The Last Days of Socrates

by Plato

  ‘It was a wonderful hope, my friend, but it was quickly dashed. As I read on I discovered a man who made no use of his Intelligence141 and assigned to it no responsibility for the order of the world, but adduced reasons like air and ether (c) and water and many other oddities. It seemed to me that he was just about as inconsistent as if someone were to say: “The reason for everything that Socrates does is intelligence”, and then, in trying to account for my several actions, said first that the reason why I am sitting here now is that my body is composed of bones and sinews, and that the bones are rigid and separated at the joints, but the sinews are capable of (d) contraction and relaxation, and form an envelope for the bones with the help of the flesh and skin, the latter holding all together; and since the bones move freely in their joints, the sinews by relaxing and contracting enable me somehow to bend my limbs; and that is the reason for my sitting here in a bent position. (e) Or again, if he tried to account in the same way for my conversing with you, adducing reasons such as sound and air and hearing and a thousand others, and never troubled to mention the real reasons; which are that since Athens has thought it better to condemn me, therefore I for my part have thought it better to sit here, and more right to stay and submit to whatever penalty she orders – because, by Dog! I fancy that these sinews and bones would have been 99(a) in the neighbourhood of Megara or Boeotia142 long ago (impelled by a conviction of what is best!) if I did not think that it was more just and honourable to submit to whatever penalty my country orders rather than take to my heels and run away. But to call things like that reasons is too peculiar. If it were said that without such bones and sinews and all the rest of them I should not be able to do what I think is right, it would be true; but to say that it is because of them that I do what I am doing, and not through choice of what is best – (b) although my actions are controlled by intelligence – would be a very lax and inaccurate form of expression. Fancy being unable to distinguish between the reason for a thing, and the condition without which the reason couldn’t be operative!143 It is this latter, as it seems to me, that most people, groping in the dark, call a reason – attaching to it a name to which it has no right. That is why one person surrounds the earth with a vortex, and so keeps it in place by means of the heavens; and (c) another props it up on a pedestal of air, as though it were a wide platter.144 As for a power which keeps things ever in the best position, they neither search for it nor believe that it has any remarkable force; they imagine that they will some day find a more mighty and immortal and all-sustaining Atlas;145 and they do not think that anything is really bound and held together because goodness requires it. For my part, I should be delighted to learn about the workings of such a reason from anyone at all, but since I’ve been denied it, and have been unable either to discover it myself or to learn about it

  (d) from another, I’ve worked out my own secondary approach to the problem of causation. Would you like me to give you a demonstration of it, Cebes?’

  ‘I should like it very much indeed.’

  (e) ‘Well, after this,’ said Socrates, ‘when I was worn out with my investigations into reality, it occurred to me that I must guard against the same sort of risk which people run when they watch and study an eclipse of the sun; some of them, you see, injure their eyes, unless they study its reflection in water or some other medium.146 I conceived of something like this happening to myself, and I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether. So I decided that I must have recourse to theories, and use them in trying to discover the truth about things. Perhaps my illustration is not 100(a) quite apt; because I do not entirely agree that an inquiry by means of theory employs ‘images’ any more than one which confines itself to facts.147 But however that may be, I started off in this way; and in every case I first lay down148 the theory which I judge to be least vulnerable; and then whatever seems to agree with it – with regard either to reasons or to anything else – I assume to be true, and whatever does not I assume to be untrue. But I should like to express my meaning more clearly; because at present I don’t think that you understand.’

  ‘No, indeed I don’t,’ said Cebes, ‘not a bit.’

  Socrates explains his new theory. Particulars are what they are by participation in the Idea, and receive their descriptions from the name of that Idea. We are now entering some of the most difficult and most discussed theory of Plato’s middle period. Yet Plato seems to find much of what he says perfectly obvious; Socrates thinks his method is unadventurously safe, and the interlocutors, with Echecrates too, are depicted as eager to agree on much of what we should hesitate over. While not denying that Plato would have had a more technical theory, traces of which emerge here through his choice of language, we should be wary of importing unnecessary technicalities into our understanding of texts such as this.

  ‘Well,’ said Socrates, ‘what I mean is this, and there is (b) nothing new about it; I have always said it, in fact I have never stopped saying it, especially in the discussion that’s just gone by. As I am going to try to explain to you the type of reason I’ve worked out myself, I propose to make a fresh start from those principles of mine which are always cropping up;149 that is, I am assuming the existence of Beauty in itself and Goodness and Largeness and all the rest of them. If you grant my assumption and admit that they exist, I hope with their help to explain causation to you, and to find a proof that the soul is immortal.’

  ‘Certainly I grant it,’ said Cebes; ‘you need lose no time in (c) drawing your conclusion.’

  ‘Then consider the next step, and see whether you share my opinion. It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from Beauty itself is beautiful because it partakes150 of that Beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of reason?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, now’, said he, ‘I cannot understand these other ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that the (d) reason why a given object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous colour or shape or any other such attribute, I disregard all these other explanations – I find them all confusing – and I cling simply and straightforwardly, naively perhaps, to the explanation that the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it or association with it (in whatever way the relation comes about)151 of that other Beauty. I do not go so far as to insist upon the precise detail; only upon the fact that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful. (e) This, I feel, is the safest answer for me or for anyone else to give, and I believe that while I hold fast to this I cannot fall; it is safe for me or for anyone else to answer that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Then is it also by largeness that large things are large and larger things larger, and by smallness that smaller things are smaller?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you too, like myself, wouldn’t accept the statement that one man is taller than another “by a head” and that the 101(a) shorter man is shorter by the same; you would protest that the only view which you yourself can hold is that whatever is taller than something else is so simply by tallness – that is, because of tallness; and that what is shorter is so simply by shortness, that is, because of shortness. You would be afraid, I suppose, that if you said that one man is taller than another by a head, you would be faced with a counter-argument: first that the taller should be taller and the shorter shorter by the same thing, and secondly that the taller person should be taller by a head, which is a short thing, and that it would be a miracle that a man should be made tall by something (b) short.152 Isn’t that so?’

  Cebes laughed and said, ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Then you would be afraid to say that ten is more than eight “by two”, or that two is the reason for its excess over eight, instead of saying that it is more than eight by, or because of, being a larger number; and you would be afraid to say that a length of t
wo feet is greater than one foot by a half, instead of saying that it is greater by its larger size? There’s the same danger here too.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Suppose next that we add one to one; you would surely avoid saying that the reason for our getting two is the (c) addition; nor, if we divided a unit, the division. You would loudly proclaim that you know of no other way in which any given attribute can come to be except by sharing the essential nature of the thing it has a share of; and that in the cases which I have mentioned you recognize no other reason for something coming to be two than its sharing in duality; and whatever is to become two must share in this, and whatever is to become one must share in unity. You would dismiss these divisions and additions and other such ingenuity, leaving them for persons wiser than yourself to use in their explanations, while you, being nervous of your own shadow, as (d) the saying is, and of your inexperience, would hold fast to the security of your hypothesis and make your answers accordingly. If anyone should question153 the hypothesis itself, you would ignore him and refuse to answer until you could consider whether its consequences were mutually consistent or not. (e) And when you had to substantiate the hypothesis itself, you would proceed in the same way, assuming whatever more basic hypothesis154 commended itself most to you, until you reached one which was satisfactory. You would not mix the two things together by discussing both the starting-point and its consequences, like one of these masters of contradictions155 – that is, if you wanted to discover any part of the truth. They presumably have no thought or concern whatever for that, because their cleverness enables them to be well satisfied with the way they muddle everything up; but you, I imagine, if you 102(a) are a philosopher, will follow the course which I describe.’

  ‘You are perfectly right,’ said Simmias and Cebes together.

  ECHECRATES: And with good reason, Phaedo! It seems to me that Socrates made his meaning extraordinarily clear to even a limited intelligence.

  PHAEDO: That was certainly the feeling of all of us who were present, Echecrates.

  ECHECRATES: No doubt, because it’s just the same with us who were not present and are hearing it now for the first time. But how did the discussion go on?

  PHAEDO: I think that when Socrates had got this accepted, and (b) it was agreed that the various Forms156 exist, and that the reason why other things are called after the Forms is that they share in them, he next went on to ask: ‘If you hold this view, I suppose that when you say that Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, you mean that at that moment there are in Simmias both tallness and shortness?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘But do you agree that the statement “Simmias is bigger than Socrates” is not, as expressed, an accurate reflection of (c) the facts?157 Surely it’s not in Simmias’s own nature to be bigger – it’s because of the height which he incidentally possesses; and conversely the reason why he is bigger than Socrates is not because Socrates is Socrates, but because Socrates has the attribute of shortness in comparison with Simmias’s height.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And again, Simmias’s being smaller than Phaedo is due not to the fact that Phaedo is Phaedo, but to the fact that Phaedo has the attribute of tallness in comparison with Simmias’s shortness.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘So that is how Simmias comes to be described as both short and tall, because he’s intermediate between the two of (d) them, and lets his shortness be surpassed by the tallness of the one while he displays a tallness that surpasses the shortness of the other.’ And with a smile he added, ‘I seem to be talking like a technical treatise; but all the same, surely, the situation is as I say?’

  Simmias agreed.

  Socrates begins by making a distinction akin to that between the accidental and essential properties of an entity – between those properties which it can lose without ceasing to be the thing that it is, and others which are essential for it to remain what it is. After this he establishes that certain things necessarily imply the participation in one of a pair of opposite qualities, and cannot take on the opposing quality. Anything which has, as an essential quality, the property P which has an opposite Q, cannot take on Q-ness but must be destroyed or retire rather than become Q. The passage is a tantalizing one for those studying Plato’s metaphysics because it is difficult to understand without postulating immanent form as something distinct from both Ideas and particulars, and yet no terminology peculiar to immanent form has been established.

  ‘I am saying all this because I’d like you to share my own point of view. It seems to me not only that tallness itself absolutely declines to be short as well as tall, but also that the tallness “in”158 us never admits smallness and declines to be surpassed. (e) It does one of two things: either it gives way and withdraws as its opposite shortness approaches, or it has already ceased to exist by the time that the other arrives. It cannot stand its ground and receive the quality of shortness in the same way as I myself have done. If it did, it would become different from what it was before, whereas I have not lost my identity by acquiring the quality of shortness; I am the same man, only short; but my tallness could not endure to be short instead of tall. In the same way the shortness that is “in” us declines ever to become or be tall; nor will any other quality, while still remaining what it was, at the same time become or be the opposite quality; in such a situation it 103(a) either withdraws or ceases to exist.’

  ‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Cebes.

  At this point one of the company – I can’t remember distinctly who it was – said ‘Look here! Didn’t we agree, earlier in the discussion,159 on the exact opposite of what you are saying now: that the bigger comes from the smaller and the smaller from the bigger, and that it is precisely from their opposites that opposites come? Now the view seems to be that this is impossible.’

  Socrates had listened with his head turned towards the speaker. ‘How brave of you to refresh my memory,’ he said, ‘but you don’t realize the difference between what we are saying now and what we said then. Then we were saying that opposite things come from opposite things; now we are saying that the opposite itself160 can never become opposite to itself – neither the opposite which is in us nor that which is in Nature.161 Then, my friend, we were speaking about objects which possess opposite qualities, and calling them by the names of the latter, but now we are speaking about the qualities themselves, from whose presence in them the objects which are called after them derive their names.162 We maintain (c) that the opposites themselves would absolutely refuse to tolerate coming into being from one another.’ As he spoke he looked at Cebes. ‘I suppose that nothing in what he said worried you too, Cebes?’

  ‘No, not this time,’ said Cebes, ‘though I don’t deny that a good many other things do.’

  ‘So we are agreed upon this as a general principle: that an opposite can never be opposite to itself.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then consider this point too, and see whether you agree about it too. Do you admit that there are such things as heat and cold?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Do you think they are the same as snow and fire?’163 (d) ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Heat is quite distinct from fire, and cold from snow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I suppose you agree, in the light of what we said before, that snow, being what it is, can never admit heat and still remain snow, just as it was before, only with the addition of heat. It must either withdraw at the approach of heat, or cease to exist.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Again, fire must either retire or cease to exist at the approach of cold. It will never have the courage to admit cold and still remain fire, just as it was, only with the addition of cold.’

  (e) ‘That is true.’

  ‘So we find, in certain cases like these, that the name of the Form is eternally applicable not only to the Form itself, but also to something else, which is not the Form but inva
riably possesses its distinguishing characteristic. But perhaps another example will make my meaning clearer. Oddness164 must always be entitled to this name “odd” by which I am now calling it; isn’t that so?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘This is the question: is it unique in this respect, or is there something else, not identical with oddness, to which we are 104(a) bound always to apply not only its own name but that of odd as well, because by its very nature it never loses its oddness? What I mean applies to the number three; there are plenty of other examples, but take the case of three. Don’t you think that it must always be described not only by its own name but by that of odd, although odd and three are not the same thing? It is the very nature of three and five and all the alternate integers that every one of them is invariably odd, (b) although it is not identical with oddness. Similarly two and four and all the rest of the other series are not identical with even, but each one of them always is even. Do you go along with this, or not?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then pay careful attention to the point which I want to make, which is this. It seems clear that the opposites themselves do not admit one another; but it also looks as though any things which, though not themselves opposites, always possess an opposite quality, similarly do not take on the opposite Idea to that which is in them, but on its approach either cease to exist or retire before it. Surely we must assert (c) that three will sooner cease to exist or suffer any other fate than submit to become even while it is still three?’165

  ‘Certainly,’ said Cebes.

  ‘And yet two and three are not opposites.’

  ‘So it is not only the opposite Forms that cannot face one another’s approach;166 there are other things too which cannot face the approach of opposites.’

  ‘That is quite true.’