Accounts and dialogues from his students mostly transport us to a time when Socrates was a relatively old man. His student, Plato, portrayed him as anything but physically handsome. "Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius. Phaedo’s reply, composed by Socrates… His discussions were full of questions instead of answers. In 399 BCE, the execution was carried out by means of a drink laced with the poisonous hemlock (Conium maculatum). It begins when Socrates seeks the true … PHAEDO: It is the ship in which, according to Athenian tradition, Theseus went to Crete when he took with him the fourteen youths, and was the saviour of them and of himself. Phaedo is asked if he had been present with Socrates on the day that he drank the poison. Updated April 10, 2020. He was the first moral philosopher of his time. He believed that a virtuous soul is one that is brave enough to stand in the face of persecution. The soul is immortal and has eternal fate. 70d, 71d). He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. In this saying Socrates equating self-knowledge and analysis to true happiness. There was a people revolution in Athens, the tyrants got toppled, and a democratic government was installed. Socrates used a method of self-analysis to explore subjects of the physical world. According to some scholars, his philosophical skills made him far better able than Xenophon was to understand Socrates and therefore more valuable a source of information about him. Socrates explains that the theory which he regards as most certain, as least vulnerable to attack, is none other than the Theory of Forms. 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The Asceticism of the Phaedo: Pleasure, Purification, and the Soul’s Proper Activity Abstract: I argue that according to Socrates in the Phaedo we should not merely evaluate bodily pleasures and desires as worthless or bad, but actively avoid them. The exact charges that were levied against him were: Typical of Socrates, he was not perturbed by those charges. They go as far as saying that the ideas purported to be Socrates’ may have not been the views of Socrates himself. He replies that he was present, and he also mentions several of the other persons who were there at the time. Their focus of the study was mainly on cosmology, mathematics, and ontology. The writings of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle paint some very ground-breaking reasoning by Socrates. In the final argument of the Phaedo, Plato attempts to show that the soul is immortal. The divergent stories about Socrates lend no help in zooming down on Socrates actual views. There have been some levels of contradictions in Plato’s dialogues and among the accounts of Xenophon and Aristotle. In order for a statement to be true, one must state that an object exists, what the object is, and the state in which it exists. When the body dies, the soul departs from the mortal body only to enter a new body depending on its karma or actions of present life. He puts the soul into an advantageous position compared to the body because the soul brings life to the body. Long, A. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Often times, it started off as a simple question and then it glided into more and more questions. Hence, those truths should be the pursuit of every one of us in order to lead a moral life. See to it, and don't forget." He was not solely in favor of democratic principles. Classical and Socioeconomic Views of Social Responsibility, The Enslavement and Control of Women’s Body, Mind-Body Connection & How the Environment Effects Learning, Structure and Function of the Human Body – Respiration and Urinary Systems, Structure and Function of the Human Body – Lymphatic and Immune Sytems, Structure and Function of the Human Body: A Broken Heart, Anatomy and Structure of the Human Body – Sense Your Hormones. It is plain that both of these arguments apply to the souls of all living things, including plants (cf. World History Edu © 2020. The dialogue Phaedo, which depicts the death of Socrates, is also Plato’s fourth and last dialogue to detail the philosopher’s final days, following Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito. Socrates appears to be principally concerned with virtue, a kind of moral excellence that structures a life according to rational principles. ), was put to death by the state of Athens. Therefore, Socrates develops the concept of the soul that gives life to the body and this concept became fundamental for many philosophical views in ancient Greece as well as western philosophy. And certainly, he wasn’t going to do so even when death stared at him right in the face. These great philosophers chronicled the life of Socrates as well as his ideas. Socrates lost the trial and was sentenced to death. Socrates’ Approach to Philosophy (The Socratic Method) Socratic philosophy sharply differs from its predecessors because it searches for a universal truth. Most notable of such dialogues are the Crito, the Apology, Symposium and the Phaedo (Platonic Socrates text). His thoughts were usually geared towards the pursuit of ethics and value-laden life. Socrates believe that the purpose of philosophy is to gain more wisdom and by questioning things one is gaining more knowledge. Kind courtesy of the efforts and sheer brilliance of his most famous student, Plato, Socrates ideas and philosophy continue to hold significant sway in our world, even after thousands of years. Phaedo. Plato’s dialogues portrayed him as thoughtfully and very articulate during the trial. In such a way, Socrates stresses that the soul is immortal and the body is just a substance, which the soul gives life. Some authors have claimed that Socrates unshackled the chains that hang tight around the young men at that time. We are starting near the beginning of our philosophical tradition, with Plato (427-347 BCE), the first of the great philosophers of the Western tradition. Rather than display to the folks how much he knew, he asked questions (the Socratic Method). Notify me of follow-up comments by email. The task of writing what this wonderful philosopher thought and spoke about fell to his students and followers. As friends and fellow philosophers Cebes, Crito, and Simmias crowd around Socrates, they express how sad they are that he’s about to die. by Plato translated by Benjamin Jowett PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: PHAEDO, who is the narrator of the dialogue to ECHECRATES of Phlius; SOCRATES; APOLLODORUS; SIMMIAS; CEBES; CRITO; ATTENDANT OF THE PRISON; PHAEDO. The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. According to him, the physical world we live in was just a mirror image of things that are false. One of the biggest advocate of sophism was Protagoras. Socrates replied that it was because of the immortality of the soul that death was no evil. The Soul Is Immortal: Socrates and Plato. Socrates believed that there was a division between the body and the soul, and that the body played no part in the attainment of knowledge. This is the theory that there exist as real entities such things as Beauty in itself, Goodness in itself, and Largeness in itself. Obviously, he did not like the punishment; however, he felt obligated to be subjected to the city’s laws and judicial processes. He believed that reasoning and logical discussions would be able to convince the jury that he was innocent of those charges. Prior to Socrates coming onto the scene, the dominant thought or philosophical reasoning is referred to as pre-Socratic. In that dialogue, Socrates is trying to comfort his … On the other hand, it is what at the time of death departs fromthe person's limbs and travels to the underworld, where it has a moreor less pitiful afterlife as a s… It was the last dialogue that he wrote in the middle period of Socrates final days. His extensive works in ethics and epistemology are what formed the pillars of Western philosophy. The philosophical subject of the dialogue is the immortality of the soul. Just like his student, Plato, he called for wise and philosophical leaders. Socrates is a philosopher living in Athens, Greece in the fourth century BC He is the central character in Phaedo. True to form as a determined and committed philosopher, Socrates has chosen to spend these hours discussing the nature of the soul and the afterlife, in a bid to comfort his friends that he is ultimately going to a better place after death. Additionally, there were some of his followers and students that sympathized with the Thirty Tyrant’s cause. Phædo or Phaedo (/ ˈ f iː d oʊ /; Greek: Φαίδων, Phaidōn, Greek pronunciation: [pʰaídɔːn]), also known to ancient readers as On The Soul, is one of the best-known dialogues of Plato's middle period, along with the Republic and the Symposium. It is plain that both of these arguments apply to the souls of all living things, including plants (cf. The philosopher simply became a thorn in the flesh of the ruling elites. Therefore, escaping was far too a heavy price to pay. Sensory … 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. Socrates believed that when his body ceased to exist anymore, that his soul would leave and join that of the forms, where he would be eternally. In the Phaedo is significantly narrower than our concept of mind, in that the soul, as conceived of in this particular dialogue, is not, in fact, responsible, or directly responsible, for all of a person’s mental or psychological activities and responses, but only for a rather severely limited subset of them. He searched for a set of universal truths that would help Athenian society live a morally upright life. A clever thinker and shrewd conversationalist, Socrates is known for encouraging people to carefully scrutinize their beliefs, often asking a series of simple questions to make his way toward a certain point. — A soul (Plato, 198). The Homeric poems, with which most ancient writers can safely beassumed to be intimately familiar, use the word ‘soul’ intwo distinguishable, probably related, ways. He was charged with ‘corrupting’ the youth and heresy. Secondly, Socrates felt that had he escaped, the inquisitive nature of his mind was bound to bring him at odds with another authority elsewhere. I will first explain some of Plato’s ontological presuppositions. These questions went a long way in liberating their thought process and giving them suggestive ideas on how best to live a moral life. He was born in 469 BCE at a place called Deme Alpoece, Athens. Another reason area of contention is whether or not Socrates accepted payment in exchange for his tutoring. The philosopher seeks death as a final truth. In this dialogue, Plato relates what purports to be a conversation between Socrates and his friends on the day of his death. In the Phaedo, Socrates believed that his life-long philosophical training had adequately prepared him when for death. Perhaps Socrates felt that his time was up. A painting by Jacques-Louis David (1787) on the Death of Socrates. Even in his death bed, Socrates appeared very calm and composed. For example, Aristotle made mention of the fact that Socrates utterly believed in virtue being knowledge. Socrates attributes a large variety of mental states not to the soul, but to the animate body, such as, for instance, beliefs and pleasures and desires and fears (Bremmer, 219). Phaedo had been present at the execution of the old crank, and Echecrates asked him to relate how Socrates met his end. In such a way, the difference is absolute and it is through the unification of these contrasting characteristics of the body and the soul, the human body gets life, while the soul gets its substance for existence since with the help of the body the soul can exist in the real world. These included Simmias, Cebes, Crito, Apollodorus, and several other people. Bremmer, J. Socrates, however, is at peace, explaining … The final reason has to do with Socrates’ high sense of “social contract” with the state. The reasons why he stayed in prison can be inferred from the Phaedo and the Crito as follows: First and foremost, Socrates was not the type of person to shy away from a fight. In this regard, the soul has the power over the body because it is the soul that gives life to the body. As a result of this, Socrates lived in abject poverty for a great all his life. During my account of the argument, I will discuss examples illuminating some details necessary to understand According to Cebes, why is Socrates' belief that the gods are asking him to commit suicide wrong? According to them, the physis (nature) remains unchanged but the nomos (law) is what varies. Unfortunately, the jury wanted to have nothing to do with any Socratic Method of analyzing the charges. They were called the Thirty Tyrants. At the same time, the soul is not narrowly intellectual: it too has desires, even passionate ones, such as the non-philosophical soul’s love [erôs] of the corporeal and pleasures as well, such as the pleasures of learning (Long & Sedley, 155). RATIONALE To live philosophically, a person must examine his or her beliefs to ground them in knowledge, and then act according to t when it's inconvenient to walk, serving meat on special occasions, and shopping locally for groceries only sporadically are CONCEPT Philosophical Analysis as a Way of Life 17 In the passage below, Socrates … Theory Of Recollection Phaedo. This is because there are lots of key points about Socrates that have been corroborated by philosophers such as Aristotle and Xenophon. One of Socrates’ friends, Crito, made arrangements for Socrates to prison break to freedom. In all probability, Socrates attributes different mental states to the body to stress the superiority of the soul, which remains untouched by emotions and different mental states, while the body is vulnerable to the impact of strong emotions and different mental states. In the Phaedo, we find a series of reflections that are directly relevant to the Melissa/Melinda quandary. The soul is, on the onehand, something that a human being risks in battle and loses indeath. Therefore, the soul turns out to be something immortal and superior, while the body is mortal and inferior. Plato’s Academy: the World’s First University, The Boston Massacre: The American Revolution, Julius Caesar: History, Accomplishments and Facts, Answers to Popular Questions about Plato - World History Edu. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Socrates spoke to anyone who was interested in having an intellectual conversation. Needless to say, none of the four main lines of argument that Socrates avails himself of succeeds in establishing the immortality of the soul, or in demonstrating that disembodied souls enjoy lives of thought and intelligence (Long & Sedley, 146). The philosopher is concerned with the soul and not with the body. Exactly when Socrates began thinking deeply about life and morality is unknown. Another student of Plato, Xenophon, expressed similar remarks. Socrates would roam the streets of ancient Athens trying to trigger the reasoning capacity of people from all walks of life. Those were his favored methods of expressing and refining his ideas. Disclaimer: Essay4you.net is an academic writing agency that provides research papers, thesis, essays as well as other custom papers exclusively for the purposes of research. Socrates, as dep All in all, those teachings served as the foundations for Classical Greek Philosophy. Note that, formally speaking, Socrates is committing a fallacy; he treats a condition that is necessary for being with the gods (purity) as if it were a sufficient condition. Required fields are marked *. Socrates* was the first thinker in Western history to focus the full power of reason on the human self: who we are, who we should be, and who we will become. The philosophical subject of the dialogue is the immortality of the soul. All of the above ideas flew right across the faces of the powerful and elite in ancient Athens. They were deeply immersed in a mythological approach of dealing with the physical world. For instance, Plato wrote extensive dialogues (Plato’s Dialogues) where the main character in the conversation was his tutor Socrates. His belief is that we already know everything and have known it since we were born, we simply recall these facts from memory when we re-learn them. Everything from religion, politics, cosmology, poetry, and mathematics owe the majority of their ideas to Socratic philosophy and methodology. Worldhistoryedu is not responsible for the content of external sites. Moreover, the soul’s functions are, as we have seen already, not restricted to grasping and appreciating truth, but prominently include regulating and controlling the body and its affections, such as beliefs and pleasures, desires and fears, no doubt in light of suitable judgments, arrived at, or anyhow supported and controlled, by reasoning (Bremmer, 222). Echecrates asked him to relate how Socrates met his end those charges to. A section of elites to power when Socrates was less interested in coming up with state! ( Plato ’ s Apology and Symposium both claim that Socrates unshackled the chains that hang around... People revolution in Athens, the soul that death was no evil towards the pursuit of one! 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