What is the Phaedo? Most summaries will say that it is a dialogue about the immortality of the soul. In it you will find some arguments for and against this claim (mainly for). Whilst dying, Socrates argues that he is not dying but only being separated from his body. His body is dying, for sure, but he is not his body: he is his soul and the soul cannot die. Or so he says.
What does the Phaedo show? It shows Socrates dying and dying well. He is calm, serene, even cheery. He does not hesitate to take the poison. He expresses gratitude. He laughs; he comforts his grieving friends. He is in command of himself. He remains the philosopher he always tried to be in life.
Why does Plato compose the Phaedo? What is its purpose? There may be many, but what is its primary function, its task, its work, its proper business? What is the point of it?
Is it to convince us of the immortality of the soul? Plato composes the dialogue to prove a point, then, and to convince you of it. It is intended to settle an intellectual matter about a matter of fact: is the soul immortal, or not? Plato says it is, and he has his protagonist present arguments to this effect. His arguments are hardly convincing. They are full of holes, relying on extravagant metaphysical speculations or cheap wordplay: Living things have souls, dead things do not, and so the soul must be life itself; the opposite of life is death, and things cannot be their opposites; therefore, the soul cannot die. If anyone leaves the Phaedo feeling convinced of their soul’s immortality, it is likely that they are leaving only with what they brought with them. And so if Plato’s purpose was to prove a point then we would have to say that he has failed to achieve what he set out to achieve.
To my mind, that was not Plato’s purpose and that is not the point of the Phaedo. The Phaedo may say a lot of things about the immortality of the soul but what it shows is Socrates dying well. This is its purpose; this is its point. This is what Plato does, when he portrays Socrates: he shows us something important. And what is shown is more important that what is said.
We know this because Socrates said so. And we know this not only from Plato. Xenophon’s Socrates says he shows his ethics by his conduct, if not by his words, and that conduct shows more than words can say. So if you want to understand Socrates’ ethics, don’t look to his words, look to his conduct. See what he is doing, not what he is saying.
If you read only the text of the Phaedo – literally; superficially – you will see only the words. And if what Socrates is reported to have said is anything to go by, it follows that this does not show Socrates’ ethics, because they are only words and that is not how Socrates shows his ethics. If you look to Socrates’ conduct, however, you will see more. Do not see what he says but that he says and how he says.
He is facing death. He understands, having investigated the idea, that death is inevitable. He understands, having investigated the idea, that dying well is something that he would choose to do, as opposed to the alternative of dying badly or living on when it is not right to do so. Socrates understands that he is faced with something that he must do and do well, and so he does what he does and does well: he applies his philosophy to the task. He rehearses the arguments that enable him to do this thing well.
This is a recurrent feature in Plato’s dialogues; we can’t be surprised to find it featured here at the end of Socrates’ philosophical life. It is a matter of healing your soul through philosophical activity, and in that context the job of rhetoric is to persuade you to take your medicine. Sometimes this involves a bit of sweetness or misdirection, especially if the medicine is bitter.
Like the ‘headache’ that is cured in the Charmides: Socrates says the cure is ‘a kind of leaf, which needs to be accompanied by a charm, and if a person would repeat the charm at the same time that they used the cure, they would be made whole; but that without the charm the leaf would be of no use’. But once they get talking the ‘leaf’ is forgotten about and it is only a matter of understanding why self-restraint is a good thing. This philosophical understanding, this ‘charm’, is like a magic spell. But of course it’s anything but magical.
And in the Gorgias, Socrates spends a long time offering rational arguments for his ethical conclusions before finishing with a mythological story about the gods judging the souls of human beings and sending them to the underworld. He says he is convinced by these rational accounts (logon). Of course it’s not about the myth.
Plato has a habit of making the point of his dialogues in the ‘digressions’ from the argument. He does it three times in the Phaedo. It is a philosophical sleight of hand that he hides in plain sight. (The Theaetetus is another good example.) In amongst the arguments of the Phaedo we find Socrates’ friends troubled by the fear of their own deaths. How can they overcome this fear? Socrates says: ‘Repeat the words of the charmer until you have charmed them away.’ This is the point of the dialogue. This is what Plato wants us to understand, and so this is what he shows us: Socrates repeating his own words, practising his philosophical activity, to take his medicine and keep his soul in good health as he dies.
See how he doubts and invites questions. Socrates is a sceptic: he doesn’t know if his soul is immortal. But he knows that he dies better if he believes that it is. See how he reassures himself. See how he does this by comforting others. It is a role, a matter of practice, something that is done and not only spoken about, even here at the end of his life’s work. By now it comes easy but it is still deliberate: it is an act of choice. Face your doubts and fears, investigate the ideas that you have about things, correct yourself using reason and, being convinced by these rational accounts, live by it, in a way that is consistent with yourself and in conformity with nature.
He cautions his friends not to blindly follow him in his reasoning, but to think for themselves, because he is working to his own purposes and they must work to theirs. When he is done with his arguments, and having refuted all objections, he insists that no one reasonable can say for certain that the soul is immortal, but that it is a belief worth risking because it inspires confidence in us to be better people, and it’s for that reason that he’s spent so much of his final hours on these charming stories. But remember that Plato is the storyteller.
In the end Socrates thanks medicine for the medicine, recognising it to be good medicine that makes it easy to die. He is grateful the medicine made it easy. Because it’s a difficult thing to die well; he’s done his best to endure it easily but he’s had to work hard at it. He is grateful that the medicine made it easier in the end, and so he asks that his friend repay that debt of gratitude on his behalf.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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