AAP2010 Abstracts
Use the form below to search abstracts by Author, Institue or Keyword.
| Title | Dr. |
| First Name | Martin |
| Surname | Black |
| Institution | Suffolk University |
| Title of Paper | Socrates’ “Second Sailing” in the Phaedo |
| Select a Stream | Plato |
| Abstract | The "Phaedo" occupies a special place in the Platonic corpus because it contains Socrates’ most extensive reflection on why he turned away from a kind of pre-Socratic natural science to the conversational examination of himself and others. This reflection indicates, among other things, two main points: (1) Socrates came to think that we do not have direct contact with the first principles of things or the genuine beings and so must pursue their investigation self-consciously through discourse as a reflection of how things are; (2) we do not have knowledge of the soul or of the ends of life and these are our most urgent objects of inquiry. Yet the place of this passage in the dialogue as a whole is puzzling, because Socrates seems to teach his companions that there is nothing more certain than that we know the “things themselves” or the beings of all things, that the soul is simple, and that the soul can be known to be immortal on the basis of these claims. Almost everyone, however, finds these arguments to be more or less obviously invalid. I argue, as have others, that the text shows that Socrates does not endorse the claims mentioned, but is rather responding to the fears of his young interlocutors, who threaten to abandon philosophy if he cannot assuage them. However, Plato is not indulging in defensive rhetoric. The “second sailing” passage provides the paradigm for explicating the problems of the knowledge of the soul that Socrates sets out, and so of the partial ascent the dialogue takes within the limits placed upon it by its circumstances. |
