Phaedo by Plato is one of the many short stories written by Plato about the life of Socrates. The Phaedo details the end of Socrates life according to a retelling by Phaedo told to Echecrates and is likely to be one of the later stories written by Plato we can tell this because of the change of the character of Socrates as compared with how he acts in prior works which we presume to be written earlier, this change in how Socrates acts is not likely to be a change in his actual opinions as the story of Crito is set not much earlier than the Phaedo and he makes assertions about things he knows in this but in the previous work he states that he does not actually know about these things. So the change in the character of Socrates is either because of the change in the understanding of the character of Socrates by Plato. The discussion in the Phaedo is closely intertwined with the religious beliefs of the time. The work of the Phaedo is deeply entrenched in the religious beliefs of the people in the room at the time which seem to mostly be in alignment what with them all being Socrates fellows and friends thus the major discussion of the Phaedo will start after a looking into what is actually happening in it.
The Phaedo is Socrates last argument/discussion with his friends, the true start of this work is a discussion of why suicide is unlawful however people such as philosophers should wish to die. The primary reason why suicide is held to be unlawful is because we are prisoners, or at the very least their possessions such as an ox or ass of the gods beings who are seen as the fount of all good or at least extremely close to such by this group. This assertion is agreed to by both individuals in the conversation Cebes and Socrates. This discussion on why leaving the gods who are such great rulers and leaders is truly wanted by the intelligent and unwanted by the fool. The fool of course being someone obsessed with the pleasures of the body rather than with the pleasures of the soul. Whilst the wise man is someone who wishes to only focus on the nourishment of the soul, and using it to look for such things as absolute justice, truth and beauty. These concepts of course being things which the body and it's wants and needs gets in the way of quite annoyingly to the philosopher. This is also why they must be good people after all if their soul gains impurity from the negatives brought about by their body the philosopher will be unable to see these things and thus unable to learn all knowledge which they might be able as the impure are forbidden from approaching the pure.
The conclusion of the previous conversation leads directly into that of the next. Socrates has convinced his friends or at least Cebes who is speaking that yes wanting to die but waiting for your appointed time and not rushing into it is exactly what the philosopher should be doing after all the gods will summon them from this world when the world is ready for them and not before. However Cebes brings up the idea that perhaps the soul does not stay wholly but rather withers away or disperses upon the death of the individual. The first refutation of the withering of the soul comes from the fact that life and death are opposites. This then presupposes that a cycle of sorts forms with souls going out of one opposite into the other life to Death to life and so on much as one goes from waking to sleeping and back to waking. A proof that Cebes offers is that knowledge is just the recollection of things that we have previously learned a favourite statement of Socrates according to him after all it would be impossible for the soul to recollect the knowledge of being human unless at some point previously it itself had been in the form of human.
This topic brought up by Cebes is of course the next topic to follow after all they have all agreed upon the previous topic but one of the other people in the room that being Simmias who does not remember this topic. Which of course leads to the explanation being that the soul would of previously known things such as absolute equality and thus even if we "learn" of it in this life as we already knew it, it truly would be better described as remembering. This leads back into the discussion of what happens to those souls of fools who do not wish to leave behind the bodily desires and how their pure soul becomes corrupted and thus remains behind trapped and imprisoned without the guidance of the gods pushing it in the right direction until such a time as it is separated at last from the body and given new form.
The next part is practically the halfway point, Cebes and Simmias bringing up their objections to the previously stated topics and trying to make holes in them meanwhile Phaedo is having a crisis of faith in all arguments and as such is assuaged by Socrates first that even if he is wrong they should not try and deny all facts and become haters of ideas after all Socrates himself is not all knowing and can only try his best, which shall soon pass on from this world with his soul.
Socrates disproves Simmias argument first after this, by basically saying that no the soul is not a harmony even if both are good things a harmony can be broken and influenced or changed by the instruments that make it whereas the soul does the opposite it coerces and makes changes to the body guiding it instead. This of course is because it is far more divine to do this he goes and talks of Homer and quotes him.
The disproving of Cebes however takes a far longer time to go over as compared with Simmias and goes over a great many things including introducing us to the idea that not all opposites are the same. Much how one man is short and another is tall and tall cannot turn into short however a short man can be taller than an even shorter man. Then there is a tangent and Socrates tells the group a story before at last we get to the scene of his death.
I do enjoy the reading of this story however I do not necessarily agree or like the philosophy that comes from it. I personally have a few issues with the ideas which Plato presents the biggest being related to the previous and earlier work of the Crito. One of the ideas can after all quite readily be relegated to the defence of the Holocaust after all. Further it also probably presents the worst of the rebuttals of Socrates (From the works I've read) against another person. He presents far to many complex ideas and question for these ideas to be satisfactorily agreed with. Plato's works cannot be taken solely in a vacuum of course but placing it back into one. The text itself is far too reliant on the person in question not disagreeing with the communal ideas that the group upholds and thus is most certainly not an introductory work to the idea of Plato and by extension Socrates.
The book of course does do it's primary purpose of making one think and question along with what is said and it tries to get you stuck into the pace of Phaedo's thinking after all the small interlude with Echecrates does not work if you have been taken out of it and do not agree that the character of Socrates truly is retelling some kind of master piece. This of course is where for most modern people I would assume fall off and do not experience both because they likely have divergent belief systems from Socrates but also because they are to a degree not going to be as enmeshed in the work as Plato would likely have been when he wrote it.
We can also see the changes being made to the structure of these works. Plato is making assumptions that the people will already agree with what is being said rather than working through each individual part this forced agreeance with the idea does not work when one doesn't have a deep understanding of the idea that we are being forced to agree with or directly disagree with. Such as the idea that the Greek gods are benevolent and good beings, after all according to the apology and references in other works such as the Phaedrus those are the gods that Plato is making Socrates this is certified when he mentions Hades. Overall the work is good but there are quite a few glaring holes in them when looked at by a modern person but some of them can easily be plugged by an individual such as replacing the Greek gods with some omnibenevolent being.
All these flaws do add up over the multiple works written by Plato and make me not necessarily enjoy like or more importantly look up to the character of Socrates which is something that we are supposed to be doing from the works that have been written. The ideas become tainted much akin to a child predator trying to make appeals to doing something for the sake of the children. The words end up ringing quite hollow. However that does not mean that the ideas of Socrates are not necessarily correct or that we should not think on them especially the idea of the Socratic method and how one should be able to at least partially justify and explain why they think something and should analyse themselves for issues that they are giving an unfair judgement to.
The reason behind going so in depth into the work when this is supposed to be a review is that adequate discussion of the ideas presented cannot be made without viewing the ideas presented within it and the group coming to at least in part some form of understanding of what is being talked about by Plato.
