Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

148
David Sedley
The great bulk of modern studies agree in locating Plato’s formal proof
of the soul’s immortality (or, more strictly, imperishability) in what I
have labelled Stage 2. The above analysis locates it squarely in Stage
1, and treats Stage 2 as a corollary: given that the soul is immortal,
upon the death of the human being we can infer that it departs from
the body and goes to Hades. The corollary need not be read as in any
way anticlimactic. That the soul migrates to Hades when death comes
has been central to Socrates’ contentions from the start. The dialogue’s
very first argument for immortality, the Cyclical Argument (69e5–
72d10), was likewise cast as a defence of the Hades mythology.
Hence its confirmation at the very end is no trivial afterthought, but
fundamental to Socrates’ entire argument, as well as effecting a smooth
transition to the concluding myth, itself centred on the geography of
Hades.
I shall now cut straight to the concluding moves of Stage 1.
Since soul is the essential bearer of life, Socrates maintains, it is incapable
of admitting the opposite property, death (105c8-d12) – an incapacity
which he elucidates with a comparison to the way in which the
number three is incapable of evenness (105d13 – 15, recalling 104e5).
There then follows the all-important conclusion (105e2 –10):
‘Well now, what do we call that which does not admit death?’
‘Deathless/immortal (athanaton).’
‘Does soul not admit death?’
‘No.’
‘Then soul is something deathless/immortal ()h\matom %qa xuw^)?’
‘It is something deathless/immortal.’
‘Well now,’ said Socrates, ‘are we to say that this has been shown/proved
(!podede?whai)? What do you think?’
‘Yes, and most satisfactorily (l\ka ce Rjam_r), 5 Socrates.’
This, the finale of Stage 1, is as clearly as one could ask flagged up as
concluding the demonstration of the soul’s immortality. Yet it is hard
to find an interpreter who recognises it as the conclusion. Why should
this be so?
5 With !podede?whai … l\ka ce Rjam_r, 105e8 – 10, compare Simmias’ acceptance
of the Recollection Argument: 77a5, Rjam_r !pod]deijtai, and Rjam_r
ja· aqh_r, used to refer back to that same acceptance at 92e1 – 2. ‘Adequately’
is too weak a translation. If such unwavering confidence in his conclusion goes
beyond the familiar epistemological caution of Plato’s Socrates, that is no doubt
because in Plato’s eyes nothing less than total confidence could have led Socrates
to face death as he did.