Socrates’ last dialogue with Cebes and Simmias before his tragic execution in Athens is cunningly presented by Plato in Phaedo (Plato, 57a – 118a; Bluck, 1955). The main subject of the discussion is the immortality of the soul and Plato attempts to prove it by the use of various arguments, among which the most perplex and equivocal is the one based on the theory of recollection. I am going to argue that while Plato fails at almost every step of his argument due to absence of logical coherence and excess of dogmatic premises, he succeeds in constructing a masterpiece of metaphors and allegories, aiming at elevating the practice of philosophizing and composing Socrates’ final swan song. First, I will reconstruct Plato’s recollection argument on the immortality of soul, by describing the main premises and assigning representative captions to assist the rest of the analysis in the current essay. I will continue with my critique on the value of the inductive method used by Plato, and I will finish with celebrating the masterful parallelisms that Plato is hiding behind the apparent incoherence in his argument.

The argument roughly consists of two main proofs: the ante-natal and the afterlife existence of the soul, although the two are quite unequally distributed during the discussion, with the former dominating most of the dialogue. The passage initiates with stating that when we remember something, we are able to think that something because we must have always had this knowledge with us all along (73c). Using our senses to acknowledge the existence of something and then apply this understanding to a different thought is the process of knowing things by recollection (73c) (opening recollection premises). Next, Plato introduces the Form of the Equal Itlsef by explaining that we acknowledge things by comparing them with what we already know, or what we remind ourselves for these things to be (74a), aiming at relating the theory of recollection to the eternal truth of the Forms (Forms and recollection). He subsequently repeats what he mentions earlier (64d) that the senses cannot fully describe the qualities and absolute knowledge of all things, and this sense-based perception will always produce inferior understanding of the truth (75a – 75b) (rejection of bodily senses). Since our senses cannot be trusted, any knowledge we possess must have been acquired before we started using our senses, therefore before we were born (75b – 75c), and our connection to the truth is lost when our senses come into the equation upon our birth. The slow and laborious process of recollection by the use of our senses reinstates our contact with knowledge (75e) (the rebirth of the truth through recollection). Therefore, our souls existed before our birth, since they possess the knowledge before our material bodies infected them with an inaccurate perception of reality (76c) (ante-natal soul from ante-natal truth and its corruption by the worldly bodies). There is no doubt that truth and reality have always existed, even before our birth, therefore our souls existed before they entered our bodies (76e). Plato here uses a Modus Ponens logical construction of the form: if reality existed before our birth, then souls existed before our birth; if souls did not exist before our birth, then reality did not either; but reality does exist, otherwise nothing would have existed, therefore souls exist (ante-natal soul and reality). Finally, to salvage the problem arising from the unilateral treatise of the ante-natal existence of the soul in the entire argument, Plato suggests that the soul continues existing in afterlife, based on the cyclical theory that all things come to being from their opposites. As life comes from death and death from life, then soul must have originated from death, since it has existed before our birth/life, and it will keep on existing after our death (77d) (cyclical theory and immortality of the soul).

Plato triumphantly fails to develop a coherent argument, by presenting a series of positions that disrupt logical continuity for the entirety of his argument. The first two premises are initiating the theory of recollection by stating – without questioning – the acquisition of knowledge before our birth, which manifests itself through the process of recollection by the use of the senses. Recalling something means that that something must have pre-existed, otherwise how would it be possible to bring it back to memory, if it had never existed in the first place? And what we think we are learning during our worldly lives is nothing else than mere recollection of what we have always known! However, isn’t it quite hard to imagine that each one of us possesses all the knowledge in the world and does not even know about it? However difficult it is to accept the latter, even more startling is the triumphant role of the senses in recalling the knowledge that was lost, well, by the senses themselves during our birth! In fact, the challenge imposed on the soul by the senses upon birth does makes sense, if one accepts a series of rather dogmatic beliefs: that souls exist, that they are the vehicles of reason, knowledge and truth (65c), and that they inhabit our bodies when we are born (64c, 70c); fairly quite a lot to take for granted, but the logical connection of the corruption of the soul by the senses established at the symmetry breaking point of birth is straightforward. The problem occurs at later on in our lives when we do acquire knowledge; the up to now villainous bodily senses are transformed by Plato into a hero, and the whole rationale collapses!

In the midst of this spiraling demise of dialectics (very unlike Socrates!), Plato attempts to further mislead us by reinforcing the opening premises with his theory of Forms, which represent the eternal truths, therefore they are the ones that have always existed. If knowledge has always existed, then our souls must have existed before our bodies, which is fair enough from the logical point of view; but which part of knowledge does he refer to? Let us imagine the example of Mowgli from the popular novel The Jungle Book, who is raised by wolves in a jungle in India. Mowgli, apart from never being taught advanced philosophical theories – likewise the majority of humans – he learned how to survive as a wolf, and not as a human. If we realistically accept the eternal existence of the soul and the reincarnation theory of Plato, where did Mowgli’s soul go? Did he end up not receiving one? Why is someone like Mowgli an exception?

As the proof of the ante-natal existence of the soul appears to satisfy both Simmias and Cebes (77b), the question of what happens to the soul post-mortem arises. Socrates effortlessly solves the problem by – ironically – recycling the cyclical argument that had used earlier (71c); if all things come to be from their opposites, then death becomes life and vice versa, and souls come to life from death, and will keep on existing after death, because that is where they originated from. Two puzzling elements emerge in this premise: the noncompliance of the soul with the theory of the opposites, and the combination of the eternal character of the soul with the cyclical process of death and life. Concerning the former, it is unimaginable that something as eternal as the soul might have an opposite. The only logical opposite of the soul is the lack of it, a rather trivial answer to the question. The triviality of the negation of the soul becomes rather serious when one applies the cyclical process, where if no soul comes to being from soul (nothing comes from something!), then how the soul is eternal in the first place?

Now that I have seemingly ‘destroyed’ mighty Plato, it is time to shatter the argument of inconsistency in the logical structure of the recollection argument, by unravelling Plato’s artistry in philosophizing: a carefully woven network of poetic metaphors. The most obvious is the allegory of recollection, representing the industrious perpetual process of learning through the method of dialectics. The irony of the use of recollection becomes obvious when Cebes and Simmias forget the explanation of the theory (Plato, 76b; Arieti, 1986: 132). But the process of reasoning does not have enough value without the existence of the eternal truth, and vice versa. As Kahn (Kahn, 2006: 123) and Bluck (Bluck, 1955: 64) suggest, the transcendental character of intelligence and the theory of recollection are strongly interconnected. Here lies the beauty of the theory of the Platonic Forms, the uncertain and the unknown, the knowledge that we know enough to desire to know more! Plato, by reminding us the ontological supremacy of the Forms over the mortality of humans and their bodily senses, emphasizes the fundamental quality of philosophy: to keep on questioning and never settle, knowing that we will never find the ultimate truth.

Naturally death is on the foreground of the dialogue, due to Socrates’ impending execution, and it cannot be excluded by Plato’s dramaturgical mastery. For a philosopher, the end of the pursuit of knowledge is like death; if we succeed in finding the truth, then there is no reason for living and the soul ceases to exist. For our soul to be immortal, our knowledge as humans has to be limited! Arieti (Arieti, 1986: 140) artfully describes that “it was this knowledge of ignorance which enabled Socrates to be a philosopher at all”. The philosopher has to believe in the immortality of the soul, and as human he has no other choice but to accept death.   

However, the most courageous of his metaphors is the significant role that the senses play in recalling the lost knowledge at birth. There are two interpretations of why he uses such a perilous reasoning: a realistic and a dramatic. In order to understand the former, I will represent all major subjects of the argument by two geometrical symbols: the circle ( O ) and the infinite line ( ─ ). The ones corresponding to a circle ( O ) are recollection, life ↔ death, and the cyclical theory, whereas the ones that can be represented by an infinite line ( ─ ) are the Forms, the truth/reality/knowledge, and the soul. Plato is ingenuously combining the eternity of an infinite line (soul, truth) with the eternity of a circle (life, death) – in fact from a topological perspective they are the same; imagine if you were a tiny ant walking on a circle with a huge radius, it would definitely appear as if you were walking on an infinite line. In reality however, this geometrical symmetry is broken at certain temporal points, namely when we are born, and the senses play that role of the break of symmetry; without them the cyclical processes would appear to be continuous, which we perfectly know they are not, because we experience death around us. The dramatic value of senses in recovering the lost knowledge is not the one for the act of birth, but rather for death. Plato’s duet dance of the eternal (soul) with the mortal (senses), just before Socrates’ death, is an attempt to reconcile the practice of reasoning of the philosopher with his bodily senses, and acts as a farewell to Socrates’ body and mortal life.

The matter of the immortality of the soul is complicated because of the clash between metaphysical and scientific interpretations. Plato knows that very well and instead of following a neat logical discourse, he camouflages the fundamental qualities of philosophy with poetry and drama. By doing so, he succeeds in satisfying the supporters of both religious and scientific approaches to the existence and immortality of the soul. But most of all, with his theory of recollection, he motivates us to practice philosophy and come closer to the coveted eternal knowledge.         

Bibliography

Arieti, J. (1986) ‘A Dramatic Interpretation of Plato’s “Phaedo”’, Illinois Classical Studies, 11(1/2), pp. 129–142.

Bluck, R.S. (1955) Plato’s Phaedo: A Translation of Plato’s Phaedo with Introduction, Notes and Appendices. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.

Kahn, C. (2006) ‘Plato on Recollection’, in Benson, H. (ed.) A Companion to Plato. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. 119–132.