Phaedo

 

• What view does Socrates have about the relationship between philosophy and death? Do you agree? Explain.

"Phaedo" opens in Greece, in which Phaedo is asked by a small group what Socrates' final moments were like, opening the discussion for the connection of this text to mortality and death. It becomes apparent that there was a small group surrounding him in his last breathing moments, except his wife was brought out. Central to his claim is that all philosophers and wise men should "learn how to die," a large connection to the first reading we did, separating body and soul. (Plato) Once an individual is able to separate their body's functions from their own soul, they will have innate peace and that your body is simply there to help you survive.

An important distinction that he makes, however, is that one should never take their own life. Even though death is the "best" place for a soul to reside, ultimately their bodies are "property" of the Gods, and therefore purposeful and artificial destruction of a body is wrong and should never be done. (Plato) This transitions into the idea of how life can interfere with wisdom, given that the body must satisfy many needs other than that of knowledge and truth. When you die, you do not experience thirst, sleep, hunger, and other needs, so the body can focus on the ideas of truth when they die. Life, in other words, can get in the way of philosophy. 

The objection many may pose is that there is no way to know if the soul persists on after life, or whether it would vanish. Through Socrates' conversation with Cebes, we learn that this argument is absurd, as then there would be the unanswerable question on why the body wakes from sleep, and how we ever came to exist at all. (Plato) The opposite condition will often arise from one. Socrates concludes that the soul must not vanish upon death because there is the idea that mortality is related to a physical presence, as such at a molecular level, and since the soul has no physical presence, it must not "vanish" upon death. The soul is abstract, and its presence will be eternal. For all of these reasons, philosophers should welcome and not fear, albeit not accelerate, death.

As for my opinion, I disagree with the premise that one should "welcome" death because it is the place where souls can seek a higher truth. To do this, one would have to experience consciousness, and I believe that from a scientific and technical standpoint, consciousness terminates a few minutes after your heart stops (once the brain runs out of oxygen), according to EEG studies. In reality, we have no idea what happens after death, and the idea that we should not fear the unknown is far-fetched. From the studies we have now, it seems that cognition ends at death, and there is no way to prove whether the soul does vanish or not. It is entirely possible that it does, because when he stated that any condition comes from the opposite, then the argument breaks down when you ask where the first one came from at all. We need not learn from past lives, so how do we know that there even is the presence of a soul at all? One doesn't need to necessarily go about their lives in constant fear of death, but the idea that one should become acquainted, and even welcome it, is an argument that I cannot agree with.