Wolz, The Phaedo, Plato and The Dramatic Approach To Philosophy

THE "PHAEDO": PLATO AND THE DRAMATIC APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY
Author(s): HENRY G. WOLZ

Source: CrossCurrents, Vol. 13, No. 2 (SPRING 1963), pp. 163-186
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HENRY G. WOLZ
THE PHAEDO:
PLATO AND THE DRAMATIC
APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY
I he modern view of the Phaedo is paradoxical. On the one hand,

it is regarded as one of the most dramatic of Plato's writings. This should
make it akin to the earlier dialogues, which have been called "dialogues
of search,"1 and in which no definite conclusion is reached. On the other
hand, it is held that of the elaborate proofs for the immortality· of the
soul which fill the main body of the dialogue, at least the final one
was "thoroughly satisfactory and conclusive"2 to its author. Formal
demonstrations, however, are not what one would expect to find in the
works of good dramatists. They suggest, provoke, or sharply criticize;
but "when it comes to putting forward positive views in place of those
that have been questioned, [they] are much more hesitant than philoso
phers, much less sure of themselves."8
Those interpreters who nevertheless insist on maintaining the cus
tomary classification usually try to turn our attention away from the
strictly philosophical parts of the dialogue and urge us to look for the
dramatic elements in the byplay, the atmosphere, the concrete situation
in which the discussion takes place. And there the dialogue is said to
yield a rich harvest. What could be more moving, we are told, than the
ι George Boas, Rationalism in Greek Philosophy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

Press, 1961, p. 132.
2 R. S. Bluck, Plato's Phaedo, The Phaedo o£ Plato translated with Introduction,
Notes and Appendices, New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1955, p. 23.
See also the statement by Karl R. Popper: "The Socrates of the Apology and some
other dialogues is intellectually modest; in the Phaedo, he changes into a man who
is assured of the truth of his metaphysical speculations." The Open Society and Its
Enemies, Princeton University Press, 1950, p. 601.
3 D. D. Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Second Printing 1961, p. 102.
Dr. Henry Wolz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Queens College, New

York City. His work has appeared in the Philosophical Journal, The Review
of Metaphysics and The New Scholasticism. A companion article on Plato
will be published shortly in the International Philosophical Quarterly.
picture of Socrates calmly conversing with his friends on the day on
which he is to die? What more dramatic than the cheerfulness with
which he sets the poison-filled cup to his lips while his friends cry out i
pain and sorrow so that he has to rebuke them for their lack of se
control? What more tense than the last moments when he walks about
the cell as long as his legs support him, and then lies down to await
the fatal effect of the hemlock—until, immediately after his order to
sacrifice the promised cock to Asculepius, the convulsive movement of his
body indicates the end?
The death scene as described by Plato may be the coping stone of a
life well lived, the life of a true philosopher; but it alone would not
seem sufficient to make us see this philosophic dialogue, the Phaedo, as
significantly dramatic.
Unfortunately, the ravages of time seem to have spared little that is
of value in the philosophic portion of the dialogue. In an age when the
very term soul is suspect and serious thinkers are impressed by the
fundamental ambiguity of the human mode of being,4 a proof for the
immortality of the soul is likely to be viewed as nothing more than
an historical oddity. But even on purely logical grounds the proofs are
commonly found wanting.5 It is not surpising, therefore, that of the two
questions which Echecrates asks at the beginning of the narration—how
did the man die, and what did he say?—only the first is generally held
to be still worthy of an answer. The division of the dialogue into the
valuable and the antiquated has led one scholar to print the philosophical
part in smaller type, so that "people who are interested in the impor
tance of Socrates to the world need not struggle through passages of
4 Few if any contemporary philosophers would use the term soul at all, but even
a consideration of the self reveals serious difficulties to the modern inquirer. One
need think only of the existentialists and phenomenologists in this regard. The im
possibility, for instance, of ascribing a fixed essence to a being capable of choosing
its own mode of being is expressed by one thinker of such persuasion, Sartre, in
connection with his famous notion of "mauvaise foi." "Let us note finally the con
fusing syntheses which play on the nihilating ambiguity of these temporal ekstases,
affirming at once that I am what I have been (the man who deliberately arrests him
self at one period of his life and refuses to take into consideration the later changes)
and that I am not what I have been (the man who in the face of reproaches or
rancor dissociates himself from his past by insisting on his freedom and on his per
petual re-creation). In all these concepts, which have only a transitive role in the
reasoning and which are eliminated from the conclusion, (like hypochondriacs in the
calculations of physicians), we find again the same structure. We have to deal with
human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is." Jean
Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. Translated and with an Introduction by Hazel
E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956, p. 58 (Italics added).
δ Sir R. W. Livingstone, Portrait of Socrates. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946, p. VIII.
See also Paul Tillich, "Even if the so-called arguments for the "immortality of
the soul" had argumentative power (which they do not have) they would not con
vince existentially." The Courage To Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953,
p. 42.
144 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963
difficult argument on immortality, which would not convince any modern
reader of its truth . . . and is not necessary to an appreciation of So
crates."®
Allowing the philosophy of the dialogue to drop out of sight and

directing the spotlight on some of its other aspects has had at least one
beneficial result. It has brought into view additional dramatic elements
which had previously been overlooked. Commenting on the Phaedo.
D. D. Raphael sees "the form of tragic drama in all sorts of details." He
refers to "a 'prologue' set outside the action itself, and 'episodes' or
'acts' of dialogue on a great subject, interrupted twice by intervals of
flashback to the 'Chorus'," one member of which has witnessed the drama
of the death of Socrates and now relates it to the other. "In these
'choric' intervals," Raphael continues, "comments are made expressi

the feelings that the action of the drama is expected to induce in t
'audience'. This is one of the stock functions of the Chorus in Greek
Tragedy. . . . The argument itself takes an unusually dramatic form
at the end of each 'act', the participants are lifted to heights of exhilara
tion or (with the exception of Socrates himself) plunged into gloom."7
To illustrate this rise and fall of the emotions, Raphael cites a passage
from the dialogue:
Phaedo: All of us, as we afterwards remarked to one another,
had an unpleasant feeling at hearing what they said. When we
had been so firmly convinced before, now to have our faith shaken
seemed to introduce a confusion and uncertainty, not only into the
previous argument, but into any future one; either we were in
capable of forming a judgment, or there were no grounds of belief.
Echecrates: There I feel with you—by heaven I do, Phaedo, and
when you were speaking, I was beginning to ask myself the same
question: What argument can I ever trust again? For what could
be more convincing than the argument of Socrates, which has now
fallen into discredit.8
Raphael does not go into the cause of these feelings except to say
that it occurs at "the point where powerful objections are being presented
to Socrates' initial argument for immortality,"9 nor does he explain how
Socrates undertook to heal "the wound which had been inflicted by the
argument."10
To arouse emotions is, of course, not one of the functions of philoso
β Livingstone, loc. cit., Tillich makes a similar recommendation when he says:
"In discussing [Plato's so-called doctrine of immortality of the soul] we should neglect
the arguments for immortality, even those in Plato's Phaedon, and concentrate on the
image of the dying Socrates." op. cit., p. 168.
7 Raphael, op. cit., pp. 82-3.
8 Phaedo, par. 88. The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English by B. Jowett, in
two volumes, New York, 1937, vol. I, p. 473. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations
from Plato's dialogues refeT to this edition.
8 Raphael, op. cit., p. 83.
to Phaedo, par. 89; p. 473.
HENRY G. WOLZ 165
phy, and details of dramatic form do not make a philosophic dialogue
genuinely dramatic, just as the discovery of ritual elements in the Greek
tragedies, although aiding and enriching our appreciation and insight,
does not make the tragedies genuine rituals. Instead of searching for some
sort of dramatic essence against which to examine the Phaedo, it would
be more profitable to consider what model was accessible to Plato, or
what elements in the drama of his time he could exploit for his specific
philosophical purpose. Since we have made an attempt in that direction
elsewhere,11 we might be justified in following the example of Francis
Fergusson, who in his Idea of a Theater uses Sophocles' Oedipus Rex
as one of the "landmarks in the study of the drama,"12 and in our
turn select it for consideration from among the available Greek tragedies.
The Cambridge Classical Anthropologists have called attention to the
ritual aspects of the Greek tragedies, which the audience could recognize
or at least "feel" as right and proper. Fergusson has laid bare the ex
periential element: the 'imitation' of an action through which the
dramatist appeals to "our direct sense of the changing life of the psy
che."13 The Oedipus Rex lends itself, moreover, to a philosophical in
terpretation which adds a new dimension and thus serves to enrich the
appreciation of the play as a whole. It is to this aspect of the play that
we propose to devote a few moments' attention in an effort to show how
the drama could be impressed into the service of philosophy.
"To find the culprit in order to purify human life"14 is, according to
Fergusson, the action to be "imitated" in the Oedipus. Of the three phases
of the tragic rhythm—agon, pathos, and epiphany—Fergusson sees the
first in the encounter between Oedipus and Tiresias. The second phase,
the pathos, he assigns to the Chorus.15 This assignment is perhaps too
exclusive; for all suffer the shock which follows upon Tiresias' revelation
of the horrible truth, and all react. It is especially interesting to consider
the reaction of Creon, whom Fergusson strangely neglects, and compare
it with those of Oedipus and the Chorus. By bringing Creon into the
picture we can provide an additional—and, for our purposes, most
significant instance—of the way in which Sophocles, as Fergusson points
out, uses the various characters and the Chorus as mirrors in which to
reflect diverse aspects of the action to be "imitated."
11 "Philosophy as Drama," to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Interna

national Philosophical Quarterly.
12 Francis Fergusson, The Idea of a Theater. A Doubleday Anchor Book, 1949, p. 15.
13 Ibid., p. 18. Note also: "I suppose that when Sophocles' actors departed after
an agon, and the chorus began to dance and chant to the accompaniment of musical
instruments, some sort of appeal to the common feeling of the audience was in
tended, analogous to that made by the Wagnerian overture. But Sophocles' chorus
did not enter until after the prologue had presented a realistic and intelligible basis
for the action which was to follow." (Ibid. pp. 102-3)
14 Ibid., p. 48.
is Ibid., pp. 37, 42, 51.
Creon, no less than Oedipus, has reason to feel outraged at the charge
hurled against him. And yet he holds his temper. He begs Oedipus to
"reflect on it"16 as he must reflect: he calls attention to his lack of
motive, being equal with the king and yet without the king's cares; he
points to the facts, namely, his visit to Delphi and the oracle's pronounce
ment; and finally he appeals to their friendship of long standing. By
contrast with Creon, who argues from the certainty of his innocence,
the Chorus have no such assurance. They reel under the impact of the
dreadful revelation: "The augur has spread confusion, terrible confu
sion."17 The recollection of the seer's past efficacy conflicts with their
loyalty to the king, and that loyalty seems well founded:
For once
in visible form the Sphinx
came on him and all of us
saw his wisdom and in that test
he saved the city. 18
After considering the factors relevant to the situation, they decide to
remain faithful to Oedipus, despite Tiresias. But they remind themselves
that only "Zeus and Apollo are wise and in human things all knowing,"19
and that as the situation develops they may have to reverse their deci
sion. Oedipus' reaction compares most unfavorably with that of both
Creon and the Chorus. Even before the seer has uttered the fateful
words: "You are the land's pollution"20 he is ready with the counter
charge. He realizes, of course, that Tiresias, being blind, could not aspire
to rule himself, and so he must be acting for Creon, the real instigator
of the plot. Since Creon is his friend, the motivation must be sought in
uncontrollable envy. And when Creon, contrary to what one would
expect of one who schemes in secret, appears before the king, Oedipus
disposes of this disturbing fact by calling him shameless.
The Oedipus with which Sophocles thus confronts his audience
seems a far cry from the Socrates who in his final hours serenely re
flects upon the possibilities of a life beyond the grave. But as a first step
toward a possible rapprochement between the play and the dialogue it
should be noted that Oedipus' rashness manifests itself in a misuse of
reason, in the kind of rationalization which makes it possible to main
ιβ Sophocles, "Oedipus the King," 1.585. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Edited
by David Greene and Richmond Lattimore. The University of Chicago Press. Vol. II,
1959, p. 36. All quotations from Sophocles refer to this edition.
17 Ibid., 1.485; p. 31.
is Ibid., 1.512; p. 32.
1» Ibid., 1.500; p. 31. Instead of seeing in the wisdom of the gods an ideal which
shows up the frailty of all human judgment and the consequent need to avoid finality,
Fergusson, who tries to keep the Chorus in as passive a role as possible, speaks here of
"something like the orthodox Christian attitude of prayer, based on faith." (op. cit.,
p. 43.)
20 Sophocles, op. cit., 1.350; p. 25.
HENRY G. WOLZ 167
tain a belief even in the face of the most damaging evidence. It is at
least conceivable that analogous excesses occur in the Phaedo with its
attempt to support faith in immortality by rational argument. In any
event, by pitting Creon and the Chorus against Oedipus, Sophocles brings
into focus a moral fibre in the behavior of Oedipus, which one would
not expect in a stage character supposedly acting out a fate imposed
upon him by the gods.
The question forces itself on the mind of the thoughtful spectator:
Why should Sophocles, who knows that the audience comes to the theater
with the idea of a fated Oedipus, present upon the stage an Oedipus
morally responsible for the way in which he faces the unpalatable truth
about his past, a responsibility which is underscored by the repeated
reproachful remarks of the Chorus, Tiresias, Jocasta, and especially Cre
on:
I see you sulk in yielding and you are dangerous

when you are out of temper; natures like yours
are justly heaviest for themselves to bear.21
Is Sophocles urging his fellow citizens to turn their attentio
a fate which leaves them helpless, and direct it toward the p
them over which they may secure a measure of control? Is
say that the tyranny of ungovernable habits or passions ha
of a power acting from without, and that they may therefo
into shirking responsibility and blame fate when they s
gain mastery over themselves? These reflections inevitably t
conflict between the characters on the stage into a conflict
the mind of the sensitive spectator.
A similar interiorization occurs in relation to the epi
usually believed that by the end of the play Oedipus has ga
insight. But if this should consist merely in a recognition
deeds, of the fact that the gods have had their way, th
little if any gain. A significantly moral insight would h
from an awareness of his impetuousness as a wrong, an imp
of which he gave proof at the crossroads where he killed his
again through the quick suspicion which he casts upon
Creon and maintains despite all facts to the contrary. B
rushes into the house to kill Jocasta, gouges out his eye
shamelessly exposes his blood-streaked face to the peopl
he shows that his behavior pattern has remained unchan
words, when asked about the cause of his self-mutilation
confused state of a man possessed by an uncontrollable
knows that his deed is his own and yet feels as if an outsid
compelled him to it:
21 Ibid., 1.675; p. 40.
It was Apollo, friends, Apollo,
that brought that bitter bitterness,
my sorrows to completion.
But the hand that struck me
was none but my own.22
If there is an epiphany, it occurs in the mind of the spectator who is

shocked at the horrible forces within each one of us, which may wreak
havoc in our lives unless carefully guarded and held in check.
This Verinnerlichung of the tragic rhythm — as an intellectual con
flict inciting reflection which leads to a new insight—could have provided
Plato with a clue for dealing with a problem which arises out of his
particular use of the Socratic method. No doubt he shared the belief of
Socrates as reported in the Symposium that "wisdom [cannot] be infused
by touch, out of the fuller into the emptier man, as water runs through
wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one."2® He, therefore, encoun
tered a serious difficulty when, as a moral teacher, he turned from oral
conversation to the written dialogue. Face to face with his student,
Socrates could guide his thoughts without reducing him to a passive
listener. But if Plato had merely recorded the dialogues between Socrates
and his students, the reader would follow the thought-processes of others
instead of thinking for himself. In his endeavor to stimulate thought
and give it direction, which Socrates described as the only legitimate
function of the moral teacher, Plato could follow the example of Sopho
cles. And as Sophocles presents his audience with two seemingly incom
patible notions of Oedipus, so Plato must lead the reader into paradoxi
cal positions, for only "when there is some contradiction present . . .
[does] thought begin to be aroused in us. . . ."24 The dramatic approach,
therefore, serves Plato not merely as an embellishment, a means of en
livening the presentation, but as an indispensable tool for producing
philosophical and hence for Plato vital pedagogical effects.
The agon or strife in the Phaedo can be seen in the clash between
Socrates' initial arguments for immortality and the objections raised by
Simmias and Cebes. The resulting pathos or suffering, corresponding to
that caused by Tiresias' revelation in the Oedipus, has been correctly
noted by Raphael in the passage he quotes from the dialogue.25 The
epiphany or insight is more difficult to identify. To uncover it, we must
probe into the cause of the upset, that is, we must ask why
the objections introduced should shake the confidence of most of those
22 Ibid., 1.1330; pp. 68-9. Those familiar with Plato's Republic will be reminded
of the character in the "Myth of Er" who draws the first lot but chooses rashly and
wrongly and then "instead of throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he
accused chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself." (Republic, Book X,
par. 619; p. 877.)
23 Symposium, par. 175; p. 304.
24 Republic, Book VII; par. 524; p. 784.
25 Phaedo, par. 88; p. 473.
HENRY G. WOLZ 169
present not only in this but in any future argument. Phaedo
and Echecrates, perhaps unwittingly, put their finger on the reason:
. . we had been so firmly convinced . . . . what could be more
convincing than the argument of Socrates?"28 It seems that the specula
tions of Socrates had led his listeners to the consoling conclusion that
the soul is immortal, and all were satisfied, except Simmias and Cebes.
The objections raised by these bright young men exploded like a bomb
shell in the midst of the intellectual and emotional contentment which
had fallen over the company. Only a moment ago there prevailed con
viction and a sense of security; now all was confusion and turmoil. The
argument appeared damaged beyond repair and the efficacy of human
reason shaken in its very foundation. But did the arguments justify the
feeling of certainty to which most of the participants had allowed them
selves to yield? A less illiberal attitude might have profited rather than
suffered from the attack.
The insight to be gained at this stage of the dialogue seems to be
precisely that the sense of security was unwarranted. This is indicated
by the manner in which Socrates reacts to the incident: "His quick sense
of the wound which had been inflicted by the argument, and the readiness
with which he healed it."27 But the treatment of the wound consists
merely in his general warning that excessive confidence in reason may
lead from credulity to skepticism as naive trust in men is likely to end
up in misanthropy. The extent to which his friends adopted a naive
attitude can be determined only by a reexamination of Socrates' argu
ments. This is left for the reader of the dialogue to do.
Even a brief glance at the arguments makes it evident that they could
not yield certainty. For the evidence introduced in support of the claim
that the soul is immortal does not consist of empirical facts but of
scientific and philosophic doctrines, and such a procedure cannot establish
the belief but only show that it is not incompatible with certain other
accepted beliefs, especially when the latter remain unexamined.
According to the first doctrine so used, "all things which have op
posites [are] generated out of their opposites;"28 and just as heating
and cooling, the state of sleeping and the state of waking pass into and
out of one another, so, unless "we suppose nature to walk on one leg
only,"29 the passage of the living into the dead has its complementary
process of generating the living out of the dead. A proof of the theory
of opposites is not required, for no one raises any objections to it.
The evidence Socrates uses in the second instance is the doctrine
of recollection. This receives more careful treatment, not because it ap
pears more doubtful to those present, but simply because Simmias, who
26 Phaedo. par. 88; p. 473.

27 Ibid., par. 89; p. 473.
28 Ibid., par. 70; p. 454.
29 Ibid., par. 71; p. 455.
insists that he is not "incredulous," has forgotten the supporting argu
ments and wants "to have this doctrine of recollection brought to [his]
own recollection."30 Cebes complies with his friend's request by referring
to the fact that when a man is questioned in the right way, he will give
the right answer, and this is said to indicate that the truth has always
been in him and needs only be recalled;81 Socrates adds that when we
observe things or actions which are more or less equal or good or just,
we discover that we use as standards for their evaluation the ideas of
perfect equality, goodness or justice, of which sense experience cannot
give an account but only serves to remind us.32 Thus Socrates and Cebes
offer what they believe to be facts for the theory of recollection. But
since this is only one of the supporting theories, the theory to be estab
lished is not at one but at two removes from experienced reality. Ulti
mately both rest on the assumption that if our judgments of degrees of
physical or moral qualities function as if concrete objects or events re
minded us of the absolute standards used, then such recollection actually
takes place. Only from the actual recollection could the inference be
drawn that the knowledge so recalled must have been forgotten in a
previous life and that the soul must have existed prior to its entry into
the body. If Socrates' faith were to rest on such arguments alone, it
would be frail indeed. At best they succeed in producing a temporary
harmony in a man's outlook, but should a serious change in philosophical
or scientific doctrine occur, the work of reconciliation would have to
be done all over again.
The third argument does little more than offer suggestions on how
one might deal with the "child within us" who is "haunted with a fear
that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may really blow her away
and scatter her."33 To allay this fear, Socrates discredits the materialistic
conception of man which gives rise to it. He does it by pointing to the
contrast between "two sorts of existences"34 in our experience, the
mutable things accessible to the senses and the immutable essences for
which those who acknowledge only the existence of concrete things can
not account. And by showing the soul to be more "akin" to the latter
than the former, he suggests that it may be of a nature incapable of
suffering dispersion and thus escape the fate which the materialists have
assigned to it.
From the outset, neither Socrates nor the Pythagoreans entertained
any illusions about the probative force of the arguments. "Surely," says
Cebes even before the arguments get under way, "it requires a great deal
of argument and many proofs to show that when the man is dead his
30 Ibid; par. 73; p. 457.

31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., par. 74; p. 458.

33 Ibid., par. 77; p. 462.
34 Ibid., par. 79; p. 463.
HENRY G. WOLZ 171
soul yet exists, and has any force or intelligence."35 Socrates does not
promise to establish these formidable truths but merely suggests that
they "converse a little of the probabilities of these things,"36 and at the
end of the first group of arguments he admits that "there are many points
still open to suspicion and attack, if one were disposed to sift the matter
thoroughly."37 And this remark of Socrates is almost immediately fol
lowed by the most pointed characterization on the part of Simmias of
any argument applicable to the subject on hand:
I feel myself (and I daresay you have the same feeling), how hard
or rather impossible is the attainment of any certainty about ques
tions such as these in the present life.38
Thus the first "act," which ends with the incident of the "wound," pre
sents us with the spectacle of men who are overly eager to secure their
hopes, who greedily reach out for the most illegitimate means of con
verting their subjective desires into objective truths. Here we find drama
in a more genuine sense than at the end of the dialogue where Plato
re-enacts the last hours of Socrates. We even find occasion for fear and
pity: there is the simple lack of care in the evaluation of an argument
skilfully conducted toward an intensely desired conclusion. This is a
fault any one of us may commit and hence' gives rise to fear; and it is
conducive to pity because it is altogether out of proportion to the despair
into which .it can lead, a despair which may do lasting damage unless,
as in the present case, a Socrates manages to work a timely rescue. We
may even be tempted to say that the drama here moves on a philosophi
cal plane. For the downfall of the protagonists, the dismay they suffer
when seeing their dearest hopes irreparably shattered, is the outcome of
an intellectual flaw. They have surrendered their critical powers to the
deeply felt desire for life everlasting, and their acute sense of frustra
tion is simply a measure of their credulity. In the defense of their faith
they have allowed themselves to fall victim to intellectual rigidity; they
have attached it too firmly to scientific and philosophical doctrines. Such
attachments are dangerous, for if in the course of time these tentative
structures crumble and make room for more spacious mansions, their
faith dies with the old, when it should be free to seek a more suitable
habitation in the new.39
The insight the reader thus gains is in some sense similar to that of
the audience reflecting upon Oedipus' reactions to the revelations of
85 Ibid., par. 70; p. 453.

38 Ibid.
37 Ibid., par. 84; p. 469.

38 Ibid., par 85; p. 470. Italics added.
39 "As history makes clear, to reduce religious beliefs and symbols to the compass
of any philosophic formulation, however well established, is tragic, and indeed, in the
end, fatal." John H. Randall, Jr., The Role of Knowledge in Western Religion. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1958, p. 13.
Tiresias. They know of the incest and parricide, and, like gods, look upon
the pitiful efforts of Oedipus to rationalize the evidence out of existence.
Sophocles, as we have seen, finds such insight too external, for the spec
tators feel too secure in their superiority. His aim is to plant the problem
of fate and responsibility in their minds in such a way that they cannot
shake it off even after the performance has come to a close and they
have left the theater. Likewise, the reader of the Phaedo, having observed
the attitude of Socrates' friends, may smile complacently at their naïveté.
Instead of making him wary and watchful, the) observation is likely to
instill in him a sense of his own superior wisdom. This temptation is
all the greater if, as here, he is able to identify himself with the wiser
heads of the group, namely, Socrates and the two Pythagoreans. To bring
about a genuine awareness of the difficulties attending any attempt to
secure one's faith, the problem must be interiorized so that it becomes a
conflict in the mind of the reader.40 Such is the purpose of the second
"act."
From now on up to the death scene àt the end of the dialogue, Plato
makes heavy demands on the attention of the reader. He first has Socrates
refute the objections of Simmias. Then, as part of the answer to Cebes'
objections, he has him expound a method of inquiry which the answer to
Simmias has all along presupposed. This method in turn implies what
one of the seminal thinkers of our time has regarded as a revolu
tionary conception of truth.41 And finally there appears a rigorous demon
stration for the immortality of the soul. While all this is going on, the
reader must maintain a critical attitude and not take the various com
ments and arguments literally, or as the views of the author, just as he

would not interpret the speeches of the characters on the stage as ex
pressing the beliefs of the playwright.
Let us first turn to the exposition of what Socrates calls "the second
best mode of enquiring into the cause."42 This plays a major part in
40 This need on the part of the reader to reach an existential awareness of the prob
lem under discussion seems to be expressed in the opening statements of Martin Hei
degger's Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit: "Die Erkenntnisse der Wissenschaften werden
gewoehnlich in Saetzen ausgesprochen und dem Menschen als greifbare Ergebnisse zur
Verwendung vorgesetzt. Die 'Lehre' eines Denkers ist das in seinem Sagen Ungesagte,
dem der Mensch ausgesetzt wird, auf dass er dafuer sich verschwende." (Bern: A.
Francke A. G., Zweite Auflage 1954, p. 5). If we are right in maintaining that Plato
consciously helps bring about such awareness, then we can no longer rest with the
surface meaning of the opinions expressed in the dialogues. Instead we must try to
determine the conflicts and consequent stimulations they were meant to produce in
the mind of the reader. And when so viewed, possibly even the so-called "late" dia
logues, but certainly the Protagoras, the Phaedrus and especially the Republic, will
appear in a novel light. This, however, must be the subject of subsequent essays.
41 Martin Heidegger, op. cit., passim.
42 Phaedo, par. 99; p. 483.
HENRY 6. WOLZ 173
building up the paradox which in the second 'act' is to bring about the
'interior!zation' of the conflict. Socrates describes it as follows:
I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest,

and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this,
whether relating to the cause or to anything else; and that which
disagreed I regarded as untrue.43
Since the principle postulated derives its value from its synthesizing
power, it may at any time have to surrender to one which is more power
ful:
I cannot afford to give up the sure ground of principle. And if any

one assails you there, you would not mind him, or answer him until
you had seen whether the consequences which follow agree with
one another or not, and when you are further required to give an
explanation of this principle, you would go on to assume a higher
principle, and a higher, until you found a resting-place in the best
of the higher; but you would not confuse the principle and the
consequences in your reasoning.44
There are three principal conditions which such a postulate must satisfy;
a) it must have inner consistency; b) its consequences must agree more
or less with observable facts; c) it must not be in conflict with other ac
cepted postulates. Now in the refutation of the harmony theory pro
posed by Simmias, Socrates has shown that: a) it leads to absurd con
sequences, since it would make us say that the soul as a harmony
contains within itself a discord or another harmony, according as it is
virtuous or not; b) its implications are contrary to known phenomena, in
as much as the soul to some extent leads and controls the body, while a
harmony is wholly dependent upon the instrument; c) it is incompatible
with the theory of recollection accepted by Simmias, according to which
the soul exists prior to its entry into the body, while a harmony appears
after the instrument has come into being.45
Since the method employed in the preceding discussion and now
explicitly set forth in theory lays no claim to certainty, it need not
shun objections and can readily surrender the less to the more adequate
hypothesis. In fact, it will welcome opposition, since this either serves
to fortify the stand taken or leads to a more satisfactory one. Had
Socrates' companions fully understood it, the crisis of the first "act,"
which threatened to destroy faith in all arguments, could never have
occurred. And when Phaedo expresses his astonishment at "the gentle
and pleasant and approving manner in which [Socrates] received the
words of the young men,"46 he thereby reveals the gulf which still
separates him from the liberal spirit of his friend and master. And
just as Oedipus, at the end of Sophocles' play, merely learns the truth
43 Ibid., par. 100; p. 484.
44 Ibid., par. 101; p. 485. Italics added.
45 Ibid., par. 91-95; pp. 470-9.
4β Ibid., par. 89; p. 473.
about his past, but does not attain to a genuine awareness of his moral
make-up, so it seems that the participants to the discussion in the
Phaedo see that Socrates in fact has rescued his argument, but they
have not learned to adopt the proper attitude to such arguments in
general.
Socrates now behaves as if he himself had fallen victim to this per
nicious tendency of overtaxing the results of a rational argument. It
appears as if in the face of his impending death he were making frantic
efforts to secure his faith beyond the reach of any possible doubt. For
when Socrates puts his method to the test in the final demonstration,
an abrupt and disconcerting change of attitude takes place. The obvious
modesty and open-mindedness which pervades the discussion of the
method, gives way to the most rigid dogmatism in its application. The
freely chosen postulates, which were to serve as tentative, temporary
principles of explanation, turn out to be the familiar forms or ideas,
and these, in the mind of the reader, are invariably associated with the
absolute and the eternal:
There is nothing new ... in what I am about to tell you; but only
what I have been always and everywhere repeating in the previous
discussion and on other occasions: I want to show you the nature
of that cause which has occupied my thoughts. I shall have to go
back to those familiar words which are in the mouth of eveiy
one, and first of all assume that there is an absolute beauty and
goodness and greatness, and the like; grant me this, and I hope
to be able to show you the nature of the cause, and to prove the
immortality of the soul.47
The argument which follows presupposes an insight into the essences
of things which the preceding discussion on method would not have led
one to expect. Hence the care with which Socrates prepares his listeners,
or Plato the reader, for what is to come. In answer to an objection,
Socrates distinguishes between opposite things and the opposite itself.
In a former argument, he says, we were talking about "things in which
opposites are inherent and which are called after them, but now about
the opposites which are inherent in them and which give their names
to them."48 And he likewise distinguishes clearly between an accidental
and a necessary quality or characteristic. Simmias is taller than Socrates
and smaller than Phaedo, not "because he is Simmias, but by reason
of the size which he has,"49 that is, not because of his nature, but because
of an accidental relation in which he stands to the others.50
47 Ibid., par. 100; p. 484.

48 Ibid., par. 103; p. 487. Italics added.
49 Ibid., par. 102; p. 486. Note also: "The point has to be made, because the force
of the argument now to be produced depends on the fact that it deals with essential
predication." A. E. Taylor, Plato, The Man and His Work. London; Methuen and
Company, Ltd. Sixth Edition, 1949, p. 204.
50 It is, of course, understood that Plato does not speak of "relations between two
HENRY G. WOLZ 175
Socrates then proceeds to argue not only that opposites exclude each
other, but that things necessarily related to one of two opposites also
exclude the other opposite. There is general agreement among com
mentators on the main part of the demonstration· for immortality, and
this has been conveniently summarized as follows:
Just as fire is that which, when it is present in a body, makes that
body hot, so soul is that which, when it is present in a body, makes
that body living. And just as fire is necessarily possessed by heat
and cannot under any circumstances become qualified by what is
opposite to heat—namely, cold—so soul is necessarily possessed by
life and cannot under any circumstances become qualified by what
is opposite to life—namely, death. Finally, just as that which can
not be qualified by the even is uneven, so that which cannot be
qualified by death is deathless. Soul, therefore, is deathless.51
Commentators disagree on the short second part of the argument (106A
106E), which Socrates thinks necessary in order to prove that the un
dying or immortal is also imperishable. Those interpretations which do
not do violence to the form of the argument are in agreement as to its
strictly demonstrative character and the implication of an insight into
the essences of things, the eternal forms and the necessary connection
between them.52
This change from a liberal to an illiberal spirit in the Phaedo, at
the point where Socrates introduces the forms, has not gone unnoticed.53
But since traditionally the theory of ideas and the belief in the pos
sibility of attaining infallibile certainty are thought to be so much
more "Platonic" than the type of method discussed by Socrates, the latter
receives but scant attention or is explained away by the most devious
means. One commentator, for instance, passes it by with a comment
expressing some puzzlement as to its relevancy;54 another sees in the
persons, but [of] properties which one has "toward" the other." (R. Hackforth, Plato's
Phaedo, translated with Introduction and Commentary, Cambridge: 1955, p. 69, note
3) "The curious thing," Hackforth remarks, "is that Plato appears to be at least on
the verge of realizing [that 'tall' and 'short' are not qualities, but relations] . . . Yet
this semi-awareness of the distinction between qualities and relations is, it seems,
only momentary; from 102D 5 onwards it disappears" (Ibid. p. 155).
51 David Scarrow, "Phaedo, 106A-106E," The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXX,
No. 2, April 1961, p. 245.
52 For details see Scarrow, op. cit., pp. 247-51.
53 R. S. Bluck describes the new attitude as follows: "We may note how Socrates,
who has hitherto been his usual self-deprecating self ("the most stupid creature in
the world", 96C), becomes almost magisterial. The language at 100B in particular is
unlike that of the usual Socrates (i.e. of Socrates talking in true Socratic vein)" (op.
cit., p. 165, note 2).
54 "This hypothetical method, if our analysis of the Phaedo has been correct,
can never attain to absolute knowledge . . . but, when we recall that [Plato] believed
in the possibility of absolute knowledge . . . we must certainly wonder why he devoted
so much space to its elaboration . . (Richard Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic,
Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1953, p. 146.) Italics added.
whole passage a transition from "Socratism" to "Platonism" as if the lat
ter were an outgrowth of or improvement over the former rather than
its opposite;55 a third attributes the difficulty to forgetfulness on the part
of Plato that he is dealing with a "second best" method,56 or to his in
decision as to whether he should regard certainty as attainable or not.57
The cavalier treatment given to the method explicitly set forth by
Socrates finds its justification in the embarrassment of the interpreters
rather than in the actual text. For far from being casually introduced,
Socrates shows it to be the outcome of a long experience. When he was
a young man, he tells his friends, he followed the nature philosophers
who looked to material things such as "air, and ether, and water, and
other eccentricities"58 for their principles of explanation. "Is the blood
the element with which we think," he asked, "or the air, or the fire?"59
But this approach to an understanding of natural processes, instead of
enlightening him, seemed to add to his confusion. He forgot, as he
ironically remarks, "what [he] before thought self-evident truths . . .
that the growth of man is the result of eating and drinking . . . when
by the digestion of food flesh is added to flesh and bone to bone.... "60
In other words, he now saw as mere factual juxtaposition what he had
previously regarded as evident causal connection. And if the method
failed to shed light on the simplest natural processes, it became obviously
absurd when applied to the complexities of human behavior. One might
just as well, Socrates continues, try to explain his own present behavior
in jail in terms of bone structures and muscle movements, instead of
mentioning the main cause, namely, the fact that both the Athenians,
in their momentous decision to condemn him, and he, in his resolve not
to escape but to remain and sufEer death, were motivated by the idea
of what they thought best.61 Anaxagoras, or perhaps his own reflections
crystallized by the remark of Anaxagoras that "mind is the disposer and
55 R. S. Bluck, op. cit., p. 165.

56 "it is well that we should be reminded that the doctrine of Forms as causes is
put forward by Socrates as a second-best doctrine relative to that which he had hoped
to build on the principle suggested by Anaxagoras. Nevertheless Plato seems in our
present section, and indeed throughout the rest of the argument which gives his final
proof of immortality to have forgotten this." (R. Hackforth, op. cit., p. 146.) Italics
added.
57 "Only when this first principle is reached, and the Forms are seen in their depen
dence on it, will the goal of all inquiry be reached ... J think that Plato wavers on
the question whether the goal can ever in fact be reached by any man in this life:
the earlier part of our dialogue seems to suggest that it cannot, the present passage
and the Republic that it can." (Hackforth, op. cit., p. 166.) Italics added.
58 Phaedo, par. 98; p. 482.
59 Ibid., par. 96; p. 481.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid., par. 98-9; p. 483.
HENRY G. WOLZ 177
cause of all,"62 induced him to turn away from concrete things and
turn to ideas in his search for principles of explanation:
I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked
at things with my eyes and tried to apprehend them by the help of
the senses. And I thought that I had better have recourse to the
world of mind and seek there the truth of existence . . . contem
plating^ existences through the medium of thought.63
The impetus in the new direction might have exceeded its proper
bounds, or rather, the ambition of Socrates might have proved excessive
As the old cosmologists, with naive daring, had reached out for th
ultimate cause among concrete things, such as water, or air, or fire, so
Socrates might have insisted upon an ultimate principle in the worl
of spirit, that is, the "power which . . . arranges [everything] for the
best."64 Fortunately, Socrates realized that this all-embracing synthesis
is unattainable, that he must content himself with the "second best
mode of enquiring"65 which starts with limited structures chosen on
the basis of their fruitfulness.
β2 ibid., par. 97; p. 482.

63 Ibid., par. 99-100; p. 484. Italics added. This passage recalls to mind Heidegger's
contention that the dialogues reveal a momentous event in the history of Western
thought. He maintains "that Plato's thinking undergoes a change in regard to the
essence of truth" ("dass Platons Denken sich einem Wandel des Wesens der Wahrheit
unterwirft") inasmuch as "henceforth the essence of truth does not unfold out of its
essential fulness and the essence of unhiddenness, but shifts to the essence of the idea"
("dass naemlich fortan sich das Wesen der Wahrheit nicht als das Wesen der Unver
borgenheit aus eigener Wesensfuelle entfaltet, sondern sich auf das Wesen der idea
verlagert") (op. cit., pp. 25 and 41). Heidegger appeals to the Republic, and especially
the allegory of the cave. There the philosopher-kings are presumed to "have in their
soul [a] clear pattern of perfect truth, which they might study in every detail and
constantly refer to "(VI, 484; Cornford. ed. p. 190); they are the prisoners who,
released from their chains, pass from the darkness of the cave into the sunlit world
outside. But is not this shift to ideas quite different from that suggested by the above
quotation from the Phaedo? For here Socrates has just confessed that the absolute,
all-embracing principle of explanation which he had hoped to find in the writings of
Anaxagoras, eluded him. And the ideas to which he turns for illumination out of
fear of losing his sight altogether are far removed from the source of absolute truth
to which the philosopher-kings in the Republic seemed to have gained access. They
are suggested by experience and must justify their worth by the sparks of intelligibility
they manage to strike up in experience [See notes 43 and 44 above]. Here we can
hardly speak of a Verlagerung or shift from things to ideas, for the two are inextri
cably intertwined. How are we to reconcile this view of Socrates as found in the
Phaedo with that expressed in the Republic on which Heidegger bases his interpreta
tion. Simply to accept one and suppress the other seems wholly illegitimate, especially
in dramatic dialogues where antithetical views are often played against each other
in order to goad the reader into working out a synthesis for himself. But these are
problems which cannot be appropriately treated in a footnote and call for a separate
study.
64 phaedo, par. 99; p. 483.
65 Ibid.
The care with which Socrates develops his methodological reflections
must be taken as an indication of the importance which Plato attaches
to them. Simply to ignore them would be the height of arbitrariness.
But it would be just as irresponsible to deny that immediately there
after, in the final proof, he proceeds as if his postulates were the result
of a clear insight into the essences of things, an insight which the method
does not allow, and that he thereby exhibits that naive trust in human
reason which, according to his own earlier warning, is liable to lead to
disaster. The thoughtful reader of Plato's dialogue is now in a position
similar to that of the discriminating spectator of Sophocles' play who
in the course of the performance finds himself as if caught between a
vise: he feels compelled to side with the Chorus and the other characters
when they upbraid Oedipus for his impetuosity; and yet he is unable to
rid himself of the impression that Oedipus is impelled to action as
if by a force over which he has no control. At this point Sophocles and
Plato deny us the luxury of simply following their thought processes.
We are either left with a riddle66 or we must look for aid elsewhere.
If we recall Fergusson's advice to search for "the action to be imitated"
and apply it to the interpretation of the Phaedo, we may find a way
out of the difficulty. For we shall then discover an analogy between the
first group of arguments and the final demonstration. Through the
former, as we have seen, Socrates tries to establish consistency between
his faith in immortality and current philosophic and scientific specula
tions. Some of his listeners were led to believe that such coherence was
equivalent to the truth. This is indicated by the shock they ex
perienced when their seemingly impregnable position crumbled before
the first onslaught of the critics. In an attempt to cure the "wound"
inflicted by the objections, Socrates gives an exposition of the coherence
theory which the arguments had presupposed. This theory has for its
ideal a system which is based on a single all-embracing postulate, and
in which every element finds its place and purpose. Only such a system
could provide the infallibility that a complete justification of his faith
would demand. Socrates himself had declared it unattainable earlier
in the dialogue.67 But just as his friends, impelled by the urgency
deeply felt needs, had mistakenly passed from what could at best
6β Fergusson would leave the riddle unsolved: "In one sense Oedipus suffers force
he can neither control nor understand, the puppet of fate; yet at the same time he wi
and intelligently understands his every move. The meaning, or spiritual content of
play, is not to be sought in trying to resolve such ambiguities as these. The spiritu
content of the play is the tragic action which Sophocles directly presents; and this act
is in its essence zweideutig . . (Op. cit., p. SO). In as much as men must submit
behavior patterns, they are always in danger of doing so excessively and lose th
freedom. Thus the problem can never be solved once and for all. But it does see
desirable to become aware of the poles between which one must find the proper me
rigid pattern and completely unpredictable behavior.
«7 Phaedo, par. 99; p. 483.
HENRY G. WOLZ 179
probable results of the argument to a feeling of certainty, so in the
final demonstration he now pretends to make the analogous error of
mistaking the approximation to the ideal for the ideal itself, that is,
of believing himself in possession of intuited essences when he has
merely reasonable postulates. Thus both the first and the second "act"
of the Phaedo illustrate analogous, though illegitimate, "movements in
the life of the psyche,"68 namely, fruitless attempts to discover a secure
ground on which to build a faith. And the shock experienced by the
friends of Socrates at the end of the first "act" is paralleled in the second
"act" by the puzzlement of the reader when confronted with the irrecon
cilability of Socrates' method as advocated and the same method as
practiced in the final demonstration, or more specifically, between the
earlier claim to mere probability and the later promise of infallible
certitude.
Each of the two instances of pathos should result in its corresponding

epiphany. Socrates helps to bring about the first by drawing a brief
sketch of the ideal mode of explanation, resting on an ultimate idea
or purpose which gives meaning to the whole and to every part in the
whole. When projected against such a norm, the arguments of the first
part of the dialogue appear pitifully inadequate. And yet the same means
employed, that is, analogy, generalization and extrapolation, based on
a limited number of observable facts, are the usual methodological tools
available to the task of reconciliation. The way in which Socrates uses
them emphasizes their weakness,69 as if he thereby meant to exercise a
salutary restraint on the human understanding which, as Francis Bacon
warns, "is of its nature prone to suppose the existence of more order
and regularity in the world than it finds."70 But once the believer has
been made aware of the true nature of the tools at his disposal and
the dangers which lurk in too close an alliance between religious and
scientific or philosophic doctrines, there is no reason why he should
not yield to the urge for reconciliation, which is said to be "a necessary
part of religious faith—for the intellectual."71 For he will thereby avoid
«8 Francis Fergusson, op. cit., pp. 161, 218.

89 The first argument rests not only on a most precarious generalization of the
theory of cyclical recurrences but, as A. E. Taylor has pointed out, contradicts Socrates'
expectation of passing to a better life (Taylor, op. cit., p. 186, Note 1). The second
argument passes rashly from a plausible description of the knowing process as if it were
a process of recollection to the quite inadmissible claim that it actually is a case of
recollection which would imply the préexistence of the soul. And lastly, the third ar
gument rests on a very doubtful analogy. From the fact that the soul in some respects
is like the eternal forms, Socrates infers that it is as imperishable as they are. One
need only compare the perfection of the forms with the temporal process in which the
soul is involved in order to realize the greatness of the disanalogy between them, and
to become aware of the tenuous thread which holds the conclusion to the premises.
70 Novum Organum, par. XLV.
71 John H. Randall, Jr., op. cit., p. 24.
the agony of having to maintain the disparate kind of faith which is in
opposition to what his age has chosen to raise to the level of irrefutable
fact.72
If the arguments of the first part appear feeble and loosely constructed,
that of the second part gives the impression of being conducted with
great rigor and therefore capable of producing conviction. But when we
examine the illustrations of necessary connections which Socrates offers,
doubts begin to arise as to just how seriously it should be taken. As
long as he refers to mathematical entities and claims, for example, that
three is inseparably tied to oddness, we may experience no difficulty.
The relation between fire and heat, snow and cold, is so constantly found
in ordinary experience that many a reader may be reluctant to question
it. But does fever or abnormally high body temperature invariably in
dicate disease as Socrates maintains?73 And if we are so uncertain about
bodily phenomena, how much more cautious do we have to be when
making assertions about the complex human self. But perhaps we have
been unduly perturbed over an unfortunate selection of examples which,
at the time of Socrates, may have been quite acceptable; or some famili
arity with contemporary philosophy and literature, which often question
the applicability of the traditional categories to a reality capable of
choosing its own mode of being,74 may have misled us into reading
modern conceptions into the reflections of Socrates.
72 Bertrand Russell describes such a faith by imagining science as capable of certify
ing the purposelessness of the universe. Although man is said to be "the outcome of
accidental collocations of atoms" in a world indifferent to his hopes and fears, and
although "the whole temple of [his] achievement must inevitably be buried beneath
the débris of a universe in ruins," he is urged to maintain his faith in ideals, to
worship if only at "the shrine that his own hands have built," to accept a God even
if he be "recognized as the creation of [his] own conscience." ("A Free Man's Wor
ship," Mysticism and Logic, New York: Doubleday Anchor Book, 1957, pp. 45, 47, 54.)
73 Phaedo. par. 105; p. 490. Hackforth attributes the cause of the difficulty to self
deception on the part of Plato: "The refusal of a cold lump of snow to admit heat,
while yet remaining snow, is a physical fact known through sense perception; whereas
the refusal of 'twoness' to admit 'threeness' and 'oddness,' and that of the soul to accept
'deadness,' are statements about implications of terms; they are in fact somewhat un
natural expressions of analytical propositions, and the final 'proof' of immortality is a
disguised assertion that the term 'soul' implies, as part of its meaning, the term 'alive.'
But by putting all these instances of exclusion on all fours with one another, as the
military metaphor helps him to do, Plato disguises—from himself, as I believe, as
well as from us—the fundamental weakness of his argument" (op. cit., p. 157). To
accuse a thinker of Plato's stature of confusion is always risky, for the charge may
all too easily boomerang on its originator.
74 This is a problem which is of serious concern to some of the disciples of Martin
Heidegger, such as Katharina Kanthack: "In Freiheit seinkoennendes Dasein, das
sinnstiftend zum Seienden hin transzendiert und eben in diesem Transzendieren ueber
sich selbst entscheidet, ist nicht 'anzunageln': weder etwas wie eine Substanz noch
etwas wie Eigenschaften lassen sich hier als das irgendwie Beharrende benennen."
(Vom Sinn der Selbsterkenntnis. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1958, p. 48) And
again: "Kann aber der Mensch als dieses Freisein Unstimmigkeit oder Einstimmig
HENRY G. WOLZ 181
An important part, however, if not the whole of the Socratic mission,
consisted in inducing people to change their way of life, and the
drunken Alcibiades in the Symposium tells how difficult it was not to
succumb to his persuasive powers.75 Both Socrates' attempt at reform
and Alcibiades' resistance to it presuppose a radical freedom, which
seems to preclude a fixed essence of the soul and the possibility of
gaining an insight into it. Furthermore, the model scheme of interpreta
tion which helped us gain a proper perspective of the initial arguments,
also serves to expose the false claim to certainty which Socrates pretends
to make in the final demonstration. Since the elements of this ideal
system derive their meaning from their position in the whole, nothing
can be said with certainty about the particular as long as the structure
of the whole remains unknown. In view of these considerations it is
difficult to understand how any one can maintain that "all the evidence
suggests that Plato himself regarded this argument as sound."76 It seems
more reasonable to hold that its purpose is to impress upon the reader
how impossible it is to meet the conditions which a rigorous demonstra
tion yielding certainty would demand, namely, insight into the very
essences of things. And so while the analysis of the initial arguments
has shown that the best that can be expected from them is the estab
lishment of a measure of harmony in a man's outlook, temporarily valid
for a given stage of cultural development, the final demonstration calls
attention to the impossibility of attaining certainty. Simmias had said as
much earlier in the dialogue:
I feel myself (and I dare say you have the same feeling), how hard
or rather impossible is the attainment of any certainty about ques
tions such as these in the present life. And yet I should deem him a
coward who did not prove what is said about them to the utter
most, and whose heart failed him before he had examined them
on every side. For he should persevere until he has achieved one
of two things: either he should discover, or be taught the truth
about them; or, if this be impossible, I would have him take the
best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the
keit sein, so verliert das vom Vorhandenen abgelesene Wort 'Eigenschaft seinen
Sinn. Das Substanz-Schema zerbricht. Es zerbricht an Freiheit, zerbricht daran, dass
der Mensch Seinkoennen ist" (Ibid. p. 150).
The problem has also found its way into literature, as seen, for instance, in Aldous
Huxley's Point Counterpoint: "The essential character of the self consisted precisely
in that liquid and undeformable ubiquity: in that capacity to espouse all contours
and yet remain unfixed in any form; to take, and with an equal facility efface, im
pression" (New York: The Modern Library, 1928, pp. 230-1).
75 "But this Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I have felt as if I
could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you will admit);
and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him, and fly as from the
voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of others,—and he would transfix me,
and I should grow old sitting at his feet." Symposium, par. 215-0; p. 339.
76 R, S. Bluck, op. cit., p. 16.
raft upon which he sails through life—not without risk, as I admit,
if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and
safely carry him.77
If we regard the dialogue as an inquiry into the ground of Socrates'

faith, then it has either been a failure or we have not carried our reflec
tions far enough. In Oedipus Rex Sophocles starts with man controlled
by fate, but he uses this starting point to draw the thoughts of the
audience away from the might of the gods and direct them toward
strictly human powers. Similarly, Plato in the Phaedo ostensibly concerns
himself with proofs in support of his faith. But his own dramatic devices
help the reader to uncover the ineffectiveness of these proofs and the
danger they constitute to a faith too dependent upon them. Are there
indications in the dialogue which might lead the reader to the true
source of Socrates' faith, as Sophocles leads his spectators to the real
cause of Oedipus' suffering?
Such indications can be found in the early part of the dialogue, even
before the proofs for immortality get under way. There Socrates calls
attention to the fact that "the pleasures of eating and drinking, . . . the
pleasures of love . . . and other ways of indulging the body"78 leave men
ultimately frustrated, as does the pursuit of "money or power."79 Those
who see here no more than an expression of other-worldliness forget the
merry banter of the Symposium, to which Socrates contributes no small
measure and where he shows that the enjoyment of "worldly" goods is
not incompatible with a realization of their ultimate emptiness. But, as
Nietzsche says, it is lasting satisfaction that men crave: "Weh' spricht:
Vergeh'! Doch allé Lust will Ewigkeit—will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!"80
Socrates recognizes another desire which remains frustrated, not because
its object cannot satisfy, but because in its genuine form its object is
inaccessible. "While we are in the body," he says, "our desire will not
be satisfied, and our desire is of the truth."81 Socrates thus presents a
picture of a man who, when viewed within the confines of his earthly
existence, appears paradoxical, if not downright absurd, possessed as
he is of desires which from the outset are doomed to frustration. If
Socrates insists on giving meaning and significance to human existence,
he must place it in a wider setting. However, the gods are silent and
neither science nor philosophy, as we have seen, can give him assurance.
But unlike the inhabitants of Dante's Inferno, whom certainty dooms
to hopelessness, his very ignorance leaves him free to have faith in the
77 Phaedo, par. 85; p. 470. Italics added.

78 Ibid., par. 64; p. 448.
79 Ibid., par. 68; p. 451.
80 "Woe implores: Go! But all joy wants eternity—Wants deep, wants deep eter
nity." "Thus spoke Zarathustra," Third Part. The Portable Nietzsche, Edited and
translated by Walter Kaufmann. The Viking Press, New York, 1954. pp. 339-40.
81 Phaedo, par. 66; p. 449.
HENRY G. WOLZ 183
purposefulness of the world, to dream of a better life to come in which
his fondest wishes find fulfilment.
It might be objected that the keen awareness of the prima facie futility
of human endeavors has seduced Socrates to turn his back on his present
existence; that in his eagerness to secure his hopes he has taken for
established truths what are merely projections of intensely felt de
sires; that despite his professed "love of wisdom" he has found truth too
difficult to face and is trying to hide it from himself, thus leading an
inauthentic existence en mauvaise foi. But Socrates escapes this danger
to his' integrity, for he never allows himself to forget that he is faced
with two alternatives, and that opting in favor of one does not remove
the other as a real possibility:
If while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure
knowledge, one of two things follows—either knowledge is not to
be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.82
For if what I say is true, then I do well to be persuaded of the
truth; but if there is nothing after death, still, during the short
time that remains, I shall not distress my friends with lamentations,
and my ignorance will not last, but will die with me, and therefore
no harm will be done.83
And in the Apology, after the Athenians have condemned him to death,
he muses:
Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or,

as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this
world to another. Now if you suppose there is no consciousness,
but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams,
death will be an unspeakable gain . . . But if death is the journey
to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what
good, Ο my friends and judges, can be greater than this?84
82 Ibid., par. 66-7; p. 450. Italics added. How easily the expression can be turned
into an expression of dogmatism is shown by the following paraphrase: "Since this
sort of knowledge cannot be acquired while we are associated with the body, it can
be gained only when we are free of it, that is, after death." (George Boas, Rationalism
in Greek Philosophy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961, p. 171).
83 Phaedo, par. 91; p. 475. Italics added.
84 Apology, par. 40; p. 422. Italics added. R. S. Bluck notes the lack of assurance
about an after-life in the Apology : "From Plato's Apology it is clear that however much
the real Socrates may have hoped for an after-life, or thought that there probably was
one, he deliberately refrained from making any sure pronouncement on the subject."
(op. cit. p. 5). Subsequently, while discussing the nature of Plato's belief as expressed
in the Phaedo, he remarks "Socrates may have hoped for an after-life; Plato here shows
that he himself had no doubt about it." (Ibid., p. 47) From the Apology he cites 29A-B
and 4IC ad fin. But he does not mention 40D ad fin., which seems to make the point
more forcefully and might have led him to notice similar alternatives in the Phaedo.
(See note 83 above). Of course, as long as the demonstrations, especially the final one,
are taken literally, the alternatives presented by Socrates are easily overlooked, as
indicated by Boas' paraphrase quoted in note 82 above.
Arguments may or may not add weight to one alternative or the other,
but they can never decide the issue in the sense of producing certainty.
Ultimately, the decision rests on a free choice. And only the preservation
of this freedom can prevent the leap into faith from becoming an escape.85
The final vision which emerges from the dialogue, not unlike that
of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, shows us man as free and responsible, for
ever in danzer of losing his freedom and failing in his responsibility.
And the principal "action to be imitated" in the Phaedo may be seen
as the movement of a free faith seeking assurance in science and philoso
phy, but being forced to fall back on its own resources on penalty of
losing itself. And just as Sophocles would have us assume full respon
sibility for our actions rather than blame the gods, so Plato would have
us muster what courage we can to set up our own goals in a universe
which may or may not be hostile to our hopes and aspirations, to keep
forever alert to resist the seductive lures of both skepticism and dogma
86 The futility of human existence appears as a frequent theme in Western thought.

Significantly it has been used for opposite ends, although usually not recognized as
something men are free to accept or reject. Lucretius, for instance, deduces it from
his radical this worldliness in order to subdue men's will to live and make them less
reluctant to die: "Nor by prolonging life do we take one tittle from the time past
death nor can we fret anything away, whereby we may happily be a less long t
in the condition of the dead. Therefore, you may complete as many generations
you please during your life; none the less, however, will that everlasting death aw
you; and for no less long a time will he be no more in being, who beginning w
today has ended his life, than the man who has died many months and years ag
(On the Nature of Things, Book III. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1949, p. 10
By contrast this same awareness of man's state in its stark misery serves Sai
Anselm of Canterbury to drive home the urgency, if not the inescapability, of
faith in God: "What, Ο most high Lord, shall this man do, an exile far from thee?
He pants to see thee, and thy face is turned from him. He longs to come to th
and thy dwelling-place is inaccessible ... Ο wretched lot of man, when he hath
that for which he was madel Ο hard and terrible fate! . . . Wretched that I am . . .
What have I accomplished? Whither was I striving?. ... I sought blessings, and lo!
confusion. I strove toward God, and I stumbled upon myself. I sought calm in
privacy, and I found tribulation and grief, in my inmost thoughts." St. Anselm
Proslogion, Chapt. I. Translated from the Latin by Sidney Norton Deane, Chicago,
1926, pp. 4-5.
With modern writers the pendulum has swung back again to the notion of futility
as an incontestable, inescapable fact: "Vous connaissez la phrase: 'Il faut neuf mois
pour faire un homme, et un seul jour pour le tuer.' Nous l'avons su autant qu' on
peut le savoir l'un et l'autre . , . May, écoutez: il ne faut pas neuf mois, il faut
soixante ans pour faire un homme, soixante ans de sacrifices, de volonté, de ... de
tant de choses! Et quand cet homme est fait, quand il n'y a plus en lui rien de
l'enfance, ni de l'adolescence, quand, vraiment, il est un homme, il n'est plus bon
qu'à mourir." (André Malraux, La Condition Humaine, Paris: Gallimard, Le Libre
de Poche 27, 1955, p. 287.)
The above reflections of Gisor on the death of his son Kyo gives eloquent expres
sion to the absurdity of la condition humaine. An unwillingness to accept the finality
of this judgment forms the basis of Socrates' faith in immortality.
HENRY G. WOLZ 185
tism, of utter despair and complete surrender of self to authority, be
it human or divine.
The analogy we have traced between the Phaedo and the Oedipus
shows that this dialogue of Plato can be viewed as philosophic drama.
And if we so view it, we need not disrupt it but can preserve its unity.
This does not mean that we must take the demonstrations for the im
morality of the soul at their face value; but neither are we compelled
to regard them as simply antiquated or unconvincing.88 For now the
center of gravity, so to speak, has shifted from the objective content of
the dialogue to the subjective effects to be produced in the mind of the
reader. The paradoxes which appear in the presentation of the arguments
are now seen as part of the method Socrates employs to issue an im
pressive warning against the excessive expectations these arguments may
arouse and the threat they thereby constitute to the very faith they are
meant to support. Only after the limits of such speculations are recog
nized does he seem willing to grant them some measure of effectiveness as
a means of encouraging and strengthening faith. It should now also be
obvious that we cannot follow the example of those who would concern
themselves exclusively with the moving description which Plato renders
of the final hours of his friend Socrates.87 To do so would mean to make
oneself willfully immune against the primary impact of the dialogue and
the subsequent insight it is calculated to bring about. For as we watched
Socrates present his arguments and defend them against the critics, we
suddenly found ourselves personally involved. As Helmut Kuhn has
said,
We come to the Greeks as to a group of actors with the intention

of seeing them perform on the stage of life itself. Then a Socrates
steps out from their midst and engages us in a conversation. Before
long we have forgotten that we came to witness the spectacle pres
ented by the lives of past generations, and we discover ourselves
participating in an inquiry into our own most vital concerns. And
so in the Phaedo, as in other dialogues, Socrates does not offer a
solution to the problems he raises; but he does point out the ob
stacles which are likely to obstruct the road of anyone making an
attempt in that direction. Above all he helps the reader attain to
an existential awareness of inevitable conflicts which can never be
quite appeased but with which in the end each individual must
seek to come to terms for himself. And this, in the main, is the
function of Plato's dramatic approach to philosophy.88
88 See note 5 above.
87 See note 6 above.
88 Helmut Kuhn, Sokrates, Versuch uebcr den Ursprung der Metaphysik. Muenchen:
Koesel-Verlag, 1959. pp. 9-10.

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THE "PHAEDO": PLATO AND THE DRAMATIC APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY

Author(s): HENRY G. WOLZ

I he modern view of the Phaedo is paradoxical. On the one hand,

ι George Boas, Rationalism in Greek Philosophy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

Dr. Henry Wolz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Queens College, New

144 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

Allowing the philosophy of the dialogue to drop out of sight and

'choric' intervals," Raphael continues, "comments are made expressi

HENRY G. WOLZ 165

11 "Philosophy as Drama," to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Interna

166 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

HENRY G. WOLZ 167

I see you sulk in yielding and you are dangerous

21 Ibid., 1.675; p. 40.

168 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

If there is an epiphany, it occurs in the mind of the spectator who is

HENRY G. WOLZ 169

26 Phaedo. par. 88; p. 473.

170 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

30 Ibid; par. 73; p. 457.

32 Ibid., par. 74; p. 458.

HENRY G. WOLZ 171

85 Ibid., par. 70; p. 453.

37 Ibid., par. 84; p. 469.

172 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

ments and arguments literally, or as the views of the author, just as he

HENRY 6. WOLZ 173

I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest,

I cannot afford to give up the sure ground of principle. And if any

174 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

47 Ibid., par. 100; p. 484.

HENRY G. WOLZ 175

176 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

55 R. S. Bluck, op. cit., p. 165.

HENRY G. WOLZ 177

β2 ibid., par. 97; p. 482.

178 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

HENRY G. WOLZ 179

Each of the two instances of pathos should result in its corresponding

«8 Francis Fergusson, op. cit., pp. 161, 218.

180 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

HENRY G. WOLZ 181

182 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

If we regard the dialogue as an inquiry into the ground of Socrates'

77 Phaedo, par. 85; p. 470. Italics added.

HENRY G. WOLZ 183

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or,

184 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

86 The futility of human existence appears as a frequent theme in Western thought.

HENRY G. WOLZ 185

We come to the Greeks as to a group of actors with the intention

186 CROSS CURRENTS: SPRING 1963

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