Plato: Socrates’ Last Days (TRM’s notes)

Socrates’ Last Days

Socratic

What is “to know”?

How does one test knowledge?

“Virtue is knowledge”

“How is it best for things to be arranged”?

Both piety and justice

Moral knowledge

Correct conduct

Religious traditions power to discriminate between right and wrong both in theological belief and in action

Argument

Prosecution

Millets

…For he knows how the young men are being corrupted and who it is that is corrupting them

“ He claims I’m a manufacturer of god’s”

Predictions

Where A determines Band B determines C, A not C

“What is agreeable to the gods is holy”

….”There’s nothing they won’t do or say to escape the penalty”

For what was divinely disapproved also appeared to be divinely approved

“Then it gets approved because it’s holy: it’s not holy by reason of getting approved”

…. It always seems to go round in circles somehow

‘ …Everything holy is just”

.”Shame is a division of fear like odd is of number”

…Service to the gods”

…”Then holiness would be a kind of skill in trading between god’s and men”

Gratification

Part B

…Introducing new divinities and corrupting the youth

…Parody

A literary tour de force

Socratic Interrogation

Subversive

Promoted insubordination

Only just before events must prove them wrong, when it becomes obvious that I have not the slightest skill as a speaker – unless, of course, by a skilful speaker they mean one whom speaks the truth.

This is my first appearance in a court of law at the age of seventy

…Unless one of them happens to be a playwright

…….. He is walking on air

I shall call as a witness to my wisdom (such as it is) the god at Delphi.

…. But he thinks that he knows something, which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance.

At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

…”So soon I made up my mind about poets too: I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Unpopularity

But you deliberately avoided my company in the past and refused to enlighten me, and now you bring me before this court, which is the place appointed for those who need punishment, not for those who need enlightenment.

Do you suggest that I do not believe that the sun and moon are gods, like other men do?

“He certainly does not gentlemen of the jury, since he says that the sun is a stone and the moon is a mass of earth.”

…”a kind of insolence or lack of restraint or youthful aggression”

…”but the slander and jealousy of a very large section of the people”…

-when he heard this warning, he made light of his death and  danger, being much more afraid of an ignoble life and of failing to avenge his friends….taking no account of death or anything else before dishonour.”

…..”and this ignorance, which thinks that it knows what it does not, must surely be ignorance most culpable.

“I owe a greater obedience to God than to you and so long as I draw breath and have my faculties I shall never stop practicing philosophy and exhorting you and indicating the truth for everyone that I meet. I shall go on saying in my usual way, “ My very good friend, you are an Athenian and belong to a city which is the greatest and most famous in the world for it’s wisdom and strength.” Are you not ashamed that you give your attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?

…my service to my god: for I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make you first and chief concern not for your bodies or for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as I go, “Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing,  both the individual and to the state.”

…..”you can please yourselves whether you listen to Antyus or not, and whether you acquit me or not; you know that I am not going to alter my conduct, even if I have to die a hundred deaths.”

“It seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the office of such a fly (gadfly); and all day long I never cease to settle here, there and everywhere rousing, persuading, reproving every one of you “.

“..a gift from God…”

…my poverty..”

I am subject to a divine or supernatural experience, which Meletus saw fit to travesty in his indictment. It began in my childhood- a sort of voice that comes to me; and when it comes it always dissuades me from what I am proposing to do, and never urges me on.”

To quote Homer, even I am not sprung “from an oak or a rock” but from human parents, and consequently I have relatives; yes and sons too, gentlemen, three of them…..”

…The penalty is death….

….a lack of effrontery and impudence……

unworthy..

…iniquity…

“there is something amiss in your reasoning..

…….vengeance….

…from this place to another….

….However I ask them to grant me one favor. When my sons grow up, gentlemen, if you think that are putting money or anything else before goodness, take your revenge by plaguing them as I plagued you; snide if they fancy themselves for no reason, you must scold them just as I scolded you, for neglecting the important things and thinking that they are good for something when they are good for nothing. If you do this, I shall have had justice at your hands – I and my children.

Well now it is time to be off, I to die and you to live, but which of us the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.

Justice and Duty

A highly controversial work

‘Crito’

“But my dear Crito, why should we pay so much attention to what ‘most people’ think?”….

“I shall not agree with you; not even if the power of the people conjures up fresh hordes of bogies to terrify our childish minds, by subjecting us to chains and executions and confiscation’s of our property.”

…you must comply…violence against your mother or father is an unholy act, and it is a far greater sin against your country.

…will life be worth living….?

…should dare to cling so greedily to life, at the price of violating the most stringent laws? Perhaps not, if you avoid irritating anyone. Otherwise Socrates, you’ll be the object of a good many humiliating comments. So you will live as the toady and slave as al the populace, literally roistering in Thessaly’, as though you had left this country for Thesally to attend a banquet there; and where will your discussions about justice and other good qualities be then, we should like to know?

Then give it up Crito, and let us follow this course, since God leads the way.

Wisdom and the Soul

‘Phaedo’

Plato’s attempt to persuade us that the soul is immortal

In a sense the work is about the process of the soul’s withdrawal and release rather than about its immorality.

Another case of such a release had been the release of Theseus and his followers and of Athens as a whole, from the perils of the Minotaur’s labyrinth and Minoan Crete.

….has he slain his Minotaur?

Penelope’s weaving –undoing by night what she had woven in the day.

……Socrates had to be dying for some purpose if the conduct leading to hid death  were to be seen as (i) good, hence (ii) honourable, hence(iii) just

….his own interests…

……psyche…

The concepts of soul proposed by Greek philosophers vary considerably, but all of them see it as principally responsible either for motion (including growth), or for sensation, etc., or for both. It could be distinguished from the body either by it’s being non-material or by it’s being a finer, more mobile type of matter. But in general it was contrasted with our bodies and with the body in general.

“The idea of an inner self which survived death, a continuing person who might experience good or bad fortune in another world, was deeply implanted in the Greek consciousness. It was there in Homer in the form of ‘Shades’, which experienced a dark existence in the underworld kingdom of Hades. It was there in the Orphic poems, which had special influence on the more religious minds of he classical period. It was there in the expectations of those about to die in Greek tragedies. The term psyche was not always used for this entity, but was fluid enough to be so used.

Wedded as it was to sensation and without the ability to lift it’s mind towards the ‘Ideas’ one can imagine that it will find Hades a dark world indeed. Among these souls the philosophers will stand out as fully in control of all available faculties, like Homer’s Teiresias among the other dead (Meno 100a)

It’s like this you see. In the course of my life I have often had the same dream, appearing tin other forms at different times, but always saying the same thing: “ Socrates. Practice and cultivate the arts.”

….”I had cleared my conscience by writing poetry…….

…. that sometimes and for some people death is better than life…..          I believe that this much is true that we men are in the care of gods, one of their possessions…….

A sensible man would surely wish to remain always with his superior…be confident

Preparing themselves for dying and death…

…..the soul of reasoning…

….it leaves the body to it’s own devices…

..intellect…

Truth..

Wars and revolutions and battles, you see are due simply and solely to the body and it’s desires…..freed from the chains of the body..

Is not what we call death a freeing and separation of soul from body?

…that true philosophers make dying their profession…temperance..

“Many bear the emblem, but devotees are few”

…other world…embodied or disembodied…

“that all opposites are brought about in this way- from opposites…

…And what, asked Socrates,
“comes from the dead?”

……it must be a process from death to life?”

…..and it is a fact that the living come from the dead, and a fact that the souls of the dead exist…

 

The Theory of Recollection

 …. Particulars…..

…Recollection…..

…. when they recognize the lyre, their minds conjure up a picture of the lad who owns it.

…similarity… perfect or partial…

..poor imitation

equality…

we must always be born knowing and continue to know all through our lives, because to know means simply to retain knowledge…

acquired our knowledge before birth, and lost it at the moment of birth……will be the “recovery “ of our knowledge…

…then souls had a previous existence…

….moment of birth…

before our birth….

The combination of the recollection argument with the opposites argument becomes a proof for the existernce of an afterlife….”author”

…. our souls existed before birth….. a kind of child with this kind of fear hidden in us too. Try to persuade him not to be afraid of death as though it were a bogey.”

The Argument from Affinity

 . assume two classes of things that may be such and such, one visible and theother invisible..

…the invisible being variable, and the visible never being the same…..

..remains constant and invariable when busied with them, through contact with things of a similar nature. And this condition of the soul we call Wisdom

…. obviously Socrates soul resembles the divine and body of the mortal

Egypt

…departs to the place where things are like itself – invisible, divine, immortal and wise….

Hovers about tombstones and graveyards…

…form of donkeys….

Become wolves and hawks and kites…. Bees wasps and ants…

..that is only for the love of learning…

…his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot in the body…

..philosophy takes over the soul in this condition and by gentle persuasion tries to set it free.

…so it abstains as far as possible from pleasures and desires and griefs

…sort of rivet..

..divine…

…..condemning itself to an endless task, like a Penelope, when she worked to undo her own weaving; no this soul brings calm too the seas of desire…..by following Reason and abiding always in her company, and by contemplating the true and divine and unambiguous and drawing inspiration from it; because such a soul believes that this is the right way to live while life endures,

and that after death it reaches a place which is kindred and similar to it’s own nature, and there is rid forever of human ills.

….wrong for humans to make out that swans sing their last song as an expression of grief at their approaching end, people who say this are misled by their own fear of death, and fail to reflect that no bird sings when it is hungry or cold or distressed in any other way; not even the nightingale or swallow  or hoopee, whose songs are are supposed to be a lament. In my opinion neither they nor the swans sing because they are sad. I believe that the swans, belonging as they do to Apollo, have prophetic powers and sing because they know the good things await them in the unseen world; and they are happier on that day than they have ever been before.

The Attunement theory

This type of theory offers an obvious challenger, since it does not allow the soul to be an independent entity of the type, which Socrates advocates

          ….Pythagoreans…..soul – harmony theory

…it is very difficult if not impossible in this life to achieve certainty about these questions……

……..Now suppose that the instrument is broken, or it’s strings cut or snapped

…being a balance of physical constituents, is the first thing to be destroyed by what we call death.

…..proof…..

….the soul never stops patching up what is worn away…

…. and it’s when the soul has perished that the body at last reveals its natural frailty and quickly rots away.

“Misology”

……Misanthropy ..

After repeated  disappointments at the hands of the very people who might be supposed to be your nearest and most intimate friends, constant irritation finally makes you dislike everybody and suppose that there is no sincerity to be found anywhere.

…. that there are not many very good or very bad people, but the great majority are something between the two.

Have you never realized that extreme instances are few and rare, while intermediate ones are many and plentiful?

Surely an attunement is not at all like the object of your comparison

Make up your mind which theory you prefer: that learning is recollection, or that soul is an attunement.

…geometry….

Do you think that an attunement, or any other composite thing, should be in a condition different from that of its component elements?

‘Surely,’ said Socrates, ‘if it is tuned more, that is, in a greater degree (supposing this to be possible) it must be more of an attunement; and if it is tuned less, that is, in a lesser degree, it must be less of an attunement.’

‘And is this the case with the soul _ that one soul is, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another is?

‘Do we say that one kind of a soul possesses intelligence and goodness, and is good, and that another possesses ignorance and wickedness, and is bad? And is this true?

…under the condition it cannot contain a greater proportion of discord or attunement,

Then beat his breast, and thus reproved his heart.

“Endure, my heart; still worse hast thou endured.”

….as something much too divine to rank an attunement.”…. don’t tempt fate…

increasing weariness…..

Anaxagoras

…. passion for that branch of learning called natural science; I thought it would be marvelous to know the reasons for which each thing comes and ceases and continues to be.

….the brain….

…. study celestial and terrestrial phenomena…

“I cannot even convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other.

…….Anaxagoras, he claimed – and asserting that it is Intelligence that organizes things and is the reason for everything.

On this veiw there was only only one thing for a man to consider, with regard both to himself and to anything else, namely the best and highest good; although this would necessarily imply knowing what is less good, since both were covered by the same knowledge.

…_Anaxagoras, I assumed that he would begin by informing us whether the earth is flat or round

It never entered my head that a man who asserted that the order of things is due to Intelligence would offer any other explanation for them that it is best for them to be as they are.

…What is best….

Fancy…

Atlas

Theory

Particulars

It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from Beauty itself is beautiful because it partakes of that Beauty…

…It is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful.

…Sharing the essential nature of the thing it has a share of

. hypothesis…incidentally…

….comparison…

…comes to be described as both short and tall….accidental and essential properties of an entity

…the opposite quality, in such a situation it either withdraws or ceases to exist.

….names….

“Form of Odd”

Form of Even”

Soul

Then since what is undying is also indestructible, if soul is really un-dying, surely it must be imperishable

too

Nature of the universe

…..I believe that you will arrive at the truth of the matter, in so far as it is possible for the human mind to attain it……

If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked

…by a process of judgement….

…..infatuation….

…if the earth is spherical and in the middle of the heavens…it needs neither air nor any other such force to keep it from falling; the uniformity of the heavens and the equilibrium of the earth itself are sufficient to support it.

…the river Phasis

…many hollow places

…ether..p.176

…grow wings and fly…

…this beauteous earth…

The pebbles

…the jaspers and rubies and emeralds…gold and silver

…monstrous unceasing subterranean rivers of water both hot and cold; and fire too, great rivers of fire and many of liquid mud, some clearer, some murkier

Homer:

Far, far away, where lies earth’s deepest chasm

..Tartarus….

….oscillating…..

…winding like a snake…

…. where the souls of the dead for the most part come….

….river called Pyriphlegethon

Styx

Cocytus

Who have lived well and holily, and those who have not.

..neutral life

…incurable….

Wicked and lawless

Tarturus

Others are judged…….curable

…for the prize is glorious and the hope is great.

….enchant ourselves with…

….self – control, and goodness and courage, and liberality, and truth

Postscript

Ideas as a class of realities

One major question is the link between the explanation of phenomena in terms of Ideas and their explanation in terms of an Intelligent God, which Socrates had previously been searching for.