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| 354 | Wisdom makes virtue and true goodness possible |
| Full Idea: It is wisdom that makes possible courage and self-control and integrity or, in a word, true goodness. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 069b) | |||
| A reaction: Aristotle also says that prudence (phronesis) makes virtue possible. |
| 370 | Philosophy is a purification of the soul ready for the afterlife |
| Full Idea: Souls which have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy will live after death without bodies. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 114b) | |||
| A reaction: Purifying it of what? Error, or desire, or narrow-mindedness, or the physical? |
| 350 | In investigation the body leads us astray, but the soul gets a clear view of the facts |
| Full Idea: When philosophers investigate with the help of the body they are led astray, but through reflection the soul gets a clear view of the facts. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 065c) |
| 362 | The greatest misfortune for a person is to develop a dislike for argument |
| Full Idea: No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than developing a dislike for argument. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 089d) |
| 13155 | If you add one to one, which one becomes two, or do they both become two? |
| Full Idea: I cannot convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other, ...or that when you divide one, the cause of becoming two is now the division. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |||
| A reaction: Lovely questions, all leading to the conclusion that two consists of partaking in duality, to which you can come by several different routes. |
| 21347 | If Simmias is taller than Socrates, that isn't a feature that is just in Simmias |
| Full Idea: When you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, so you mean there is in Simmias both tallness and shortness? - I do. ...But surely he is not taller than Socrates because he is Simmias but because of the tallness he happens to have? | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102b-c) | |||
| A reaction: He adds that both people must be cited. This appears to be what we now call a rejection relative height as an 'internal' relation, which is it would presumably be if it was a feature of one or of both men. |
| 360 | We must have a prior knowledge of equality, if we see 'equal' things and realise they fall short of it |
| Full Idea: We must have some previous knowledge of equality, before the time when we saw equal things, but realised that they fell short of it. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 075a) |
| 1 | There is only one source for all beauty |
| Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 100c) | |||
| A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |
| 368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them |
| Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 102a) |
| 16516 | The ship which Theseus took to Crete is now sent to Delos crowned with flowers |
| Full Idea: The day before the trial the prow of the ship that the Athenians send to Delos had been crowned with garlands. - Which ship is that? - It is the ship in which, the Athenians say, Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking the victims. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 058a) | |||
| A reaction: Not philosophical, but this is the Ship of Theseus whose subsequent identity, Plutarch tells us, became a matter of dispute. |
| 359 | If we feel the inadequacy of a resemblance, we must recollect the original |
| Full Idea: If someone sees a resemblance, but feels that it falls far short of the original, they must therefore have a recollection of the original. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 074e) |
| 357 | People are obviously recollecting when they react to a geometrical diagram |
| Full Idea: The way in which people react to a geometrical diagram or anything like that is unmistakable proof of the theory of recollection. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 073a) |
| 9343 | To achieve pure knowledge, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things with the soul |
| Full Idea: We are convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be the original ideal which motivates the devotion to a priori knowledge - that it will lead to a 'pure' knowledge, which in Plato's case will be eternal and necessary knowledge, like taking lessons from the gods. Wrong. |
| 15859 | To investigate the causes of things, study what is best for them |
| Full Idea: If one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. Then it befitted a man to investigate only ...what is best. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097d) | |||
| A reaction: A reversal of the modern idea of 'best explanation'. Socrates is citing Anaxagoras's proposal to understand things by interpreting the workings of a supreme Mind. It is the religious version of best explanation. |
| 13154 | Do we think and experience with blood, air or fire, or could it be our brain? |
| Full Idea: Is it with the blood that we think, or with the air or the fire that is in us? Or is it none of these, but the brain that supplies our senses of hearing and sight and smell. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 097a) | |||
| A reaction: In retrospect it seems surprising that such clever people hadn't worked this one out, given the evidence of anatomy, in animals and people, and given brain injuries. By the time of Galen they appear to have got the answer. |
| 364 | One soul can't be more or less of a soul than another |
| Full Idea: Is one soul, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another? Not in the least. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 093b) | |||
| A reaction: This idea is attractive because unconsciousness and death seem to be abrupt procedures, and so appear to be all-or-nothing, but I would personally view extreme Alzheimer's as an erasing of the soul, though a minimum level of it seems all-or-nothing. |
| 361 | It is a mistake to think that the most violent pleasure or pain is therefore the truest reality |
| Full Idea: When anyone's soul feels a keen pleasure or pain it cannot help supposing that whatever causes the most violent emotion is the plainest and truest reality - which it is not. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 084c) | |||
| A reaction: Do people think that? Most people distinguish subjective from objective. Wounded soldiers are also aware of victory or defeat. |
| 351 | War aims at the acquisition of wealth, because we are enslaved to the body |
| Full Idea: All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth, and we want this because of the body, to which we are slave. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 066c) |
| 13156 | Fancy being unable to distinguish a cause from its necessary background conditions! |
| Full Idea: Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a cause. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 099c) | |||
| A reaction: Not as simple as he thinks. It seems fairly easy to construct a case where the immediately impacting event remains constant, and the background condition is changed. Even worse when negligence is held to be the cause. |
| 369 | If the Earth is spherical and in the centre, it is kept in place by universal symmetry, not by force |
| Full Idea: If the earth is spherical and in the middle of the heavens, it needs neither air nor force to keep it from falling. The uniformity of heaven and equilibrium of earth are sufficient support. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 108e) |
| 363 | Whether the soul pre-exists our body depends on whether it contains the ultimate standard of reality |
| Full Idea: The theory that our soul exists even before it enters the body surely stands or falls with the soul's possession of the ultimate standard of reality. | |||
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 092d) |