Socrates’s five dialogues make a great storyline about his life and thoughts: from he was accused of ‘corrupting the youth’, defending his own innocence (open to interpretation), propounding the theory of forms, to being executed. And to learn about Plato’s ideas, The Republic can be an intimidating start – but not these enjoyable little dialogues, which provide a great introduction to Plato’s grant pursuit and articulation of ‘the ideal city’ and ‘the philosopher king’.
Phaedo is probably one of the most significant and iconic episodes of philosophy history. In this dialogue, we are given the opportunity of grapple with Plato’s theory of forms and his inquiry of the sources of knowledge, in the process of defending his fearlessness and pleasantness in the face of Socrates’ imminent demise. There are a few questions that should confuse a modern reader: what is the significance of this piece besides that its main character is the founder of philosophical reasoning? What we should appreciate from this book besides it is rightly considered as a masterpiece?
The first thing I would say is Socrates as a lover of knowledge demonstrates powerfully what is it like to be genuinely inquisitive about the truth and how one should use rationality to justify his fate when it is determined by the external. Although this is not Socrates’ intention, I do view that to a certain degree, Socrates tries to convince his companions he is indeed at peace with himself knowing death is to be put upon him. Some of his logic is clearly faulty and arbitrary – for instance, to argue the immortality of a soul he uses the example of the immortality of God to justify that a soul can be imperishable so long as humans deem gods as imperishable – and from the standpoint of an atheist this does not stand still. I truly admire the spirit he possesses in search of virtue and beauty.
Also, if we look at this dialogue from the whole picture of human intellectual history, this is a very inspiring book. Let us imagine, at some point in our record of time, humans truly broke free of the limit of the survival instinct of hunting, power and mating and started to ponder about the meaning of wisdom, virtue, the universe and philosophy. How can we not say that humans are not superior to animals? Hence, to appreciate Plato’s ideas, readers need to have a sense of mega-awareness to the significance this piece holds for humans in seek of questions – what happens after death, the separation of body and soul and human virtues – that are so abstract, so difficult, and so remarkable.
Siming Lan 