(Artykuł) Davis Michael - Socrates' Pre-Socratism. Some Remarks On The Structure of Plato's Phaedo

Socrates' Pre-Socratism: Some Remarks on the Structure of Plato's "Phaedo"
Author(s): Michael Davis

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Mar., 1980), pp. 559-577
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
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SOCRATES' PRE-SOCRATISM:SOME REMARKSON THE
STRUCTUREOF PLATO'SPHAEDO
MICHAEL DAVIS
JL o speak of Socrates' pre-Socratism is puzzling. It suggests that

there was a time at which Socrates was not Socrates. That is not en
tirely misleading. There was something special about Socrates, spe

cial enough so that Nietzsche, for one, thought it appropriate to name
a problem after him.1 Plato and Nietzsche agree that there was
something uncommon about Socrates; yet in this very ?mcommonness

was revealed something fundamental about what it means to be
human. Still, out of the mouth of Plato's Socrates in the Phaedo we
learn that there was a time at which Socrates was not special. His
pre-Socratism refers to that time, a time which we may call Socrates'

"first sailing," a time when he inquired into the causes of the coming
to be, perishing, and being of each thing. Obviously this way of in
quiry can be first only from the perspective of Socrates' famous "sec
ond sailing." It is this second sailing which makes Socrates special.
For that reason it has been legitimately the object of more attention
than the first sailing. Truth a greater
has claim on us than error,
even Socrates' error. Nevertheless, the need for a second sailing can
become clear only as a result of an awareness of the deficiencies of the
first. If we are to understand specialness we must understand its
origins in commonness. With that in mind it is to the deficiencies of
Socrates' first sailing that I would now like to turn.
The first sailing is usually interpreted as Socrates' flirtation with

the doctrines of the pre-Socratics.2 That is born out by his claim to
1 is present
Nietzsche's preoccupation with Socrates from his earliest
work to his latest. See especially Die Geburt der Trag?die (Munich: Carl
Hanser Verlag, 1966), Secs. 11-15, and "Das Problem des Sokrates," in
G?tzen-D?mmerung (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1966). See also Werner
Dannhauser's Nietzsche's View of Socrates (Ithaca and London: Cornell Uni
versity 2 Press, 1974).
Plato sometimes and Aristotle frequently underestimate the sub

560 MICHAEL DAVIS
have inquired into the heavens and the earth. While the methods are
perhaps pre-Socratic, the motives behind the inquiry are not. Let us
listen to Socrates' own account:
And I often unsettled myself, inquiring first into such things as these:
Is it, as some said, when the hot and cold give rise to putrefaction that
living beings are nurtured? Or whether it is the blood, or air, or fire
by which we think, or by none of these, but the brain which provides
the sensations of hearing and seeing and smelling from which memory
and opinion come to be, and is it from memory and opinion come to rest
that knowledge comes to be?(96b ff.)3
Socrates does not begin with questions about the heavens and the
earth. His first two questions, when stripped of their pre-Socratic
trappings become these: "What is life?" and "What is thinking?" He
does not put the two together, but ifwe do we discover a third ques
tion: "What is the cause or nature of that kind of life that thinks?" or
"What is man?" Hidden behind the questions which motivate the
young Socrates is the same question which motivates Socrates on the
day of his death, the nature and power of the human soul.
If the young Socrates' motives are so good, just what is wrong
with the first sailing? The young Socrates attempts to acquire
knowledge of himself by means of knowledge of the whole. Just as an
inquiry into coming to be and perishing is instrumental to an account
of the soul in the Phaedo, so also is an account of the whole instru
mental to an account of the soul for the young Socrates. But in the
Phaedo the question of the whole is consciously subordinated to the
question of the soul; the young Socrates understands himself to be at

tracted to the question of the causes of everything for its own sake.
The old Socrates has no such illusion. He is aware of the connection
between philosophia and philoneikia, love of wisdom and love of
victory. It will be his awareness of this problem which allows him a
superior understanding of the whole.
tlety of the pre-Socratics. It is clear, for example, that far from ignoring
the question oidoxa (understood as both opinion and appearance) Parmen
ides and Heracleitus are very much concerned with it. For the purposes of
this paper I have accepted the exaggerated and oversimplified view of the
pre-Socratics present in the Phaedo. It is possible to do that because this
exaggerated view is not an accidental feature of the dialogue. The Phaedo
will turn out to be concerned with the necessity to begin in exaggeration,
that is, in error.
3All are from the Loeb Classical edition of the
quotations Library
Phaedo (Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press/William
Heinemann Ltd., 1966). I have changed the translation where necessary.

SOCRATES' PRE-SOCRATISM 561
The young Socrates abandons his first sailing because he finds it
unnatural. He is frustrated. Far from adding to his knowledge, this
sort of inquiry leads him to conclude that he doesn't know several
things he previously thought he knew. Socrates' pre-Socratism is

thus not the first stage of his autobiography. It is preceded by opin
ions about the nature of things which it succeeds in calling into ques
tion. He used to think that men became bigger by eating and drink
ing, that eating adds flesh and bone to the flesh and bone already
there, and thus leads to growth. He used to think that a tall man or
horse could be taller than another by a head. Finally, and Socrates
says most manifestly or visably (although obviously in some sense
least visably), he used to think that 10was greater than 8 by reason of
2, and that 2 cubits were larger than one cubit because they exceeded
it by half. This is a peculiar list, and worth dawdling over. Is there
anything which ties these examples together? All three cases
concern questions of comparative magnitudes. To compare the size
of two things obviously requires that one be able to tell the two
apart. The first example is somewhat more complicated because it
involves the growth of one man. When a man grows he obviously
undergoes a change, and yet to say that he grows is to say that he

remains one man despite the change. To compare the size of men or
horses on the basis of the heads of men or of horses seems to involve
making a unit of a head (much in the way we have made a unit out of a
foot), but clearly that requires that we be able to identify the unity of
the head, and that unity is dependent upon its being a part of a larger
whole, a man or a horse. Again the question of relative size involves
the ability to see things as ones. The final example involves the rela
tive size of numbers. In the first instance two is taken to be the
source of the greatness often relative to eight. It replaces head, and
is so to speak taken as a unit, as a one. In the second instance the
relative greatness of two cubits and one cubit is seen in terms of the
former exceeding the latter by half. In this case it is only because
the two is not a unit, i.e., because it can be halved, that the compari
son can be made in this way. Just as a head could be a unit only by
being understood as a part of something which itself had to be under
stood as one, here two is allowed to serve as both the measure and the
measured, as both a one and as a many.4
4 owes a great deal to Jacob Klein's Greek Math
The above discussion
ematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge, Mass, and
London: M.I.T. Press, 1968), esp. chapter 6, "The Concept of Arithmos."

562 MICHAEL DAVIS
What unifies this list of perplexities growing out of Socrates' first

sailing is the concern for whatever it is which makes things one.5
That becomes clear in what follows the list. Kebes asks Socrates
what he thinks of these things now. Socrates responds that far from
knowing the cause of any of these things he doesn't even know what
happens when one is added to one. Does the first one become two?
Or vice versa? The two together are one, but apart they are two.
To know what makes them one is to know what constitutes them as a
whole. To know how
anything is generated or perishes, or for that
matter is at all, amounts to knowing how it comes to be or ceases to be
one. The difficulty is of course most clear (as Socrates had sug
gested) with numbers, since their very being is to be a multitude
taken as one. But this is a difficulty which extends far beyond the
problem of numbers:
Nor do I still persuade myself that I know by means of what any one
comes to be, or in a word [heni logoi], by means of what anything
comes to be, perishes, or is, according to this way of inquiry (96b ff.).
One might ask, as commentators have, what all of this has to do

with Socrates' first sailing.6 What is the connection between Soc
rates' "natural science" and his inability to explain what it is which
makes things one? When we attempt to explain something, living
beings for example, in terms of heat and cold, or thinking in terms of
blood, or air, or fire, or electrical impulses, we are doing something

very natural. We are confronted with a puzzle in our world,
something we do not understand. When faced with the unknown we
attempt to explain it in terms of what we do know, what is familiar.

That makes sense; how else could we come to know anything? On the
other hand, such an explanation threatens either to undermine the
original unity, or wholeness, or distinct nature of the thing which is to

be explained, or it tends to undermine the original unity, wholeness,
or distinct nature of that which is used in the explanation. The logi
cal extension of the attempt to understand the unknown in terms of
the known is to understand the variety of things in the world as mere
modifications of one thing which is known to us. Tha?es tries to ex
5This was first suggested to me by Ronald Polansky's

interpretation
lecture notes on the Phaedo.
6 for one, seems to find the unity of the problem in
Gregory Vlastos,
this section rather suspect. See "Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo," n. 50,
in Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1971).

plain everything in terms of water. But if everything is water why

isn't everything wet? And if everything is wet, why doesn't every
thing appear wet? By explaining the unknown in terms of the known
we run two risks; we may either destroy the wholeness of that which
we seek to explain or we may destroy the wholeness of that which we
are using in the explanation.
Socrates' first sailing is deficient because it attempts to explain
things by reducing them to other things. It induces a kind of forget
fulness which causes us to lose sight of what things are. One cannot
answer the question "What is X?" with the claim that "X is Y," al
though that seems the most natural and reasonable way of proceed
ing. That way fails because, by itself, it cannot account for why X
does not seem to be Y. It does not account for the distinction
between seeming being, and is only to say that it cannot
but that
account for whatever it is about our world which makes questioning
both necessary and possible. This first sailing has no room for ques
tioners; it is not sufficiently attentive to what itmeans for a world to

have souls in it, and that, despite the fact that the original motive for
Socrates' inquiry was the question "What is man?"
Socrates' second sailing will experiment with a seemingly absurd
answer to the question "What is X?", namely "X is X." That safe and
stupid answer is meant to call us back to the wholeness of what we

are trying to explain. The problem, of course, is that such an answer
is not only safe; it is stupid. If we are puzzled, itwill simply call us
back to what we are puzzled about. It calls us back to a stage prior to
pre-Socratism, a stage in which the "what is" question never even

arose. The difficulty is that once the question does arise it is not
possible to get rid of it by pretending it hasn't. And given the defects

of our common understanding of the world it is clear why
"what the
is" question arises. For example, the first result of Socrates'
initial
inquiries is that his common sense knowledge of the nature of growth

is destroyed. That knowledge tells us that we grow by eating and
drinking. This common sense view is involved in that famous paren

tal utterance "Eat your dinner." And, of course, it is true as far as it
goes. But it does not account

very for some important things, among
them maturity and death. At a certain point eating no longer leads to
growth, or at least to growth understood as healthy or natural.

After that point there begins a gradual decline of life leading ulti
mately to death. If the common sense understanding of growth were
true we would continue to grow indefinitely. It is not true, but it is a

564 MICHAEL DAVIS
perfectly natural way to begin thinking about what itmeans to grow,

and far from being at odds with pre-Socratism it is remarkably paral
lel to it. Pre-Socratism is nothing more than resorting to our ordi
nary way of looking at things in an attempt to resolve the problems
which arise out of our ordinary way of looking at things. It neglects
to notice that certain things, the first things or archai, cannot be
known in the way that everything else is known.
There is obviously some connection between what are broadly
speaking the two deficiencies of Socrates' pre-Socratism. The young
Socrates is a reductionist who pays insufficient attention to the na
ture of wholes. That prevents him from even raising the question of
why things appear other than they are, i.e., why questions arise.
That in turn prevents him from understanding that peculiar kind of
being capable of asking questions. Socrates' insufficient understand
ing of the whole is traceable to his insufficient understanding of the

soul. The old Socrates looks into himself at the beginning of this sec
tion and announces that they will have to extend their inquiry to in
clude the causes of all coming to be and perishing. That is not simply
because the soul is one kind of being which comes to be and perishes.
It is ratherbecause only in a cosmos containing soul does it make
sense to speak of coming to be and perishing.
Even the young Socrates had sensed this problem. There is a
second stage to his pre-Socratism. At 97c Socrates says that he was
pleased with Anaxagoras, that itwas somehow good that mind should
be the cause of all things. Later (97d) he says that he found Anaxa
goras a teacher "to [his] mind" (kata noun emautoi). Socrates finds
it good and to his mind that mind should rule all. What is the signifi
cance of this meeting of minds? What is accomplished by making
mind the ruler of all? To really make mind order everything for the
best would have two effects. It would immediately make a place for
something like soul in a pre-Socratic cosmos, something not reducible
to prepsychic elements and itself fundamental. Secondly, it would
introduce what reductionist science can never give us, purposes, and
thus open the way for an understanding of things as wholes. In a
pre-Socratic world I would be hardpressed to determine where a

table stopped and a coffee cup began. Iwould be hardpressed to ex
plain what made this single being a one. With the introduction of
purposes the integrity of beings is assured. Beings are distinguish
able from each other on the basis of that good or purpose which they
serve.

Anaxagoras appeals to the young Socrates because he suggests a
way of bridging the gap between a pre-Socratic reductionist cosmos

and what one might call an anthropocentric, or poetic, cosmos, a cos
mos in which Socrates' original, but only implicit, question concerning
the nature of man would be at home. A cosmic nous, or mind, offers
the possibility of combining the advantages of explanations based on
the formula "X isY" with the explanations based on the formula "X is
X." Anaxagoras tries to bridge the gap between an inquiry into man
and an inquiry into nature by making the principle of nature, or the
whole, identical with the principle of man or the soul.
Anaxagoras fails. Like the young Socrates, his motives are
good, but in the end he makes no use of this mind. That he makes no
use of mind indicates he does not show what it is for. Having failed
to give an account of its purpose, he has failed to distinguish it from
other sorts of causes. Anaxagoras's account is like everyone else's
but with the addition of the empty formula that "things are done for
the best." It is a formula which has no meaning because Anaxagoras
does notsay in any particular instance what the best is. Under those
circumstances the formula reduces to the less helpful "things are
done." Anaxagoras is reduced to accounting for all things in reduc
tive terms. Socrates, and we, are disillusioned. Still, Anaxagoras's
failure to do what he said he would do does make explicit what the
problem is. Any attempt to explain the causes of things must bring
together the world of the reductive account in which things are un
derstood as other than what they are with our everyday world in
which things are what they are.
In explaining why he found Anaxagoras so unsatisfactory Soc
rates turns to his own body. Socrates' presence in prison cannot be
explained by giving an account of the disposition of the various parts

of his body. He cannot be reduced to a configuration of bones and
sinews, although those bones and sinews may be things without
which we cannot explain his remaining. They are not the cause o? his
remaining however. To explain that would require an account of

Socrates' decision and everything that went into it, that is, an account
of Socrates' intention. But what is an intention other than the rela
tion of an ensouled being to its world? The question "Why?" inevita
bly leads us back to the part of the soul responsible for such ques
tions. The question of the soul is not just a question; it is the
fundamental question of the nature of the whole. To raise it,
however, requires a second best way. One cannot approach the mat

566 MICHAEL DAVIS
ter directly, which is to say naturally or pre-Socratically. One must

turn instead to that meeting point of soul and world, to logos. What
precisely this second sailing is is a matter of great importance, a mat
ter I will not attempt to broach here. Instead, I propose to return to
the beginning of the Phaedo to see what light Socrates' first sailing
may shed on the first part of this dialogue.
II
Few readers of the Phaedo have been tempted to consider Soc

rates' first arguments for the immortality of the soul simply persua
sive. A refreshingly large number have even been willing to enter
tain the possibility that Plato was aware of their inadequacy. Of the
first argument Bluck says that "there are strong indications that
Plato did not consider the present argument to be conclusive," and of
the second that "it is admittedly incomplete by itself."7 According to
Gallop the first proof "is better construed as an opening dialectical
move than as an argument to which Plato was seriously commit
ted."8 While refreshing, these admissions are not enough. One is
compelled to ask why Plato begins with arguments which are so ob
viously inadequate. It is not sufficient to say that Plato threw in a

mechanistic argument for his mechanistic readers (Bluck).9 Nor will
it do to suggest that the first argument is an opener in a dialectical
game (Gallop). We still wish to understand why Plato plays this
game. Or, supposing the purpose of the Phaedo (as its subtitle sug
gests) is to teach us about the soul, why does the dialogue begin with
errors about the soul? To understand why we must turn to the logoi
themselves.
Socrates prefaces the first argument for the immortality of the
soul with the remark that he does not think anyone, even a comic
poet, would accuse him of making speeches (tous logons poioumai)

about things that do not concern him (70b ff.). That is true in two
senses. Socrates' original reason for inquiring into the question of
the immortality of the soul had been his view that wisdom is not
7
Bluck, Plato's Phaedo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), p.
20.
8 trans, with notes
Phaedo, by David Gallop (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975), p. 104.
9
Bluck, p. 22.

possible while we live. Thus if it is possible, it must come after we

die. The immortality of the soul is first introduced as a necessary
condition for wisdom.
However, the issue soon acquires a life of its
own. Kebesis quick to point out that most men fear death. They
fear that their souls will cease to be, and so lack any power (dunamis)
and wisdom (phronesis). The reverse side of this fear of death is a
love of life, the same love of life which had been disparagingly attrib
uted to Evenus earlier (61c ff.), and which it is now suggested that
Aristophanes will understand. Apparently the poets are the spokes
men for love of life. These two motives for wanting to be immortal,
love of wisdom and love of life, seem to be equally present in the first
arguments of the Phaedo. The first is designed to calm the fear of
death by showing that the soul retains some sort of dunamis after
death. In other words, death is simply life in Hades. The second
argument is designed to show that the sort of learning we do in this

life presupposes some wisdom in us prior to our birth. In other
words, the second argument argues that we must have a kind of im
mortality because we have phronesis. While this seems in agree

ment with Socrates' original motive, i.e., love of wisdom, in fact this
proof which is based on knowing is also designed to calm our fear of

death. The overriding concern of this section is the fear of death, and
so the love of life. Throughout the Phaedo Socrates' apparent praise
of death is, beneath it all, a praise of a certain kind of life. In that
sense he
is competing with the poets.
The first of Socrates' arguments purports to prove the immortal
ity of the soul in the following way. Everything comes to be from its
opposite. If X is to come to be, it must clearly come to be from what

is not X. Therefore, in the case of any two opposites, X and Y, there
must be two sorts of coming to be, namely X into Y, and Y into X. If
living is the opposite of being dead, and if one of the kinds of coming
to be of these two opposites is the movement from living to being
dead, i.e., dying, then the other movement must be from being dead
to living, i.e., coming to life again. But, says Socrates, for us to come
to life again there must be something which comes to life. If that is
our soul, then our soul does not perish at death.
There are obviously a number of problems here. If, as the argu
ment presumes, what persists through the change we call dying is the
soul, then isn't this argument in fact a perfectly good proof that our
souls exist as dead? Whatever that means, it scarcely calms my fear
of death. Secondly, while the argument might be successful in show

568 MICHAEL DAVIS
ing that the living come from the dead and the dead from the living
whenever either comes to be, it surely does not come close to showing
that my particular soul is immortal. It is no accident that this du
namis or power which is preserved is left so empty of content. For
these and other reasons the argument is not very persuasive, but we
should have been able to see that from the very beginning. When
Socrates extends the question to all forms of coming to be he
intentionally treats the coming to be of life as though itwere of a piece
with all other forms of generation. So mechanical is Socrates in his
application of this rule of generation that he begins by refering to
being born and dying as two kinds of coming to be. While it is true
that from a perfectly neutral perspective we could perhaps speak of
the coming to be of life and the coming to be of death, it is just as clear
that we do not occupy that perfectly neutral perspective. It is pre
cisely because we are not neutral to the question of life and death that
we are involved in this argument in the first place.
This first argument fails for a variety of connected reasons.
While it is intended to come to the support of life by undermining the
fear of death, it proves to be neutral to the distinction between life
and death. That is to say, it is not sufficiently aware of its own ori
gins, or, this argument which purports to show the immortality of the
soul fails to ask the crucial question, "What is soul?" Socrates' first
argument, like his first sailing, is pre-Socratic.

The second of the arguments, the famous recollection argument,
is considerably more complicated than the first. It is introduced by
Kebes at 72e ff. He senses the inadequacy of the first argument; it
had not sufficiently preserved the individual soul, the self. The recol
lection argument, on the other hand, appeals to what is perhaps most
ours, our memories. This new argument, far from prov
intimately
ing the possibility of wisdom in a life after death, presumes some sort
of wisdom in this life in order to prove the necessity of a pre-existing,
disembodied soul. The love of life hidden in the first argument led to
a reduction of the living to the dead. Phronesis was abandoned and
only dunamis preserved. Here, where the love of life is somewhat
more open, phronesis will be reintroduced as a means, a premise in an
argument designed to prove that we do not die. The first argument

is less aware of its real motive. As a consequence it, like Socrates'
first sailing, loses the very thing it is designed to preserve. The sec
ond argument, the recollection argument, like Socrates' Anaxagorean
stage, is somewhat more aware of the problem. But, as we will see,
it only superficially avoids the reductionism of the first argument.

Theargument does not claim, as Kebes suggests, that all learn
ing is recollection. On the contrary, it seems to assume the possibil
ity of acquiring some knowledge through the senses (75a). When we
compare two sticks, for example, to see if they are equal in length, we
invariably find that sensible sticks fall short of true equality. To

know that means two things. It means that we have some knowl
edge of these particular sticks. That our senses can provide us

with. And it also means to know that which they fall short of. That
is not possible by means of the senses. Consequently this knowledge
in me of the equal itself which was awakened by the sight of two
sticks must have been in me prior to seeing them. But, since it is in
principle possible to make comparisons of equality whenever I sense,

this knowledge of the equal itself must have been inme prior to the
time when I began to sense, that means prior to my birth. That I
was not aware of its presence in me until some sensation caused me to
draw a comparison suggests that the knowledge both presentwas
and absent in me, that is, that it was forgotten. Thus "learning" it or
making it present is simply recollection. If what I learn now is really

recollected from a time before my birth, then I must have been
around before my birth. Since the conditions for being around before
my birth are not so very different from the conditions for being
around after my death, the recollection argument puts us well on the
way toward proving the immortality of the soul.

There are a number of difficulties with the proof. Iwould like to
point to two specific problems. First, Socrates offers an elaborate
definition of recollection at 73c.
Then we do agree to this also, that whenever knowledge comes to be

present in this way it is recollection. I mean some way such as this: if
someone either seeing or hearing, or in some other way sensing
something knows not only that thing, but also intuits something else of
which the knowledge is not the same but different, does he not recol
lect that of which he had the intuition?
Something has been omitted here. When Simmias playfully sug

gested at the beginning of this argument that he didn't recollect the
proofs for the view that learning was recollection, what he meant was
that he had heard them before, that he had a vague sense that he
would recognize them should he hear them again. In other words,
recollection clearly involves two things. On the one hand, Socrates'
definition is quite correct. We say that something causes us to recol
lect something else when something which is present makes us think
of, or make present to ourselves, something else which is not really

570 MICHAEL DAVIS
present to us. Recollection does do that, but it does more. Recollec

tion requires that in addition I be aware of the fact that I once knew
what I have now recollected. That is no small addition given the un
derlying purpose of this argument, to prove the immortality of a per

sonal soul.
Thisdifficulty may become clearer when we examine the other
major problem with the proof. When Simmias does not understand
the passage I have somewhat cumbersomely translated above, Soc
rates responds with a series of examples. These specific examples,
we suppose, are meant to cause him to recollect, or recognize the
truth of what he has just heard but not understood. The examples
fall roughly into three groups. Socrates points out that the two
things in question, the thing causing us to remember and the thing
remembered, may be either alike or different. For example, a lyre
or cloak?notice that these examples return later in the objections of
Simmias and Kebes?a lyre or a cloak may cause one to think of a
beloved. Or,
seeing Simmias may cause one to think of Kebes.
In
this case
things cause us to think of other things unlike themselves.
Socrates' second set of examples reminds us that a picture of a horse
or lyre may cause us to think of a man, and a picture of Simmias may
cause us to think of Kebes. In the final example Socrates points out
that a picture of Simmias may cause us to think of Simmias. In this
last case the thing recollected and the cause of recollection are alike.
A picture of Simmias is more or less like Simmias.
The key question at this point is to which of these three sorts of
relation between thing recollected and cause of recollection do the
equal itself and the two equal sticks belong. In his discussion of
equality Socrates begins from the thing recollected, i.e., from the
equal itself. Why does he do that? It is perhaps because it is not

obvious that two sticks are the cause of recollection of anything in
particular at all. In this regard they are unlike the last of Socrates'
examples, the
picture of Simmias andPart of what it
Simmias.
means to be a picture is to be obviously an image of something else.
It therefore makes sense to say that Simmias's picture falls short of
being a perfect image of Simmias. Knowing the original we can mea

sure the copy. On the other hand, even ifwe did not know the origi
nal, a picture proclaims itself to be an image. Even if we did not
know Simmias we would know that there might be a man to whom
this picture more or less corresponded. We would recognize an
image as an image. But that two sticks are an image of anything is

by no means obvious. That they are an image of equality is even less

obvious.
In this regard the case of equal seems more like Socrates' first
set of examples. A cloak is not obviously a cause of recollecting any
thing. It is not obviously image. an That is especially clear since
what it reminds us of, in Socrates' example a beloved boy, is not
really like it at all. What then is the connection between the two? It
is clearly the unmentioned lover. At 75b Socrates uses the language
of love to suggest that an image yearns to be like that of which it is an
image. While the cloak certainly does not yearn to be like the be
loved boy, there is a yearning involved. In this case the disposition
to connect two things is not present in the things themselves, but in
the one who connects them, in the lover.
We therefore have the following problem. Socrates seems to
claim that we learn about the equal itself by recollection occasioned
by sensible objects. That is, he wishes to say that sensible objects

which approach equality are images of equality itself. Insofar as
they are images they may be said to yearn to be what they image, and
fall short of what they yearn to be. On the other hand, it is clear that
the things of this world are not images in the sense that pictures are
images. Pictures by themselves point beyond themselves. Sticks

are more like the example of the cloak; they point beyond themselves
without immediately appearing to do so. The problem is the compati
bility of these two kinds of recollection. The yearning, so necessary

to an object's pointing beyond itself, comes from different sources in
each case.
Socrates' middle set of examples seems at firstglance a happy
combination of the two kinds of recollection. When a picture of Sim
mias causes me to think of Kebes, something which is obviously an
image causes me to recollect something which it is not simply like.

That is, the thing of which it is an image is not immediately obvious.
We seem to have found an example of recognizing an image as an
image without yet recognizing that of which it is an image. But of

course our apparent success disappears as soon as we realize that we
have simply suppressed a middle step in the relation. The picture of
Simmias causes us to recollect Simmias, and that recollection causes
us to recollect Kebes.
The middle example is therefore not so much a solution as a
statement of the problem of the whole recollection argument.
Throughout the section Socrates proceeds as though the things we

572 MICHAEL DAVIS
recollect were simply called forth on the basis of things presently ex
perienced. But it is quite clear that recollection does not work that
way; it is also quite clear that Socrates knows it. By beginning with
the example of the cloak and the beloved, Socrates implies that there
are grounds for recollection other than those to be found in the object,
grounds that suggest that since an image must in some way differ
from what it images, perhaps nothing is simply an image, that is, a
being whose being is exhausted in its yearning to be something else.
That is only to say that all images contain elements of yearning which
originate not in the image but in the imager.

This second argument for the immortality of the soul depends on
the claim that we learn about things like the equal itself through rec
ollection. The problem with the argument is that it proceeds as
though things as they appear in the world, sticks and stones,
themselves call forth the equal itself. That is, it proceeds as though
things were obviously images. But Socrates' examples (the very ex
amples which were supposed to have caused Simmias to recollect the

truth of the recollection argument) show us the difficulty with that
view. It forgets the lover, the imager, i.e., the self which is very
much present in any act of recollection. This loss of self is not an acci
dent of the argument. From the very first Socrates was able to make
it plausible that learning was recollection only by abstracting from
the fact that when / recollect something, that means I not only re
member it; I also remember having known it before. Thus while ap
parently arguing for the pre-existence of the same soul, this argu
ment has really posited the existence of a soul which once knew
things which I don't remember having known. In that case this pre
existing soul is not the soul the concern for which was at the origin of
the argument; it is not my soul.
In a much more elaborate way this argument too is reductive.
That becomes clearer when we remember the rather obvious fact that
learning is not recollection any more than everything is water.
Learning is learning, and any who wish to explain to us that it is not

really what it seems to be must also explain to us why it seems to be
what it isn't. Socrates avoids the necessity of doing that by defining
recollection in such a peculiar way at the beginning of the argument.
But that only means that he must either obscure the character of rec
ollection in order to explain learning or he must obscure the character
of learning in order to let it be explained by recollection. This is the
same as the problem of the first argument and the same as the prob
lem of Socrates' first sailing altogether.

The first two arguments do differ in a significant way however.

Unlike the first argument, and like the Anaxagoras stage of Socrates'
first sailing, the recollection argument is an attempt to overcome the
difficulties arising out of a prior reductive account. Anaxagoras tries
to restore the wholeness of things by introducing mind into the cos
mos. Socrates, with Kebes' urging, tries to restore what had been
lost in the first argument, the self; he does that by understanding
learning in terms of recollection. But Anaxagoras's mind is no longer
recognizably mind, and Socrates' recollection is no longer recogniz
ably recollection. Thus both attempts fail to repair the damage of the
arguments which precede them, while for that very reason making
clear the character of the problem which they address.
Ill
It is not yet clear what these remarks about Socrates' pre-Socra

tism have to do with the structure of Plato's Phaedo. That structure
is complex, but on any division of the dialogue it is clear that there are
two parts divided by the dramatic interlude at 88c ff. The interlude
begins with a conversation between Phaedo, the narrator, and Echec
rates to whom he is narrating. Both were ready to accept Socrates'
proofs for the immortality of the soul, but following the objections of
Simmias and Kebes they are unable to do so. Phaedo and those as
sembled around Socrates were moved to mistrust their judgment
and the power of argument as such. Echecrates makes it clear that
the course of the argument has forced him to reject certain opinions
which he has always believed in, and to seek for another argument for
the immortality of the soul. The first part of the dialogue, while pur
portedly offering positive arguments for the immortality of the soul,
has in fact heightened the sense of ignorance of those present, and
with it their sense of fear. Socrates responds to these fears with a
long and marvelous statement on the dangers of misology inwhich he

compares misology to misanthropy. We are therefore called back to
the logoi, but this time we are aware we are turning to the logoi.
All of this suggests that the second half of the Phaedo is a sort of
second sailing. Just as the second sailing involves a turning to the
logoi, the second part of the Phaedo begins with a warning against
misology. This parallelism suggests something nonarbitrary, nonac
cidental about Socrates' first sailing. The second part of the Phaedo
consists of Socrates' replies to the objections raised by Simmias and

574 MICHAEL DAVIS
Kebes to the first part of the Phaedo, objections which for the first
time in the dialogue made the question "What is soul?" explicit. It
thus depends on those initial arguments
though even
they are inade
quate. That is even more strongly suggested by the reappearance of
the recollection and opposition arguments in the replies. The struc
ture of the Phaedo therefore suggests that Socrates' intellectual auto
biography is not an account of a development he happened to un
dergo; it is an account of a development he had to undergo. Were

that not the case we would be hardpressed to explain why the very
dialogue which most explicitly points out the defects of pre-Socratic
philosophy reproduces those same defects in its own beginning. Soc
rates' first sailing is an account of pre-Socratism as a necessary mo
ment in understanding as such. It is the natural way to begin, which
is to say, we naturally begin in error.
The Phaedo begins in error because there is no other place to
begin. Put differently, we do not ever begin; we rather discover that

we have already begun. Phaedo's attempt to relate the discussion,
the logos, to Echecrates ex arches, from the beginning, or from the
first principles (59c ff), is strictly speaking impossible. Misology and
misanthropy are the same because to be an anthropos is already to be
immersed in logos. Of course that does not mean that we are born
with logos. Rather, when learning to speak it is unthinkable that we
could begin by learning what it means to speak. We must begin in
ignorance of what we are doing. Our first speech cannot be about
speech; it must therefore be self-forgetful. Only when we have spo

ken do we have anything to say about speech.
Put somewhat differently, the Phaedo, this dialogue which bears
the subtitle Peri Psyches, On the Soul, cannot begin with the ques
tion of the nature of the human soul. The true importance of the
question of the human soul cannot be realized until that soul has tried,
and failed, to grasp the whole. Only then can it become aware of its
peculiar position within the whole. In this sense itmay be said that
the true nature of soul is revealed in the philosopher, that is, in
knowledge of ignorance. Just as our first speech cannot be about
speech, our first knowledge cannot be of our ignorance. Ignorance is

not simply emptiness; a human soul is never simply empty. Igno
rance rather manifests itself in opinion, appearance, doxa. It is in
awareness of our opinions as opinions that we become aware of the
power of a soul, that we become self-aware. A second sailing neces
sarily presupposes a first sailing; Socratism presupposes pre-Socra

tism; Socrates' specialness presupposes a certain commonness.

Just as Socrates' pre-Socratism was preceded by a realm of ordi
nary experiences of out
which it grew, and from which it unknow
ingly derived its questions, so also the Phaedo does not begin with
arguments for the immortality of the soul. Those arguments are en
veloped in a poetic account of the last day of Socrates' life: The whole
of the dialogue, like Socrates' own recollection of his past, is Phaedo's
recollection of Socrates' end. We are given an account of Socrates'
deeds in which
he is repeatedly refered to as an aner, a real man (57a,
58c, 58e, etc.), in which he is likened to a hero, Theseus, and in which
in all honesty we must admit we are at least as impressed with the
noble and graceful manner of his death as we are with the arguments
he introduces to prove the immortality of the soul. The Phaedo is
(with the possible exception of the Symposium) perhaps the most
dramatically impressive of Plato's dialogues. It presents a noble
deed in speech; in this sense it is particularly poetic. Like poetry the
Phaedo depicts noble action, and thus makes a statement about the
goodness of life.10 Since the poets celebrate lives, they celebrate

life. The Phaedo in celebrating Socrates' way of dying in effect cele
brates Socrates' life. It is no accident that Plato introduces Evenus,
an admittedly second rate poet, into the Phaedo with the suggestion
that he would cling to life. If the poets celebrate life there is a sense
inwhich they make it difficult to die.
The Phaedo begins with poetry because poetry is perhaps the
most accurate reflection of our passionate attachment to life.
Whether poets are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" or
are "always the valets of some morality or another," they depict
human deeds in logoi in such a way as to make human life lovable.
The explicit teaching of the Phaedo is in stark contrast to this
attachment to life. Socrates likens philosophy to practicing death.
This explicit teaching is supported by the turn to what amounts to
pre-Socratic philosophy. The world of poetry is non-reductionist; it
unashamedly embraces the human as human. Still, it is unstable.

On the one hand, it provides us with models of noble human action; it
depicts for us men who are heroic in their willingness to risk death.
10This
may seem to take the Platonic view of poetry for granted, a
view which seems so extreme at times as to suggest that the poets cannot
be reflective, that they cannot know what they are doing (See Apology 22a
c and the whole of the Ion). But one need only read Aristophanes' speech in
the Symposium to see that Plato knew that poetry was not so simple
minded as all that. Plato exaggerates a certain aspect of poetry in order to
pose what he considers the fundamental human alternatives. See n. 2.

576 MICHAEL DAVIS
On the other hand this heroism seems rooted in life, and impossible
without life. Achilles avenges the death of his friend Patroklos; that
means it was bad for Patroklos to have died. This same Achilles
when confronted in Hades admits that he would rather be a day la
borer on earth thanking of all the shades in the underworld.11 Po
etry is a reflection on the human which, in exalting the human, makes

death seem especially terrible.
The antidote for this extreme love of life is a disparaging of the
value of life. In its turning away from the human toward the heavens
and the earth pre-Socratism gives voice to this tendency. Because it
treats the soul as though it were like everything else, pre-Socratism
disparages the specialness of the human, and tends to lose sight of the
soul altogether. The only problem with pre-Socratism is that it is un
true. Precisely because it is so influenced by the human, because of
its philoneikia, it cannot acknowledge the human. Whereas poetry
is an exaltation of the human which ends by disparaging the human,
pre-Socratism is an unreflective disparaging of the human which con
ceals a deeper exaltation of the human. The great virtue of the So
cratic turn, of the second sailing, is its insistence that the human is
and must be the beginning point. Like the poets, Socrates is self-re
flective. the pre-Socratics he recognizes the need to find
Like
something beyond the human in terms of which the human can be un
derstood, but also in terms of which the human will be found want
ing. Socrates' second sailing is only a second best way, a way born
out of an awareness of a tension between those two motives for prov
ing the immortality of the soul, love of wisdom and love of life.
Finally, the structure of the Phaedo itself reflects a certain com
promise between poetry and pre-Socratic philosophy. Poetry pre

sents deeds to us in speech. If we are aware of the poet's speech as a
deed he has in a certain sense failed to present the deed of his poetic
hero powerfully enough. One's first impression of Homer ought not
to be what a fine poet he is. For him to be a fine poet means for him
to have caused us to be preoccupied with the fate of his Achilles. On
the other hand, pre-Socratic philosophy presents us with speech
which does not reflect about itself at all as a deed. It is a logos which
pretends to need no context. Platonic dialogues fit neither of these
categories. They are speeches which present deeds; in that sense
11
Homer, Odyssey (Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard Univer
sity Press and William Heinemann Ltd., 1974), 11. 485 ff.

they are poetic. But the deeds they present are speeches. By pre
senting speeches as deeds Plato forces us to become aware of their
true nature as speeches. We are forced to turn our attention toward
the logoi. Among Platonic dialogues the Phaedo is peculiar since far
more than most it calls our attention to the tension between speech
and deed. It does that by presenting a deed by far the most im
pressive of any in the Platonic dialogues, Socrates' death. The final
irony of the Phaedo is that this dialogue which purports to sooth the
fear of death by showing us that life is not really a very good thing, is
in fact a poetic recollection of a man whom Phaedo calls the best, most
wise, and most just man of his time. At its deepest level, and with all
of the necessary qualifications, Plato shares with the poets the view
that human life is good.
Sarah Lawrence College.


(Artykuł) Davis Michael - Socrates' Pre-Socratism. Some Remarks On The Structure of Plato's Phaedo

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Socrates' Pre-Socratism: Some Remarks on the Structure of Plato's "Phaedo"

Author(s): Michael Davis

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

JL o speak of Socrates' pre-Socratism is puzzling. It suggests that

tirely misleading. There was something special about Socrates, spe

something uncommon about Socrates; yet in this very ?mcommonness

pre-Socratism refers to that time, a time which we may call Socrates'

The first sailing is usually interpreted as Socrates' flirtation with

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

question of the soul; the young Socrates understands himself to be at

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

things he previously thought he knew. Socrates' pre-Socratism is

undergoes a change, and yet to say that he grows is to say that he

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

What unifies this list of perplexities growing out of Socrates' first

One might ask, as commentators have, what all of this has to do

blood, or air, or fire, or electrical impulses, we are doing something

something we do not understand. When faced with the unknown we

attempt to explain it in terms of what we do know, what is familiar.

original unity, or wholeness, or distinct nature of the thing which is to

5This was first suggested to me by Ronald Polansky's

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

plain everything in terms of water. But if everything is water why

tioners; it is not sufficiently attentive to what itmeans for a world to

stupid answer is meant to call us back to the wholeness of what we

pre-Socratism, a stage in which the "what is" question never even

possible to get rid of it by pretending it hasn't. And given the defects

inquiries is that his common sense knowledge of the nature of growth

drinking. This common sense view is involved in that famous paren

goes. But it does not account

growth, or at least to growth understood as healthy or natural.

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

perfectly natural way to begin thinking about what itmeans to grow,

ing of the whole is traceable to his insufficient understanding of the

pre-Socratic world I would be hardpressed to determine where a

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

Anaxagoras appeals to the young Socrates because he suggests a

way of bridging the gap between a pre-Socratic reductionist cosmos

whole, identical with the principle of man or the soul.

Anaxagoras fails. Like the young Socrates, his motives are

explained by giving an account of the disposition of the various parts

remaining however. To explain that would require an account of

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

ter directly, which is to say naturally or pre-Socratically. One must

Few readers of the Phaedo have been tempted to consider Soc

compelled to ask why Plato begins with arguments which are so ob

viously inadequate. It is not sufficient to say that Plato threw in a

poet, would accuse him of making speeches (tous logons poioumai)

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

possible while we live. Thus if it is possible, it must come after we

argument is designed to show that the sort of learning we do in this

words, the second argument argues that we must have a kind of im

mortality because we have phronesis. While this seems in agree

proof which is based on knowing is also designed to calm our fear of

opposite. If X is to come to be, it must clearly come to be from what

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

argument, like his first sailing, is pre-Socratic.

argument designed to prove that we do not die. The first argument

This content downloaded from 129.8.242.67 on Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:49:53 PM

ing is recollection. On the contrary, it seems to assume the possibil

ity of acquiring some knowledge through the senses (75a). When we

invariably find that sensible sticks fall short of true equality. To