Plato, Phædrus, pp. 251-253. Symposion, pp. 210-211. ὅταν τις ἀπὸ τῶνδε διὰ τὸ ὀρθῶς παιδεραστεῖν ἐπανιὼν ἐκεῖνο τὸ καλὸν ἄρχηται καθορᾷν, &c. (211 B).
[16] Plato, Phædon, p. 96 A. ἐγὼ οὖν σοὶ δίειμι περὶ αὐτῶν τά γ’ ἐμὰ πάθη, &c.
[17] Tacitus, Hist. ii. 53. “Othonis libertus, habere se suprema ejus mandata respondit: ipsum viventem quidem relictum, sed solâ posteritatis curâ, et abruptis vitæ blandimentis.”
Phædon — compared with Republic and Timæus. No recognition of the triple or lower souls. Antithesis between soul and body.
We have here one peculiarity of the Phædon, whereby it stands distinguished both from the Republic and the Timæus. The antithesis on which it dwells is that of the soul or mind, on one hand — the body on the other. The soul or mind is spoken of as one and indivisible: as if it were an inmate unworthily lodged or imprisoned in the body. It is not distributed into distinct parts, kinds, or varieties: no mention is made of that tripartite distribution which is so much insisted on in the Republic and Timæus:— the rational or intellectual (encephalic) soul, located in the head — the courageous or passionate (thoracic), between the neck and the diaphragm — the appetitive (abdominal), between the diaphragm and the navel. In the Phædon, the soul is noted as the seat of reason, intellect, the love of wisdom or knowledge, exclusively: all that belongs to passion and appetite, is put to account of the body:[18] this is distinctly contrary to the Philêbus, in which dialogue Sokrates affirms that desire or appetite cannot belong to the body, but belongs only to the soul. In Phædon, nothing is said about the location of the rational soul, in the head, — nor about the analogy between its rotations in the cranium and the celestial rotations (a doctrine which we read both in the Timæus and in the Republic): on the contrary, the soul is affirmed to have lost, through its conjunction with the body, that wisdom or knowledge which it possessed during its state of pre-existence, while completely apart from the body, and while in commerce with those invisible Ideas to which its own separate nature was cognate.[19] That controul which in the Republic is exercised by the rational soul over the passionate and appetitive souls, is in the Phædon exercised (though imperfectly) by the one and only soul over the body.[20] In the Republic and Timæus, the soul is a tripartite aggregate, a community of parts, a compound: in the Phædon, Sokrates asserts it to be uncompounded, making this fact a point in his argument.[21] Again, in the Phædon, the soul is pronounced to be essentially uniform and incapable of change: as such, it is placed in antithesis with the body, which is perpetually changing: while we read, on the contrary, in the Symposion, that soul and body alike are in a constant and unremitting variation, neither one nor the other ever continuing in the same condition.[22]
[18] Plato, Phædon, p. 66. Compare Plato, Philêbus, p. 35, C-D.
[19] Plato, Phædon, p. 76.
[20] Compare Phædon, p. 94 C-E, with Republic, iv. pp. 439 C, 440 A, 441 E, 442 C.
[21] Plato, Phædon, p. 78. ἀξύνθετον, μονοειδὲς (p. 80 B), contrasted with the τρία εἰδη τῆς ψυχῆς (Republic, p. 439). In the abstract given by Alkinous of the Platonic doctrine, we read in cap. 24 ὅτι τριμερής ἐστιν ἡ ψυχὴ κατὰ τὰς δυνάμεις, καὶ κατὰ λόγον τὰ μέρη αὐτῆς τόποις ἰδίοις διανενέμηται: in cap. 25 that the ψυχὴ is ἀσύνθετος, ἀδιάλυτος, ἀσκέδαστος.
[22] Plato, Phædon, pp. 79-80; Symposion, pp. 207-208.