Abstract
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 95e9–96a1).
This leads Socrates to the passage with which this paper is concerned. He mentions
several changes of different sorts and nominates some purported “causes” that he
and other theorists used to accept, but which he now finds scarcely intelligible.
He then expounds his own mature view that the Forms are causes.
The existing literature on this passage is vast and highly sophisticated, so much
so that one might reasonably despair of saying something new at this stage. Nevertheless,
I think some of Socrates’s remarks on philosophical methodology in our
passage have not yet been appreciated as deeply as they should be. In particular,
there has been little work showing how well-integrated they are with his positive
proposals about causes. I also think that there are metaphysical models available
to modern philosophers, not merely coherent with but actually suggested by
Socrates’s methodology, which give a more satisfactory picture of those positive
proposals than others available in the contemporary literature. That, at any rate,
is what this paper aims to provide.