Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

146
David Sedley
was another tenet of traditional myth and cult. And that our souls are
such as to survive death, go to Hades, and perhaps return in new incarnations,
was part of a religious tradition with roots in Homer and Orphism.
2 Plato would see himself less as an innovator than as an interpreter
and defender of these traditions.
Essential immortality
The context of the Phaedo is well known. Socrates, awaiting execution,
has the task of convincing his interlocutors that the soul is immortal, and
thus clarifying why, instead of fearing his imminent death, he looks forward
to whatever rewards await him in the afterlife. The most astute of
his interlocutors, Cebes, has expressed his concern that even a soul capable
of surviving the body’s dissolution might prove not to be altogether
immortal, but could eventually wear out and die (86e6–88b8). Socrates’
long reply (95b5 –107a1) is intended to shut off this danger by
showing the soul to be intrinsically immortal – the sort of thing that
not only does not die but in its very nature could not die. The final
part of this reply (102a11–107a1) – the Last Argument, as it has
come to be known – requires a separate study in its own right, and
for present purposes I shall present no more than what I believe to be
its gist, reserving close critical discussion for another occasion.
The argument has a reputation for being both difficult and unsatisfactory.
Some scholars even read Plato and his speaker Socrates as themselves
judging it mistaken or at any rate unreliable. 3 But Plato created
this argument and put it into Socrates’ mouth precisely in order to explain
why Socrates went confidently and cheerfully to his death. It
seems to me inconceivable that he should mean to convey the message
that Socrates’ final act as a philosophical martyr, his confident acceptance
of death, was based on a dubious argument. 4 Beyond any reason-
2 Cf. its introduction at Meno 81a10-c4 as what is said by “priests and priestesses”,
with the backing of the poets.
3 The evidence usually cited is the doubts expressed by Simmias, and Socrates’
sympathetic response to them, at 107a8-b10. But Cebes, who is fully convinced
(107a2 – 3), is portrayed throughout as methodologically much more sound
than Simmias, as I argue in Sedley 1995. For Socrates’ confidence in his conclusion,
see also n. 5 below.
4 I do not, of course, mean that Socrates is himself convinced for the first time
only as he finishes expounding the last Argument. Rather, he is repeating for