The Role of the Affinity Argument in the "Phaedo"

Author(s): Matthew Elton

Source: Phronesis , 1997, Vol. 42, No. 3 (1997), pp. 313-316
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182565

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 Discussion Notes

The Role of the Affinity Argument in the Phaedo

MATTHEW ELTON

The affinity argument (78b4-84b8) stands out in the Phaedo as the weakest
of all Socrates' arguments for the immortality of the soul. Not only does Socrates
recognise that it shows no more than that the "soul must be completely indis-
soluble, or something close to it" (80b 0) but, unlike his other arguments, it
is thoroughly trounced by stinging and sarcastic replies from Simmias and
Cebes. It is clear from the dialogue that Plato has grave doubts about the
mode of argument employed in the affinity passages. But if Plato knows the
argument is so bad, then why is it here, nestling amongst, by the usual count,
three more reasonable arguments for immortality?2 My answer is that it is here
precisely in order to illustrate how not to argue the case for immortality, and,
more generally, how not to argue the case for any thesis. The affinity remarks,
then, form part of an object lesson in how not to do good philosophy.
My strategy will be, first, to show that Plato (and his leading man) reject
analogical forms of argument, and, secondly, to defend the stronger claim that
the use of this argument forms part of an illustration of where the philos-
ophy can go wrong.

I am more concerned with the overall role, rather than the finer details of the
affinity remarks, so a quick and crude recap should serve my purposes here.
Socrates claims that the soul is akin to unchanging, incomposite and invis-
ible forms, the body is akin to mutable, composite and visible particulars.
Forms are immortal, by analogy so too are souls. Or then again, the soul is
akin to the divine, the body to the mortal. The divine are immortal, by anal-
ogy so too are souls.
In fact, as already noted, the claim is that souls are immortal "or some-
thing close to it" (80blO). The qualification indicates an early awareness of

Accepted February 1997

' All quotations are from Plato: Phaedo translated with notes by D. Gallop. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1975.
2 Of course no-one would dispute that the remarks have plenty of other work to do
besides taking the main argument forward.

? Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, 1997 Phronesis XLI113

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 314 MATTHEW ELTON

the limits of analogical argument. But Plato indicates the severity of the situ-
ation by the responses he places in the mouths of Simmias and Cebes. In both
cases, an explicit reference is made to the style of argument.

[One] could surely use the same argument about the attunement of a lyre and its
strings, and say that the attunement is something unseen and incorporeal and very
lovely and divine in the tuned lyre, while the lyre itself and its strings are cor-
poreal bodies and composite and earthy and akin to the mortal. Now, if someone
smashed the lyre, or severed and snapped its strings, suppose it were maintained,
by the same argument as yours, that the attunement must still exist and not have
perished - because it would be inconceivable that when the strings had been
snapped, the lyre and the strings themselves, which are of mortal nature, should
still exist, and yet the attunement, which has affinity and kinship to the divine
and the immortal, should have perished.... (85e2)

The conclusion about the lyre is absurd. But until we reach the absurdity the
analogies look to be quite as strong as Socrates', and, as Simmias makes very
clear, the same argumentative strategy is being used. The mode of argument,
then, is cast under suspicion. (It is perhaps also worth noting that these
remarks of Simmias come just after he has made some remarks about philo-
sophical method.)
Cebes opens his reply in a similar manner:

What's being said [by Socrates in the affinity argument] is very much as if some-
one should offer this argument about a man - a weaver who has died in old age -
to show that the man hasn't perished but exists somewhere intact, and should
produce as evidence the fact that the cloak he had woven for himself, and wom,
was intact and had not perished; and if anyone doubted him, he should ask which
class of thing is longer-lived, a man, or a cloak in constant use or wear ... [This
weaver], though he'd woven and worn out many such cloaks, perished after all
of them, despite their number, but still, presumably, before the last one; and yet
for all that a man is neither lesser nor weaker than a cloak. (87b5)

Cebes goes on to press an analogy between the body and the cloak, on the
one hand, and the soul and the weaver, on the other. Once again, the analo-
gies look just as convincing as Socrates' own, but here they are pressed into
the service of a contrary conclusion. How is this possible? - because of the
type of argument that is being employed. In fact, in both of these replies,
Plato is illustrating the problems of analogical reasoning. Socrates' friends
have grasped the way in which that style of reasoning works - as Socrates
says "[Simmias] really seems to be coming to grips with the argument in no
mean fashion" (86d9) - and are using their grasp to poke fun.
But there is further evidence that Socrates, despite having offered an argu-
ment of this form, does not believe in the method. One of his criticisms of
Simmias' harmony theory is that it is incompatible with the pre-existence of
the soul, a thesis established by the recollection argument. When pressed
by Socrates to explain which argument he prefers, the analogical argument
for the harmony theory or the earlier, "non-analogical" argument, for pre-

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 AFFINITY ARGUMENT IN THE PHAEDO 315

existence, Simmias goes for the latter. And his choice is made on account of
the type of argument used:

I acquired the [harmony conclusion] without any proof, but from a certain likeli-
hood and plausibility about it, whence its appeal for most people; but I'm aware
that arguments basing proofs upon their likelihoods are impostors, and if one
doesn't guard against them, they completely deceive one ... the argument about
recollection and learning has come from a hypothesis worthy of acceptance....
(92cl 1)

If Simmias is aware of this methodological principle which prejudices ana-

logical arguments, Socrates and Simmias' alike, we can hardly countenance
that Socrates himself is not. Indeed, Simmias' remark foreshadows Socrates'
later discussion of right philosophical method, his "second voyage" (99d-102a).
Here, in any case, we can take Socrates to endorse what Simmias has said,
as he directly moves on to the next criticism of harmony, without pausing to
comment or clarify Simmias' moves.
Lastly, we can note that at no point does Socrates attempt to defend or
shore up his own analogical argument. Rather, he attacks the conclusions of
Simmias and Cebes' replies, and goes on to defend the conclusion of his ana-
logical argument by other, non-analogical means. On the evidence gathered
so far, we can confidently claim that Plato was very clear about the pitfalls
of analogical reasons, and, although Socrates himself seems to have dropped
his guard for a moment, he too is, at the very least, dimly aware of their
limitations.3

II

I now want to push for the stronger claim, viz. that Plato is providing an
object lesson in how not to mount an argument. Consider firstly the conver-
sation just before Socrates launches into the affinity remarks (77a7-78b4).
Cebes and Simmias appear to be rationally convinced by Socrates' case for
immortality, but are still anxious. Socrates chides them:

1 think you and Simmias would like to thrash out this argument still further; you
seem afraid, like children, that as the soul goes out from the body, the wind may
literally blow it apart and disperse it.... (77d5)4

Cebes: "Try to reassure us, Socrates, as if we were afraid; or rather, not as if we

were afraid ourselves - but maybe there's a child inside us, who has fears of that

3 Cf. Republic 434d-435b and 435d. Socrates explains that the analogy of justice
in the state and in the individual should be treated as a heuristic, delivering merely
provisional and fallible results.
4 The fear of a wind blown dispersal is an allusion to a materialist theory of the soul.
The affinity remarks help along Plato's main argument by illustrating a non-materialist
picture of the soul, but they do not provide a rational argument for that picture.

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 316 MATTHEW ELTON

sort. Try to persuade him, then, to stop being afraid of death, as if it were a
bogey-man."
"Well, you must sing spells to him every day," said Socrates, "till you've charmed
it out of him." (77e3)

Socrates, then, is being exhorted to press on not with a decent philosophical

argument, but rather with something that will soothe Cebes and Simmias'
anxiety. He is being exhorted to appeal to their emotions and not their rational
faculties. And what does he deliver? - an argument that, to borrow from
Simmias, has "a certain likelihood and plausibility about it," but which falls
somewhat short of a proof.
Simmias and Cebes, forgetting what they had asked for, treat these remarks
as kosher argument, and engage in a rational, and effective, critique. The
result is that argument itself is given a bad name, for equally cogent argu-
ments seemed to have established contradictory conclusions. This brings us
to the remarks on misology (88c1-91c5).5 Socrates explains that:

(It] would be a pitiful fate, if there were in fact some true and secure argument,
and one that could be discerned, yet owing to association with arguments of the
sort that now seem true and now false, a man blamed neither himself nor his
own lack of skill, but finally relieved his distress by shifting the blame from him-
self to arguments.... (90c10)

Just as naive trust of people of poor character leads to misanthropy, tarring

all people with the same brush, so too does naive trust of arguments of poor
character lead to misology. Analogical arguments, Socrates is telling us here,
are arguments of poor character. If one cannot distinguish between those sorts
and the better sorts - such as the sort praised by Simmias as being derived
from "[hypotheses] worthy of acceptance," then it is no wonder trouble fol-
lows. The pickle that all three friends find themselves in arose out of failure
to distinguish between arguments of a decent sort and rogues. Socrates has to
take some of the blame for this - he should not have given in to the requests
to address the fears of "the child inside" - and in the misology remarks he
is doing his best to undo the damage. Indeed the situation affords him an ideal
opportunity to draw out a very important moral.
And so I suggest that Plato included the affinity argument not in order to
support directly the case for immortality, but, rather, to illustrate the pitfalls
of analogical reasoning. Once this has been done, and once Simmias' impor-
tant rival hypothesis has been rejected, Plato returns to what is, in his eyes,
kosher argument in support of the main claim of the dialogue.

University of Stirling

I Here, we might note, there is a wholly legitimate use of analogy. Socrates helps
make clear what misology is by an analogy with misanthropy, but the pitfalls of misol-
ogy are independently explained.

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