1. See e.g. Theodor Ebert, Sokrates als Pythagoreer und die Anamnesis in Platons Phaidon, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, 1994, No. 13, p. 16: ‘Dieser Sokrates des Phaidon ... ist eine Erfindung Platons.’
2. See e.g. Leon Robin, ‘Sur le Phedon’, Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, Longmans, Green & Co. New York, 1927, pp. 575-6: ‘Ce que Platon fait dire à Socrate, c’est ce que, selon lui, Socrate au moment de mourir aurait pu dire sur l’âme et sur sa destiné, s’il avait donné à sa pensée tout le développement dont elle est capable et si ce développement avait rencontrée les objections auxquelle lui, Platon, s’est heurté.’
3. Cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia IV. iv. 4.
4. See e.g. Plato, Phaedrus 274c-278e, Protagoras 329a, 347e-348a.
5. See esp. Plato, Republic 595a-608b.
6. John Burnet, Plato’s Phaedo, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1911, 12th impression 1977, p. x.
7. Burnet, op. cit. p. xi-xii.
8. Burnet, op. cit. pp. x-xii.
9. Burnet, op. cit. p. ix, n. 1.
10. Burnet, op. cit. p. xliii.
11.Tr. W. D. Ross in The Works of Aristotle, published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica edition of Great Books of the Western World, William Benton, Chicago, London, Toronto, 1952, and reprinted from the Oxford University Press edition of The Works of Aristotle.
12. See W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1924, repr. 1948, vol. i, p. xxxiii-xxxvi. The passage from the Nicomachean Ethics is translated by W. D. Ross, op. cit. Note that in both these passages Aristotle refers to Plato in the plural and without naming him: ‘those who first maintained the existence of the Ideas’, ‘the Forms have been introduced by friends of our own’. Aristotle did not invent this manner of referring to those whom one subjected to criticism. Plato similarly referred to Isocrates (e.g. in Euthydemus 305c, Republic 500b), Isocrates to Plato (e.g. in Antidosis 260 with a direct reference to Pl. Rep. 500b4), Isocrates to Alcidamas (Against the Sophists 9), and Alcidamas to Isocrates (On Sophists 1).
13. W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, op. cit. p. xliv.
14.See e.g. K. R. Popper, The open society and its enemies, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Henley, 1966, repr. 1977, vol. 1, n. 56 to Ch. 10, p. 308: ‘... any doubt of Socrates’ veracity in the Apology makes of him one who lies for the sake of saving his skin.’
15. Cf. Diog. Laert. ii. 106.
16. Cf. Plato, Hip. Min. 364d-370e; Xen. Mem. IV. ii. 11-40.
17. According to Plato Antisthenes was present at Socrates’ death. See Pl. Phd. 59b8.
18. G. W. Most views the matter similarly. He says that we might be tempted to understand the first person plural opheilomen (‘we owe’) in Socrates’ last words as being equivalent to a singular, as Gallop does with reference to 116d4, if opheilomen stood alone in the plural. But the imperatives apodote (‘pay the debt’) and mê amelêsête (‘don’t neglect’) too stand in the plural, which means that all the verbs can only be taken as genuine plurals: ‘it follows that what is at stake cannot be merely some personal oath of Socrates’, regarding himself and his family, but rather something that involves the group as a whole.’ G. W. Most, ‘A Cock for Asclepius’, CQ 43 (i) (1993), pp. 105-6.
In reference to Gallop Most notes that even if opheilomen stood alone in the plural it would seem best also to take the words ‘we’ll do so’ (116d4) as a genuine plural referring to Socrates and his friends, for Socrates ‘goes on in his very next words to address his disciples (kai hama pros hêmas, ibid.) and to include them in his first-person plural exhortation to obey (peithômetha, d8)’. Most, op. cit. p.105, n. 59.
Most argues that Socrates’ words refer to Plato’s illness, to which Phaedo refers at the beginning of the dialogue as a circumstance that has prevented Plato from joining Socrates on his last day (59b10): ‘there can be little doubt that Plato, by referring prominently to his own illness and by not referring to anyone else’s, has constructed the Phaedo in such a way as to suggest that Socrates was thanking Asclepius for the recovery of Plato’s health’ (p.107). Most is well aware that Socrates’ words cannot refer to Plato’s future recovery, for the word opheilomen (‘we owe’) denotes a situation of obligation deriving from previous benefit, beforehand one can ‘promise’ but one cannot ‘owe’ (p. 104). He therefore argues that only after drinking hemlock and thanks to it Socrates divines that Plato has been healed: ‘Thus, in his last moments, Socrates is not recalling something he has forgotten nor reminding the others of something they already know; instead he is making an announcement to them of news that his proximity to death has only now enabled him to receive himself’ (p. 109). I find this difficult to accept, for if Plato’s illness was so severe that it prevented him from coming to prison and being with Socrates in his last hours, and if he was miraculously healed in the evening of that day, just before Socrates died, then he and his friends would have talked about it, and Phaedo would not have expressed an uncertainty about it by saying ‘But Plato was ill, I think’ (Platôn de oimai êsthenei, 59b10).
19. David Gallop, ‘Emotions in the Phaedo’ in: Plato’s Phaedo, Proceedings of the Second Symposium Platonicum Pragense, OIKOYMENH, Prague 2001, p. 284. Gallop notes that J. Crooks offered a similar interpretation of Socrates’ last words in CQ 48, 1998, pp. 117-125.
20. Cf. e.g. Plato, Alcibiades, 117b-118a.
21 . Cf. Plato, Charmides 166d3-4: ‘I pursue the argument chiefly for my own sake, and perhaps as well for the sake of others who are friends’.
22. J. Crooks accepts Most’s argument that Socrates’ last words refer to Socrates and the company of his friends collectively; they owe a cock to Asclepius for Asclepius’ intercession in curing some real illness, but rejects Most’s referring the words to Plato’s illness. Instead, he identifies the illness as ‘the pathos of misology’, referring to Socrates’ remarks on the unhealthy state of his and his friends’ souls at 89c, 90b-c, and 90e:
‘The pivotal position of these remarks - between the evaluation of the group’s crisis of confidence following the early discussion and Socrates’ attempt to respond to it - extends the scope of the hygiene metaphor over the entire text. The difficulties we encounter in connection with the arguments in the first part of the conversation (61c-88c) now count as evidence for the assumption “that we ourselves are not yet sound”. The rather complicated exercise in Socratic pedagogy that follows - the meditation on harmony (91c-95a), the autobiographic account of the disillusion with natural science and the recognition of the forms (96a-102a), the attempt at a higher synthesis of science and metaphysics (102b-107b), the myth of the true earth (107c-115a) - shows itself in advance as a striving “manfully and eagerly to become sound”, i.e. a course of therapy. The final qualification - “you and the others for the sake of your future life, and I because of my impending death” - emphasizes the collective nature of the project. It is the company as a whole that has been thrown “into confusion and distrust” by the objections of Simmias and Cebes, the company as a whole which stands in need of linguistic convalescence. It seems to me that the reading which best preserves the integrity of Plato’s portrait of Socrates as teacher takes the reference to Asclepius at 118 as an acknowledgement of having met this need. In the final scene of the Phaedo, his course of therapy complete, Socrates bids the group continue in the life of inquiry (115b).’
I heartily agree with every word that Crooks says, except for his identification of the illness. The illness to which Socrates refers is not ‘the pathos of misology’, for when Socrates warns against the danger of misology, and when he says that instead of mistrusting arguments we ought rather to assume that we ourselves are not yet sound, he clearly speaks of something else. He speaks of his and his friends’ inability to find the proper argument and reach the truth. At 115b Socrates does not ‘bid the group continue in the life of inquiry’, he bids his friends to live according to what he said in his last discourse and in his preceding life, and which they accepted as true. At 107b, reflecting on his final argument that in his view proved conclusively and incontrovertibly that the soul is immortal, Socrates says that if his friends properly analyse and grasp the argument, they would not search any further (ouden zêtêsete peraiterô, 107b9).
23. These passages are quoted in Gallop’s translation.
24. Plato signals the discrepancy between the argument from opposites and the last argument by registering a word of dissent on the part of an unnamed member of the audience who perceived that there was something wrong as soon as Socrates began to develop the final argument. Socrates begins by maintaining that largeness itself is never willing to be large and small at the same time, and that also the largeness in us never admits the small, just as the small in us can never become large, thus inducing a general claim that no opposite, while still being what it was, can at the same time come to be, and be, its own opposite (102d5-103a2). After reporting this initial stage of the argument, Phaedo says ‘On hearing this, one of those present - I don’t remember for sure who it was - said: “But look here, wasn’t the very opposite of what’s now being said agreed in our earlier discussion: that the larger comes to be from the smaller, and the smaller from the larger, and that coming-to-be is, for opposites, just this - they come to be from their opposites. Whereas now I think it’s being said that this could never happen.”’ Socrates riposted: ‘You don’t realize the difference between what’s being said now and what was said then. It was said that one opposite thing comes to be from another opposite thing; what we’re saying now is that the opposite itself could never come to be opposite to itself, whether it be the opposite in us or the opposite in nature.’ (103a4-b5). This riposte was tacitly invalidated in the next stage of the argument by Socrates’ maintaining that the soul itself can never suffer the opposite of the Form of Life; in the light of this development the ‘cyclical argument’ became untenable.
25. Emp. Julian, Epist. 59 (Hertlein), i.e. Epist. 50 (Wright).
26. See Diog. Laert. ii. 105, Aulus Gellius 2.18. According to Diogenes and Gellius Socrates induced his friends to ransom Phaedo who from then on devoted himself to philosophy.
27. Cf. K. v. Fritz’ entry on Phaidon in Pauly-Wissowa, RE, vol. 38, 1938, 1540-1541.
28. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. iv. 80. I quote J. E. King’s translation in the LCL edition of Cicero, with minor changes.
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