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The Death of Socrates

Article in Philosophical Papers · February 2015

DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2015.1014539

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THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
Dylan Brian Futter

Penultimate Version: Substantial Revisions to Final Version.

1.

According to Alcibiades, Socrates behaved ‘in the midst of battle ... exactly as he does

around town’, ‘strutting like a proud marsh goose with ever a side-long glance’ (Symp.

221b2-4).1 According to Phaedo, he retained his equanimity all through his last day, laughing

and joking with his companions. Socrates faced death courageously.

In what does Socrates’ courage consist? Many have thought that his is the courage of the

martyr, grounded on a belief in divine reward. In this paper I present an alternative view. At

the end of the Phaedo, Socrates departs in wonder. Hence he does not know, nor take himself

to know, that the soul is immortal. But, paradoxically enough, his awareness of ignorance,

and desire to know, saves him from fear and despair. Socrates’ courage is founded on a hope

for knowledge which is embodied in the very activity of philosophy. 2

2.

Courage is always a matter of living up to an ideal. This is explicit in Aristotle’s account of

courage as most purely manifest in the context of war. The courageous hoplite risks his life

fighting for the polis because it is the beautiful thing to do (EN 1115b12-13). Although he is

1
I have here joined the translation of Nehamas and Woodruff, as reprinted in Cooper (1997), with that of Bury
(1909).
2
See Tillich (2000: 11).

1
sensitive to the badness of death and injury, undergoing them unwillingly (EN 1117b7-9), he

“will endure them in the way one ought and keeping them in proportion, for the sake of the

beautiful” (EN 1115b12-13).3

The courageous hoplite endures fear in fighting for the polis. Aristotle’s conception of virtue

as mediality complicates the relationship between courage and control (cf. EN 1104b7-9).

Courage seems initially to be, at least, a matter of overcoming fear.4 But Aristotle is explicit

that the man who has to control his fear is not courageous but strong-willed.5 The genuinely

courageous man remains “unafraid in the face of a beautiful death” (EN 1115a33). This

points to what Aryeh Kosman has described as “a mastery that is beyond effort and beyond

restraint, a skill in which technique and control disappear, [and] become ... transparent”.6 Be

this as it may, I want to set aside courage in this strict sense, 7 and concentrate on a more

quotidian notion of courage as involving a struggle with fear. The concept of courage reveals,

at least potentially, 8 a divided self, and it is this division which seems to me to provide the

key to understanding Socrates’ courage in Phaedo.

3
Translations of Nicomachean Ethics are by Sachs (2002). The translation of ὰνδρεῖα by courage is misleading
to the extent that it does not convey the strongly masculine association of the term; ἀνδρεία is, quite literally,
manliness.
4
For Aristotle, courage involves two different emotions, viz. fear and confidence. See EN bk. 3.6-9. For
discussion, see Pears (1980).
5
See EN 1152a1-3 and 1102b26-28. For discussion, see Brady (2005).
6
Kosman (1983: 213; italics in the original).
7
But see §7.
8
As Jonathan Lear observes: “psychic parts need not always be functioning in the conflictual ways in which
they are first identified” (1992: 199).

2
The courageous hoplite opposes fear in order to live up to the beautiful by fighting for

victory. Courage is characterised, at least potentially, by conflict. The citizen-soldier’s fear of

wounds and death expresses an interest in health and bodily life. 9 But he is also sensitive to a

higher ideal. The beautiful is a higher ideal inasmuch as he experiences himself as called on

to prioritise its demands over his own health and life. Hence the courageous soldier is averse

to his fear of the enemy and the attachment to life and limb that this fear expresses. It is

therefore wrong to say simply that courage involves self-sacrifice and cowardice self-

preservation. This is to distort the phenomenon, focussing too exclusively on the bodily

goods. At the psychological level, the courageous soldier preserves herself by sacrifice, that

is, holds herself together by disdaining her attachment to her corporeal self. Cowardice, on

the other hand, involves succumbing to the temptation to prioritise one’s own health and life

over the higher good. Since self-betrayal of this sort damages the soul and its integrity, it is

harmful: it is, as it were, a kind of psychological and ethical wounding.

Fear of the enemy tempts the soldier to betray the ideal of the beautiful. Hence fear of the

enemy is potentially harmful; fear itself can be dangerous. Thus danger is by the concept of

harm applicable to goods beyond physical well-being and life, with which it is most

commonly associated. In Laches, Socrates expands the concept of courage on precisely this

basis. He says:

9
Wounds and death are ways of being harmed because health and life are goods.

3
 And I wanted to include not only those who are courageous in warfare but also
those who are brave in dangers at sea, and the ones who show courage in illness
and poverty and affairs of state; and then again I wanted to include not only those
who are brave in the face of pain and fear but also those who are clever at
fighting desire and pleasure, whether by standing their ground or running away.
(191d3-e1)

Courage can be required in defending against internal dangers, most importantly, the “terrible

danger” of failing to care for the soul (Phd. 107c4).10

3.

The Phaedo depicts the last hours of a condemned man. This is a truly frightening situation.

Here is a chaplain’s account of what it is like:

I usually put my hand on their leg right below their knee, you know, and I usually
give ’em a squeeze, let ’em know I’m right there. You can feel the trembling, the
fear that’s there, the anxiety that’s there. You can feel the heart surging, you
know. You can see it pounding through their shirt.11

Plato’s representation of Socrates’ execution is strikingly different.

[The executioner] held out the cup to Socrates, who took it very cheerfully ...
without a tremor or any change in colour or expression, but giving the man his
usual bull-like look, asked: “what do you say about pouring someone a libation
from this cup? Is it permitted?” (Phd. 117b3-7)12

…And while he was saying this, he was holding the cup, and then drained it
calmly and easily. (Phd. 117c3-5)

10
Aristotle seems opposed to this type of generalisation. According to Sachs, this is because he is “in search of
the primary instance of whatever he studies, rather than the most comprehensive definition of it” (2002: 48, note
60). But cf. Burnet’s note: “Plato was deepening the significance of ἀνδρεία, [whereas] Aristotle has to do only
with the τὰ δοκοῦντα, the moral consciousness of the average Hellene...” (1900: 142) For a different reading of
Aristotle, see Burger (2008: 68-80). On the question of whether Socrates’ widening of the scope of courage
collapses the distinction between courage and temperance, see Schmid (1992: 106-10).
11
This description is by Southern Baptist Minister, Jim Brazzil (2015), who has been present at the execution of
more than 130 men.
12
This translation is my own. For the remainder I have used the Grube rendition as reprinted in Cooper (1997),
with revisions noted.

4
Plato indicates here with extraordinary dramaturgical precision that Socrates does not fear.

Fear is associated with a characteristic set of sensations, e.g. sinking feeling and surging

heart, physical symptoms, e.g. paling and trembling, and behavioural patterns such as running

away. But Socrates does not pale, does not tremble, and does not resist the sentence. Instead

he makes a joke. How does he manage this?

One possibility is that Socrates’ courage is that of the martyr, grounded on a belief in the

afterlife. Bertrand Russell’s formulation of this view is both memorable and amusing:

There is something smug and unctuous about him, which reminds one of a bad
type of cleric. His courage in the face of death would have been more
remarkable if he had not believed that he was going to enjoy eternal bliss in
the company of the gods.13

According to Russell, courage based on belief in one’s immortality is less remarkable than

courage not based on such a belief. Although “it is not all that easy to hang onto faith in the

face of privation, torture, and death”,14 it is, one must admit, easier. A person who endures in

the firm conviction that she will “enjoy eternal bliss” is not, in the highest degree,

courageous.

This leaves the question of whether Socrates’ imperturbability is grounded on belief in the

afterlife. Russell’s position is not unreasonable since Socrates does seem to advance several

13
Russell (1967: 142).
14
Geach (1977: xxx).

5
arguments for the immortality of the soul. 15 Nevertheless, despite its prima facie

reasonableness, the reading is incorrect for at least three reasons.

First, Socrates repeatedly explains his positive demeanour in terms of hope (ἔλπις). Here is

one example:

That is why I am not so perturbed, because I have good hope (εὔελπις)

that there is something for those who have died, and as has long been
said, a much better future for the good than for the wicked. (63c4-7;
Grube trans. with revisions; see also e.g. 64a1; 67b8-c3)16

To hope is to recognise the object of one’s hope as uncertain, and not to believe that it will

come about.17 Hence, if Socrates’ self-understanding is correct, his courage—and I will

assume it is that—cannot be grounded on a belief in the afterlife.

Secondly, Socrates says more or less explicitly that he does not know that the soul is

immortal. On one occasion, he makes the following admission:

For I am thinking ... that if what I say is true, it is a fine thing to be convinced; if,
on the other hand, nothing exists after death, at least for this time before I die I
shall distress those present less with lamentations, and my folly will not continue
to exist along with me—that would be a bad thing—but will come to an end in a
short time. Thus prepared, Simmias and Cebes, he said, I come to deal with your
argument. (Phd. 91b1-8)

15
The function of the so-called proofs of immortality will be discussed below in §6.
16
The Grube translation of 63b4-c4 is misleading to the extent that it uses “believe” for what could be rendered
as “think” or “suppose” (63b6) and “belief” for “hope” (63c1). Nevertheless it does a reasonable job of
communicating the conditional nature of Socrates’ statements here. “This last I would not altogether insist on,
but if I insist on anything at all in these matters, it is that I shall come to gods who are very good masters” (63c1-
4; italics added).
17
Waterworth refers to “the element of uncertainty which ineliminably belongs to hope” (2003: 7ff., italics in
original). See also Day (1969: 95).

6
This is not the attitude of someone who thinks he has a “proof” of his own immortality.

Moreover, after the completion of the final complex argument for the deathlessness of

the soul, and in response to Simmias’s confession that he has certain “private

misgivings about what [has been] said” (107a9-b3), Socrates replies:

You are not only right to say this, Simmias ... but our first hypotheses require
clearer examination, even though we find them trustworthy. And if you analyze
them adequately, you will, I think, follow the argument as far as a man can, and if
the conclusion is clear, you will look no further. (107b4-b9; Grube trans. with
revisions)

Hence Socrates does not take the matter to be settled: he recommends further inquiry. If

they follow the logos as far as possible, and if the conclusion is clear, they will look no

further. From this, Socrates draws another hypothetical conclusion: if the soul is

immortal, it requires care, for all of time (107c2-3).18

A third objection to Russell’s interpretation is Socrates’ dying look.

Shortly afterwards Socrates made a movement; the man uncovered him; he had
fixed his eyes (ὃς τὰ ὄμματα ἔστησεν).19 Seeing this Crito closed his mouth and
his eyes (118a; Grube trans. with revisions).

The image of open mouth and eyes is a trope for wonder.20 In wonder we become aware of

ourselves as not-knowing.21 Thus is seems that Socrates died as he had lived, a life of

18
Notice too that Socrates proposes the activity which becomes formulating the arguments for immortality with
the question of whether Cebes would like that they “tell a story” (70b6; διαμυθολογῶμεν). Grube’s rendering of
διαμυθολογῶμεν as “discuss” is seriously misleading.
19
This sentence is inadequately rendered in the majority of English translations. The verb is active and
transitive. Not: “his eyes were fixed” (Grube), but “he had fixed his eyes”. I owed this point to Brann et al.
(2011: 34)
20
Brann et al. (2011: 34).

7
perpetual aporia and wonder. His courage is, as all courage must be, grounded on knowledge

of ignorance. 22

4.

Socratic courage as exhibited in Phaedo does not conform to the model of the martyr. Nor

does it conform, at least superficially, to the Aristotelian paradigm, in which courage involves

the willingness to risk one’s life for a beautiful goal. 23 Socrates cannot risk his life for the

cause: death is, for him, inevitable. And there seems to be no beautiful goal for which to

act—he is a condemned criminal.

Initial appearances are misleading. Socrates is able to strive for a beautiful goal in his last

hours. The goal which he pursues is wisdom. More precisely, Socrates strives till the last to

live up to his self-reflexive ideal of being a person who strives for wisdom.24 Death in the

pursuit of wisdom, and therefore in striving to be a philosopher, is for him the most beautiful

death. For wisdom is the highest good and the “only valid currency for which [all things]

should be exchanged” (Phd. 68b).

21
See Aristotle, Met., 982b17-18. The word for wonder (θαῦμα) saturates the Phaedo, occurring—with
cognates—21 times in all. This isn’t evident in translation, and only becomes conspicuous when one starts
looking for it. For an illuminating discussion of wonder, especially in relation to tragedy, see Cunningham
(1969). Joe Sachs’ introduction to Aristotle’s Poetics (2011) is also useful.
22
This would seem to be one of the main conclusions of Plato’s Laches. For discussion, see Gonzalez (1998:
22-41).
23
I here set aside the requirement of mediality understood as psychic integration.
24
Cf. Ap. 23b3-4; Lys. 218a-b; Symp. 204a1-b2. For discussion, see Futter (2013).

8
The citizen-solider fights the enemy. But Socrates does not fight, or oppose, any human being

or any institution. He does not fight those who carry out the capital sentence. This point is

comically expressed in the appearance of the dolorous officer of the Eleven, who weeps

uncontrollably even while the condemned man retains his good cheer (Phd. 116b-d).

Socrates’ situation is not what it was at the time of trial (Ap. 28e ff.), and even on the

previous night, when he had the option of running away (see Crit. 45a ff.). He is in the prison

house, as he explains, because he “thought it [more just] and [more beautiful] to endure

whatever penalty the city ordered rather than escape and run away” (Phd. 99a2-4). Socrates’

battle is fought entirely at psychological level, in the realm of inner experience. In Phaedo,

Socrates’ enemy is the fear of death.25

The courageous soldier must confront the fear of death. The fear of death expresses an

attachment to the goods of bodily health and life. The soldier must detach from this

attachment in order to live up to the idea of the beautiful. If he does not overcome the danger

of fear, he will be a coward, giving in, as it were, to the temptation to life and health.

Socrates’ famous account of philosophy as practicing death can be understood in just these

terms (Phd. 64a ff.). According to Socrates, it would be strange if philosophers were to fear

death since they are already in the business of dying and being dead. In the striving for

wisdom, the philosopher disdains the body, since it does not facilitate his pursuit of

knowledge of the good and the beautiful, etc. (65d ff.), and serves only as an encumbrance

25
See Klein (1985), Madison (2002) and Futter (2014a) for discussion of how the dialogue’s allusions to the
myth of Theseus and the Minotaur exemplify this point.

9
(66b f.). The self-reflexive commitment to being a person who strives for wisdom requires

that the philosopher oppose that which could tempt him to betray himself. Socrates’ account

of philosophy as the practice of death and dying thus explains the philosopher’s aversion to

fear. This would be, as he says in the Apology, “a dreadful way to behave”—remaining at his

post in the Athenian army but abandoning his divinely ordained philosophical mission for the

fear of death” (28d10-29a1).

On the day represented in Phaedo, Socrates cannot escape the capital sentence. For a person

in this situation, the temptation is to withdraw, and break down, allowing herself to go to

pieces. To go to pieces is to despair. As Gabriel Marcel points out, the “essence of the act of

despair” is “always capitulation before a certain fatum laid down by our judgment”:26

To capitulate, in the strongest sense of the word, is not only, perhaps is not at all,
to accept the given sentence or even to recognise the inevitable as such, it is to go
to pieces under this sentence, to disarm before the inevitable. It is at bottom to
renounce the idea of remaining oneself... 27

Despair is psychological and ethical disintegration. 28

It is easy to understand why the cowardly solider runs away. He wants to preserve his life. It

is more difficult to understand what motivates him to surrender psychologically, that is,

despair, when he cannot preserve his life. By despairing he apparently loses both his life and

himself, considered in terms of his ideals. Similarly, it is easy to understand why Socrates

might have been tempted to propose exile as penalty for his guilt (Ap. 37c). He could at least

26
Marcel (1951: 37).
27
Ibid.
28
Cf. Tillich (2000: 55ff.).

10
have saved his life by betraying himself. But what could tempt him to prefer capitulation to

perseverance in the search for wisdom? For to prefer capitulation and despair to perseverance

in philosophy is to prefer giving up, lying down, and miserably perishing 29 to an alternative

which at least has this much to speak in its favour: it is a holding together of oneself. The

temptation to despair can only be accounted for in terms of a desire for one’s own death, a

fascination with one’s own destruction.30 “This is what we express admirably when we say of

a being ‘He preys on himself’”.31

For the citizen-soldier, fear is dangerous because it tempts him to give up the fight. For the

philosopher, the fear of death is dangerous because it tempts him to give up the search (Ap.

28d10-29a1). In circumstances where preservation of one’s life is no longer possible there is

still the choice to remain or renounce oneself. The temptation to despair is self-defeating

because despair is spiritual death. 32 Hence, by despairing, the coward loses his life, and his—

if I may put the point this way—life.

In fighting the fear of death even when he cannot preserve his life, Socrates fights the

temptation to despair. Despair is, for him, true death, because it is a death of the soul. Life is

not—strange as this might sound—a purely biological concept. It is, or is also, a normative

concept. This is why we say that someone has “given up on life”, as though not all lives are

29
Marcel, op. cit.: 37.
30
Marcel (1951: 42).
31
Marcel (1951: 44).
32
By “spiritual” I mean “concerning the soul”.

11
in the fullest sense, lives. This is why we say that a person has really lived, or has not really

lived. The “really” alerts us to the fact that not all lives are lives in this normative sense; that

some lives are more lives than others. The primary concept under discussion in the Phaedo is,

of course, ψυχή, the explanatory principle of life. As is always the case in Plato, the dialogue

begins with the surface of a core “concept” (or form), the pretence, and moves deeper, until

the concept itself seems to transcend philosophical attempts to pin it down.33

By fighting against the fear of death, Socrates treats his attachment to life in the biological

sense as an illness in order to express a commitment to life in the normative sense.34 He

strives to live, in the normative sense, in the face of bodily death, where this means, that he

holds on to and keeps a firm hold of himself, that is to say, safeguards his integrity. 35 But

even more than this, he both strengthens himself, and radiates, by living philosophically in

the hours and minutes before death, that is, in just the way he had spent his days in the public

places of Athens. 36 The courageous philosopher opposes his attachment to life, and thereby

accepts bodily death, for the sake of life.37 Hence in philosophy, if not anywhere else,

courage and prudence converge.

33
As Jonathan Lear puts the point, “[the] pretense seems at once to capture and miss the aspiration” Lear (2011:
11).
34
He makes this point explicitly in Crito when he suggests that what is most important is not living, but living
well (Crit. 48b5). Cf. Nietzsche (1974: bk. 4, section 340; see also section 26).
35
Paraphrasing Marcel (1951: 38).
36
Ibid.
37
On the meaning of the conflation of Socrates and sacrificial animal in Socrates’ bull-look at Phd. 117b4, see
Futter (2014b: 6-7).

12
Socrates’ courage can also be described in terms of his fearing spiritual death more than

corporeal death. As the soldier chooses to fight for the preservation of the polis, and thereby

reveals himself as valuing his life less than the city, Socrates chooses to fight the fear of

death, and thereby reveals himself as valuing his life less than his life, and indeed, the

philosophical well-being of his companions.38 In fact, he succeeds in living freely even in the

face of fate and death by disdaining physical life. Socrates’ fear of bodily death is

transformed, in the way I described above, into a fear of spiritual death. In a sense, therefore,

his fight against the fear of death which expresses his attachment to life is a fight for life.

This way of looking at the matter casts new light on the emotional crisis of confidence and

discussion of misology which occurs at the epicentre of the dialogue. The context is the

formulation of incisive objections to Socrates’ initial arguments for an immortal soul by

Simmias and Cebes. Here is Phaedo’s description:

When we heard what they said we were all depressed, as we told each other
afterwards. We had been quite convinced by the previous argument, and they seemed
to confuse us again, and to drive us to doubt not only what had already been said but
also what was going to be said, lest we be worthless as critics or the subject itself
admitted of no certainty. (Phd. 88c1-c7)

The moment is forced into a crisis; the possibility of philosophy is threatened. The

philosopher’s courage is justified by the good of wisdom. But now it seems that this goal is

entirely out of reach, or chimerical.

38
See below and §6.

13
Socrates opposes his attachment to the body in order to strive for wisdom and thus live up to

a beautiful goal. The view that wisdom is not worth striving for, or, what comes to the same,

that philosophy is impossible, threatens this position. If philosophy is impossible then

Socrates has founded himself and his life on an illusion. Although despair is self-defeating

insofar as it precipitates one’s spiritual death, the death of oneself, a life spent in pursuit of a

worthless or illusory goal is self-defeating in another way. The existential option on which

the avoidance of despair is dependant is put in question. 39

Socrates’ response to the Minotaur of despair is perhaps the most wondrous event in the

dialogue. If Marcel is right to say that the Stoic “bears himself ... as though he had no

neighbours”,40 then this moment is by itself sufficient to prove that Socrates is no Stoic.

Phaedo says:

I have certainly often admired Socrates, Echecrates, but never more than on this
occasion. That he had a reply was perhaps not strange. What I wondered at most in
him was the pleasant, kind and admiring way he received the young men’s argument,
and how sharply he was aware of the effect the discussion had on us, and then how
well he healed our distress and, as it were, recalled us from our flight and defeat and
turned us around to join him in the examination of their [logos]. (Phd. 88e4-89a7)
Socrates consoles his interlocutors: he strokes Phaedo’s head and presses the hair on the back

of his neck; and he invokes the union of Heracles and Iolaus by which the many-headed

Hydra was conquered. And, above all, he describes a certain experience that they—he and his

companions—should be careful to avoid:

39
In the Christian tradition despair is regarded as a sin against the Holy Spirit: it amounts to the renunciation of
God. In the Phaedo, despair would seem to be intelligible as the renunciation of the good of wisdom.
40
Marcel (1951: 38)

14
 That we should not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no
greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. Misology and
misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without
knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be
altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him
to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has
frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one’s
closest friends, then, in the end, after many such blows, one comes to hate all men
and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all. (89c11-e3; italics added)

To be a misanthrope is to deny the possibility of humanity; it is to despair of humanity. To be

a misologist is to deny the possibility of philosophy; it is to despair of philosophy. This

movement of despair, Socrates says, comes from fixity in belief, a representation of the world

as given. Initial credence is transformed into global doubt, “that no one is sound in any way”.

Socrates says that one should not explain one’s inability to find a true and reliable account by

blaming the logos (Phd. 90c-91a). One should hold oneself responsible, and strive to become

“healthy”, a better knower. Socrates’ fight against misology is a fight for philosophy by

philosophy.

5.

Socrates strives to live up to an ideal of philosophy, of being one who pursues wisdom, and

therefore, to die a beautiful death. This requires that he take a stand against despair. But what

does it mean to stand against despair, thereby warding off the death of the soul? I shall

suggest that Socrates fortifies himself and his companions against despair by hoping. 41

41
Cf. §3. On the relationship between hope and confidence, see Aristotle, E.N. bk. 3.6-9. The notion of
destroying something by the introduction of its opposite is a central element in Socrates’ last argument for
immortality. See Phd. 102a-107b.

15
Hope has not one but two opposites: fear and despair. Hope and fear are opposites on an axis

of desire. They are different valuations of the same object or outcome. Hoping for something

means seeing it as good; fearing it is seeing it as bad. For example, to hope for news of one’s

daughter’s return home is to regard the news as a potential source of good; to fear getting

news of her return is to regard it as a source of bad. Hope and fear always contain an element

of doubt; that the object of the fear will, or will not, materialise. This is why they may be

regarded as anticipatory emotions.

Hope and despair are opposites on an axis of probability. In hope, one desires some object, or

outcome, and regards it as at least possible. In despair, one desires the object of hope, but

regards it as impossible. For example, suppose a person with a terminal illness hopes for a

cure. When she comes to be believe that the cure is impossible, she despairs. Despair

therefore involves a claim to knowledge. If despair is death in the normative sense, the sense

of “going to pieces”, then hope is life, or a source of life. Therefore, if Socrates is to live, in

the moments before his death, he must hope. Therefore, if Socrates is to live, in the moments

before his death, he must doubt or be capable of doubting.

Philosophy begins in wonder.42 In wonder we become conscious that we do not know. In

becoming conscious of our ignorance, we discover that we strive to know. In wonder, one

42
Plato, Theaet. 155d; Aristotle, Met., 982b.

16
strives for the knowledge that one experiences oneself as lacking. So a person who wonders

stretches out—anticipates—the good of knowledge. Hence wonder involves, or gives rise to,

the hope for knowledge. Therefore philosophy is founded on hope. Therefore, in the striving

for wisdom which is also the striving for the beautiful, the activity of philosophy embodies a

principle of hope.

Despair is spiritual death. Courage is exhibited in the strength to overcome fear, and the

temptation to despair, in order to live up to one’s ideals, by doing something beautiful. We

can now see what it means to live up to that ideal. Wonder, as an expression of the love of

wisdom, is something to be preserved. Socrates’ wonder, at the very moment of death,

indicates his perseverance in philosophy, his being able to be someone who strives for

wisdom, even at the death knell. Socrates is able to wonder at death! I think of him as a

curious little dog sniffing at death like a lamppost.

We can now also understand what it means to overcome the temptation to despair by

philosophy. In preserving his sense of wonder, Socrates preserves epistemic hope. In

preserving hope, he avoids death, true death, understood as despair. In preserving hope, he

banishes fear. In wondering at the moment of death, Socrates knows that he does not know.

If the nature of death is unknown, 43 and on this account, its value, why should Socrates think

of it in positive rather than negative terms? Why should Socrates regard death as an object of

43
In the dialogue, death is defined as the separation of soul from body (64c). This definition does not, as the
dialogue makes clear, by itself imply the immortality of the soul.

17
hope rather than fear? The answer has to do with the wisdom that the philosopher desires.

According to Socrates, knowledge of the good and the beautiful (etc.) appears to be

impossible for an incarnate human being (66e), and hence, either knowledge is impossible, or

it is possible for one only after death (66e). This point may sound arcane but it is merely a

formulation of a truth amply demonstrated over the past 2500 years, viz. that philosophical

inquiry into basic “concepts” always ends in aporia. Therefore, the reason why the

philosopher looks forward to bodily death with hope is thus that she sees it as a source of

possible good. The philosopher embraces death as an opportunity for acquiring what she most

intensely desires (68a-b)

6.

The conversation of the Phaedo is haunted by fear.44 After the completion of Socrates’ initial

apologia against the charge of excessive frivolity in the face of death, Cebes intervenes:

Socrates ... everything else you said is excellent, I think, but men find it very hard to
believe what you said about the soul. They think that after it has left the body it no
longer exists anywhere, but that it is destroyed and dissolved on the day the man dies,
as soon as it leaves the body; and that, on leaving it, it is dispersed like breath or
smoke, has flown away and gone and is no longer anything anywhere (69e7-70a6).
Socrates presents two arguments in response. After further resistance from his interlocutors,

he says:

I think you and Simmias would like to discuss the [logos] more fully. You seem
to have this childish fear that the wind would really dissolve and scatter the soul,
as it leaves the body, especially if one happens to die in a high wind and not in
calm weather. (77d5-e2)

44
Some formulations in this section are borrowed from Futter (2014).

18
Cebes laughs and says in reply:

Assuming that we [are] afraid, Socrates, try to change our minds, or rather do not
assume that we are afraid, but perhaps there is a child in us who has these fears; try to
persuade him not to fear death like a [hobgoblin] (77e3-7; cf. Crito 46c).

The word translated “hobgoblin” is μορμολύκεια, deriving from Mormo, a “hideous she-

monster” used by Greek nurses to frighten little children.45 The word is also used of both

tragic and comic masks. Cebes likens fearing death to fearing a hobgoblin, or even, the mask

of a hobgoblin. Presumably death is frightening only because it is not seen as a mask: in

Platonic language the image is not seen as image. 46

Socrates’ response to Cebes’ request is striking:

You should ... sing a charm over him every day until you have charmed away his
fears. (77e8-9)

The prisoner on death row has become a charmer, charming his friends out of their fear. What

a delicious irony. More importantly, Socrates’ logoi are not intended to operate purely at the

level of reason and evidence. They are explicitly therapeutic, designed to save his

interlocutors, and himself, from despair. This is one way in which the dialogue casts Socrates

as a new and true Theseus: “he saved them and was himself saved” (58b1). 47

With this we can return to a question set aside earlier in the essay (§3), viz. the proper

interpretation of Socrates’ arguments for the immortality of the soul. I have suggested that

45
Liddell et al. (1940)
46
This fundamental failure to exercise the faculty of eikasia is characteristic of the people chained up in the
Cave allegory. See Rep. VII.
47
See note 24.

19
Socrates does not take these arguments to be conclusive. 48 The basic problem—even setting

aside “human weakness” (Phd. 107b1)—is that he does not consider what soul is before

considering how soul is qualified (Men. 71b-c; Rep. 354a-c). Does he not regard these

arguments as at least making the conclusion probable? This may be the case. But what is

clear is that if he chosen to unleash the power of his destructive intellect, he could have

revealed several significant weaknesses in the “proofs”. 49 The reason why he does not do so,

even as he welcomes objections from his interlocutors (Phd. 84d-e; see also 89a ff.), is the

therapeutic function of the discourse.

Socratic dialectic is not argumentation in anything like the contemporary sense.50 It is at

bottom concerned with the formation of character rather than the statement of propositional

truth. As Pierre Hadot has shown, philosophical discourse in the ancient traditions was not

primarily directed “at the acquisition of a purely abstract knowledge” 51 but was a means of

caring for the soul: it was “always intended to produce an effect, to create a habitus within the

52
soul, or to provoke a transformation of the self”. This is especially true of the Socratic

dialogue which turns out to be “a kind of communal spiritual exercise”53. Dialectic in the

Phaedo is, more precisely, conceptualised as a kind of ritual, “a repetitive, rule-governed

activity, self-consciously performed in terms of a sacred symbolism” which is “designed to

48
See §3.
49
For this view, see also Klein (1985).
50
See Futter (2011).
51
Davidson (1995: 20).
52
Hadot (2002: 176).
53
Hadot (1995: 90).

20
recover a condition of original wholeness, health, or holiness” (Phd. 69b ff.).54 The primary

function of the discourse is the fortification of the soul against fear and realisation of courage

in the pursuit of wisdom.

To fear is to make an evaluation. To fear death, therefore, is to take a stand on the badness of

death. Fear thus involves a claim to knowledge even while it depends on doubt.55 In terms of

the internal chronology of the dialogues, Socrates had made precisely this point only a month

earlier in the context of his trial: 56

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not,
to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may
not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it
is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to
believe that one knows what one does not know. (Ap. 29a4-b2)

To be in a state in which one desires to know the nature of death is to be in a state in which

fear is impossible. Socrates’ dialectic in Phaedo should be understood as intended to produce

wonder in himself and his interlocutors. This is to say that it is designed to produce the

recognition that none of them know what death is, or whether it is good or bad, while

embodying the striving for wisdom.

54
Hooke and Blackman (1933: 3); Anderson (1987: 494).
55
The doubt and knowledge refer to different things. The doubt refers to the question of realisation; the
knowledge to the evaluation of the object of the fear.
56
Xenophon says that Socrates was “forced to live for thirty days after the verdict was given” (Mem. 4.8.2).

21
Fear contains a cognitive component inasmuch as it a valuation of some object. Change the

valuation and you dissipate the fear. 57 But in this case, and in many others, to fight fear is not

to fight purely at the level of reason. Such is the implication of Cebes’ remarks about the

child within. The specific explanation given in the dialogue for the insusceptibility of fear to

reason is, I want to suggest, is that the fear of death is derived from a certain metaphysical

picture, which operates as a controlling metaphor.

The childish fear of dispersion is associated with conception of the soul as the “harmony” of

corporeal substance. According to the harmony theory, the soul [is] a mixture of bodily

elements” (86d): the existence of the soul, like the “attunement” of a lyre, depends on the

arrangement of bodily parts. Hence the source of Simmias’ and Cebes’ fear is nothing other

than a materialist conception of the soul.

It is important not to misunderstand what is being said here. The metaphor of the child and

the hobgoblin has no bearing on the truth of materialism. The point is rather that materialism,

a philosophical thesis, has come to be enshrined in a metaphor which controls thought in

ways that bypasses reason (Phd. 88d). Socrates’ interlocutors fear, at least in part, because

they are in the grip of a metaphor of the soul that colours their conception of death. This is

what Socrates must fight against. The only way to do this is to present a countervailing

picture. In the Republic, Socrates claims that falsehood can be useful as a kind of drug in

helping those who are in the grip of an illusion (381c). In the Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger

57
This point is concisely made in Pears (1980).

22
explains that images can reveal the true proportions of things (235c-e). Socrates’ arguments

for the immortality of the soul and culminating eschatological myth are designed to purify his

interlocutors of fear by counteracting a distorting picture.

It may be asked whether Socrates is simply trying to replace one illusion with another. At the

level of goals, the answer is ‘no’. His aim is to replenish wonder. But at the level of means,

the possibility of wondering at death does require the presence of a correcting illusion.

Socrates presents an opposing point of view without sustained consideration of its

deficiencies for therapeutic reasons. Simmias and Cebes take themselves to know something

they don’t know, viz. that death is a great evil. Socrates aims to get them to recognise their

epistemic limitations by engineering wonder; but this is also, in a weird way to save them, or

to enable them save themselves. The norm of health to which they must be restored is wonder

and epistemic hope. Socrates fights for philosophy, for the ideal of wisdom, by fighting for

the knowledge of ignorance.58

7.

In Phaedo, Plato shows the “human situation in the face of fate and death”. 59 What he shows

is the “effortless grace” of a true courage which can affirm life even in death. 60 Socrates’

courage is grounded on his self-reflexive commitment to being a philosopher. This

commitment, expressed and preserved in wonder, dissipates the fear of death because it
58
It might be thought that this is due to the primitive state of philosophy and science. But this is not so. See e.g.
Rodrigues (2014).
59
Tillich (2000: 11).
60
Ibid.

23
dissolves the presumption of knowledge on which this fear is based, and reframes death as an

opportunity for knowledge. Epistemic hope is grounded in the very activity of philosophy,

which is also its well-spring. Hence it seems that the effortless mastery constitutive of true

courage, rather than the forcible holding down of “a recalcitrant and alien other”, 61 has its

source in the transformative power of the dialectical art.62

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