Plato's Phaedo: A Summary of the Immortality of the Soul, Part One

After the death of Socrates, his pupil Plato would go on to reconstruct many of his dialogues, including Phaedo, which recounts Socrates' beliefs with regards to the immortality of the soul. Phaedo, along with the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro, are known to many scholars as a tetralogy, since they deal with the trial and death of Socrates.

Phaedo is the longest and richest dialogue of the aforementioned tetralogy. Philosophically, it is also the most important. Taking place on the morning of Socrates' death, it primarily deals with the immortality of the soul. However, it also recounts many of philosophical tenets that Socrates, and later Plato, would espouse. These include the theory of recollection as well as the theory of Ideas.

Phaedo begins when Echecrates, a Pythagorean, asks Phaedo to tell him about the death of Socrates. Phaedo is glad to oblige, relating the philosophical discussion that they had before Socrates had to drink the poison.

Death: The Liberation of the Soul

The first major discussion centered on death. Socrates makes the argument that philosophers are engaged in meletç thanatou, "the practice of death." In his own words, he says:

The rest of mankind is not aware that those who apply themselves correctly to the pursuit of philosophy are in fact practicing nothing more or less than dying or death. If this is so, it would be indeed strange that men who had throughout their lives sought precisely this, should grumble when it came - the very thing which they had, for so long, desired and rehearsed. Philosophers practice dying, and death has less terror for them than anyone else.

Socrates then defines death as nothing more than the separation of the soul and the body. During life, Socrates explains, the desires and needs of the body prevent us from making real headway in the practice of philosophy. In other words, the body inhibits the mind. He says,

The body presents us with innumerable distractions, because of the necessity of looking after it; and again, if any illnesses assail it, they too hamper us in out pursuit of truth. The body fills us with emotions of love, fear, desire, and fear, with all kinds of fantasy and nonsense, so that in very truth it really doesn't give us a chance, as they say, to ever think of anything at all...we are slaves in its service; and so...we have no time for philosophy. Even if we do get some time off from looking after it...it keeps on turning up everywhere in our search, and causes disturbance and confusion, and thoroughly dumbfounds us...if we are ever going to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body, survey things alone in themselves by means of the soul herself alone.

Socrates ends his argument by saying that philosophers must have as little to do with the entanglements of the body as possible. Indeed, it must be their goal to be independent of the body, because only then will they achieve true learning and understanding (phronesis). Because the state of being independent of the body is death, then philosophers should not fear it at all, but welcome it when the proper time comes.