The following passages are from the Phaedo. At varying points questions are asked that require an explanation from you. Space is allotted for your explanations. The questions are meant to guide you through the text and lead toward an understanding of Socrates’ argument.
Socrates: “ When I was young, I was tremendously eager for the kind of wisdom which they call investigation of nature. I thought it was a glorious thing to know the causes of everything, why each thing comes into being and why it perishes and why it exists; “
With this first statement how is Socrates like the other Presocratic philosophers which we have read?
“ … I investigated the phenomena of heaven and earth until finally I made up my mind that I was by nature totally unfitted for this kind of investigation.”
Does Socrates succeed in finding the causes of things as the Presocratics did?
“Then one day I heard a man reading from a book, as he said, by Anaxagoras, that it is the Divine Mind ( the Mind of God) that arranges and causes all things. I was pleased with this theory of cause, and it seemed to me to be somehow right that the mind should be the cause of all things, and I thought, ‘If this is so, the mind in arranging things arranges everything and establishes each thing as it is best for it to be. So if anyone wishes to find the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of a particular thing, he must find out what sort of existence … or activity is best for it. And therefore in respect to that particular thing, and other things too, a man need examine nothing but what is best and most excellent; for then he will necessarily know also what is inferior, since the science of both is the same.”
What is the new theory of cause that excites Socrates? What does it mean to say that Divine Mind is the cause of all things? Specifically why should all be for the best or be as good as it could be if the Mind of God is involved in its coming into being? Does this saying remind you of the argument of one of the previous Presocratic philosophers?
“ As I considered these things I was delighted to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of things quite to my mind, and I thought he would tell me whether the earth is flat or round, and when he had told me that, would go on to explain the cause and the necessity of it, and would tell me the nature of the best and why it is best for the earth to be as it is; and if he said the earth was in the center, he would proceed to show that it is best for it to be in the center; and I had made up my mind that if he made those things clear to me, I would no longer yearn for any other kind of cause.”
How does Socrates seek to apply the idea of the good or what is best toward an understanding of the world?
“ I never imagined that when Anaxagoras said the world was ordered by an intelligent Divine Mind he would introduce any other cause for these things than that it is best for the world to be as it is. So I thought when he assigned the cause of each thing and of all things in common he would go on and explain what is best for each and what is good for all in common. I prized my hopes very highly, and I seized the books very eagerly and read them as fast as I could, that I might know as fast as I could about the best and the worst. My glorious hope, my friend, was quickly snatched away from me. As I went on with my reading I saw that Anaxagoras made no use of this Divine Mind, and did not assign any real causes for the ordering of things, but mentioned as causes air and aether and water and many other absurdities. And it seemed to me it was very much as if one should say that Socrates does with an intelligent mind whatever he does, and then, in trying to give the causes of the particular thing I do, should say first that I am now sitting here ( in prison) because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints which divide them and the sinews can be contracted and relaxed… and should fail to mention the real causes, which are, that the Athenians decided that it was best to condemn me, and therefore I have decided that it was best for me to sit here ( in prison) and that it is right for me to stay and undergo whatever penalty they order.
How does Anaxagoras fail to make use of his own principle? How does Socrates, on the other hand, use this very principle to explain his own predicament?
“ Whoever talks in that way ( of sinews and bones) is unable to make a distinction and to see that in reality a cause is one thing, and the thing without which the cause could never be a cause is quite another thing. And so it seems to me that most people, when they give the name of cause to the latter ( that is, to the material bones and sinews) , are groping in the dark, as it were, and are giving them a name that does not belong to them. And so one man makes the earth stay below the heavens by putting a vortex about it, and a
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