Because Phaedo is one of Plato’s most conceptually rich Socratic dialogues, most readers focus primarily on the text’s specific philosophical implications, but it’s worth keeping in mind that it is also a snapshot of Socrates’s final living moments. Surrounded by friends and fellow thinkers, he chooses to spend the remainder of his time doing what he has devoted his entire life to: seeking the truth through intellectual inquiry and discussion. This means engaging his devoted friends and followers in a lively back-and-forth regarding the soul, death, knowledge, and the nature of existence itself. As he does this, Socrates urges his interlocutors to voice whatever reservations they have about his theories, prioritizing the integrity of the discussion over his own beliefs. In this way, Plato portrays the respect Socrates has for the process of intellectual inquiry, demonstrating how committed he is to helping others explore sound arguments. Even on the verge of death, then, Socrates demonstrates that open discussion and intellectual discourse with valued friends are key components of being alive.
After Socrates outlines his first three arguments for the immortality of the soul, his friends and fellow thinkers Simmias and Cebes admit that, though they want to agree with his logic, they each have problems with certain aspects of his reasoning. Phaedo admits that he’s “depressed” when he hears these objections, since he previously thought Socrates’s arguments were perfect, and now he feels confused. In his retrospective account of this entire conversation, Phaedo tells Echecrates, “That [Socrates] had a reply [to Simmias’s and Cebes’s objections] was perhaps not strange. What I wondered at most in him was the pleasant, kind, and admiring way he received the young men’s argument, and how sharply he was aware of the effect the discussion had on us, and then how well he healed our distress and, as it were, recalled us from our flight and defeat and turned us around to join him in the examination of their argument.” Simply put, Socrates doesn’t resent his friends’ counterarguments, nor does he vehemently try to prove them wrong. Instead, he gladly “receive[s]” their misgivings and—with the kindness of a friend—thoroughly examines what they’ve said. As a result, it becomes clear how much Socrates appreciates the nature of friendly debate. Interested first and foremost in accessing the truth, he doesn’t shy away from objections, instead inviting his listeners to engage with him in an intellectually robust dialogue. This, it seems, is the only way for a group of thinkers to come to definitive conclusions.
To illustrate his approach to rhetoric and the process of intellectual inquiry, Socrates tells his listeners that he doesn’t want to become a “misologue,” or someone who detests reason and debate. “There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse,” he tells his friends, explaining why he’s so open to hearing their qualms with his argument. This point also gives him a chance to show that he’s grateful for Simmias’s and Cebes’s objections. He goes on to acknowledge the danger of confusing his listeners, which he believes might turn them into misologues and apathetic debaters who will be hesitant in the future to believe any argument. Accordingly, he’s glad that Simmias and Cebes have voiced their reservations, since this ultimately encourages him to make his argument clearer. Once again, then, his respect for the truth and the value of dialogue above all else comes to the forefront of the text.
The context of this debate is also significant, since Socrates isn’t only pontificating before his fellow thinkers; he’s also bidding them farewell. Waiting to receive the poison he’s been sentenced to drink, he spends the remainder of his life with a group of grief-stricken friends. However, he doesn’t let sentimentality interfere with his never-ending pursuit of truth and wisdom. Sensing that some of his listeners are (unlike Simmias and Cebes) holding back objections to his arguments, he assures them, “I shall not be eager to get the agreement of those present that what I say is true, except incidentally, but I shall be very eager that I should myself be thoroughly convinced that things are so.” Going on, he urges the listeners not to go easy on him, saying this will do them no good. “If you will take my advice, you will give but little thought to Socrates but much more to the truth,” he says. “If you think that what I say is true, agree with me; if not, oppose it with every argument and take care that in my eagerness I do not deceive myself and you […].” In turn, Socrates once more shows his friends that what he wants above all else is to access the truth. What’s more, he suggests that this is something he can only do in partnerships with his listeners, thereby framing the act of rhetorical discussion as a give-and-take process.
It is perhaps because of Socrates’s relational approach to intellectual inquiry that Phaedo and the rest of his friends can’t help but weep for their “comrade” when he finally drinks the poison. In turn, readers see the profound impact Socrates has had on the people around him, forging meaningful friendships through the crucially important process of philosophical discourse—a process to which he devotes himself right up until the very end of his life.
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Intellectual Inquiry, Discussions, and Friendship Quotes in Phaedo
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.
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.
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?
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
It is as when one who lacks skill in arguments puts his trust in an argument as being true, then shortly afterwards believes it to be false—as sometimes it is and sometimes it is not—and so with another argument and then another. You know how those in particular who spend their time studying contradiction in the end believe themselves to have become very wise and that they alone have understood that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or in any argument, but that all that exists simply fluctuates up and down […] and does not remain in the same place for any time at all.
I shall not be eager to get the agreement of those present that what I say is true, except incidentally, but I shall be very eager that I should myself be thoroughly convinced that things are so. […] If you will take my advice, you will give but little thought to Socrates but much more to the truth. If you think that what I say is true, agree with me; if not, oppose it with every argument and take care that in my eagerness I do not deceive myself and you and, like a bee, leave my sting in you when I go.
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.
You have bravely reminded us, but you do not understand the difference between what is said now and what was said then, which was that an opposite thing came from an opposite thing; now we say that the opposite itself could never become opposite to itself, neither that in us nor that in nature.
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.
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.
