In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates explains how the greatest evil one can practice in life is to indulge in pleasure and pain. Death, he describes, is the separation of the body and the soul. He goes on to say how a true philosopher is one who limits these bodily pleasures and pains as these actions tie the body to the soul, not allowing for a pure death. Therefore, Socrates believes that a true philosopher must practice death throughout life to keep the body and soul separated as much as possible in order to “attain the greatest blessings yonder” when death finally arrives (63e). However, Socrates is wrong to preach that pleasure and pain are the greatest evils as without them, we are not human. True humans and philosophers find meaning and immortality not just through logical knowledge, but also from subjective artistic endeavors.
Firstly, I would like to lay out what I view as Socrates’ argument for the differences between true philosophers and others:
P1: Death is the separation of the soul from the body.
P2: True reality is the pursuit of knowledge.
P3: True reality is within the soul.
P4: The body distracts us from pursuing knowledge by its need for nurture and its want for indulgence (hedonism).
P5: A true philosopher is a thinker who forgoes hedonism for the sake of pursuing knowledge (freeing the soul).
C: True philosophers are closer to death than others (i.e. practice toward death).
The main issue with this argument is regarding premise one where Socrates says, “… freedom and separation of the soul from the body is called death…” (67d). From my point of view and understanding, if I assume premise one to be true, then the rest falls into place as a sound argument. Premise two is true because within reality, we do pursue knowledge as we go throughout life; our reality is formed by knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge makes life easier and more enjoyable. Premise three is true as I view the soul to be our conscience which I believe fits exactly to what Socrates believes the soul is as well as he asks, “does the soul grasp the truth?” in reference to if the body is preventing it from doing so, and soon after, he says, “the soul reasons best when…” in further reference to the body clouding it (65b-c). Therefore, since Socrates believes the soul tries to grasp truth and that the soul reasons, he gives proper relation to exactly what our conscience does: seeks truth in the world and seeks reason for that truth. With the soul being one’s conscience, true reality being within the soul, and true reality being the pursuit of knowledge, then one can say that our conscience is the pursuit of knowledge, which is exactly what our conscience does for as long as we are alive. Premise four is true as our bodies do indeed need to be nurtured with food, exercise, water, sleep, etc. and our bodily desires lead us to drinking, sex, indulgence, etc. These practices do lead us astray from deliberate philosophical thought (clouding the conscience/soul) as we cannot focus right with a starving/neglected mind or a distracted mind. Premise five is true as a true philosopher is one who would prioritize pursuing knowledge first and foremost over other distractions as much as possible: “Do you think it is the part of a philosopher to be concerned with such so-called pleasures as those of food and drink?” asks Socrates to scrutinize the hedonistic position in favor for one of knowledge (64d). This means that true philosophers lead a very conscience-driven life, one that is tipped as much as possible to the “soul” side of the scale.
Socrates’ conclusion can now be seen as true with the premises connecting well to where I can see that true philosophers are closer to death because they practice finding reason and truth instead of hedonistic activities. Assuming premise one is true, understanding now that premises two through five are true, and seeing that they connect well to the conclusion, I can say that this is a valid argument. However, going back to premise one, I find it to be the weak link that pulls this whole argument apart and prevents this from being a sound argument.
Socrates makes the assumption that the soul (or conscience) separates from the body upon death. From our understanding of science today, we do know that when one is dead that they are no longer using their conscience; however, we cannot assume that they just separate. It is more likely, based on science, that the conscience is destroyed right then and there, just as the body will be destroyed upon decomposition. Saying that one’s conscience and body are so separate that in death they head in entirely different directions is unconvincing to me. The neurons of our body are assigned into three categories: afferent, interneuron, and efferent. Our bodily senses give us sensory information from the outside world to our conscience, which is afferent to interneuron signaling. The interneurons are the neurons that make up our brain, therefore our conscience. Our conscience (or soul) then influences our body through interneuron to efferent nerve signaling pathways which dictate all of our muscle movements. This interdependent relationship between the body and the conscience through back-and-forth signaling shows just how interconnected the two really are; we cannot have one without the other. Therefore, when Socrates says: “and indeed the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pleasure nor pain…” the claim does not follow biology (65c). The soul (conscience) in fact reasons worse when the senses are not stimulated as this limits information for it to reason about, and when death finally occurs, both the body and conscience decompose as they are dependent on each other for their purposes as shown by their neuron interconnectedness for function. Because of the uncertainty of his claims, I disagree with the truth of Socrates’ premise that the soul separates from the body upon death. This leads to the conclusion of true philosophers being closer to death than others to be unsound, as every premise must be one-hundred percent true in a sound argument.
I can now see that although true philosophers devote their life to logical knowledge and the avoidance of pleasures and pain, this does not provide evidence that they are closer to death than others or that they are “better” than others because of these preferences. I have discussed that premise four is true; however, I do not see it as an inherent negative now that there is some uncertainty in the soundness of the later conclusion it tries to support. To me, these pleasures and pains that Socrates despises are in fact necessary to live a complete and utterly human life, and even to gain further philosophical knowledge.
There are two aspects of the human condition that I believe battle in our minds every day: logic and emotion. A person can make their life and thought process logical within themself. However, once any situation or thought involves another conscious being, the situation becomes emotional. As a conscious being, I can control my own thoughts and make decisions based on my emotions, but I cannot control anyone else’s. The emotional aspect of adding just one more person creates many more possibilities and contradictions come up more frequently. This is what I believe Socrates is trying to fight against with his value of logical thought. He wants to find a definite reason for how everything works: “If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be” (97c-d). To a true philosopher, this probably makes sense as a practice to follow: “if he is a true philosopher… he is firmly convinced not to find pure knowledge anywhere except [the underworld (which to Socrates is death which we know from before as the searching of knowledge for the conscience)],” but I believe this path leaves out a core concept of what it means to be a human (68a-b).
Socrates wants to remove emotion from the equation of life by having the true philosophers practice toward death. Leaving out the hedonistic activities of life, however, leads to a lack of potential experiences, experiences that need emotion to understand. The simple fact that he wants to practice for death means that he wants us not to be human anyway, as to live is to be human since we are in fact humans living. The feelings that one gets when experiencing the world are subjective in nature; I may love the sunshine of a sunny day at the park, but my friend may hate the heat. What is important though is that we each have our own subjective experience which allows us to connect to the world in our own way; we differ in our opinions, but we still gain knowledge for ourselves. Behaving in debauchery such as drinking alcohol or tasting food or indulging in sex may not tell us what happens when we die, but it does inform us more about what happens when we are alive, and is that not more useful to someone who is alive? Knowing more about the body that we live in is essential in understanding oneself, which is a key component in philosophy. Therefore, to understand oneself more, one must experiment and adventure using the senses they are given to feel, not just to think.
Branching further, I would like to consider how art plays a role in this emotional mindset. Art is the apex of creativity and should be appreciated and studied to its fullest potential throughout life. The grandeur and romantic aspects of it are what give truthful happiness and further knowledge. The power of art forms should not be underestimated. Art is used to convey emotion in ways independent of traditional terminology. Novels, movies, paintings, poems, nature, food, drink, exercise, religion, culture, politics, dance, sex, and even philosophy fit within the category of art because it is subjective just as the rest are. Many feel the closest to existence when experiencing art as it allows for an overwhelming feeling of sublimity and connection to something unexplainable yet all too familiar. These feelings not only allow us to understand our motivations and emotions for ourselves, but also exist as a bridge for someone else to observe. The beauty, however, is that one may understand it exactly how the creator imagined it or completely differently; I may see a painting in a museum and laugh while another cries. These differences arise because of the previous experiences one goes through before experiencing the art form. These feelings allow one to feel almost hyperaware of oneself to a sort of fleeting enlightenment feeling at times. This goes against what Socrates believes as he talks through his argument for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo.
The arguments that he pushes for are seen as a way to comfort his friends about his upcoming death and also their own worries about when they will die themselves one day. Previously, I have shown that the soul-body argument has flaws, and this may deter others from believing that there really is no immortal soul; however, I would like to bring up an alternative immortality as a replacement. I believe that we cannot prove that we are immortal through logic, but through emotion instead: art. I have shown that the language of “soul” is equivalent to “conscience” and to that I say: is Socrates’ conscience really dead? What have we been reading this entire time? Socrates still lives on through his/Plato’s work; he has achieved immortality through philosophy, just in an emotional way instead of a logical one. The art form that Plato provides us fashions Socrates in the exact way that he would want to be seen for eternity; we see him as a constant learner, supportive teacher, and overall, a good man. His teachings have lived on for thousands of years to teach as many individuals his lessons as if he lived himself for this long to teach them. Socrates has achieved immortality through the art of philosophy.
This is the case with any artist. Directors, actors, painters, poets, writers, and philosophers live on through their emotions in their work and are remembered because of the emotions they give others. Socrates teaches us logic, but we remember him because of the fantastic epiphanies he gives us, and those epiphanies are emotion. Humans are creatures of emotion and denying ourselves from that by practicing toward death is the real greatest evil we can give ourselves.
I can understand now how there seem to be a couple of giant holes in the understanding of thinking-behavior that have appeared from my argument: To what extent can one use this hedonistic expression? And what is the value of logic now? On hedonism, I believe Friedrich Nietzsche displays its downsides in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. As the antithesis of his famous Ubermensch, the idea of “Last Men” is that they are individuals who are all alike and content with the life in front of them. All they practice are the simple pleasures of life and do not reach out at the potential in front of them. To me, this is a type of hedonism that provides no value to oneself, society, or knowledge in general. One should be encouraged to indulge in life’s pleasures, but not to the point of laziness and nihilism. To learn from the fun and adventurous aspects of the body, it is important for one to note the mistakes, lessons, and insight one gains from them.
Perhaps most importantly is the new value of logic that must be explained from my initial discounting. Logic can be seen as the opposite of subjectivity on initial glance, but looking deeper, one can see how that nature makes it useful. The beauty of logical forms, especially Socrates’, is how debate is used to continually improve the answers to life’s toughest questions. Logic’s goal may be to find universal answers to these questions, but that is a goal that cannot be achieved, and that is a good thing. Logical debate and discussion are useful just as Socrates and his friends used them because they did give them satisfactory answers, though two-thousand years later, we see how hundreds of famous thinkers have argued against them just as this essay does. The improvement of logic through this system of new experiences over time gives it an essence of being temporarily objective until new information shows up naturally as humanity develops. We can still use logic as a reputable system to prove and disprove phenomena in the world around us, but that does not mean that the Earth is still the center of the universe or that flies come from meat because of spontaneous generation. Logic and emotion are both needed in life through a balance just like nurturing both the soul and the body together for even more knowledge.
If one is to seek immortality of their soul, they must pursue a life of art to lead the way toward new knowledge and emotion for others to remember them by. I have first laid out disproving Socrates’ view that the soul and body separate when death occurs which then allowed me to conclude that it is not only useless to try to keep the soul pure by denying the pleasures and pains of life, but that acting in such a way deprives one of their own humanity. As a substitute, I brought in a counterargument for why subjectivity and artistic endeavors are more important to pursue for the sake of being alive as a human as well as how one can gain immortality from them. Looking at the potential problems my argument puts forth, I stated and challenged what they bring to this new view on hedonism and logic by showing that one needs a balance of both. Though Socrates’ arguments hold weight from their eloquent composition to their completeness of topics, much time has passed since they were brought up to allow for differing points of views to assess them with the new experiences that the future brings.
Works Cited:
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Ernst Schmeitzner, 1883.
Plato, Phaedo, trans. Grube G M A. Five Dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Cito, Meno, Phaedo. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 57a-118a.
Very distinguished article making a sense towards death and its adventures toward the body and soul.