The present paper offers a general introduction to the first Polish post¬war translation of the Tabula of Cebes. It discusses the general structure of the text and its major arguments. Subsequently, some speculations on the philosophical affinity of the author of the text are given and the nature of its reception is dealt with. Furthermore, the article presents also a brief history of allegorical interpretation in Greece and touches upon the most important exegetical tendencies that hitherto have appeared in European (...) culture. The article is followed by the first Polish postwar translation of the Tabula of Cebes. (shrink)

This new translation of Epictetus' Handbook brings his ancient teachings to those who wish to live the philosophic life by finding a way to live happily in the world without being overwhelmed by it. This modern English translation of the complete Handbook is supported by the first thorough commentary since that of Simplicius, 1500 years ago, along with a detailed introduction, extensive glossary, index of key terms, and helpful tables that clarify Stoic ethical doctrines as a glance. Accompanying the Handbook (...) is the Tablet of Cebes , a curious and engaging text from an unknown author. In complete contrast to the Handbook 's more conventional philosophical presentation, the Tablet is an allegory that shows progress to philosophical wisdom as a journey through a landscape inhabited by personifications of Happiness, Fortune, the Virtues and Vices. (shrink)

There is growing recognition in Phaedo scholarship of a parallel between the deuteros plous passage and the introduction to Simmias' speech: both speak of attempting to discover or to learn the truth about things, and then, if that proves impossible, to resort to divine or human logoi, the former being the "safer" of the two. It is contended that that model governs Socrates reply to Cebes: he first tried to discover the truth about causes by himself; then he tried to (...) learn it from Anaxagoras; and then, having failed in both endeavors, he resorted to logoi, both "divine" in the hypothesis of the forms and "human" in the hypothesis of intermediates, the former being the "safest" recourse. Finally, a defense is provided for the thesis that in calling the deuteros plous "deuteros," Socrates is being ironical. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por fim introduzir a leitura de um texto com muitas versões em latim e grego desde a Idade Média. As figuras da narrativa são pagãs, mas a mensagem é cristã: a prática da virtude é mais importante que o conhecimento. Tal permite subir a uma montanha com três círculos, degrau a degrau, até que a luta pela felicidade atinja a morada dos bem-aventurados (beatorum domicilium).

In the Phaedo, Socrates leads us to expect that his final argument will address the details of Cebes’ cloakmaker objection. Nonetheless, almost all commentators treat the final argument as unconnected to these details. This paper argues that close attention to Cebes’ objection, Socrates’ restatement of it, and Socrates’ final argument shows that the final argument does offer a detailed response. According to the objection, the soul suffers as it brings life to the body, which ultimately leads to its destruction. Socrates (...) argues that, on the contrary, bringing life to the body is precisely what ensures the soul’s immortality and indestructability. Cebes’ objection targets Socrates’ so-called ‘affinity argument’. In responding to Cebes’ objection, the final argument fills in the account of the soul that Socrates put forward in the affinity argument. In doing so, it identifies one precise way in which the soul is akin to the divine. (shrink)

This Paper Offers A New Interpretation of Phaedo 96a–103a. Plato has devoted the dialogue up to this point to a series of arguments for the claim that the soul is immortal. However, one of the characters, Cebes, insists that so far nothing more has been established than that the soul is durable, divine, and in existence before the incarnation of birth. What is needed is something more ambitious: a proof that the soul is not such as to pass out of (...) existence. According to Socrates’s initial response to Cebes at 95e8–96a1, giving such a demonstration requires a thorough investigation into “the reason for coming to be and passing away in general” (ὅλως γὰϱ δεῖ πεϱὶ γενέσεως ϰαὶ Φθοϱᾶς τὴν αἰτίαν διαπϱαγματεύσασθαι .. (shrink)

This chapter examines Plato's recurrent response to the “Growing Argument” in the dialogue that exhibits Plato's most extensive evaluation of the concept of “number,” Phaedo. There, Plato illustrates mathematical Pythagorean argumentative techniques in the figures of Socrates's interlocutors Simmias and Cebes, and critiques them according to whether or not they exhibit a proper methodological rigor. The proposition of Forms and teleological causation generates new ways of thinking about number. When Socrates finally develops the most complete analysis of number that can (...) be found in Plato's oeuvre, in the final argument, he does so chiefly in order to lay the groundwork for a proof of the soul's immortality. The Phaedo thus illustrates Plato's most circumspect appropriation of mathematical Pythagorean concepts. (shrink)

Socrates' last words are a microcosm of the riddle his character poses to the philosophical reader. Are they sincere or ironic? Do they represent an afterthought prompted by a belated sense of familial responsibility or a death–bed epiphany? Are we to determine their reference in relation to the surface logic of the Phaedo or take them as the sign of a concealed discursive depth? In what follows, I will argue that the answer to these questions depends upon acknowledgement and clarification (...) of the pedagogical challenge Socrates faces in conversation with Simmias and Cebes. What I have to say is prompted, in large measure, by Glenn Mosts recent article which both undertakes substantial analysis of the riddles treatment by the tradition and develops a plausible solution. I do not accept this solution. But the struggle to articulate my misgivings about his argument was indispensible to the development of my own. In view of this, it seems prudent to begin with a brief summary of the position he takes. (shrink)

In his discussion of the ethics of suicide Plato alludes to more than one traditional injunction against it:indicates a fairly general acceptance of its wickedness. Cebes has heard the Pythagorean Philolaus, among others, saying that suicide was immoral, but has gathered no satisfactory explanation as to why this should be so. One reason, impressive, but, Socrates admits, difficult is to be found.

What happens to the soul after death? Does it simply vanish, or does it continue to exist beyond the body? In the Phaedo, Plato presents Socrates’ final conversation with his companions before his execution, a discussion where he makes the case that the soul is immortal. Through a series of arguments, Socrates seeks to demonstrate that the soul exists before birth and endures beyond physical death. However, his companions, Simmias and Cebes, challenge his reasoning with thought-provoking objections. Does Socrates ultimately (...) prove the soul’s immortality, or do his challengers expose doubts that remain unresolved? (shrink)

This paper raises a new interpretive puzzle concerning Socrates’ attitude towards truth in the Phaedo. At one point Socrates seems to advocate that he is justified in trying to convince himself that the soul is immortal and destined for a better place regardless of whether or not these claims are true, but that Cebes and Simmias should relentlessly pursue the truth about the very same matter. This raises the question: Why might Socrates believe that he will benefit from believing things (...) about death irrespective of the truth, but that Cebes and Simmias will not? Why should they continue pursuing the truth? This paper argues that the relevant difference between Socrates and his friends is that Socrates is a fully accomplished philosopher, while his friends are not. This, I argue, makes Socrates an epistemic authority, and it is in virtue of being an epistemic authority that he is justified in not pursuing the truth about death. The upshot of this paper is that sometimes the demands of living well require that we abandon the pursuit of truth and knowledge. (shrink)

The long sentence at Plato Pbaedo 62a has been the subject of much discussion from Antiquity on. None of the proposed interpretations gives satisfactory sense. The basic error is that everyone has failed to perceive the ultimate unity of the sentence, which leads to the wrong view that the force of the negation ουδέποτε extends to the first part of the sentence only. The reading proposed here takes account of the fundamentally oral character of Plato's language; it is shown that, (...) when the sentence is half-way, the initial construction is resumed and simplified. The force of the negation ουδέποτε extends to the sentence as a whole. This results in an interpretation which is in full accordance with the context: Cebes is supposed to be astonished at the fact that suicide is prohibited, even for those people for whom death is preferable to life. (shrink)

No final do prólogo do Fédon, há uma tensão entre desejo de morte e proibição do suicídio entendida por Cebes como um contrassenso manifesto. Contudo, o que se mostra um disparate é na realidade o recurso platônico para introduzir grandes temas que serão trabalhados ao longo do diálogo. Delinear-se-á, numa curiosa trama de mythos e lógos, um ponto crucial que reverbera no restante do diálogo e que possui, com efeito, grande envergadura para o pensamento filosófico e religioso posterior: trata-se do (...) passo 62b, no qual se diz que “nós homens estamos numa certa de phrourá”. Como entender essa afirmação, cuja obscuridade é reconhecida pelo próprio Sócrates? Parece-nos que a compreensão desse passo depende da interpretação e, por conseguinte, da tradução que se dá para o termo phrourá. Afinal, trata-se de prisão, cárcere, custódia, posto, ou serviço de guarda? Devido às muitas controvérsias que esse vocábulo tem causado desde a Antiguidade, e na confiança de que essa discussão ainda está longe de encontrar seu termo, este artigo tem como objetivo não só analisar a semântica desse vocábulo grego, mas também articulá-la com o passo no qual está inserida. E o pano de fundo: uma visão religiosa particular que afirma o divino ser o que cuida dos homens. Em suma, espera-se que esse debate proporcione recursos para novas pesquisas e reflexões férteis sobre a filosofia platônica. (shrink)

To unravel the intricacies of the last argument of the Phaedo for the immortality of the soul, the reader has to peel away successive presuppositions, his own, Plato's and not least the presupposition that Plato very skilfully portrays as being shared by Socrates and his friends.A first presupposition is the reader's own. According to our modern ways of thinking, a soul that is immortal, if there is such a thing, is a soul that lives forever. That presupposition is not shared (...) by Socrates and Cebes (Socrates' interlocutor in the final argument). A soul that survives separation from the body, once or a number of times, is held to have survived death and therefore to be immortal. But it does not follow that it will live forever. For a soul to live forever, it must be shown to be not only immortal, but imperishable. Only if the soul is both immortal and imperishable can the assembled company be sure that the Socrates who is talking to them now will still be living when, after sunset, he has drunk the hemlock and can talk to them no more.The modern reader who has divested himself of the presupposition that immortal and imperishable are mere synonyms, and therefore appreciates the need for an argument designed specifically to prove that the soul is imperishable and not merely immortal, has nonetheless to be aware of a second presupposition, a presupposition shared by Socrates and his friends which restricts the meaning that the modern reader might otherwise suppose to be conveyed by the word 'imperishable'. Both Socrates and Cebes, as portrayed in the Phaedo, take it for granted that the only time when the soul might perish is the moment of her separation from the body. Provided it can be shown that the soul will survive separation from the body, no matter how often the body is taken from her, the soul, so they are happy to assume, will have shown herself to be both immortal and imperishable.We do not have to suppose that this second presupposition is shared by the author of the dialogue. Plato's subtle but insistent restriction of the moment when the soul might be threatened with extinction to the moment of her separation from the body has been deliberately designed to alert the reader to a way of thinking which Socrates, Cebes and Echecrates all take for granted, but which Plato does not necessarily invite the reader of the dialogue to share.The restriction is nonetheless essential to the structure of the argument. It is because Socrates does not envisage a possible extinction of the soul at any moment other than the moment of separation from the body that he is able to present a soul that is essentially alive as immune to the death which separates soul from body, however often such a separation may occur, and as therefore (so he claims) not only immortal but imperishable.In presenting that argument, how far has Plato deliberately foregone any attempt to prove that the soul is imperishable subsequently to the moment of her separation from the body? Socrates argues that the soul is unaffected by the death of the body because she is essentially alive. He does not argue that she is immune to destruction or extinction because she is essentially existent. In the face of Plato's silence, in the Phaedo and elsewhere, the modern reader has to hold in abeyance a third and final presupposition, that only a being whose essence it is to exist can of its nature never not exist.To understand the dialogue is therefore no easy matter. The reader needs to distinguish Socrates as the mouthpiece of Plato from Plato as the author of the dialogue. At the same time the modern reader has to distinguish the Plato of history from a fictional Plato who shares our own ideas and our own preconceptions, including the concept of a being cuius essentia est esse. An intricate double task, which other modern readers of the dialogue have so far not even attempted. (shrink)

A defense is provided of the following translation of Phaedo 104d1-3: "Would they not, Cebes, be those things which, whatever they possess, force it to have not only their own form, but also in every case that of one of its opposites?".

In thePhaedo, Socrates warns his listeners, discouraged by the objections of Simmias and Cebes, against becoming haters oflogoi. I argue that the ‘misologists’ are presented as a type of proto-skeptic and that Socrates in fact shows covert sympathy for their position. The difference between them is revealed by the pragmatic argument for trust in the immortality of the soul that Socrates offers near the end of the passage: the misologists reject such therapeutic uses oflogos. I conclude by assessing the relationship (...) of the positions of Socrates and the misologists in thePhaedoto those of later ancient skeptics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato’s Phaedo by Franco TRABATTONIAthanasia A. GiasoumiTRABATTONI, Franco. From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato’s Phaedo. Boston: Brill, 2023. 190 pp. Cloth, $143.00In his comprehensive study of the Phaedo, Franco Trabattoni challenges the conventional interpretation of Plato’s thought by denying that Plato was ever a dogmatist or a skeptic. The opening chapter proposes that Plato employs a “third way” standing (...) on the Parmenidean distinction between dôxa (belief) and epistēme (knowledge). According to Trabattoni, the Phaedo (together with all other dialogues dealing with the distinction between sensible and intelligible reality) implies that knowledge of the forms can be obtained only after the separation of body and soul and only without the assistance of intermediaries. He contends that humans have no better instrument than lôgos to discover the intelligible realities (forms) that philosophy seeks. However, because lôgos serves as an intermediary, he believes that the mediation of lôgos introduces an unavoidable fault into the cognitive process, which is directly linked to the concept of dôxa. He maintains that this hypothesis is essential for the arguments presented in the Phaedo’s first part to make sense.Trabattoni delves into the Phaedo not just philosophically but also linguistically, particularly in passage 60c, where Cebes brings up the question of suicide. Notably, in chapter 2, Trabattoni provides a new translation of this passage that contrasts with the readings supplied by Dorter, Gallop, and Boter. Trabattoni claims that Plato responds to the problem of suicide by adhering to the eudaemonistic stance that no obligation that goes against the happiness of the individual subject to it is of any value.Chapter 3 features a counterargument to the predominant viewpoint positing an inconsistency between the Phaedo and the Republic. Trabattoni asserts that these dialogues agree in maintaining that true virtue can be ascribed only to those who believe in metaphysical realities and possess an exclusive desire to acquire knowledge of them. He posits that the disparities between the two dialogues can be attributed primarily to differing perspectives rather than a significant theoretical divide.In my opinion, chapter 4 is the book’s most interesting and original portion. Here, Trabattoni argues that Plato’s contrast in the Phaedo between genuine and false philosophers is directed at Antisthenes, specifically, that Plato opposes his Socratism to Antisthenes’ by depicting the Platonic Socrates as a genuine philosopher (philōsophos) in contrast to Antisthenes’ Socrates, who is portrayed as a false one (philōdoxos). According to Trabattoni, Plato endeavors to provide what Antisthenes’ portrayal of Socrates does not, namely, a metaphysical perspective that differentiates between opinion and truth. Though novel and charming, Trabattoni’s interpretation is not supported by the text since the Phaedo makes no direct allusion to Antisthenes’ Socrates, mentioning Antisthenes only at the beginning (58b) as someone present at Socrates’ last moments. Thus, the book’s strongest section could also be considered its weakest.Chapter 5 argues that the recollection theory is not intended to establish the possibility of a complete retrieval of the knowledge of the forms. [End Page 163] Trabattoni disagrees with Scott’s and others’ assertion that recollection is a method of inquiry on the grounds that Socrates never explains how the alleged “method” of recollection should be applied. Rather, Trabattoni contends, the function of recollection is to explain why human intellective knowledge cannot exceed the boundary of dôxa. Trabattoni argues further that the recollection theory indicates that only when the soul is separated from the body, that is, when a person dies, is it possible to gain knowledge of the forms.Chapters 6 and 7 examine in depth the philosophical, methodological, and linguistic aspects of the objections raised by Cebes and Simmias as well as Socrates’ ensuing arguments regarding the immortality of the soul. Additionally, Trabattoni explores the historical background of Plato’s Phaedo and the impact on it of Pythagoreanism, Orphism, and Eleatic philosophy.Chapter 8 is another particularly captivating section. It offers a fresh perspective on the concept of the “second voyage” (deũteros ploũs), challenging the prevailing interpretation, on which the second voyage signifies the triumph of the... (shrink)

In this book two philosophers, Simmias and Cebes, who were friends and contemporaries of Plato’s continue their discussions of life and death and religion in this current year of crisis. Beginning in a railway station in Boston and continuing on through Providence and New Haven, they argue the eternal problems of what truth is and whether liberalism, with its concern for human reason, its tolerance of people who disagree with it, has much of a place in a world of totalitarianism (...) and war, of Freud with his irrational subconscious and the atomic bomb with its fury. In an amusing and searching scrutiny of the liberals and their opponents Mr. Bixler analyzes through his two heroes the principal modern philosophies that are grappling with the ills of the world, and he demonstrates a considerable area of agreement between their opposing views. (shrink)

Comment, Socrate, personnage historique et citoyen notoire de l’Athènes, est-il devenu une fiction littéraire dans les dialogues de Platon? Serait-il une réaction, assez étrange, au refus de socrate d’écrire? Quoi qu’il en soit, peu après la mort de Socrate, fait son apparition un nouveau genre nommé Socratikoi logoi. Outre Platon d’autres écrivains ont donné de telles compositions en dialogue: Eschine de Sphattos, Antistene, Aristipe, Bryson, Cebes, Criton, Euclide de Megara, Phaidon. Est-ce que les dialogues de jeunesse de Platon sont autre (...) chose que les plus réussies Socratikoi logoi. La thématique de ces dialogue en manière socratique est la démonstration savoureuse que l’interlocuteur de Socrate, malgré le fait qu’il semble savoir beaucoup de choses, il ne sait, en fin de compte, rien. Presque tous les jeunes de l’entourage de Socrate avaient emprunté cette technique de Socrate et dialoguaient avec les citoyen d’Athènes, faisant de Socrate un nom notoire, tout en l’exposant aussi à la haine de ceux qu’il avait directement humilié et que ses disciples avaient humilié. Cette technique de montret au savant qu’il ne sait rien; a enchanté les disciples qui ont inventé ultérieurement Socratikoi logoi. Souvent, Platon lui-même, en choisissant des enjeux impossibles dans ses dialogues de jeunesse (la définition d’une vertu) crée des Socratikoi logoi. (shrink)

With the celebrated frontispiece to the New Science (1744) and through an immediate comparison of this image to the ancient moral fable inscribed in the Tablet of Cebes the Theban, Vico ingeniously employs a then well-known common topic and a conventional emblematic device to inaugurate his topics-based philosophy. A topical knowledge of the human cannot, for Vico, be seized by precept only; it must be undergone as an active and imaginative recovery of the topics through memory. In times of need, (...) topical memory is consequential for civil wisdom and historical consciousness. An aptitude for the practic of topics is manifest in the manmade figurations of fable and poetry and in the requisite and recollective resynthesis of them. By modeling, exemplifying, explaining, and soliciting this aptitude for topical knowledge, Vico provides a multifold teaching on the acquisition of civil wisdom. (shrink)

Plato seeks to establish in _Phaedrus_ a close link between poetry and the eidetic sphere to which philosophical knowledge belongs, or which the philosopher accesses through a practiced synoptic-dialectic understanding. This type of philosophical poetry is perfectly illustrated in the Socratic palinode itself, which Socrates –and ultimately Plato – establishes as a paradigm of the poet philosopher, a palinode by necessity must be uttered “with certain poetic terms”. Working from that palinode as a model, Plato seeks to approach the subject (...) of _éros_ with philosophical discourses fed with poetical terms, that is, through an explicit blend of philosophical and poetic elements, the clearest example of which is the _Phaedrus_ as a whole, or, in more general terms, the Platonic dialogical genre in as much as this puts forward an interaction between the philosophical and poetic registers. Taking into account this relationship of compatibility that Plato establishes in _Phaedrus _between the poetic-philosophical paradigm and the traditional paradigm – which in books I, III and X of the _Republic_ clearly appeared in tension–in this paper I’m interested in supporting such a relationship in the dream anecdote as told by Socrates at the start of the _Phaedo_. In this anecdote, the philosopher confesses to Simmias and Cebes that since his time in prison, although he had never done such a thing before before, he has been composing poems based on the versification and musicalization of Aesop’s fables and a hymn to Apollo. (shrink)

This article investigates the essay the Descriptio Silentii (Description of Silence) by Celio Calcagnini, a humanist scholar from Ferrara, an essay written in the early sixteenth century and published in 1544. The article provides the first English translation of the essay, describes its inspiration and sources and reviews the content of the essay in order to assess Calcagnini’s contribution to the philosophy of silence from the Renaissance and before. Calcagnini’s essay is an ekphrasis of a picture supposedly located in the (...) ruins of the Roman temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste, the inspiration for its format is the late Hellenistic text the Tabula Cebetis, and the principal content is an appeal for the virtues of silence in human affairs and the castigation of the garrulous following the example of Plutarch’s essay De Garrulitate from the Moralia. However, this appeal to the virtues of silence is a prelude to the deeper theme and purpose of the essay: the theme of mystical silence, a silence by which it is possible to approach and understand the god-head and the divine, and which can only be expressed in non-verbal language, riddles or poetic imagery. (shrink)

Ahrensdorf’s interpretation of the Phaedo leaves few stones unturned. While other scholars have pointed to the fallibility of Socrates’ “proofs” for the immortality of the soul, or have sought to distinguish the primary interlocutors, Simmias and Cebes, or have examined this dialogue’s vindication of the philosophical life, Ahrensdorf manages to pull all these issues together in a coherent, holistic reading of the Phaedo. The dialogue, he argues, presents Socrates’ views that the individual soul is not immortal and that our embodied (...) human existence is the place where the philosophical life is lived out, not some transcendent reality in which perfect wisdom exists. “In the Phaedo, then, Socrates indicates, albeit quietly, that, in his view, the philosophical life is the best way of life, not because of the rewards the divine soul of the philosopher will enjoy in Hades, but rather because of the happiness the philosopher enjoys, as a human being, in this life”. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Swan Song Hemlock Ultimate Disease Conclusion Further Reading.