Socratic View of Death - Essay Example

Phaedo The last of the four Socratic dialogues recorded by Plato, describes the last hour of Socrates’ life filled with an interesting conversation between himself and his numerous friends. In the dialogue, the philosopher is about to face his execution after a month of waiting in prison and finally drink hemlock. However, the main peculiarity that often becomes a subject for discussion is that he does not show any sign of fear of death any sign of regret. Although the philosopher was rather old at that moment, the idea of his death distressed his friends and disciples. Therefore, his attitude towards death and afterlife was perceived as rather odd and unusual, but the line of development arranged by Socrates for his arguments supporting the idea of death seems rather plausible and – together with the metaphysical theory of forms elaborated by Plato – underlies many ideas of Christianity formed later. Juxtaposition of Socratic and Christian doctrines is possible at least due to the concept of the immortal soul and fleeting nature of earthly life inside the material body. At the end of the dialogue, just before he died, Socrates asked his friend Crito to make an offering – a cock - to Asclepius, and this last request has been interpreted in many ways; yet, the most common understanding on this expression is that death is perceived as a relief and cure for all miseries and maladies of life. As a thesis, I would state that his view of life and death (death being a state free of all earthly concerns) is rather reasonable to certain extent, as Socrates manages to support it with the insight to the ideas of objective reality, reason and immortality of the soul. As the search for truth in the course of dispute and discussion is a hallmark of Socrates’ philosophy, no wonder that he prefers to lead his companions to understanding of the truth giving them points for consideration and constantly asking questions (as if he wasn’t sure and wanted his point of view to be confirmed and approved by his friends). In this dialogue, we see the philosopher gradually unfolding his ideas of death and afterlife in front of his companions and supporting his statements with examples. As the fear of death becomes the main issue of concern, Socrates states that a person should perceive his/her death gladly and have no fear of it. Whereas at the first sight, this idea seems rather puzzling, it makes sense as soon as the concept of immortal soul is applied. Providing a fellow philosopher as an example, Socrates proves that a thinker should take death as a gift. The reason Socrates thinks so addresses somewhat ascetic dogmas of life – moreover, in the context of Christianity, they could even be called monastic. According to his perception, the human body poses a kind of obstacle for the soul and intellect; and this is especially true for the cleverest people, for philosophers, whose main concern is truth. However, Socrates asserts that the body is of no use in searches for it, instead, the body creates problems on the way to comprehension of truth, as it acts as a distracting factor, diffusing one’s attention between intellectual searches and trivial earthly concerns: the body needs food, sleep and clothes – in other words, all the primary elements of material life: “If we do get a bit of leisure and turn to philosophy, the body is constantly breaking in upon our studies and disturbing us with noise and confusion, so that it prevents our beholding the truth” (Plato 66d). Therefore, having a body is seen as a kind of obstacle. The philosopher should be interested in death, as it is what he is concerned with throughout his lifetime and what can release him from unnecessary material issues leaving him full freedom for comprehension of higher ideas, “when he is to die, [he] has strong hopes that when he is dead he will attain the greatest blessings in that other land» (Plato 64a). However, despite promoting the ideas of relative asceticism, Socrates doesn’t imply that the philosopher should completely deny all earthly pleasures and goods; yet he states that the philosopher mustn’t be dependent on them: he should care about food and drinks too much, yet he should eat and drink as much as it is necessary for his body to function and to nourish mind. Socrates’ meditations over the issue of life and death are originally based on the belief in existence of afterlife as a better form of being. In the earthly life, humans are stated to be subjected to the master, the God taking care of them, while there must be other good gods in the afterlife: “I believe that there, no less than here, I shall find good rulers and friends» (Plato, 69e). It derives from Socrates’ words that both earthly life and afterlife are good, yet in the afterlife, the human gets released from the bonds of material existence, being placed in the world of ideas. In the material world, on the other hand, the body is an obstacle on the way of true knowledge acquisition and our physiological means of perception like eyesight and hearing are biased and nonobjective. True existence, if it is available for our souls, is found in thought, not in senses; therefore, Socrates literally denies empirical knowledge, giving preference to pure philosophical search. Here, the concept of the superiority of nonmaterial existence gives rise to Plato’s theory of forms as the manifest of distinction between material and nonmaterial realities. Socrates mentions that the soul “departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless” (Plato 79), in other words, in the world of forms. Supporting Socrates’ ideas, Plato asserted that forms as some independent entities existing beyond the borders of physical world guide our existence in the latter. However, the fragments of the forms’ definition are found in different works of Plato instead of being assembled in a sole statement. However, one can conclude that forms are “mind-independent entities: their existence and nature is independent of our beliefs and judgments about them” (Cohen).This means that human perceptions and evaluation of visible reality are predetermined in the nonmaterial, ideal world. On the other hand, Socrates’ idea is that freeing ourselves from material “shell” we get to the ideal nonmaterial world, with no material obstacles interrupting our search for truth. These positions lead us to the conclusion that the reality one passes to after death is superior to the material one. While Socrates describes death as separation of the soul from the material body, we encounter Plato’s dualism between reality and illusion, between ideas and sense experiences/objects, between intellect and sensory perception. These pairs are intertwined in his theory of forms, the first member of each pair surpasses the second one both in reality and in good. What is also significant about Socrates’ attitude to death is that he connected the outcome of one’s journey to the nonmaterial world in terms of virtue and good, drawing parallels between the extent of virtue a person manifests in the material world and place/conditions he/she will pass to after death. Asking Crito to make an offering of a cock to Asclepius, Socrates hints at death’s ability to “heal” the soul cleaning it of the burden of material life, as Greeks traditionally made offerings for Asclepius in acknowledgement of recovery. Therefore, death can be perceived as a gift for a philosopher and for a righteous person. In addition, it is clear that Socrates is ready to die and this idea makes him happy, for he lived a life of virtue and – as a philosopher – mainly ignored bodily pleasures of material world. This philosophical framework is rather reasonable, yet is can be criticized in certain aspects. Referring to religious aspect and parallels to Christianity, it is possible to say that such approach to earthly life has very few advantages: humans are prone to reach extremes in obedience of religious doctrines proclaiming superiority of afterlife: for instance, Christian doctrine initially encouraged to reject earthly surfeits in order to get to Eden in afterlife. Moreover, if physical world was created by God, as Socrates claims, and God is unconditionally good, it is unlikely that material world is bad and certain aspects of material life are not worth experiencing. Second objection I would like to express is that – although both Socrates and Plato underestimate significance of physical senses – they are inevitably a crucial instrument in comprehending the surrounding reality. Referring, for instance, to the concept of beauty, which is stated to be constructed by some higher intelligence and just planted in human minds, I would suppose that it is impossible to conceive beauty as a form without perceiving it with our own eyes. Given the idea by nonmaterial reality, we inevitably resort to our senses to acquire knowledge about its manifestations, yet, it is quite justified that sense perception is often nonobjective. Drawing a conclusion, I would say that Socratic view of death is rather positive – and it is proved in the paragraphs above, he claims death to be the release from burdens of material existence so that one can devote his/herself to true knowledge acquisition. Moreover, the dialogue clearly demonstrates the image of reality constructed by Socrates with juxtaposition of ideal and material worlds, where the former can be reached fully only through death, i.e. separation from material body and leaving only the immortal soul. However, I do not quite agree with complete underestimation of sense experience in ideas realization process. Work Cited: Cohen, S. Mark. Theory of Forms, 2006. From: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/thforms.htm Plato. Phaedo. From: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DPhaedo%3Asection%3D57a Read More