The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro; Apology; Crito; Phaedo (Penguin Classics)

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So I made myself spokesman for the oracle, and asked myself whether I would rather be as I was—neither wise with their wisdom nor ignorant with their ignorance—or possess both qualities as they did. I replied through myself to the oracle that it was best for me to be as I was.’ No man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteousness and wrong in the state, will save his life." I was a bit wary going in but I was pleasantly surprised that this book wasn't as difficult to understand as I'd expected it to be.

It's strange to reread a text that I first read when I was young, idealistic, optimistic, and believed that the expunging of those who questioned conventional thinking was the exception, not the rule. The Phaedo has come to be considered a seminal formulation, from which "a whole range of dualities, which have become deeply ingrained in Western philosophy, theology, and psychology over two millennia, received their classic formulation: soul and body, mind and matter, intellect and sense, reason and emotion, reality and appearance, unity and plurality, perfection and imperfection, immortal and mortal, permanence and change, eternal and temporal, divine and human, heaven and earth." [31] Texts and translations [ edit ] Original texts [ edit ] Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo. Greek with translation by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Loeb Classical Library 36. Harvard Univ. Press, 2017. ISBN 9780674996878 HUP listingIrwin, Terence. 1999. "The Theory of Forms". [In] Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, 143–170. Edited by Gail Fine. Oxford Readings in Philosophy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Campbell, Douglas 2021. "Self‐Motion and Cognition: Plato's Theory of the Soul." Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (4): 523-544. Plato: Meno and Phaedo. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. By David Sedley (Editor) and Alex Long (Translator). Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0521676779 For a full list of references to the fragments that survive from these commentaries, see now Gertz 2011, pp.4–5

Campbell, Douglas (2021). "Self‐Motion and Cognition: Plato's Theory of the Soul." Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (4): 523-544. Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. 1982. "Phaedo" [In] The Greeks on Pleasure, 83–95. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Lorenz, Hendrik (22 April 2009). "Ancient Theories of Soul". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Retrieved 2013-12-10. Holmes, Daniel. 2008. "Practicing Death in Petronius' Cena Trimalchionis and Plato's Phaedo". Classical Journal, 104(1): 43-57.It is not at all clear how these two roles of the soul are related to each other. But we observe this casual oscillation nevertheless throughout the dialogue and indeed throughout the whole corpus. For instance, consider this passage from Republic I: The Phaedo was first translated into Latin from Greek by Apuleius [4] but no copy survived, so Henry Aristippus produced a new translation in 1160. Is there any function of the soul that you could not accomplish with anything else, such as taking care of something ( epimeleisthai), ruling, and deliberating, and other such things? Could we correctly assign these things to anything besides the soul, and say that they are characteristic ( idia) of it? Plato (1966) [1925]. "Phaedo, by Plato, full text (English & Greek)". Plato in Twelve Volumes. Translated by Harold North Fowler. Introduction by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA & London, UK: Harvard University Press & William Heinemann Ltd. D.R. Campbell argued that "Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts." [28]

Sedley, David. 1995. "The Dramatis Personae of Plato's Phaedo." [In] Philosophical Dialogues: Plato, Hume, and Wittgenstein, 3–26 Edited by Timothy J. Smiley. Proceedings of the British Academy 85. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Again, we see here the dogmatist who feels upright and superior to all the hypocrites around him – a typical academic attitude, which can be seen in many academics in our own time as well. The feeling of superior knowledge and the position that entitles someone to exclaim truths – never mind all the fallacies involved here. I found this fitting in a world where so many people appear to be comparing themselves to one another and constantly trying to be, perhaps, something they are not. So I underlined that last bit of the sentence twice: ''it was best for me to be as I was.'' Plato worked his whole life to rationally prove, without a doubt, the existence of a higher plane of existence and higher truths which informed the visible world. In the last dialogue he would write, Laws, he was still trying and still not quite succeeding. Plato's works may be read as one life-long refutation of Protagoras' relativity. See Campbell 2021: 524 n. 1 for more examples of scholars hurling this problem at Plato's feet, both in the English-language scholarship and abroad.The soul attains virtue when it is purified from the body: "He who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements when they associate with the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge– who, if not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of true being?" [11] The Cyclical Argument [ edit ] Both are translated in two volumes by L.G. Westerink (1976–7), The Greek Commentaries on Plato's Phaedo, vols. I & II, Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co.