This paper deals with the deuteros plous, literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s Phaedo, the key passage being Phd. 99e4-100a3. I argue that (a) the ‘flight into the logoi’ can have two different interpretations, a standard one and a non-standard one. The issue is whether at 99e-100a Socrates means that both the student of erga and the student of logoi consider images (‘the standard interpretation’), or the student of logoi does not consider images but (...) that “consistency should suffice for truth” (‘the non-standard interpretation’); (b) the non-standard one implies the problem of the hypothesis, a problem analogous to the problem of the elenchus; (c) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’ ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th Meditation and the final proof for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. (shrink)

8000 Word annotated bibliography on the Phaedo, with roughly 70 entries. Note that the subscription version is a bit easier to navigate. The hyperlinks work in this pdf, but you can not as easily jump to the different sections.

The non-identity argument at Phaedo 74b–c is among the most studied and disputed arguments in Plato’s dialogues. In the passage, equality is distinguished from perceptible equals insofar as the latter sometimes appear (phainetai) unequal. A long-standing crux is whether the distinction concerns perceptible equals’ merely appearing unequal or actually being so. A fresh approach to the construal of the verb phainomai is taken here and shown to favor the latter view, thereby securing a stronger argument for non-identity.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.