One feature of 'soul' is easily obscured in translation. The word may be used not only of individuals, but also in a generic sense to connote a kind of 'stuff, just as 'body' may be used to mean not only individual bodies but also 'matter'. See on 70c8—d6 and 80c2— d7. It is not always clear whether 'soul-stuff or 'the individual soul' is meant. The distinction is critical for immortality. For the idea that 'soul is immortal', merely in the sense that there exists a permanent quantum of 'soul-stuff, would no more imply the immortality of individual souls than the notion of a permanent quantum of matter implies the immortality of individual bodies. Clearly, the latter notion is compatible with the view that no individual body is immortal, and that there may be continual variation in the total number of bodies existing at any given time. Might not the same hold true of souls? At Republic 611a it is argued that the total number of souls must be 'always the same'. This would imply, assuming that no soul can be shared by several organisms, a fixed limit to the number of things that could be simultaneously living.
The foregoing notions of soul are immensely varied. They range, on a descending scale, from the intellectual and spiritual functions of a small class of human beings to that which is shared by living things in general. This variation poses several problems. First, it may be asked whether arguments appealing to such widely divergent concepts of soul could establish the immortality of the same thing. The notions of soul as 'intellect' and soul as 'life-principle' will, between them, largely monopolize the coming arguments. But these 'souls' can hardly be identified. Soul as intellect is said to be 'similar to what is unvarying' in virtue of its kinship with the changeless objects which it knows (80b2—3); whereas soul as life-principle is an agent of change in living bodies, and will, through its association with the body, be subject to change itself (e.g. 79c2—8, 81bl-c6, 83d4-e3).
Secondly, it remains uncertain which psychical characteristics are supposed in the Phaedo to survive death, and whether any others could, consistently with its arguments, be supposed to do so. Much of the argument suggests survival of the intellect or rational self only; and it may be asked whether this would be sufficient for, or even compatible with, the faith in 'personal' survival which Socrates affirms. If, for example, such features as memory or emotion are required for personal immortality, but are, at least implicitly, excluded from survival by the philosophical arguments, then personal survival not only goes unproven in the Phaedo but is actually ruled out.
Finally, the wide range of notions of 'soul' gives rise to a series of images of the soul-body relationship that can hardly be reconciled with one another. We may ask, for example, how the soul can at once 'bring life' to the body (105 c—d), 'rule and be master' of the body (80a, 94b—d), and yet be a 'prisoner' within the body, cooperating in its own captivity (82e—83a). The dialogue contains no single, logically coherent 'doctrine' that might answer such questions. As E. R. Dodds has said (G.I. 179), 'the Classical Age inherited a whole series of inconsistent pictures of the "soul" or "self'.' Several of these are amalgamated, no doubt consciously, in Plato's thought. But the more clearly they are distinguished, the more usefully the philosophical arguments can be explored.
See, further, E. R. Dodds, op.cit., Ch.7, and T. M. Robinson, P.P., Ch.2.
6Sbl—7. Plato's language for sense experience is often hard to interpret. The words translated 'sight' and 'hearing' at 65b2 may mean either, as here, the senses of sight and hearing, or, as at 74dl and 98d7, visual and auditory sensations. Both words recur at 65c6, where they seem best taken in the latter sense. For the meaning of 'sight' at 65e8, where the text is uncertain, see note 9.
The generic word for 'perception' is similarly ambiguous between 'sense' and 'sensation'. At 65b5 the phrase translated 'the bodily senses' means, literally, 'the senses around the body', suggesting that they are thought of as having bodily location. 'Sense' has been used in the translation also at 75bll, 79a2, 79c4, 79c5, 83a5, 96b5-6, and 99e4. At 65dl 1 'sense-perception' has been used, since the phrase 'those that come by way of the body' suggests that sensations are meant. This translation has been used also at 73c7 and 76a2. The meaning is uncertain at 66al, 75a7, 75all, 75bl, 75b6, 75e3, and 76d9. See also on 74c7-d3 and note 6.
The senses are continually disparaged—cf.65c5—10, 65e6—66a6, 79c2—8, 83a4—7, 99el-4. Yet just how they are 'neither accurate nor clear' (b5) is never properly explained. Can Socrates be thinking of misjudgements of size due to distance, or of refraction or other sources of visual error? His talk of the soul being 'taken in by the body' (65bll, cf.83a4—5) might suggest this. Cf.Protagoras 356c5— 357a2, Republic 602c—e. Such 'deceit', however, occurs against a background of perceptual judgements that are generally correct. Moreover, the senses themselves play an indispensable part in measurement, and thus in the correction of error. Mistaken judgements of size or shape would therefore fail to illustrate the theme that 'we neither hear nor see anything accurately' (b3—4), unless, indeed, the poets are to be credited with some version of the modern 'argument from illusion', to show that we never perceive physical objects as they really are.
Socrates' quarrel with the senses appears more radical. It is not merely that they misrepresent the physical world, but that they never present anything else. They hamper the soul's access to the real objects of its understanding, the 'Forms', that will be introduced at 65d4—5 below. They give no indication that there are any such objects, and strongly suggest that there are not. Clear philosophic understanding can therefore be achieved only when normal sensory awareness is suspended.
At 65b3, if any specific poets are meant, the reference may be to Epicharmus' line 'intelligence sees; intelligence hears; the others are deaf and blind' (DK 23 B 12).
65c2—4. 'The things that are'-, here, as often, Plato uses the present participle of the verb 'to be' with the definite article, to denote the object of the soul's understanding. The singular phrase has generally been translated 'that which is', and the plural 'the things that are'.
The Greek verb 'to be' has both (1) an 'incomplete' use, in which it requires a complement, expressed or understood, and (2) a 'complete' or 'absolute' use, in which it stands by itself. In use (1) the verb may express identity of subject with complement, or it may predicate the complement of the subject. In some contexts it is not certain which of these is meant. Nor is it clear whether any such distinction was recognized by Plato when this dialogue was written. Not until the much later Sophist is any systematic clarification of 'being' attempted. The distinction between the 'is' of identity and that of predication sometimes affects the interpretation of a phrase (see on 75c7—d6, p.131), or the assessment of an argument (see on 93d 1—5, p. 162).
In use (2), which survives only vestigially in English, the verb commonly means either 'to be true' or 'to exist'. It has often been rendered in one or other of these ways. In the present passage, however, it is not clear whether 'the things that are' are thought of as 'truths' or 'existents'. They are said to become clear to the soul in its reasoning. This might suggest that, as Burnet holds (note on 65c2—4), 'truths' are meant. Yet Socrates will shortly go on to speak of 'the hunt for each of the things that are' (66a3) in connection with 'Forms', which are introduced in terms suggestive of existents (see next note). It should be borne in mind that Plato constantly treats thought processes as analogous to perceptual ones. Sight and touch are his standard models for intellectual discovery and understanding. Such understanding, even when expressed as vision or grasp of 'objects', may well be thought of as including the apprehension of truths. If so, a sharp dichotomy between 'truths' and 'existents' need not be drawn at this point. Cf. C. H. Kahn (V.B.A.G. 457): 'If we recognise some interaction between the old use of the participle to refer to facts or events and the new use to designate whatever things there are in the world, this will help us to understand the persistent Greek refusal to make any sharp distinction between states of affairs or facts with a propositional structure, on the one hand, and individual objects or entities on the other. For the Greeks, both types count as "beings".'