great but curable crimes […] must of necessity be thrown into Tartarus, but a year later the current throws them out […]. After they have been carried along to the Acherusian lake, they cry out and shout, some for those they have killed, others for those they have maltreated, and calling them they then pray to them and beg them to allow them to step out into the lake and to receive them. If they persuade them, they do step out and their punishment comes to an end; if they do not, they are taken back into Tartarus and from there into the rivers, and this does not stop until they have persuaded those they have wronged […].
No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief—for the risk is a noble one—that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places, since the soul is evidently immortal, and a man should repeat this to himself as if it were an incantation, which is why I have been prolonging my tale. That is the reason why a man should be of good cheer about his own soul, if during life he has ignored the pleasures of the body and its ornamentation as of no concern to him and doing him more harm than good, but has seriously concerned himself with the pleasures of learning, and adorned his soul not with alien but with its own ornaments, namely, moderation, righteousness, courage, freedom, and truth, and in that state awaits his journey to the underworld.
“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.” — “It shall be done,” said Crito, “tell us if there is anything else.” But there was no answer.
