Jiwa. Socrates bercerita mengenai jiwa. Paling aku tertarik ialah dengan masalah 1+2

3.5. For all its reputation as one of Plato's masterpieces, Phaedo falls short of the previous texts leading up to Socrates' last day on earth. This one is convoluted, dull at times, minorly enlightening at others, but mostly without emotion until the final two pages. I'll write some more thoughts down either here or in the compiled review. That is Plato's first "tetralogy" done, if you go by the ordering of Thrasyllus (if it was indeed him).

Naklada Jurčić
Zagreb, 1996.
Prijevod: Koloman Rac
Uvod i bilješke: Jure Zovko
Najbolje Platonovo djelo koje ikad pročitah!
Nije mi jasno zašto je Zovko napisao predgovor pretežito u obliku prepričavanja ovog filozofskog dijaloga? Prvo Jure Zovko prepriča što se sve govori u dijalogu, a onda čitatelj to i pročita u samom dijalogu? Mislim, ono....
U uvodu se navodi da ovaj dijalog posjeduje najljepši Platonov jezik u vidu toga da je jezik ovog djela ponajviše književnoumjetničke prirode. Jezik je sjajan, no rekao bih, po sjećanju, da mi "Gozba" ipak posjeduje ljepši jezik, to jest, jezik na većoj razini književnoumjetničke furke.
Kao i u svim Platonovim dijalozima jezik se koncentrira na, gle čuda, dijalozima. "Gozba" posjeduje svojevrsne "didaskalije" u vidu toga što se u zagradama navodi položaj likova (koji uglavnom leže u mamurluku). Inače, "Gozba" se odigrava nakon velike pijanke pa je i u tom smislu bolja.
No, ipak je "Fedon" najbolje Platonovo djelo.
Razlog tome leži u savršenom i britkom jeziku, toj mediteranskoj atmosferi iskrenog humanizma i kritičkom mišljenju kakvo se danas sve više guši i od strane Glasnovića raznih i od strane LGBT-a raznih.
Književnoumjetnička odrednica ovog dijaloga, izuzev jezika, bila bi i kružna koncepcija priče. Dijalog počinje tako što Ehekrat pita Fedona kako je Sokrat proveo posljednje trenutke svoga života. Fedon je bio Sokratov učenik te je svjedočio tim trenucima te završava Ehekratovim oduševljenjem Sokratovoj mudrosti. Baš kao svojevrsna novela. U tom smislu ovaj dijalog posjeduje hipodijegetičku razinu, u kojoj je Sokrat u biti pripovjedač.
Sadržaj, dakle, prati posljednje trenutke Sokratova života. Od svih dijaloga, koje ja pročitah- mislim da mi je ovo sedmi dijalog, ovaj ima najviše likova. Skoro deset ljudi spika sa Sokratom. "Fedon" spada u kasnija Platonova djela pa je gotovo sigurno da Sokrat u "Fedonu" ne predstavlja ideje stvarnog Sokrata već Platonove ideje. Kad već govorimo o idejama; po njima je i najviše očigledno da je lik Sokrata glas Platona.
Ironija i svjesna kognitivna nadmoć Sokrata u ovom dijalogu je mjestimice na takvoj razini da je istovjetna ironiji i samosvijesti Igora Mandića.
Kao štovatelju Heraklita Efeškog drago mi je bilo uvidjeti da je Platon preuzeo i promovirao koncepte dijalektičke proturječnosti; nema hladnog bez toplog ili nema velikog bez malog i tome slično. Tim strujanjem uma dolazi se do toga da nema života bez smrti. I osnovna stavka ovog dijaloga jest duša. S time da je Platon shvaćao dušu više kao nešto što objedinjuje misleću stranu čovjekova bića, ne nešto emocionalno. Ja bih definirao pojam duše koju ovaj dijalog nosi kao zbir stečenog znanja i svijesti o svemu koju čovjek stekne kroz život. Platonu je važna koncepcija puta u stjecanju znanja. Znanje se stječe cjeloživotnim umnim putovanjem.
Na samom kraju dijaloga Sokrat govori o Zemlji. Sokrat iznosi oba mišljenja; da je Zemlja okrugla i da je ravna ploča. Prekul je Sokratova usporedba svemira i dna mora u vidu epistemologije fizičkog svemira:
"Tako bi tko, kad bi nasred mora prebivao na dnu, mogao misliti, da prebiva na moru; i gledajući kroz vodu sunce i ostale zvijezde, držao bi, da je more nebo, jer od tromosti i slabosti svoje još nikad nije dopr o iz mora ovamo na kraj- niti od drugoga, koji je vidio, čuo, koliko je ovo upravo čišće i ljepše od onoga kod njih. Isto tako se i nama dogodilo. Jer kako prebivamo u nekoj udubini zemaljskoj , mislimo, da gore na njoj prebivamo, i zrak zovemo nebom, kao da je on nebo, kojim se kreću zvijezde. A to je zato, što mi od slabosti i tromosti nijesmo podobni doprijeti do navrh zraka. Ta kad bi mu tko na kraj došao ili kad bi okrilatio i poletio, vidio bi, promolivši glavu, kao što u nas vide ribe ovo ovdje, kad se iz mora pomilaju,- da, tako bi tko vidio i ono ondje. Pa kad bi on po prirodi svojoj mogao gledajući ustrajati, upoznao bi, da je ono pravo nebo i prava zemlja. Ta ova zemlja i kamenje i savkolik prostor ovdje- to je pokvareno i istrošeno, kao ono u moru od slane vode..."
Ovaj pasus mi je najjebeniji u cijelom dijalogu. Podsjeća na prispodobu o spilji.
No, samo par stvari o jeziku. Leksem "okrilatio" je kul, rijetko se koristi te daje draž umjetničkosti tekstu. "Okrilatio" izaziva efekt očuđenja. Konkretan primjer kniževnoumjetničke vještine Platonova pisanja. A, i sama vizualnost, atmosferičnost Platonova pisanja je očigledna.
Sadržaj ovog citata je u srži epistemološke naravi. Relativizirajući ljudsko znanje o fizičkoj Zemlji i o svemiru, relativizira se i uopće doseg ljudskog znanja kao takvog. Platonova tvrdnja da kada bi ljudi stigli do granice "zraka" (atmosfere) i "neba" (svemira) bilo bi to istovjetno granici mora i zraka. Da je naše nebo ekvivalent moru, a da je svemir ekvivalent zraku iznad mora. Genijalno. Platon je već u petom stoljeću prije Krista bio svjestan svemira. Time se djelomično razbija Spenglerova tvrdnja o apolonskoj kulturi kao kulturi bez čežnje za beskrajem. Iako, Platon zapravo govori sa strahopoštovanjem o onome onkraju neba, on to ipak spominje, razmišlja o tome. Shvaća da je nešto nepregledno iznad Zemlje.
Platon kasnije u tekstu tvrdi da u svemiru ("nebu") žive drugi ljudi i ne samo ljudi. Nebo je mjesto "gdje su uistinu bogovi stanari". Pomalo dejvidajkovski, zar ne? Platon sa ovom prispodobom i onom o spilji zbilja zasniva i začinje film "Matrix". Platon je svjestan koliko je naše znanje nepotpuno; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTL4q.... Istina on nema tu metapolitičku podlogu, ali ima onu daleko dublju, metafizičku.
Čitanje je ratovanje!
Hasta luego!

Unedited stream of thoughts from the margins of the dialogue.

4/5 stars because, unlike the other dialogues, there were a lot more statements than there were questions - this Socrates seems to think he knows what he's talking about, whereas other Socrates dialogues felt a lot less committal to their positions. Maybe this Socrates wanted to reassure himself that he had a soul so that he could go towards death in peace.
But even though the Theory of Forms isn't super convincing, Plato does motivate the idea that *some* sort of theory is necessary to explain the nature of being and causation; we can't disinterestedly collect observations and "facts" about the world without trying to tie them together under the auspices of a unified theory. The very things we choose to observe about reality reflect what we think is important according to our "theory." This is opposed pure empiricism which states that since all we can ever "know with certainty" are our own observations, we are never fully justified in deducing general theories or laws that hold true regarding phenomenon that we haven't yet observed (e.g. an empiricist could say "well, just because you understand the orbit of Mars doesn't mean you'll be able to say anything useful about the orbit of Venus! Until you look at Venus with your own eyes you can't say for sure whether it's spherical or square, whether it orbits in an ellipse or a figure 8.) That seems silly. Maybe I'm strawmanning empiricism.
————————————————
This relates closely to Christian thought surrounding “mortification of the body,” that a person who wishes to be good must deny almost all bodily impulses, which tend to act *against* the best interests of the soul rather than for it (not all the time, but a lot of the time).
Socrates says that “a man who finds no pleasure in [bodily associations] and has no part in them is thought by the majority not to deserve to live and to be close to death; the man, that is, who does not care for pleasures of the body.” I can attest that staying in on a Friday night while in college definitely leaves one feeling like one isn’t “living life to the fullest” but it certainly leaves plenty of time for study! Socrates was a classical, non-romantic nerd. “The soul reasons best when none of the senses troubles it, neither pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body … in its search for reality.” He continuously insists that the sensory world is illusory, that true reality cannot be directly apprehended, that it only consists of capitalized Ideals.
We can never reach absolute zero, but we can understand what it would be and can base the Kelvin system off of it
No physical structure in the universe will ever represent a perfect ellipse, no handmade drawing, no discretized computer image. But we understand that the orbits of the planets “tend towards” perfect ellipses, with aberrations due to the interference of other planets’ gravity.
Socrates, as Plato’s mouthpiece, says that the pursuit of knowledge of non-tangible Ideals is the main task of philosophy. As a philosopher, one must do everything within one’s power to clear away obstacles for that pursuit, which means eliminating “bodily evils.” “The body keeps us busy in a thousand ways because of its need for nurture.” Eating is a distraction from learning (that’s why I read these dialogues over breakfast for a month)

I think Plato takes things too far, saying “no thought of any kind ever comes to us from the body…the body and its desires cause war…all wars are due to the desire to acquire wealth…we are enslaved to the body’s compulsion to acquire wealth, which makes us too busy to practice philosophy.”
Thinking about Herman Hesse: I think of Siddhartha, who, as a temporary ascetic, tried to shun all Earthly distractions to fast-track his way to Enlightenment, but found himself returning from his meditations again and again feeling hungry, cold, and dirty, eventually giving up that life for some basic comfort.
[spoiler for Narcissus & Goldmund]
I think of Narcissus who spends a decade studying in a monastery, in the “dry arid lands of the mind,” to become a pale, gaunt fellow who knows little of the outside world. Someone who wonders whether he will end up dying peacefully, with calm acceptance of the life he lived as a scholarly monk, or with regret over all the experiences he gave up study indoors.
[end spoiler]
To consider complete denial of the body as an ideal to which one must aspire, to pretend that the soul and the body are completely separable, seems doomed to fail. After all, if one were to completely deny the body then one would die within a few days of thirst, which would make it pretty difficult to study philosophy. So clearly, there exists *some* middle ground which is the true ideal, a middle way.
The other extreme aspect of that quote is that “no thought of any kind ever comes to us from the body…if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves with the soul by itself.” Again, this presents an extreme in which only a priori knowledge is useful, which stems from Plato’s belief that “all learning is recollection,” that all we will ever know is contained within our souls at birth and life is simply a matter of rediscovering what we “already know.” My two problems with this are 1) that all learning is not purely recollection, the “proof” of this in Meno was not convincing, which I’ll talk about elsewhere and 2) that this amounts to saying “the explore-exploit dilemma is a false one. One needs only to sit by oneself and exploit all the knowledge that one already has, and that is how one can reach the truth.” The only discipline in which I could imagine this is true is pure mathematics, and it would only be true 1) pure math is a priori and 2) one had enormous durations of time to think. Even if math is a priori, studying the world with the body accelerates research (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relatio... ) so I don’t think that sensory exploration should be completely shunned for a life of thought if one wishes to have full knowledge of the world.
I agree that the body does tend to distract the mind more often than it helps it; our ancestors did not find food or mates by writing out mathematical proofs. Practicing philosophy does require discipline and limiting oneself. I’m not a philosopher but I do try to lead an examined life, an intentional one in which I minimize my regrets. That has led me to limit myself in many ways, from imposing externally-enforced limits on my screen time to swearing off video games to saying “no” to spontaneous invitations. But I don’t aspire to become a complete ascetic; I would be lying if I claimed that was an ideal way to live. Worldly experience provides the basis for imagination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanti...), and imagination is the wellspring from which scientists originate their hypotheses. Robert Pirsig (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...) pointed out that there is no straightforward analytical method by which one can filter and order the hypotheses to explain a phenomenon; one must appeal to a notion of which hypothesis “seems better than another,” and from reading his book, he made it clear that a combination of worldly experience and contemplation was necessary to determine “what’s best,” regarding both scientific hypotheses as well as ways of living.

Going back to the dialogue, I didn’t buy into a whole lot of the Form discussion going on. Socrates is trying to make the point that if opposites come from opposites, that if “the weaker comes from the stronger,” and “sleeping comes from being awake”, then “death comes from living just as the living comes from the dead,” and that dead matter must become “imbued with a soul” in order to come alive. He says “there are two kinds of existences, the visible and the invisible, and the invisible always remains the same whereas the visible never does,” and he’s talking about how the only constant in the world is that it’s constantly shifting but that Forms are eternal and unchanging, that the area of a circle is always pi * r^2 no matter where and when you are, and that since souls are immaterial then they are immortal, much like ideas. I guess you could say that just in the same way perfect spheres “interact” with the world by “imbuing” planets with Sphereness, souls interact with the world by imbuing organic matter with life. But…who says that all “invisible” things are alike? We can’t observe them.

There is a great section when Socrates is challenged by Simmias and Cebes and he has to take a breath and collect himself. He says “it would be pitiable when there is a true and reliable argument that can be understood, if a man who has dealt with arguments that appeared one time true and another time untrue (which is what just happened when Socrates was challenged) that he should not blame himself or his own lack of skill but, because of his distress, gladly shift the blame away from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life reviling reasoned discussion and be deprived of truth.” He’s definitely on point regarding how bodily pride and ego can get in the way of the truth, which exists outside of the discussion but can be examined through discussion. That it takes humility to be able to admit that you’re wrong (even though our natural instinct would be to assert dominance in a discussion rather than to seek the truth). In light of this, I can see why Plato might have wanted to create an ideal out of the opposite: where most people only cared about winning arguments with rhetoric and defeating the other side, Plato would want to encourage people to seek Truth even if it means they end up being proven wrong. So that might have contributed to all this bodily mortification idealization.

Even with some parts that were kind of absurd, e.g. “if you compare to people’s heights, you shouldn’t say ‘the taller person is taller because their body is a foot longer than the other person’, you should say that the taller person is taller because they partake in the Tallness more than the other person.” I think it was wrapped up nicely in the end. After Socrates finishes describing a myth of what happens to people after they die, a long tale of swirling waters and trapped souls, he says “No sensible man would insist that things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief — for the belief is a noble one — that something like this [myth] is true about our souls, since the soul is evidently immortal…if during life has 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 considered himself with the pleasures of learning, and adorned his soul with moderation, righteousness, courage, freedom, and truth, then a man should be of good cheer as he awaits his journey to the underworld.” In other words, “even if heaven and hell aren’t real, then what’s the harm in being a good person and denying yourself pleasure? You missed out on a 2:00am rave? Boo-hoo” As Aristotle says later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristot... ) “the man whose appetites are in the correct order actually takes pleasure in acting moderately.” So if you really believe in all this virtuous stuff then you won’t even feel FOMO at all!

But the questions remain: if asceticism is not an ideal and is an extreme, then how does one define “moderation” in each pursuit? To what degree can one remove oneself from earthly indulges without feeling regret?

It’s better to ask these questions than to not ask them and live blindly; it is better to be constantly learning and questioning how much learning is appropriate than to live life completely in the moment and never bother to reflect at all. It’s better to reflect too much and realize that you’re reflecting too much than to never reflect and never realize that you’re never reflecting. If you’re partying so much that you never have a chance to assess your partying, then you’ll drop dead on the dance floor.

So with that, I’m going to go back to sitting at my computer and reading some of those wikipedia articles I linked earlier, and soon I’ll pick up Nicomachean Ethics to read about how to live a good life. And then later I’ll go for a walk (while keeping six feet away from everyone) and not think about anything at all

“But the immortal is imperishable; and therefore the soul on the approach of death does not perish but removes.”

But Plato, I think, was sick

Symposium , the first Platonic dialogue I came across, surprised me in its readability. The same thing had happened to me, a few years before, with the works of Sophocles. It is amazing enough that these texts have reached us thanks to a precarious chain of transmission; but even more so is that, after so long, we can still access them so easily. It is something that happens to me only with Ancient Greek literature (although not with all of it), especially with the theater, with Plato's dialogues, and also with the Gospels, which are Ancient Greek literature after all. The texts generated in other cultures, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead , or the Confucian Analects , or the Nordic sagas, may be interesting to me, but I can't read them with this ease. They have the mark of something strange and foreign, even though I find in them the same universal human concerns. With Plato, the opposite happens: sometimes the topics seem boring or absurd, as is in fact the case with Phaedo , but the wonder of reading them is enough to keep me going.

Phaedo has for me many great moments, beyond this central theme, which is that of the immortality of the soul. Most of it takes place during Socrates' last afternoon, when his friends go to visit him in prison. Socrates seems serene, even slightly excited, at the prospect of death. And he talks, of course. He explicitly says that this is going to be a second Apology, but dedicated exclusively to his friends, a private and personal text while the other had been a public plea. He then defends the Platonic worldview - it is a fairly complete exposition - and extends himself on the subject of the soul and its immortality. He proves his arguments absurdly, exercising with his friends the last loving strokes of his maieutic ("ah, dear Cebes, but then you will agree that ..."). The decisive contribution of Platonism to Christian theology has never been clearer to me than in this dialogue. It's a slightly interesting thing, but not more than what I might have learned from reading Wikipedia or Plato for Dummies . What I really find fascinating about Phaedo are the margins of this main text, which I could not have read elsewhere than in the dialogue itself.

Unlike what happens in other dialogues, the title of this one does not refer to the opponent (or the victim) of Socrates' turn, but to his narrator. In the first scene, Phaedo of Elis, who is one of the disciples who was present that last afternoon, meets another philosopher, Echecrates, some time after the execution, and relates to him with prodigious memory all that Socrates said. His story follows, from there, the form of a classic dialogue, although on a couple of occasions Echecrates interrupts Phaedo to marvel at what he tells him. We cannot help but think, at the moment, that it is not just a dialogue within another, because the first scene is also part of a larger text, which would be the dialogue between Plato and ourselves. It is the system of Chinese boxes that we find in The Thousand and One Nights , or in the novels of Juan José Saer, or in infinite other places from then on. It is a procedure that, now that I think about it, also appears profusely in the epic, so of course in the Iliad , although perhaps what makes it unique in Plato's case is that it also seems a reflection of his own philosophical system: from the concrete to the abstract, from the immediate situation to the mere words.

Phaedo begins his story at the moment in which Socrates' friends arrive at the prison. Xanthippe, the philosopher's infamous wife, is there with one of their children, and seeing the friends arrive makes her extremely emotional. "This is the last time you will talk to your friends," she says. Socrates, under his breath, says to one of them "Someone take her away from here." The insertion of this quasi-humorous passage, and above all very human, if perhaps a bit misogynistic, gives an extra relief to the entire dialogue. It is not that the story is only the excuse for the Platonic disquisition; Plato evidently wants to, and on top of it he is able to, make a credible narration of those last moments of Socrates. When I read this passage, and others like it, I at least feel that things could very well have happened like that. Also at the beginning, one of the friends transmits to Socrates a warning from the executioner: not to talk too much, because talking too much seems to “agitate” the condemned, and in the end they have to give them two or three times the indicated dose of hemlock. Socrates, whom we know as one of the great talkers of Western history, laughs and comments they better prepare two or three glasses. The joke, inserted in such a solemn occasion, seems so typical of the Socratic ethos that I also blindly believe it.

Then there are some pathetic moments drawing closer to the end. At one point, Phaedo says that Socrates, as he used to do, was playing with his hair - with Phaedo's hair, right? -, because Greek men were not afraid of this type of physical expression of affection, or of others, and then he says, as if to himself: “maybe you will cut them tomorrow”, alluding to what was at that time a sign of mourning. Later, when the executioner gives him the hemlock (that poison that is famous only thanks to this moment), Socrates watches him as he leaves the room and says that he is a good man, that many nights he would come to chat with him and ask him if needed something. What did Aristotle say? Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas : “Plato is my friend, but truth is a better friend”. Well, I say: truth is my friend, but Plato is a better friend.

In one of his famous and later transcribed talks, his talk dedicated to immortality, Borges comments on Phaedo , and observes the famous phrase:  Plato, I think, was sick . I don't know if Borges really read the dialogue, because he attributes the finding to Max Brod, who as far as I know wrote a novel – which I wasn’t able to find - whose protagonist is a boy who is obsessed with this Platonic dialogue. Not a curious choice for Brod, who today is known above all as the friend who did not burn Franz Kafka's texts: one of these refractory figures in the history of literature, built in the shadow of an admired and more talented other, like James Boswell, or Bioy Casares, or Stanislau Joyce, or -in his beginnings- Plato himself. By evoking the phrase, Borges also gives it a typically Borgian inflection, turns it into Platón, creo, estaba enfermo . He says that it is the only time that Plato is mentioned in his own dialogues, and I know that Borges would have liked it to be so (me too), but this mention is only one of three: the other two times, Plato is mentioned in the Apology , as one of those present at the trial of Socrates, and also as one of the friends willing to pay the 3,000 denarii bail. After considering the classical interpretation of this curious self-insertion, Borges concludes that the philosophical reasons are secondary and that "Plato felt the insurmountable literary beauty" of declaring himself absent from the very situation he is narrating.

However, let us return to the classical interpretation, which is to suppose that the author of the dialogue meant something with this absence. Phaedo, to begin with, is very sure of Plato's absence that afternoon, but nevertheless seems to doubt his reasons. He was sick, I think. So, should we think that Plato alleged a flu so as not to say goodbye to his friend and teacher? The fact of his absence, whether it is true or not, and in this way, makes me think that he already wants to express a distance between the two - at least a philosophical distancing. The Socrates of the Apology and that of Phaedo are considerably different. In the first dialogue, for example, Socrates declares that he is not afraid of death, because in the event that the afterlife exists, he trusts the gods, and, if it does not exist, then there’s nothing to fear. In the Phaedo , he deals with demonstrating the immortality of the soul, with a certainty that he had not found before. It is a distance first of all temporary: Socrates spent only a few months in prison until he was executed, but years passed between Plato writing the Apology , perhaps the first of his texts, and the Phaedo. , which belongs to its intermediate period. The  Plato, I think, was sick , as opposed to his presence pointed out twice in the  Apology , tells us that Plato did not want this dialogue to be taken literally, as a truthful account of the facts. It is even possible that  he was  present, but Socrates did not say what he attributes to him. The exposition on the soul is already purely Platonic philosophy, and the character of Socrates is more its enunciator than the stinging Athenian (the “gadfly”) of the first dialogues.

It is a transformation that makes me think a little about the origins of Christianity. The historical Jesus that we can intuit in the early Gospels does not look very much like the idealized, refined version of Jesus that Paul and the Gospel of John give us. The parallels with Socrates are many, to the point that it seems to me that this story, like Platonism, paved the way for Christ. We have the unjust accusation of the teacher, the trial, and above all the sentence that seems inexplicable, especially because it is meekly accepted by the condemned, as if he knows something that no one else knows. The disciples will spend centuries arguing about that acceptance, trying to make sense of it. And they will reach similar conclusions, although Socratism has not become a religion. It was close to do so, though. If we have the  Apology  as a public plea, then there is the  Phaedo  as a private dialogue and for friends, that is, initiates, who receive a revelation that is not within reach. of all. It is a more selective Gnostic writing, the beginning of a mystery religion. Plato also could not understand Socrates' final meekness, and had to invent this dialogue to give him a justification: only if he had believed in the immortality of the soul he was justified in allowing himself to be killed so easily, just as the certainty of the resurrection could explain the sacrifice of Jesus. We don't really know what Socrates' trial meant, nor did Plato, but the conviction that there is something muddled and intense in that story, something to be understood, to be resolved, makes it so important. I am not interested in  Phaedo  as a metaphysical text, but as a testimony of this obsession. Which is to say: as literature.

В този диалог си засяга темата за душата и тялото. Сократ предлага различни аргументи в подкрепа на твърдението, че душата е безсмъртна.

"Critone, dobbiamo un gallo ad Asclepio, dateglielo, non ve ne dimenticate".

Baseddddd

Phaedo is probably one of the most significant and iconic episodes of philosophy history. In this dialogue, we are given the opportunity of grapple with Plato’s theory of forms and his inquiry of the sources of knowledge, in the process of defending his fearlessness and pleasantness in the face of Socrates’ imminent demise. There are a few questions that should confuse a modern reader: what is the significance of this piece besides that its main character is the founder of philosophical reasoning? What we should appreciate from this book besides it is rightly considered as a masterpiece?

The first thing I would say is Socrates as a lover of knowledge demonstrates powerfully what is it like to be genuinely inquisitive about the truth and how one should use rationality to justify his fate when it is determined by the external. Although this is not Socrates’ intention, I do view that to a certain degree, Socrates tries to convince his companions he is indeed at peace with himself knowing death is to be put upon him. Some of his logic is clearly faulty and arbitrary – for instance, to argue the immortality of a soul he uses the example of the immortality of God to justify that a soul can be imperishable so long as humans deem gods as imperishable – and from the standpoint of an atheist this does not stand still. I truly admire the spirit he possesses in search of virtue and beauty.

Also, if we look at this dialogue from the whole picture of human intellectual history, this is a very inspiring book. Let us imagine, at some point in our record of time, humans truly broke free of the limit of the survival instinct of hunting, power and mating and started to ponder about the meaning of wisdom, virtue, the universe and philosophy. How can we not say that humans are not superior to animals? Hence, to appreciate Plato’s ideas, readers need to have a sense of mega-awareness to the significance this piece holds for humans in seek of questions – what happens after death, the separation of body and soul and human virtues – that are so abstract, so difficult, and so remarkable.

*lengthy excerpt read for class*

damn i sorta get why this guy is so popular now LOL

his reasoning tactics were very interesting to read as i found myself trying to see how he would connect a tangent with his initial argument, then being like "woah" when he finally connected it back to his main point and it somehow made sense

the dialogue format makes surprisingly digestible ! i expected it to be a lot more difficult to understand but i found it very enjoyable and clear for the most part

Το διαβάζω απο εκδόσεις βιβλιοπωλίον της Έστιας σε μεταφραση Ιωάννη Πετράκη.