Customer Reviews

Plato's Phaedo

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This brilliant study of the Phaedo ends up to me as being rather an anti-climax. By applying modern analytical logic to the Phaedo, that is: not reading Plato on his own terms but disparaging his so-called faults in logic, I wonder if Bostock is not missing the general literary genre of the Phaedo, where metaphor and imagination play a role that are equal or more important than analytical logic.
An example of this is on page 192 where Bostock writes that:
"The long final argument, then, turns out in the end to be something of an anticlimax. We have laboured through a lengthy, and often perplexing, discussion of causation which attempts to substantiate the principle that the true cause of a thing's being P must itself have the property of being P, and must have it essentially. But even if this principle is granted, and it is granted also that the soul is the true cause of life, still the desired conclusion will not follow. For to say that life is an essential property of the soul is just to say that the soul must be alive so long as it exists, and if we regard this as claiming that the soul is 'immortal' ('deathless'), then certainly the word 'immortal' is being used in an unusual sense. But Plato has failed to notice this. Taking it for granted that the word is being used in its usual sense, he thinks it must obviously follow that the soul exists for ever. And I am afraid that this is simply a mistake which we can do nothing to put right."

I was hugely disappointed by Bostock's commentary on Plato's Phaedo. In essence I agree with the reviews of the previous two readers, but even more so. I can only add that Bostock does not seem to me to be a truly objective critic. He almost chooses to misunderstand the theories that Plato addresses in this dialogue and often drops into the same pitfalls in which he believes that Plato has fallen. As a previous reviewer mentions, it is almost uncanny that many of Plato's views on the soul and immortality are echoed four centuries later by Jesus. It seems paradoxical that the carpenter of Nazareth could have been a student of Plato, and even more paradoxical that Mr. Bostock would not find this worthy of discussion seeing the impact these two figures have made on the world.

Religious arguments aside, the narrow, dare I say biased, review of Mr. Bostock is shocking comming from a man of his academic eminence. His declarations are vague and arrogantly deviate from Plato's argumets without a by-your-leave. His vantage is narrow considering the broad topic that Plato addresses. Yes, it is necessary to show that some of Plato's arguments may be unsustanible but Mr. Bostock's are even more egregious in this respect.

_If it was up to me to preserve just one of the dialogues of Plato for posterity it would be the Phaedo. That is because this is the metaphysical core of the teachings of Socrates (the main character) as told by Plato. As is emphasized in the text, death is the main topic of concern for the true philosopher- and that is what is covered here. However, there is nothing morbid about it. This is a message of hope, for Socrates establishes the divinity and immortality of the soul. The good man, he who has purified himself through the love of wisdom (Philosophy) goes to a higher, purer realm to be with like-minded souls and the gods themselves. The bad man also goes to his just reward with those of like character.

_If I was to abstract the core truth here it would be that the true philosopher is always trying to free his soul from the body- for only then is the soul free of the distractions and distortions that can corrupt it and keep it from direct perception of the Ideals (Absolute Truth, Good, Beauty, and Justice.)

_You easily see where the Church borrowed so much of its basic theological underpinnings. In fact, reading this work abolishes forever in your mind the idea that the pre-Christian pagans were in anyway necessarily savage or barbaric in their deepest spiritual beliefs. This is spirituality more pure than anything preached by the Church- and it is supported by reasoned argument and not appeal to empty faith and authority.

_The closing of the dialog is probably the finest depiction in Western literature of the death of a great and good man. You truly concur that Socrates was indeed the wisest and justest and best of all men.