PHI 2323 Lecture 6

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Feedback for Socratic Circles

• Feel free to disagree more...

Phaedo Summary

Socrates Kicks Out His Wife

• Xanthippe not present for last discourse... why?
  • Note her remarks to Socrates' friends: "This is the last time you will ever talk"
  • She doesn't believe in afterlife‽
  • Too much emotion makes one a materialist?

Philosophy is "Death Practice"

• Socrates says he has spent his entire life preparing for death through philosophy
• death = "separation of soul from body"
  • "soul" does not carry the same weight as today
  • Simply "principle of life" or the thing that makes living things live (man, dogs, flowers)
• Philosophers possess ethical virtues:
  • moderation, bravery, temperance (68d–69e) -- for the sake of wisdom; better than everyone else
  • these virtues fight off pleasures and vices of the body
• Also possess intellectual virtue: seek the forms, the timeless and eternal truths (65b)

Eternity of the Soul 1

3 assumptions:

1. world is eternal
2. change happens
3. soul is in the body as a place

Argument:

• Change is always between opposites
  • shorter ↔ taller
  • hot ↔ cold
  • asleep ↔ awake
• given the first assumption, if change is only in one direction, then there will be only one state remaining
  • changes have to be bi-directional
• death is change from living to being dead
• therefore there has to be a process by which the dead become living
  • soul is eternally reincarnated

This assumes a closed system; i.e., there is a fixed number of souls and no new souls are created.