The Phædon is characterised by Proklus as a dialogue wherein Sokrates unfolds fully his own mental history, and communicates to his admirers the complete range of philosophical cognition.[1] This criticism is partly well founded. The dialogue generally is among the most affirmative and expository in the Platonic list. Sokrates undertakes to prove the immortality of the soul, delivers the various reasons which establish the doctrine to his satisfaction, and confutes some dissentient opinions entertained by others. In regard to the exposition, however, we must consider ourselves as listening to Plato under the name of Sokrates: and we find it so conducted as to specify both certain stages through which the mind of Plato had passed, and the logical process which (at that time) appeared to him to carry conviction.
[1] Proklus, in Platon. Republ. p. 392. ἐν Φαίδωνι μὲν γὰρ ὅπου διαφερόντως ὁ Σωκράτης τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ζωὴν ἀναπλοῖ, καὶ πᾶν τὸ τῆς ἐπιστήμης πλῆθος ἀνοίγει τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ ζηλωταῖς, &c. Wyttenbach thinks (note, ad p. 108 E) that Plato was young when he composed the Phædon. But no sufficient grounds are given for this: and the concluding sentence of the dialogue affords good presumption that it was composed many years after the death of Sokrates — ἤδε ἡ τελευτή, ὦ Ἐχέκρατες, τοῦ ἑταίρου ἡμῖν ἐγένετο, ἀνδρός, ὡς ἡμεῖς φαῖμεν ἄν, τῶν τότε ὧν ἐπειράθημεν ἀρίστου, καὶ ἄλλως φρονιμωτάτου καὶ δικαιοτάτου. The phrase τῶν τότε which may probably have slipped unconsciously from Plato, implies that Sokrates belonged to the past generation. The beginning of the dialogue undoubtedly shows that Plato intended to place it shortly after the death of Sokrates; but the word τότε at the end is inconsistent with this supposition, and comes out unconsciously as a mark of the real time.
Situation and circumstances assumed in the Phædon. Pathetic interest which they inspire.
The interest felt by most readers in the Phædon, however, depends, not so much on the argumentative exposition (which Wyttenbach[2] justly pronounces to be obscure and difficult as well as unsatisfactory) as on the personality of the expounding speaker, and the irresistible pathos of the situation. Sokrates had been condemned to death by the Dikastery on the day after the sacred ship, memorable in connection with the legendary voyage of Theseus to Krete, had been dispatched on her annual mission of religious sacrifice at the island of Delos. The Athenian magistrates considered themselves as precluded from putting any one to death by public authority, during the absence of the ship on this mission. Thirty days elapsed between her departure and her return: during all which interval, Sokrates remained in the prison, yet with full permission to his friends to visit him. They passed most of every day in the enjoyment of his conversation.[3] In the Phædon, we read the last of these conversations, after the sacred vessel had returned, and after the Eleven magistrates had announced to Sokrates that the draught of hemlock would be administered to him before sunset. On communicating this intelligence, the magistrates released Sokrates from the fetters with which he had hitherto been bound. It is shortly after such release that the friends enter the prison to see him for the last time. One of the number, Phædon, recounts to Echekratês not only the conduct and discourse of Sokrates during the closing hours of his life, but also the swallowing of the poison, and the manner of his death.
[2] See the Prolegomena prefixed to Wyttenbach’s edition of the Phædon, p. xxi. p. 10.
[3] Plato, Phædon, pp. 58-50.
It appears that Kriton became bail before the Dikasts, in a certain sum of money, that Sokrates should remain in prison and not escape (Plat. Phædon, p. 115 D; Kriton, 45 B). Kriton would have been obliged to pay this money if Sokrates had accepted his proposition to escape, noticed already in chap. x.
Simmias and Kebês, the two collocutors with Sokrates. Their feelings and those of Sokrates.
More than fifteen friends of the philosopher are noted as present at this last scene: but the only two who take an active part in the debate, are, two young Thebans named Kebês and Simmias.[4] These friends, though deeply attached to Sokrates, and full of sorrow at the irreparable loss impending over them, are represented as overawed and fascinated by his perfect fearlessness, serenity and dignity.[5] They are ashamed to give vent to their grief, when their master is seen to maintain his ordinary frame of mind, neither disquieted nor dissatisfied. The fundamental conception of the dialogue is, to represent Sokrates as the same man that he was before his trial; unmoved by the situation — not feeling that any misfortune is about to happen to him — equally delighting in intellectual debate — equally fertile in dialectic invention. So much does he care for debate, and so little for the impending catastrophe, that he persists in a great argumentative effort, notwithstanding the intimation conveyed by Kriton from the gaoler, that if he heated himself with talking, the poison might perhaps be languid in its operation, so that two or three draughts of it would be necessary instead of one.[6] Sokrates even advances the position that death appears to him as a benefit rather than a misfortune, and that every true philosopher ought to prefer death to life, assuming it to supervene without his own act — suicide being forbidden by the Gods. He is represented as “placidus ore, intrepidus verbis; intempestivas suorum lacrimas coercens” — to borrow a phrase from Tacitus’s striking picture of the last hours of the Emperor Otho.[7] To see him thus undisturbed, and even welcoming his approaching end, somewhat hurts the feelings of his assembled friends, who are in the deepest affliction at the certainty of so soon losing him. Sokrates undertakes to defend himself before them as he had done before the Dikasts; and to show good grounds for his belief, that death is not a misfortune, but a benefit, to the philosopher.[8] Simmias and Kebês, though at first not satisfied with the reasonings, are nevertheless reluctant to produce their doubts, from fear of mortifying him in his last moments: but Sokrates protests against such reluctance as founded on a misconception of his existing frame of mind.[9] He is now the same man as he was before, and he calls upon them to keep up the freedom of debate unimpaired.
[4] Plato, Phædon, pp. 59 B, 89 A. τῶν νεανίσκων τὸν λόγον, &c. (p. 89 A).