Abstract
The paper aims to address the problem of the separation of body and soul in Plato’s Phaedo, in search of both its ontological features and moral consequences. Apart from the normal approach and use of dialogue as a literary and philosophical milestone for all body-soul dualisms in the history of philosophy, I believe two different ways of understanding this separation are outlined in the dialogue. The first one would indicate a moral separation, regarding what a philosopher should take care of: philosophers are supposed to mind the soul and not the body. A different way to address this separation between body and soul is the one I would like to consider as an ontological separation: the soul is so independent from the body that is declared to survive after its death. In a way, the dualistic ontology of individuals forcefully follows the bodily engagement of a chameleon-like soul in its wandering, both epistemological and moral, through the sensible world.
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- 1.
On the standard version of the body-mind problem in the Phaedo, see Fierro (2013).
- 2.
Broadie (2001, p. 307) and Carone (2005, p. 245) rightly stressed the relevance of this ethical dualism in the Phaedo. Woolf (2004) proposes a further and very sharp distinction between a weaker, called evaluative dualism, and a stronger ascetic reading of the separation. For Pitteloud (2017, pp. 58–82), the separation between soul and body must be understood in the light of the separation between Forms and sensible objects. See also Pakaluk (2003) on the maximization of the death as core concern of a philosophical life: the philosopher aims to be as dead as possible while alive; hence, he welcomes the maximal condition of death, when it arrives (2003, p. 99).
- 3.
- 4.
At the same time I distance myself from Carone (2005). She claims that Plato, in his later dialogues, would have left behind the strong dualistic commitments of the Phaedo by allowing that the mind may be the subject of spatial movements. I believe some kind of indecision and nuances on his dualistic approach can be seen right from the Phaedo itself, i.e. from at least the middle dialogues. See also Johannsen (2000) claiming that in the Timaeus, Plato is ascribing spatial properties to soul and body alike.
- 5.
Here it is important to note that the word εἶδος doesn’t have, in the passage under discussion, the technical meaning of idea/form. This connotation of the word is going to play an important role later on in the dialogue (see Phd 103e).
- 6.
Fierro (2013, p. 21) rightly points out that the comparative ὁμοιότερον here (along with the superlative ὁμοιότατον @80b) reveals that the ontological difference between the soul and the body is more attenuated than the one between the intelligible and the sensible realms. Casertano (2015 @79b) follows a similar line of thought: “this comparative leads, logically to (1) that the soul is not the invisible, but it is more invisible than the body; (2) that the body is also similar to the invisible, but less invisibile than the soul”.
- 7.
Apolloni (1996, p. 7) is rightly trying to recover the argument’s value, by taking it as a deductive proof and a philosophically more worthy of attention piece than, for example, the arguments of the reminiscence or the final argument.
- 8.
Boetus’ criticism and text have been regrettably omitted by Eusebius. For a discussion of this omission, see Gertz (2011, pp. 126–29).
- 9.
Another image, quite expressive, of the inevitability of this somatization is the one of the souls wandering as ghosts by the tombs (Phd 81d). See Gertz (2011, p. 29) on the reading of this very passage by Ammonium.
- 10.
Both the ideas of the palingenesis, which is a core point in the first argument for the immortality in the Phaedo (70c-72e), and the anamnesis, the second argument (72e-77a), also imply a kind of inclination of the soul towards the coupling with the body (in the first argument) and a positive function of the senses since knowledge is the result from an interaction between the information that our senses give us and universal notions, under which we classify our sense data (see Fierro, 2013, p. 24, and Scott, 1987, p. 348).
- 11.
Pakaluk (2003, p. 99) inspired this conclusion in his inquiring to what extent does a true philosopher achieves a philosophical life by practicing death in living. Our conclusions here are quite different, of course, since he’s not willing to admit some kind of influence of the epistemological and ethical effort of the philosopher on the ontological endurance of the dualism. This latter idea has been discussed in a recent talk with Thomas Johannsen at Brasenose College, Oxford. I’m deeply grateful for his insights, and I should admit that this paper owns a large debt to him.
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Cornelli, G. (2019). Separation of Body and Soul in Plato’s Phaedo: An Unprecedented Ontological Operation in the Affinity Argument. In: Pitteloud, L., Keeling, E. (eds) Psychology and Ontology in Plato. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 139. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04654-5_3
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