[5] Plato, Phædon, pp. 58-59.
[6] Plato, Phædon, p. 63 D.
[7] Tacitus, Hist. ii. 48.
[8] Plato, Phædon, p. 63.
[9] Plato, Phædon, p. 84 D-E.
Emphasis of Sokrates in insisting on freedom of debate, active exercise of reason, and independent judgment for each reasoner.
Indeed this freedom of debate and fulness of search — the paramount value of “reasoned truth” — the necessity of keeping up the force of individual reason by constant argumentative exercise — and the right of independent judgment for hearer as well as speaker — stand emphatically proclaimed in these last words of the dying philosopher. He does not announce the immortality of the soul as a dogma of imperative orthodoxy; which men, whether satisfied with the proofs or not, must believe, or must make profession of believing, on pain of being shunned as a moral pestilence, and disqualified from giving testimony in a court of justice. He sets forth his own conviction, with the grounds on which he adopts it. But he expressly recognises the existence of dissentient opinions: he invites his companions to bring forward every objection: he disclaims all special purpose of impressing his own conclusions upon their minds: nay, he expressly warns them not to be biassed by their personal sympathies, then wound up to the highest pitch, towards himself. He entreats them to preserve themselves from becoming tinged with misology, or the hatred of free argumentative discussion: and he ascribes this mental vice to the early habit of easy, uninquiring, implicit, belief: since a man thus ready of faith, embracing opinions without any discriminative test, presently finds himself driven to abandon one opinion after another, until at last he mistrusts all opinions, and hates the process of discussing them, laying the blame upon philosophy instead of upon his own intellect.[10]
[10] Plato, Phædon, pp. 89 C-D, 90.
Πρῶτον εὐλαβηθῶμέν τι πάθος μὴ πάθωμεν. Τὸ ποῖον, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ; Μὴ γενώμεθα, ᾖ δ’ ὅς, μισόλογοι, ὥσπερ οἱ μισάνθρωποι γιγνόμενοι· ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν, ἔφη, ὅ, τι ἄν τις μεῖζον τούτου κακὸν πάθοι ἢ λόγους μισήσας. p. 90 B. ἐπειδάν τις πιστεύσῃ λόγῳ τινὶ ἀληθεῖ εἶναι, ἄνευ τῆς περὶ τοὺς λόγους τέχνης, κἄπειτα ὀλίγον ὕστερον αὐτῷ δόξῃ ψευδὴς εἶναι, ἐνίοτε μὲν ὤν, ἐνίοτε δ’ οὐκ ὤν, καὶ αὖθις ἕτερος καὶ ἕτερος, &c.
Anxiety of Sokrates that his friends shall be on their guard against being influenced by his authority — that they shall follow only the convictions of their own reason.