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Socrates' last words: another look at an ancient riddle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. Crooks
J. Crooks
Affiliation:
Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec
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Extract

Socrates' last words are a microcosm of the riddle his character poses to the philosophical reader. Are they sincere or ironic? Do they represent an afterthought prompted by a belated sense of familial responsibility or a death–bed epiphany? Are we to determine their reference in relation to the surface logic of the Phaedo or take them as the sign of a concealed discursive depth? In what follows, I will argue that the answer to these questions depends upon acknowledgement and clarification of the pedagogical challenge Socrates faces in conversation with Simmias and Cebes. What I have to say is prompted, in large measure, by Glenn Mosts recent article which both undertakes substantial analysis of the riddles treatment by the tradition and develops a plausible solution. I do not accept this solution. But the struggle to articulate my misgivings about his argument was indispensible to the development of my own. In view of this, it seems prudent to begin with a brief summary of the position he takes.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 117 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 Phaedo 118. All citations of Platos text follow the Fowler translation, Loeb Classical Library, 36 (Cambridge, MA, 1990). Henceforth, only standarized line numbers will be provided as reference.Google Scholar

2 Friedlaender, P., Plato (Princeton, 1958), p. 85.Google Scholar

3 cf. Most, G., ‘A cock for Asclepius’, CQ 43 (1993), 96–111,105. The phrase is used in reference to Wilamowitzs suggestion that while Socrates had been conversing with his wife and children, he had forgotten to mention a vow which concerned them.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ibid. All citations of Most are taken from this article. Like him, I will leave aside the historical question of whether the words of the request Socrates makes at 118 were in fact his last words. I am interested only in their significance in Platos text.

5 For more on the ring composition of the Republic, see Brumbaugh, Robert, Platonic Studies in Greek Philosophy: Form, Arts, Gadgets and Hemlock (Albany, 1989), pp. 17–27.Google Scholar

6 Cf. e.g. Vlastos, G., Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 19–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Rowe, C. J., Phaedo (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 6–7, 194–5.Google Scholar

8 Mitscherling, J., ‘Phaedo 118: the last words’, Apeiron 19 (1985), 161–5,161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., p. 162.

12 Ibid.

13 Cf. e.g. Davis M., ‘Socrates pre–Socratism: some remarks on the structure of Plato's Phaedo’, Review of Metaphysics 33 (1980), 559–77. Also, Dorter, K., ‘The reciprocity argument and the structure of the Phaedo’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 15 (1977), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Stewart, D., ‘Socrates last bath’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 10 (1972), 253–4, n. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Cf. 63b, 63e, 69de.

16 Heraclitus fr. 40, Diogenes Laertius 9.1. Heraclitus fr. 129, Diogenes Laertius 8.6. For translation and commentary on these and other early references to Pythagoras, see Kirk, , Raven, AND Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 216.Google Scholar

17 Ion fr. 4, Diogenes Laertius 1.120

18 Cf. Nilsson, M., Greek Folk Religion (New York, 1940), pp. 93–5.Google Scholar

19 At 58a–c, Phaedo tells Echecrates that Socrates execution was delayed by the annual I mission to Delos in celebration of Theseus victory over the Minotaur: Now the Athenians made r a vow to Apollo, as the story goes, that if they were saved they would send a mission every year to Delos. And from that time even to the present day they send it annually in honour of the god. Now it is the law that after the mission begins the city must be pure and no one may be publicly 1 executed until the ship has gone to Delos and back. for that reason Socrates passed a long time in prison between his trial and his death. The mission to Delos is the condition for the possibility of the conversation the Phaedo reports. Beyond that, commentators have often been struck by Platos efforts to cast his account of Socrates last day in the imagery of the Theseus myth. Cf. e.g. Burger, R., The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Haven, 1984), pp. 14–24,112–21.Google Scholar

20 For a discussion of the importance of Orphic/Pythagorean religious themes in the Phaedo and in Plato's middle period generally see Morgan, M. L., Platonic Piety (New Haven, 1990). Morgan takes the prominence of Orphic themes in the Meno, the Phaedo, the Symposium, and elsewhere, as evidence of Platos having preferred Orphism to the declining polis–religion. I take the references to Theseus and Asclepius at the beginning and the end of the Phaedo, together with Socrates instruction of Simmias and Cebes, as evidence of a more critical attempt to ground the intellectual and religious experiences of the Pythagoreans in an ethical engagement of the polis, one object of which is preservation and renewal of its popular autochthonous spiritual heritage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 On the politics of Orphism and Pythagoreanism in the context of the ancient polis, see Detienne, M., Between beasts and gods, in Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 215–28.Google Scholar