I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.
- Socrates, Phaedo, 64a
The windows in this house are pretty old. When, in the month of January, there are no Fahrenheits to speak of, and especially when we have a negative amount of these Fahrenheits, the bigger living room windows and sliding glass door leak a fair bit (best not to stand too close when the sun isn’t shining through). This leakage leads to the downstairs cooling and drying from the bitter winter air. This then leads to the heat kicking in, which further dries out the house while warming it. The upstairs is beds and a bath, so it has fewer windows and much less airflow. Because of this, walking through our upstairs hallway at night is what the local Sioux call Inipikaga— the traditional sweat lodge ritual ceremony of penance and purification—while the downstairs averages a comfortable 68 Fahrenheits.
Socrates hates thinking about these things. Well, not these things specifically—he never really left Athens, according to the Crito, and Athens averages 50 Fahrenheits in January. That’s 33 more than we average over here. What I’m saying is Socrates didn’t think much about HVAC problems because he was a philosopher.
For Socrates in the Phaedo, death is “the separation of the soul from the body” (64c).1 In fact, In his dialogue with Simmias, he asks whether the philosopher can or should be concerned with the pleasures, pains, or services of the body. That is, Socrates wonders whether Simmias believes the philosopher can have his mind/soul (hard to distinguish the two in Plato, if at all possible) preoccupied with fulfilling his desires for food, drink, sex, nice clothes, wealth, and the like.
Can he, the philosopher? I’m asking the dear reader now. Can the philosopher be a fatty who scrolls through his Instathot feed all day? Can the philosopher be bothered to refill the tank of his humidifier for the third time today when it isn’t even getting above thirty-five percent? I mean, WHAT’S THE POI
Simmias thinks not. Regarding the concerns of the body, “the true philosopher despises them” (64e). Socrates concludes that the philosopher, “as far as he can,” then, “turns away from the body toward the soul” (64e). Thus, “the philosopher more than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much as possible” (65a).
You might be thinking what I’m thinking. Socrates says “that the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble,” and the body is the opposite. So, it’s as you expected: philosophers are better than the rest of us.
Not so fast, not so. Socrates adds that the majority of people agree that the man who lives in such a way, finding no pleasure in bodily things, does not “deserve to live”, and is already close to death, in that he denies the desires of the living body (65a).
Ruh roh, Raggy. Or, like zoinks, Scoob. Philosophers are bad? Even in ancient Greece? I mean, we know they smell bad, but intrinsically bad? Tough break.
Thus far, Socrates has made a negative case for the philosopher’s mode of existence, but now he moves into a positive case. That is, the life of the philosopher isn’t merely a problem of conflicting desires (contemplation in pursuit of wisdom vs. worldly pleasures), but the body necessarily distorts reality and hinders wisdom.
Then what about the actual acquiring of knowledge? Is the body an obstacle when one associates with it in the search for knowledge? I mean, for example, do men find any truth in sight or hearing, or are not even the poets forever telling us that we do not see or hear anything accurately, and surely if those two physical senses are not clear or precise, our other senses can hardly be accurate, as they are all inferior to these. (65b)
Socrates says that the body is bad, the mind/soul good, since the senses are easily deceived and therefore cannot play a part in wisdom. Indeed, Socrates says that “as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire, which we affirm to be the truth” (66b).
The body is real real bad, folks. At least, that’s what Socrates says. But is it intrinsically so? You wouldn’t know, you’re too busy using Instagram. The man who would know is a philosopher, and he is a philosopher who most perfectly
approaches the object with thought alone, without associating any sight with his thought, or dragging in any sense perception with his reasoning, but who, using pure thought alone, tries to track down each reality pure and by itself, freeing himself as far as possible from eyes and ears, and in a word, from the whole body, because the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom whenever it is associated with it. (66a)
So, on Socrates’ account, the philosopher must separate himself from the body as much as possible. “Any man,” Socrates says, “whom you see resenting death was not a lover of wisdom but a lover of the body” (68c). If a man observes this practice–that is, the habitual pursuit of wisdom in denial of the pleasures, pains, and services of the flesh–then he becomes a philosopher, and is necessarily practicing for dying and death.
We’re using Grube’s translation until C.D.C. Reeve blesses us with his own.