I am in the process of re-reading the Phaedo where Socrates talks to a group of friends on the morning of his execution in his prison in Athens. These discussions are quite detailed (and timely as Socrates points out) since they are mostly about the soul and its immortality after physical death along with various related topics. As usual, a number of these discussions and topics will stand out as being of particular interest to individual readers – at a particular moment in their lives - as is often the case with the writings of Plato. This short blog post of mine today merely wants to highlight a few small points that I found particularly interesting myself while reading a few pages of Phaedo again with my coffee this morning and indeed over the last couple of days.
Firstly, I thought Socrates encapsulated that modern feel very well for those people who have done any “spiritual searching” themselves and have gone to one type of religious meeting after another offered by various groups such as those based on many different types of Christianity, Buddhism, or New Age style practices.
Socrates recounts to his friends that once he heard someone reading from a book by the philosopher Anaxagoras that: ‘mind was the disposer and cause of all’ and that he [Socrates]: ‘rejoiced to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired’. Unfortunately for Socrates – and I am sure for many modern day searchers for spiritual wisdom and fellowship – he continues a few lines later:
‘What expectations I had formed, and how grievously I was disappointed! As I proceeded , I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities.’
The above few lines reminded me of the feelings I had myself as a young man of joining a new religious or philosophical organisation and then being disappointed as one goes further to find less and less substance holding up the deck of cards of their beliefs and practices. However, these few lines also sounded a very positive and harmonious note to me for the benefits of studying philosophy – being that by far the best and most honest solution for our search is a personal exploration of matters divine and spiritual – where one can discard those things that seem to be ‘improbable’ and hang on to those things that seem to be the most probable and plausible after a careful examination of any proposition and the alternatives personally.
It seems also a good moment now to repeat an advice of mine to new students of Socrates and Plato – whether young or old – and that is not to even contemplate taking the whole corpus of Plato’s more spiritual writing and regarding it like some religious totalitarian doctrine to be swallowed in full without question or doubt - as is often the case with the doctrines offered by most of the more established religious organisations of today and previous years. No; this is not the way of the evolving “real” philosopher. It is much better for real platonic philosophers to accept some parts and disagree with other parts (and indeed perhaps to sit on the fence with other parts) according to one’s own deliberations and explorations at a given period of time in their lives. (i.e. we may change or amend our views as the years go by and should not be afraid or too proud to do so….)
I should like now to raise one nagging difficulty I have with various explanations and descriptions of the soul that come up in the Phaedo dialogue and indeed throughout the works of Plato. If for the sake of argument we accept that the soul exists – then to my mind it most certainly is a very unusual and unique thing or perhaps kind of stuff. I therefore find explanations of the soul and its various attributes very weak if they make use of ‘universal principles’ as occurs often in Plato’s writings. For example, if one said that wardrobes, chairs, and tables are hard on the outside – it does not naturally follow on for me (and most others I suspect) that the soul is also hard on the outside. If one said that liquids such as tea, coffee and brandy need to be kept in a vessel to stop them simply dispersing away – it does not follow on to me that this also applies to the soul. In other words, unless we have a pretty good idea about what this soul stuff is in the first place – I think it is pretty hard to suggest what it can and cannot do and achieve with any kind of accuracy – or offer up an argument using examples from this ‘world of the senses’ as some kind of “proof” .
Talking of proofs - as a former high school maths teacher myself (but certainly no mathematician) – I have some idea of course about the use of mathematical proofs in order to support the truth of various hypothesise and proposals. However, in mathematics each proof usually relies on at least one accepted truth at its foundation. A simple example might be that if I take a scale and weigh 1 litre of wine – I can see that it weighs 1 kilogram. Now if somebody asks me what do you thing half as much wine (500 mls) weighs – I do not really have to speculate – but rather can calculate that it is 500 grams and I can explain why and offer a proof if needed. I can do this because the original starting point or truth (1000mls = 1 litre = 1 kilogram) is a rock solid foundation to start to build an endless number of examples on.
Explaining schoolboy maths and explaining the existence, immortality, and various lives and functions of the soul seem to be very different things to me – and the idea that by using any combination of words, arguments or examples from the sensible world one can claim to have proved something about the soul seems awkward at best to me. This is not to say one cannot perhaps offer convincing reasons for choosing a personal position on these and similarly metaphysical matters.
I could not make a few quick comments on the Phaedo without mentioning a few favourite lines from Plato of many years standing that come up towards the end of the dialogue just after Socrates gives his frankly bizarre description of the soul’s passage through the underworld and giant rivers circling the earth. Just after this strange description are some simple but truly important lines to me which bind me to the texts of Plato and the philosophy of Socrates even if some of the descriptions appear hard to believe. Socrates says:
‘A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be very confident that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true. But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of the kind is true…’ [i.e. we can think of it in this way even if it is not ‘literally’ accurate … like most diagrams of atoms or molecules and a host of other ideas in any modern day science classroom.]
In conclusion, I am not sure that words alone will ever be able to prove the existence of the soul and its activities and qualities to anyone; let alone a sufficiently large number of people in the modern world.
What Do You Think? If not words, then what other ways are there?
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