Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Three kinds of Platonic immortality 1
David Sedley
The immortality of the soul is one of Plato’s favourite topics. In a series
of dialogues generally thought to span the greater part of his writing career
– above all the Apology, Gorgias, Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus
and Timaeus – he reverts to it repeatedly, clocking up no fewer than
seven formal proofs of it. At the centre of all this stands his ethically pivotal
conviction that the soul outlives its present incarnation, to be duly
rewarded or punished. The realization that the soul’s progressions and
regressions are most properly evaluated and understood over an indefinitely
long time-span, and not just within the confines of a single life, in
his eyes both makes greater moral sense of the world and clarifies how
we can best play our own part in it. It also offers the longer-term prospect
of our souls’ leaving bodily incarnation behind, and thus bringing
to an end the long project of making ourselves as godlike as possible.
My aim in this paper is to display, and compare, three different notions
of personal immortality, all of which play a role in Plato’s dialogues.
I shall call them ‘essential’, ‘conferred’ and ‘earned’ immortality.
It would be unrealistic in a single paper to try to cover all Plato’s discussions
of immortality. But in so far as my coverage is to be synoptic, the
following linking motif is one best emphasized at the outset. All his
treatments of immortality seek to incorporate, interpret and build on
existing religious traditions. That not only the individual gods but also
the world itself is immortal was the legacy of a tradition stemming
from Hesiod’s Theogony, where both heaven and earth, the world’s
two main components, came into being as immortal gods. That exceptionally
high-achieving mortals can, like Heracles, become immortal
1 Predecessors of this paper have benefited from discussion at the November
2006 Chicago colloquium in ancient philosophy; at the Université de Paris 1
seminar L’Ame et l’action, in February 2007; at the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, also in February 2007; at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, in
March 2007; and at the Zweiter Kongress der Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie,
Hamburg, in July 2007. I am particularly grateful to Sean Kelsey, who was
my commentator at Chicago, and to Georgia Mouroutsou, Frisbee Sheffield
and Michael Pakaluk for written comments.