PHI 2323 Lecture 8

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Exam over Phaedo 2019-09-18

Phaedo Review

Socrates' Response to Simmias' Objection

• soul exists prior to body, whereas a lyre produces the harmony
• harmony cant have harmony like soul can be harmonious/well-ordered
• harmony doesn't rule the lyre like the soul rules the body

Socrates' Response to Cebes' Objection

Starts with a tangent on natural philosophy:

• natural philosophers tend toward "reuctionistic materialism"
  • cause of everything is the matter/parts that make it up
  • this didn't satisfy Socrates
• Mentions the following subjects:
  1. Math: 2 is not just 1 + 1 (i.e., how you get "2"), there is "two-ness" about the 2.
  2. The Head Example: someone can be taller and shorter at the same time... these are opposites and that's absurd! (???)
  3. Mind: question "Why is it best for … to be a certain way?" answered "because they are that way" (not good enough for Socrates)
     • The best answer would be particular providence, the answers to the "big questions" -- There seems to be an ultimate goal or purpose to everything: why do I exist? now? here?
     • Socrates settles on the next-best answer: The forms, immaterial abstractions from which all material derives its meaning for existence
     • "I'm more than just my bones and sinews," says Socrates.

The Final Argument

1. A form cannot have its opposite: what it means to be "hot" cannot become what it means to be "cold" (or "even"/"odd", etc.)
2. If a form is in the definition of something, then that thing cannot take on the opposite form: "3", which is "odd" by definition can never be "even"
3. The definition of a soul is "the thing that gives life", so it cannot take on the form of death and can never be dead!

The True Earth

• Everything is awesome up there!
• Torment and rivers at the center of the earth
• we live in the middle layer between

The moral of Phaedo is to be a philosopher and to be virtuous.