SOCRATES ON LIFE AND DEATH

(PLATO, APOLOGY 40Cg-q1C7)*

In a familiar passage at the end of Plato's Apology, Socrates offers an account ofwhat

he believes will happen to us when we die. As in the Phaedo, it is his impending death

that prompts Socrates to speculate about the nature of the afterlife: as soon as his

verdict is announced, Socrates turns to the jury to gloss on his sentencing. It was

unprecedented, as far as we know, for a defendant in the Athenian court to end his

trial by addressing the members of the jury, but the Apology has Socrates doing just

that.' While his defence in the Apology was already audacious, Socrates' closing speech

appears even more provocative. Among other things, he declares that he has no reason

to fear death, but that, on the contrary, the death penalty he received only moments

before may well be considered a blessing. Socrates supports this claim with an

argument in the form of a constructive dilemma: either death involves the cessation

of consciousness, in which case our afterlife existence will resemble a single night of

dreamless sleep, or after our death we will go to a place where all the dead are ruled

over by just judges. Since either scenario constitutes a good state, death should be

considered something good (4oC5-41C7). This article will examine Socrates'

argument in detail and discuss a number of salient problems that arise from it.

Commentators have typically attempted to tackle the interpretative problems one by

one, but I shall argue that they resist satisfactory resolution and instead alert us to an

ironic reading of this passage.