Plato's drama goes on to depict the actual course and approach of death. The poison, true to its nature, slowly but surely causes the various parts of Socrates' body to grow numb. Before this chill reaches his heart, Socrates utters his famous last words to his faithful friend Crito: "We owe a cock to Asclepius. So pay the debt and don't be careless." The dialogue, which is recounted by Phaedo, then ends with Phaedo's praise of Socrates: "This was the end, Echecrates, of our comrade, as it came to pass -- a man, as we may say, who was, among those of that time we'd come up against, the best and yes, the most thoughtful and the most just."

      The Phaedo may be said to concern itself with the two senses of the word "end" -- end as the point at which something stops, and end as that for the sake of which someone leads his life, end in the sense of purpose. In the dialogue Socrates "meets his end" in a twofold sense: He awaits the last moment of his mortal life, and, while waiting, discusses the end or purpose of that life. In other words, Socrates discusses the life that is genuinely philosophical, the life devoted to the search for wisdom. It is on this point that Socrates does something utterly remarkable, something he does in no other dialogue: He defines philosophy as meletê thanatou, "the care of death." What in the world can Socrates mean by this phrase? In an effort to respond to this question, I shall comment briefly on the various ways in which death comes up and is talked about in the dialogue.

Part I: The Minotaur and the Fear of Death

      The whole of the dialogue is recounted by Phaedo to his friend Echecrates in the city of Phlia, a city known for its association with the followers of that man of mystery -- Pythagoras. It is a long time since the trial and death of Socrates, and Echecrates is overjoyed to find in Phaedo a man who was right there in the prison when Socrates died. Echecrates very much wants to know how Socrates met his end. Phaedo is more than willing to oblige and says: "to remember Socrates is ever the most pleasant of all things" (58D). Phaedo's intense admiration for Socrates is itself one of the dialogue's central themes. Through the drama of the dialogue, Plato compels us to think not only about Socrates but also about the various characters' attachment to Socrates. This attachment is both understandable and touching. We too admire Socrates, especially as we see him in this dialogue. But a question arises: Is there perhaps a danger in this attachment? Can one's love of Socrates prevent one from fully engaging in the philosophic life, from being truly Socratic? I shall return to these questions at a later point.

      Early in the prologue Echecrates expresses wonder that there was so great an interval between the trial and the death of Socrates. Phaedo informs him that the city puts no one to death during the embassy sent to Delos each year. This embassy commemorates the heroic act of Theseus, who saved the seven youths and seven maidens from being sacrificed to the Minotaur or "Bull of Crete."

      This reference to Theseus and the Minotaur gives the Phaedo its mythological setting. Plato's dialogue playfully mimics and reinterprets the famous myth. The mimicry is faithful to the myth even in the number of people whom Phaedo remembers by name -- fourteen in all. The drama of the Phaedo consists, then, in Socrates' effort to save his friends from the monster that threatens them. Socrates is the new, philosophic Theseus. But who (or what) is the Minotaur? It seems clear from many clues in the dialogue that this monster from whom Socrates' friends need to be saved is none other than -- the fear of death.

      At several crucial points in the dialogue Socrates brings up the extreme importance of music. Music in the Phaedo seems to be closely connected with the fear of death. You recall Socrates' dream early on in the dialogue, the dream that exhorts Socrates to "make music and work at it." Socrates at first thinks that he is being urged on to continue his pursuit of philosophy, for philosophy, says Socrates, is "the greatest music." But then he comes to think that the god was urging him to take up music in the ordinary sense, popular music (61A). And so, he takes up setting Aesop's fables to verse. Socrates' "turn" to popular music seems to be his turn to the fears of his friends, the fear that threatens their full participation in philosophy. The arguments of the Phaedo are not, therefore, just efforts to provide theoretical answers to fundamental questions: They are also addressed to the passions of Simmias and Cebes, most especially, to their fear of death.

Part II: Philosophy as the Care of Death

      The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is not the only means by which Plato defines and shapes the conversation of the dialogue. There is another "background drama" -- the trial of Socrates, which Plato depicts in the Apology. Early in the Phaedo, just after Socrates has made it clear that the genuine philosopher would not make a fuss at the approach of death, Simmias and Cebes accuse him of injustice. Why in the world, they want to know, would a good man rejoice to leave both his friends and the service of the gods in this life? Behind this formal accusation, there seems to lurk a more personal charge: How dare Socrates act so blithe when his friends are so upset to see him die! How can he be so unfeeling, so inhuman! Socrates responds to the formal charge by saying: "What you say is just … for I think what you're both saying is that I should make my defense against these charges, just as in the law court" (63B). The Phaedo, then, is the second trial and "apology" or defense of Socrates. In the first trial, Socrates attempted to give a public defense of the philosophic life before a court of impersonal judges. He failed -- perhaps because it is, to Plato's mind, impossible ever to give a public defense of philosophy. Here in the Phaedo Socrates must defend philosophy a second time, this time before a court of friends, before a court of people, that is, who love and admire Socrates and do not want to see him die. Why, we wonder, has Plato set up the drama in this way? Why depict this last conversation between Socrates and his adoring friends as a trial and defense? What does it mean for one's friends to become one's judges?

      Now it is extremely interesting to observe that the conversation recounted by Phaedo does not begin with either death or the question of the soul's immortality. It begins with Phaedo's observation that what he felt on that occasion was like nothing else he had ever experienced before. The whole mood of the last meeting with Socrates was a wondrous blend of pleasure and pain, laughter and tears (59A). Socrates appears to pick up on this very theme when, after the chain has been removed from his leg, he comments, casually and even humorously, on the wondrous behavior of pleasure and pain. Human life, it seems, is an absurd mix of these two feelings. When someone experiences the one, observes Socrates, its other seems destined to follow -- a splendid topic for an engaging Aesop's fable. In this way Plato introduces one of the recurring themes of the dialogue: the behavior of contraries in general. Contrariety, as you recall, plays an absolutely crucial role in the arguments for the soul's immortality. The very first argument Socrates gives for the immortality of the soul relies on the general thesis that contraries are always born from each other, while the very last argument (which, we must note, is the very last argument of Socrates' entire life) relies on the thesis that contraries cannot abide each other.

      In any case, the topic of death does not come up until Socrates refers to the poet-sophist, Evenus. Evenus, Cebes reports, had expressed wonder that Socrates, who never wrote any poetry before he went to prison, is now engaged in this form of music-making. Socrates then recounts his dream and ends up with a piece of advice: "So tell Evenus this, Cebes, and bid him farewell, and tell him, if he's sound-minded, to follow me as quickly as possible" (61C). Simmias interrupts and tells Socrates that Evenus is sure to be unpersuaded by this advice, to which Socrates says, "What! Isn't Evenus a philosopher?"

      The conversation proper would appear to begin in earnest with this question about whether Evenus is a true philosopher. What the many, the "hoi polloi," think is first, that death is an evil, and second, that the philosopher, because of his radical questioning of the city's standards of excellence, courts death and in that sense deserves to die. Socrates proceeds to define the genuine philosopher in terms of death. "Others," he says, " are apt to be unaware that those who happen to have gotten in touch with philosophy in the right way devote themselves to nothing else but dying and being dead" (64A). Here begins Socrates' relentless attack on the claims of the body. Death is defined as a form of freedom. It is the separation of the soul from the body. But the philosopher, during his mortal life, constantly pursues such separation by shunning all but necessary contact with the body and its concerns. Why, then, when an actual and presumably more complete death, a more complete freedom, was at hand, would the philosopher make a fuss about it?

      The phrase I referred to earlier -- meletê thanatou or "care of death" -- comes up at a later point in the discussion. But it would be helpful to take up its meaning now. Meletê and various Greek words related to it occur often in the Phaedo. Socrates' last words to Crito are one such occurrence: "Pay the debt and don't be careless." The verb meletan means to care for, to study, to pursue diligently, to exercise or practise something. Meletan is what a human being does when he pays careful attention to something he loves, when he tends it as though it were a garden, when he lovingly weeds, waters and prunes. Meletê is a passion at work. It is not just the feeling of care but the work we put into that for which we care. So when Socrates says that philosophy, genuine philosophy, is meletê thanatou, the care of death, he is saying that the philosopher dutifully and lovingly takes care that he approach a state of death -- to pursue the garden analogy, that he cultivates death. But what is this death, and how is it related to that which the philosopher loves above all -- wisdom?

      It is impossible to hear Socrates' astounding claim about the philosopher's pursuit of death without adding, as it were, quotation marks around the word "death." It is impossible not to think of the opinion that the many, the "hoi polloi," have of both death and the philosopher. To them the philosopher is certainly a walking dead man. This is so not just because he endangers his life by questioning the city but also because his life seems on the whole not to be a life at all. What, after all, is life without pleasure? And what is pleasure except what most people think pleasure is -- food, drink and sex? An obvious answer to the many presents itself: Unless you have actually tasted the pleasures of the philosophic life, unless you have actually felt the thrill of thinking, then that life certainly appears to be a kind of death. The condemnation of the philosopher is thus based on ignorance and inexperience -- ignorance of the true nature of philosophy and inexperience in genuine pleasures. By defining philosophy as the care of death, Socrates emphasizes the gulf that separates the two understandings of what it means to be truly alive -- the philosophical and the non- or anti-philosophical. The difference has to do with whether one lives for the sake of the body or for the sake of the soul. It is very important to observe that this is not the choice between pleasure and non-pleasure but, as I have suggested, the choice between bodily pleasure and the pleasure appropriate to the soul, that is, the pleasure of thinking.

      The choice between these two lives and these two pleasures depends ultimately on what we take to be our truest and deepest self. This is the word with which the Phaedo begins, autos or self: "You yourself, Phaedo -- were you present with Socrates on that day … ?" What is our true self? What is that which does the living when we say "I am living"? Is it my soul? But then what is the soul? Is the soul that which causes me to be organically alive, a living being like other subhuman living beings? Or is soul perhaps my mind, that by which I think? The conversation of the Phaedo not only does not settle this all-important issue but does not even raise it explicitly. We are left wondering, at the end of each argument and indeed sometimes in the course of a given argument: What sense of soul is at work here?

      In speaking of the philosophic life, Socrates implies that soul (which is feminine in Greek) refers to that by which we think. Soul here is not a cause of life in the organic body. She is rather invisible, altogether incorporeal, a leader of the body rather than a follower, and that in us which has the power to recollect and commune with those eternal and immutable beings to which soul is by nature most akin. These are the beings Socrates sometimes calls "things themselves by themselves" or "the forms." These forms play a crucial role in what Socrates means by defining philosophy as the care of death.

      The forms come up early in the discussion. In fact, Socrates' comments on the curious behavior of pleasure and pain suggest that "the pleasant" and "the painful" are themselves instances of forms. Socrates appeals to the forms in his very first attempt to defend himself before his court of friends. In speaking with Simmias about the genuine philosopher, Socrates observes that the philosophic soul turns away from the body in order to be what Socrates calls "a soul herself all by herself" (65D). He then gets Simmias to agree that there is some Just Itself, Beautiful Itself and Good Itself. These forms the soul never gets in touch with through any of the senses. To commune with them, she must pull herself away from the distractions and noise of the body; that is, the philosopher must diligently pursue that separation from the body that Socrates defines as death. Here Socrates draws the following conclusion: If during our mortal life we can accomplish this separation only imperfectly and for finite stretches, then it must be that in actual death, when the separation is fully accomplished, the philosopher will attain the condition with which he is in love, the condition of divine wisdom. Socrates puts all this mythically by saying that the philosopher will reach the fulfillment of his desire for wisdom in Hades, a word which in Greek is very close to the word for "unseen" or "invisible." The meaning of the word Hades thus comes to be revised and in a sense reversed. No longer the place for insubstantial, flitting shades -- those poor excuses for solid bodies we find in Homer -- Hades is now the most "real" place of all. It is the "place" of the beings that are most solid and enduring because they are invisible, forever unchanging and utterly incorporeal.

      Socrates goes on to argue that without wisdom the other so-called virtues are not really virtues at all. Courage, moderation, justice -- without wisdom, these so-called virtues are nothing but fear of dishonor, fear of pain (or at least loss of pleasure), and fear of injustice. That is, Socrates extends his defense of philosophy beyond the theme of death per se to the good he expects to find in death. He thus anticipates the great myth about the earth that he will tell later in the dialogue. Let me attempt a simple summing up of the main points here: The philosopher does not fear death (and thus distinguishes himself from the "hoi polloi") first, because perfect wisdom, a perfect vision of the forms, requires a soul that's been purified of the mindless distractions of the body; second, because true virtue, that is, true human goodness, depends ultimately on that very wisdom that the genuine philosopher loves and pursues in all his intellectual exertions, so that if there is an afterlife and if the philosopher believes that the Powers That Be are lovers of goodness, then surely he if anyone would have reason to expect a good reception in Hades, for he alone had pursued a good that was good in and of itself, he alone was good not out of fear but out of love.

      With this Socrates seems willing to end his defense before his court of friends. "If I've been at all more persuasive to you in my defense," he says, "than I was to the Athenian judges, it would be well" (69E). Notice that in all this Socrates has not tried to give anything like a proof that the soul is immortal. He has focused on the philosopher's soul and has tried to articulate what one might call the "rational faith" that goes with being a philosopher. Such faith consists in trusting that the gods and indeed the cosmos as a whole are responsive to the inherent goodness of wisdom and the love of wisdom.

      This focus on the soul of the genuine philosopher changes with Cebes' response to Socrates' defense. Cebes grants that everything has been, in his words, "beautifully put," but he points to the undeniable fact that human beings are full of distrust about these things (70A). Cebes, we are to imagine, would not have brought this up had not he too experienced such distrust, had not he too, as he himself admits, had within him a child who fears death. It is at this crucial moment in the dialogue that the conversation turns away from the strictly philosophic life to a consideration of souls in general. This turn is also the turn from soul as that by which we think and are wise to soul as that by which all living things are said to be alive. As Socrates points out to Cebes, as though stressing the turn away from the exclusively human that Cebes himself has suggested: "don't look only to human beings … but also to all animals and plants" (70D). More simply stated, it is here, through Cebes' observation of human distrust, that the conversation turns from an account of philosophic virtue and the philosopher's bond with Being to the world of bodily change -- to physics.

Part III: The Life and Death of Argument

      An examination of the arguments in the Phaedo goes far beyond my purpose this evening. Here let me simply note that Socrates pursues four so-called "proofs for the immortality of the soul": first, an argument based on the thesis that in all natural processes contraries are born from their contraries; second, an argument based on the thesis that learning is in fact recollection; third, an argument based on the soul's invisibility; and fourth, an argument based on the forms taken as causes of contrary affections.

      In the argument from recollection Socrates tries to direct Simmias and Cebes to the way in which learning, which is in its deepest sense communion with eternal things, proves the eternal and immortal nature of the soul herself. He tries, in short, to lure them back to a consideration of the philosophic nature. The argument "works" for Simmias and Cebes only up to a point. They agree that it proves that soul did in fact exist before entrance into a mortal body; but they continue to worry about what will happen to the soul, to their souls, at the moment of death. The recollection argument points to an eternal and always retrievable "past," while anxiety always looks to an uncertain and therefore terrifying future. Socrates tries to lure Simmias and Cebes away from futuristic, time-bound thinking. But their anxieties prove too strong -- even for the potent "music" of a Socrates. Socrates teases them. "You have the fear of children," he tells them, and reminds them of the need to calm the child within by means of daily incantations (77E). Nevertheless, Socrates does address their fears by continuing the argument. He puts forth his third argument (the argument from the soul's invisibility). Socrates resumes and intensifies his attack on bodily pleasure and reminds Simmias and Cebes that genuine philosophy is meletê thanatou, "the care of death" (81A).

      As we now approach the midpoint of the Phaedo, the center of Plato's own dramatic labyrinth, silence descends on the group. Simmias and Cebes, urged on by Socrates, voice their distrust in the preceding argument. Both use images to articulate that distrust. Simmias brings up the Pythagorean idea that soul is some sort of tuning, from which it seems to follow (since the tuning is the first thing to be destroyed when the lyre is destroyed) that soul is the most vulnerable and mortal of all things. The image goes completely against what Socrates has argued in various ways -- that soul, at least the philosophic soul, cultivates a life of separation from the body, that soul is most who she is, most a soul, only when thus "separated," that is, "dead" to the body. The image of Cebes appears to be even more devastating to whatever trust Socrates has secured. What's to prevent soul from being like an old weaver man and the body from being like a cloak he's woven? The weaver-soul might well outlive a great many cloak-bodies but, alas, eventually die in the course of all her weavings and embodiments -- die while wearing her last "cloak."

      Simmias and Cebes cause quite a stir with this eloquent formulation of their doubts. Here is what Phaedo reports: "Now once we'd heard what they said, all of us felt ill at ease (as we told one another later) because, after we'd been so powerfully persuaded by the previous argument, they now seemed to shake us up again and to cast us back into distrust, concerning not only the arguments that came before but even what would be said later on. Who knows, we might be worthless judges, or these matters themselves might be beyond trust" (88C)! Even Echecrates, to whom Phaedo is telling the story at a safe distance, as it were, from the scene of approaching death, expresses his sympathy with those present. He is understandably eager to know (as we are) what Socrates did next.

      The section of the dialogue that follows is the most important in the whole dialogue. It may be the most important moment in all the dialogues. For what is at stake here is not whether this or that argument works to prove the immortality of the soul but whether argument as such can ever be trusted. This distrust is obviously of tremendous importance for the question of whether philosophy is to be trusted, since the business of philosophy, as Socrates constantly reminds us in this dialogue, is that of "giving accounts." Socrates affectionately plays with Phaedo's hair and warns him of the danger of what Socrates calls misology or the hatred of argument (89Aff.). Just as someone who's been deceived by close friends several times in a row ends up distrusting and hating all of human nature, so too someone who's put his trust in arguments and has seen them crumble in refutation one after the other ends up hating all arguments.

      It is interesting here that it is a question not of mere distrust but of out and out hatred. What is the ground of this hatred? We perhaps get some inkling of this hatred when we think of those occasions in life when one person says to another: "And to think that I trusted you!" When argument lets us down repeatedly, the experience can be emotionally devastating. We trust arguments in much the same way that we trust loved ones who are closest to us. We build a world on our trust in other human beings, and we seem to do the same thing with the arguments in which we place our trust. Our subsequent hatred, when we are disappointed and deceived, is a loud commentary on human nature and what human beings expect from other human beings and arguments alike -- absolute, utterly unfailing certitude. We build our lives on the assumption that such certitude is possible. But what if this certitude is not possible? What if it's impossible for human beings to be as trustworthy as we want them to be, demand that they be? What if in arguments too there is no absolute certitude to be had, if there is no such thing as a completely and utterly unassailable argument, an argument that settles all issues and solves all problems? What then?

      Socrates attempts to revive Phaedo's flagging spirits by calling attention to an all-important fact, a fact we tend to forget in the midst of our despair and resentment. He tells Phaedo that someone who allowed himself to become a misanthrope or hater of human beings "was attempting to deal with human beings without art in human affairs. For if he dealt with them artfully, he'd think of them just as they are -- that both the really good-natured and the really wicked are few, and that most people are in between" (89E-90A). Without denying that there can be unaccountable, utterly surprising betrayals in life, Socrates is pointing to the fact that there is, after all, a knowledge of human nature that allows human beings their varying degrees of trustworthiness and untrustworthiness. So too, someone who knew the analogous "art of arguments" would know better than to think that all arguments were equally untrustworthy or that there existed such a thing as a completely unfailing, unproblematic argument.

      It turns out that Simmias, just before he raised his difficulty of the soul as a tuning, had put his finger on an important feature of philosophic argument. Simmias grants that knowledge of the soul's mortal or immortal nature is either something impossible in this life or else difficult. In response to this problem, Simmias offers a characterization that reminds us of the many-wayed Odysseus: "For in these matters, a man must, it seems to me, accomplish one of these things: He must learn or discover what's the case, or, if that's impossible, he must sail through life in the midst of danger, seizing on the best and the least refutable of human accounts, at any rate, and letting himself be carried upon it as on a raft -- unless, that is, he could journey more safely and less dangerously on a more stable carrier, some divine account" (85C). Simmias has here given a beautifully apt depiction of the philosopher. The philosopher is that human being who alone realizes that human nature is neither utterly in the dark nor utterly enlightened and wise, neither at the extreme beginning of things nor at the coveted end. Simmias has in fact foreshadowed the extremely interesting account of hypotheses in what Socrates later terms his "second sailing" in search of a cause.

      But to return to Socrates' brief interchange with Phaedo, Socrates tells Phaedo that he will, in keeping with the custom of mourning, no doubt cut his hair tomorrow. "That's likely," Phaedo responds. Socrates proceeds to say, in effect, "Why wait until tomorrow?" Here are Socrates' actual words: "This very day … I'll cut mine, and you'll cut these locks of yours, if our argument meets its end and we can't bring it back to life" (89C). What is remarkable here is Socrates' shift of the language of life and death away from human beings to arguments. To return to the drama of trial and defense, we see here that in the Phaedo it is not just Socrates who is on trial but the very logos, the very act of constructing arguments and giving accounts, to which Socrates devoted his life. It is our care for this logos that somehow lies at the heart of the proper care for our own souls. In caring for, in tending and cultivating, logoi or arguments, we busy ourselves with a quest for rational solidity and a trustworthiness based on radical questioning. Without this radical questioning we are the victims of arrogance and despair: We forget that we are neither at the absolute beginning or the absolute end but are rather somewhere in the middle of things, making our way as best we can. In any case, the life that is worth living (which, as Socrates suggests in the Apology, is the examined life) stands or falls on the constant revitalization of the logos, of rational inquiry that makes its way by means of speeches, arguments and accounts.

      The care for the revitalization or renewed life of the logos serves as a sort of complement (and perhaps corrective) to the definition of philosophy as the care of death. Being dead to the distractions and allure of the body really means being opened up and made alive to the spirit of radical questioning, alive to the life of inquisitive speech. To put this in the bluntest possible way, the philosopher lives for the sake of the perpetuation and ongoing life of inquiry. That is what counts most in the end, which is to say that his life is defined by what he is devoted to, what he is in love with: He lives that the logos might continue to live. If we could only keep this in mind without being distracted or "shaken," we would not fear death: Love would conquer fear. So that by getting his friends involved in the intricacies of arguments about the soul's nature and fate, Socrates is in effect trying to undistract them, to cast good spells against evil spells. He is trying to get them to pay serious attention to the argument and in that way to pry their concern away from personal anxiety and time. He is trying, in a sense, to remind them of what it means to be fully alive. What does it mean to be fully alive? It means to forget about time. It also means being fully aware of difficulties -- not shielding ourselves from difficulties but (to mix a metaphor) rolling up the sleeves of our soul and diving headlong into difficulties. That perhaps explains to some extent why Socrates, in his very last conversation, puts forth arguments that are notorious for their defects and questionable assumptions. This is intentional. The difficulties are there to excite and awaken Simmias and Cebes, to get them to continue to think and to explore. They were put there by Plato to revitalize and renew our relation to the logos.

      To repeat: The exhortation to Phaedo to "bring the argument back to life" serves to shift the emphasis away from anxiety over one's own personal fate to the concern that the logos, in spite of setbacks and apparent failures, be constantly renewed, like the web of Penelope or like the Phoenix who rises out of her own ashes. This point suggests that the so-called proofs for the immortality of the soul that we find in the dialogue and for which the dialogue is famous, are really subsidiary to the deeper concern for the immortality we approach and enjoy right now when we forget time and busy ourselves with arguments. This busying ourselves with argument is itself a form of philosophic music. It is the "greatest music," which, by absorbing the philosophically-minded human being in the search for truth and for the strongest possible argument, distracts him from the all-too-human anxiety about his temporal end. It redirects his attention and care to that for the sake of which he lives.

      Socrates goes on to tackle Simmias' objection. In effect he argues that the soul, contrary to what the Pythagoreans think, cannot be compared with the tuned condition of a lyre. It is interesting that the usually sceptical Cebes, who had raised the more serious objection, now yields to overconfidence. He has no problem believing that Socrates will make short shrift of Cebes' own objection (95B). Socrates has to warn him not to "put the whammy" on the argument to come. Cebes' burst of overconfidence shows how easy it is, even for a sceptical fellow like Cebes, to go from false despair to false trust. It is easy to forget that our raft is human (or at best, semi-divine, like Herakles) and that we are, as I mentioned before, always in the middle of things.

      Socrates' reponse to Cebes' objection is enormously complex and fascinating. Socrates goes way back into his own youth. He tells us about his youthful "fling" with physics, his own disenchantment with the solid-seeming logos of Anaxagoras, and his "second sailing" by which he formulates a method of sorts for journeying through the sea of hypotheses. The whole passage confirms and elaborates what we have already seen -- that the genuine philosopher thinks of himself, experiences himself, as an Odysseus-like being in the midst of things, an adventurer trying to find his way home. The "method" of Socrates is that human raft which Simmias had prophetically spoken about earlier. Socrates seeks refuge and safety in the hypothesis of the forms. Why is this hypothesis the most trusty raft on which to sail? Because it grounds speeches and speculations about the way things are in the way in which ordinary language -- in its naming the beautiful, the just, the good -- offers a clue about a truly findable being, a being that was, so to speak, "friendly" or congenial to human account-giving.

      In light of his fascinating autobiography, Socrates goes on to give the argument that presumably dismantles the objection of Cebes. It is the fourth and last of the arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. As I have already noted, it is also the last argument of Socrates' life.

      The fourth argument for the immortality of the soul, the most labyrinthine and problematic in the entire dialogue, is far too complex to go into here. This argument from cause is far in spirit from the arguments that had to do with the philosophic nature and the care of death, focusing instead on a curious, almost mythical, blend of dialectic and physics. The backbone of the argument is the behavior of contraries and the mutually exclusive nature of contrary forms. The argument in fact depicts a personified "war of forms," a playful drama of contraries that reminds us of what Socrates had said about pleasure and pain at the start of the conversation. In the very last argument of his mortal life, Socrates thus combines the music of philosophy with the charm of Aesop.

      After this last argument of Socrates, Cebes, once again, seems unquestioningly persuaded. Here is what he says: "I, at any rate, Socrates … don't have anything else to say against these claims, nor do I in any way distrust our arguments" (107A). Simmias, by contrast, does express distrust. But it too is disturbing, disturbing because it is the vague, flabby sort of "I don't know -- maybe we can't really know anything for sure" sort of thinking. Socrates, by contrast, is crisp and precise. He addresses the excessive trust of Cebes and the wishy-washy scepticism of Simmias with the following remarkable speech: "Not only that, Simmias … What you say is good, but also our very first hypotheses -- even if to all of you they're trustworthy -- must nevertheless be looked into for greater surety" (107B). What are those "first hypotheses?" Well, they are none other than the hypothesis of the forms, that on which all the arguments in one way or another were made to depend. Socrates is in effect telling Simmias and Cebes that they are far from done, that they ought not to give the arguments unquestioning trust, but that they should continue to investigate the most radical beginnings on which the conclusion about the soul depends. To be true caretakers of the logos, they must be like Penelope: They must unweave in order to reweave. They are not to come away from the discussion thinking that they now have in their possession iron-clad, air-tight proofs for the soul's immortality. What Socrates bequeaths to Simmias and Cebes (and to all who hear Phaedo's story) is thus not a doctrine but an infinite task.

      Does this undermine what Socrates has been trying to accomplish all along? That depends on what we think he has been trying to accomplish all along. Has he been trying to convince his friends that the soul is immortal? Yes, I believe he has. But he has also been trying to get Simmias and Cebes to reflect on how the philosopher, right here and now, gets in touch with the eternal and unchanging by living in a certain way and by pursuing the logos -- even, as it has turned out for Socrates, at the cost of his life.

Part IV: The Death of Socrates and the Care of Soul

      The whole foregoing conversation has been the heroic effort on Socrates' part to steer a safe course through the Scylla and Charybdis of excessive trust and excessive distrust. Imagine for a moment how difficult this must be -- not only in general but also under the delicate circumstances that Socrates must somehow address. On the one hand, Socrates must defend the philosophic life and its bond with the pure, the invisible, the unchanging, the deathless. He must revive his friends' trust in the inherent goodness of the philosophic life. On the other hand, he must save them from misology or the hatred of argument, not by shielding them from difficulties but by enticing them with the difficulties that even the strongest logos involves. Socrates must paradoxically evoke both their piety and their scepticism. Even more paradoxically, he must somehow reveal that the philosopher's "piety," that is, his unswerving trust in philosophy as the best and most divine life for man, manifests itself in an ongoing skepsis or inquiry. The sheer difficulty of this heroic effort makes it far from clear whether Socrates has really succeeded in redirecting his friends' care away from their personal safety to an altogether fierce and fearless passion for inquiry, far from clear, in other words, that the Minotaur has in truth been slain.

      Earlier I said that the Minotaur in Plato's labyrinth is the fear of death. The interlude with Phaedo suggests that another, perhaps even more threatening monster is the distrust in (and ultimately the hatred of) argument. This in turn raises the question of the philosopher's relation to non-argument. By this I mean the philosopher's relation to trust or faith. Is the philosopher the human being who questions everything and believes in nothing? That seems highly doubtful. Surely the philosopher may be said to trust in the power of logos or argument. Can that trust ultimately be argued for and thereby replaced by an argument? Can reason ever give a non-circular defense of itself? Can philosophy ever succeed in persuading people of its inherent goodness unless those people are already disposed to the goodness of argument and inquiry?

      The myth Socrates tells about the true earth directly addresses this central theme of trust. If we take Socrates at face value, it seems that he is telling us that lovers of argument also need stories. The philosopher needs to construct, to imagine, a whole cosmos or "beautiful whole" in which the love of wisdom and genuine virtue are accorded what they deserve. The myth Socrates tells is a wonderfully imaginative construction of just such a world. Socrates has no illusions that the cosmos is exactly as he imagines it to be, hopes that it be. He tells Simmias (to whom the myth is principally addressed): "For beautiful is the prize, and the hope great" (114C). He goes on to say: "Now to insist that all this holds in just the way I've described it, isn't fitting for a man with any mind. Nevertheless, that this or something like it is the case regarding our souls and their dwellings, since it's apparent that the soul is in fact something deathless, does seem to me both fitting to insist on and worth the risk for one who thinks it's so -- for a noble risk it is" (114D)! The myth, in other words, gives noble utterance to what I called at any earlier point "rational faith." A myth does not prove -- it shows. Perhaps, too, it seeks to persuade, not by giving reasons but by beguiling us with intelligent and noble images that are consonant with the love of wisdom. The myth shows us what would be worth trusting.

      Socrates' myth about the true earth is extraordinary, even by Plato's standards. It tells of a cosmos that is not only just but constantly amazing. Within the earth all sorts of punishments and reconciliations are going on for human souls. Inner earth is the locus of violent physical process and moral seriousness. But the best souls, the philosophic souls that have purified themselves and thus have made themselves fitting for a pure dwelling, are liberated from all the turbulence and swooshings that go on inside the earth. The lives of those liberated are a pure pleasure, a pleasure unmixed with pain. They are lives released from the absurd cycle of pleasure and pain that Socrates refers to in the early moments of the dialogue. The reward for a philosophic life is a life of leisurely looking at the way things really are. There is no more need for moral virtue, no more need for cities, no more need for defenses of philosophy or ministering to one's fear-haunted friends. There is simply the unending enjoyment of unimpeded, comprehensive vision.

      Although the myth speaks of the eternal order as an afterlife, Socrates seems to use the deep and mystical tone of myth to convince us of the supreme importance of tending our souls right here and now. The myth, in other words, casts over our mortal, temporal lives the "magic" of eternal significance. In the simplest possible terms, the myth is a powerful reminder that we must not neglect the care of our own souls but devote ourselves here and now to what Socrates calls "the learning-related pleasures" (114E).

      In what remains of the account given by Phaedo, Plato offers a richly detailed chronicle of the events that led up to Socrates' death. In this concluding section of my talk, I shall comment on just one of those details.

      Near the end of the dialogue, Socrates takes the poison from the attendant's hands and asks whether he can pour some for a libation. As he asks his question he looks up at the attendant from under his brows "with that bull's look that was so usual with him" (117B). Translators shy away from the literal meaning of the adjective taurêdon, "bull-looking." They cover up its strangeness with expressions like "with wide open eyes" (Fowler) or "with his usual steady gaze" (Tredennick). But the Greek is quite clear. As Socrates takes the cup that holds the fatal potion and asks if he may use it for a pious gesture, he looks like a bull. (Socrates' notorious bulging eyes and pug-nose make the image all too apt!) How can we fail to connect the adjective "bull-looking" with the myth of Theseus, with that Bull of Crete whom Theseus slew? But why has Plato done this? Why, after the Minotaur known as Fear-of-Death has presumably been slain by our Theseus-Socrates, does Socrates himself take on the guise of that bull? In what sense has Socrates himself become the Minotaur?

      It is here, by way of conclusion, that I return to an earlier set of questions: Is there a danger in being attached to Socrates? Can one's love of Socrates prevent one from fully engaging in the philosophic life, from being truly Socratic?

      The whole conversation in the Phaedo is prompted by Socrates' apparent blitheness in the face of death. Simmias and Cebes are understandably bothered by this blitheness. They playfully demand that Socrates present a defense, just as he did in the law court. Let me put this in terms of the Theseus myth. Theseus, after being led through the labyrinth by Ariadne, who loved him, left her, unchivalrously, on the isle of Naxos. In the Phaedo it is as though Simmias and Cebes play the role of Ariadne, at least in this respect: They are complaining that Socrates, with whom they have shared so many dangers in logos, is abandoning them -- that he is, in effect, committing an injustice against them by his cheerful, unperturbed manner, his willingness to die. Socrates is unjust because he fails to return humanness for humanness.

      Socrates' "bull's look," his playing the role of the Minotaur, no doubt has several functions. For one thing, the bull's look captures the ferocity, the uncompromising clarity of purpose, with which Socrates led his life. As Death looks him in the face, Socrates looks right back. He fights fire with fire -- mocks the Fear of Death with the monster's own intimidating glare. He bullies the bull. But in another sense, Socrates reveals -- for all to see -- his own potential for distracting the souls of his followers from their care of the logos. Simmias, Cebes, Phaedo, Apollodorus -- perhaps all who are present with Socrates in the prison cell -- are in danger of confusing the man Socrates, whom they dearly love, with that for which Socrates lived. The bullish look Socrates shoots at the potion-bearer perhaps may be taken to mean the following: Socrates wants his friends to see how the heroic savior can become the monster, how Theseus can become the Minotaur, when the fixation on the mortal man displaces the love of wisdom and the tending of arguments. The love of Socrates then itself becomes a Minotaur that takes the soul out of the labyrinth of logoi and imprisons it once more in the labyrinth of mortality and grief.

      Crito and Apollodorus are, in different ways, examples of this falling prey to the Socrates-Minotaur. After all the logos, after all of Socrates' "music" (which combined encouragement with skepsis, gentleness with rigor), after all the talk about the philosophic soul and the need to turn away from the body, Apollodorus breaks down in a storm of wailing as Socrates drinks the poison; he takes everybody else with him (117D). Socrates reproves them for their misbehavior, their "striking such false notes," as he says. The logos, it seems, is perhaps potent and persuasive in the short run but uncertain in its long-range effects. Nor should this surprise us, for what is the logos, what is philosophy, up against here but the passions of the soul? And what greater passion is there than the intense love that binds us to certain human beings? The dialogue reminds us of this dimension of human life by presenting us with two respondents, Simmias and Cebes, who (we have reason to believe) are lovers.

      Crito, Socrates' old friend who had wanted to bribe the guards and get Socrates out of prison in the dialogue named after him, also slides (not without a certain humorousness) right back into the realm of the body. (Perhaps it is more correct to say that he never really left it.) He follows Socrates around, as if Socrates at any moment will vanish into thin air! And in his final interchanges with Socrates, he expresses extreme concern for Socrates' body. Not only does he want to know how Socrates wants to be buried -- he also observes that Socrates still has time to enjoy what others enjoy before their execution: food, drink and sex (116E)! The entire preceding logos seems to have been wasted on Crito. And yet Crito is presented, I believe, sympathetically by Plato. We are not simply to judge him (which is all too easy) but to see in him the power of a love all-too-human, all-too-understandable and poignant. We appreciate what philosophy's care of death is up against to the extent that we are willing to admit that there is a touch of Crito in all of us -- who knows, perhaps even in the philosopher. Does not Socrates seem affectionately attached to Phaedo and his beautiful hair?

      In the opening moments of his narrative, Phaedo speaks of Theseus, who saved the seven youths and seven maidens "and himself was saved" (58B). Aside from the question of whether Socrates has truly saved his friends from their fear of death, another question naturally arises: Did Socrates save himself? The humanly complex, delicate circumstances of Socrates' last conversation make it extremely difficult to determine what Socrates himself truly believes and whether he has completely slain the monster of fear within himself. In praising Socrates at the very end of the dialogue, Phaedo leaves out the virtue of courage. If Phaedo's view of Socrates is taken as Plato's view, then it would seem that the philosopher does not need courage in the face of what he does not fear in the first place. But it is far from clear that Phaedo's view is Plato's view. Phaedo saw what Socrates wanted his friends to see: a man whose soul was utterly untroubled, even joyous, at the hour of death. Was there absolutely no fear of death for Socrates when he drank the poison? The question is the same as this one: Was the love of wisdom so strong in Socrates that it successfully overcame all human frailty? Are we sure, in other words, that the philosopher needs no courage in the face of his mortality? I leave this question for you to decide, observing only that usually a hero is more of a hero if he does have something to overcome in himself.

      In the Phaedo, Plato perpetuates the memory of his teacher. At the same time, he warns us of the danger of our love affair with the human-all-too-human, with the man Socrates. For it is precisely this love of our non-philosophical humanity that waters the plant of fear and grief. And yet, although Socrates extols a transcendence of the merely human, throughout the dialogue he is intensely human -- even if he does not act the way most people would act under similar circumstances. He shows genuine affection for his friends, he ministers to their passions, and he encourages them to continue the logos which, if they are persuaded by him, will in fact not die but be reborn in the Herculean labors of inquiry. The paradox of Socrates is his divine humanness. In this paradox Plato seems to have presented the true defense of Socrates: He has shown us, in Phaedo's account, how the human-all-too-human can become a monster and how the philosophic transcendence of the human returns us to our deepest and noblest humanity.

21 June (Father's Day). The Phaedo is one of Plato's most popular dialogues. Unlike the Parmenides or Sophist, which deal with apparently remote themes (that is, remote from the immediate and weighty concerns of everyday human life), the Phaedo deals, we may say, with life itself. Who among us can fail to be deeply moved by and interested in the themes of this dialogue -- with the question of whether or not the soul is mortal, with what what happens to our souls at the moment of death, with whether, assuming the soul survives bodily death, there is another world, a world in which human souls occupy places and live lives in keeping with their virtues and vices? Who, I say, can fail to be moved by all this? And yet, the Phaedo, in spite of its popularity, is anything but removed from the questions of less popular, more "technical" dialogues like the Parmenides, Sophist and Timaeus. It connects deep and difficult questions about being, unity and cause with the concern we have for the meaning of life and the problem of death. The center of perplexity in this popular but baffling dialogue is occupied by the forms. Socrates connects philosophy with the care or practice of being dead, death with invisibility (the play on the word Hades), and invisibility with the forms ("the things themselves by themselves"). Furthermore, there is a powerful and intimate connection between these so-called forms and the logos or life of discourse. How do the forms function in this dialogue? What light do they shed on the last day of Socrates, on philosophy as the care of death, and on the nature and vocation of the human soul? These are the questions I wish to take up with you this evening.

      Hegel once said that philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying. Is the Phaedo edifying? Answer: Yes. Is it therefore philosophically deficient? No. If edifying means "aims at making us feel uplifted," then, no, Socrates' conversation does not aim at this. Through the words and deeds of Socrates, Plato exhorts us to work, not to merely "feel" uplifted or cultured. As Socrates exhorts Simmias and Cebes, so Plato exhorts us to the business of inquiry. The Phaedo preaches toughness of soul. So I want to talk about how the forms function not so much to argue for the immortality of the soul but to direct the soul to its highest and truest concerns. The body is here the locus of death and decay. If the highest life of inquiry is to be practiced successfully, the body and its care must be transcended. But what does it mean to transcend the body? Well, most obviously it means to transcend, be free from, the body's incessant tyrannicalness. Socrates may be said to exaggerate the philosopher's negative relation to the body. He does this (positively) by allying himself with Pythagorean mysticism. But an exaggeration is not the same as an outright lie. Philosophy is in some sense the care or practice of death. In its very extremism the Phaedo manages to bring out and highlight the non-human, the superhuman character of philosophy. Now Socrates is arguably at his most human in this dailogue. He shows genuine affection for his friends and an all-too-human concern for his own fate (he refers to his contentiousness). Is he dissimulating here? I doubt it. Has Socrates managed to transcend his own humanity? Would he show such touching devotion to and affection for his friends if he had? (Socrates seems ton the brink of his transcendence!) The philosopher aspires to be a god, and in this aspiration he aspires to be beyond the all-too-human. It is this aspiration, this eros -- which is necessarily also a hybris or insolence -- that defines Socrates. But that is not all that defines Socrates. As an aspirant rather than a god in the full sense of the term, Socrates feels his own humanity to the fullest and recognizes it in others. He gives every appearance of enjoying humanity, or at least to enjoy the company of his friends. So what are we to make of this demonic man, this man who is both beyond the human and, in crucial respects, the perfection of the human? Who is Socrates?

      Keep the thing textually anchored in the question of the forms and their function in the dialogue. Now we must be careful not to rush to the opinion that, of course the forms play a big part in the Phaedo -- this is Plato, isn't it? Many take this for granted, forgetting that the forms, far from constituting anything like a "theory of the forms," are never fully explained in any dialogue and never appear in the same way twice. That is why the question must be posed in terms of function. This will prevent us from thinking, erroneously as I belive, that Plato started with Heidegger's question "What is being?" and came up with his answer "the forms." It will also encourage us to look carefully athe specific (and contradictory!) ways in which Socrates speaks of the forms.

      All the arguments for the deathlessness of the soul in the Phaedo depend in one way or another on the forms. I note in passing that the word "immortal" or "deathless" is a privative. "Mortal" is, strange to say, the positive quality in Greek as in English. What Socrates seeks to prove in the Phaedo is that the soul lacks or is free of this quality, that the soul is not something, that is, deathbound or mortal.