The Phaedo (Socrates)

Question 1

Outline Socrate’s life

Answer 1

Born in Athens to middle-class parents. Worked as a stonemason before committing to Philosophising. Often described as ugly, but charismatic- attained a cultish following among the young men of Athens. Philosophising was aimed at very practical results: more genuinely fulfilling and ethical lives for everyone. Gained enemies by criticising the supposedly ‘superficial’ attitudes of Athens: directly interrogating men of power and influence. Sentenced to death, and obeyed this sentence even as possibilities for escape were possible.

Question 2

Outline Plato’s theory of the forms

Answer 2

The forms are unchanging, perfect ‘blueprints’ of concepts or essences that we draw on to recognise physical manifestations, or ‘particulars’, that participate in them
We recognise something as beautiful because we have an innate sense of some eternal standard of true beauty, or Beauty itself. This unchanging, perfect essence of beauty is the Form of Beauty
For example: we recognise that a tiny model of a horse is a horse, despite it having so little in common with an actual horse, because we tap into the ‘form of horse’ (the concept of horse-ness)

Question 3

Outline the background of the Phaedo

Answer 3

Written by Plato in Classical Greece. The Phaedo describes a dialogue between Echecrates and Phaedo, discussing the final hours of Socrates’ life
Before his sentence, Socrates was visited daily by a group of male philosophical friends and students. As Socrates slowly dies from the hemlock, the friends engage in a discussion about what happens to the soul after death

Question 4

Outline Socrates’ Affinity argument

Answer 4

Responding to the question of whether the soul is 'scattered to pieces' after death, Socrates describes a dichotomy between two classes of things: those likely to disperse or perish after death and those which do not. The first class defines things which are like the Forms: visible, changeable, composite and grasped by the senses. The second class defines things which are like the Particulars: invisible, constant, singular and grasped by reason.
Socrates identifies the Body as being more like the Particulars, while the Soul is more like the Forms
Seeing how things split into their composite parts are destroyed, and the soul is incomposite, it is reasonable to establish that the soul cannot be destroyed, and is therefore not destroyed when the Body dies

Question 5

Criticisms of the Affinity argument

Answer 5

• accepting the argument relies on accepting the theory of the forms
• If souls can be virtuous or non-virtuous, doesn’t that suggest that not all souls are unchanging and perfect?
• likewise, if souls can be seduced by the body and mortal temptations, doesn’t that suggest that souls can be affected by the body?

Question 6

Outline the relationship between body and soul

Answer 6

the body is mortal and physical and the soul immortal and immaterial.