Analyzing The Phaedo Dialogue 'Before Socrates' Death

The Phaedo dialogue presents a discussion between Socrates and his fellows in the hours before Socrates’ death. Socrates uses his remaining time with them to alleviate their worries as to his own impending death, by providing his proofs for the immortality of the soul.

Socrates makes his argument under the premise of what he refers to as an ancient doctrine which asserts that after death, the souls of the dead travel to another world and once they return they “are born again from the dead (28)” to give life to the living. Socrates’ argument is an attempt to reason that all that is living comes from that which is dead due to a cyclical process of opposites “generating” their own opposites. Socrates uses the states of sleeping and waking to

(E.g. That which is in a state of sleep must have once been awake, it comes to be awake from having been asleep, and vice versa).

(ii) If opposites are generated out of each other, then there is an intermediate process between each, thereby making two processes through which one opposite becomes the other. (E.g. When that which is in a state of sleeping enters a state of waking, and vice versa, there are intermediate processes of waking up and falling asleep).

(iii) If the process of generation from opposites were not cyclical, and there was no return of elements into their opposites, then all things would eventually turn into and remain in their otherwise opposite forms. (E.g. All that is awake would eventually become asleep and not return to wakefulness).

Socrates asserts that this cyclical process is true of all opposites, including living and dying, and therefore he concludes that since the living must come from the dead, the soul (as that which gives life) must continue to exist beyond the death of an

First and foremost, Socrates’ bases his argument for the cyclical generation of opposites upon an “ancient doctrine” which he assumes to be true. This doctrine asserts that the living is born from the dead, which can be traced back to Ancient Greek mythos, and for which there is no determinable evidence to support its accuracy. Socrates was no doubt aware of this, and even stated toward the beginning of his argument in the Phaedo dialogue that “if [the doctrine asserting that the living is born from the dead] is not [true], then other arguments [would] have to be adduced (28).”

Another assumption made is that the soul, the Forms, and an unearthly realm exist as anything more than conceptions of the mind. Part of the Phaedo dialogue is given to describing the nature of the soul as that which is incorporeal, akin to the divine, and imperceptible in the earthly realm. Something ethereal such as the soul and the Forms is not able to be measured or observed in any way which would render its existence irrefutable, and therefore requires assumption and faith in its existence as a precedent for piecing together and accepting Socrates’