For 'wisdom' (79d6—7) see on 69a6—c3.
79e8—80a9. The soul's kinship with the divine is derived from its being 'naturally adapted' (a4—5) to rule the body, i.e. to discipline it and resist its desires (cf.94b—e). This may seem odd, in face of Socrates' continual stress upon the soul's bondage to the body (e.g. 66b-d, 83c—e). If 'rulership' indicates divinity, and 'being ruled' mortality, why should the soul's servitude to the body not suggest that it is mortal and the body divine? No doubt the conception of 'nature', here as elsewhere in Plato, is normative. What 'nature ordains'(80a 1) is what ought to happen, not what usually does. The soul's 'natural' fitness to rule the body does not mean that it always does so, just as in the Republic (430e—43 la) the 'natural' superiority of reason does not mean that it is actually in control. Even so, the notion of the soul's 'rulership' sits awkwardly with the theme of its imprisonment within the body. See on 64e4—65a3 (p.90).
'Rule' is more naturally attributed to gods than to Forms. But the Form world is virtually identified with the gods—see on 81a4—11. For human service to the gods, cf.62b-63a and see on 58a6-c5.
80al0—cl. The contrasts that have been drawn between Forms and the sensible world are summarized at 80b 1—5. Forms are called 'intelligible' (bl) versus 'non-intelligible' (b4). The word translated 'non-intelligible' can also mean 'unintelligent', and there may be a hint of this sense here: body is 'stupid'. For 'body' without the article see next note.
At 80b2 the Forms are said to be 'uniform', by contrast with the material realm, which is called 'multiform' (b4)—cf.78d5, 83e2. Hackforth (81, n.2) understands 'uniformity' to mean 'the denial of internal difference or distinction .of unlike parts'. If the Forms' incompositeness is taken to imply that they have no parts (see on 78c 1—9), then no distinction of parts of any kind, whether like or unlike, could be allowed them. However, the notion of parts may be irrelevant here. For 'uniform' may be explained as meaning 'of just one character'. See K. W. Mills, Phronesis 1958, 45—6 and W. F. Hicken, S.P.M. 191.
At 80b3—5 soul and body are said to be 'most similar' (superlative) to their respective domains, and not merely, as at 79al6 and 79e4, 'more similar'. 'Most similar' could be intensive—'very similar', or could mean 'more similar than anything else'. These interpretations of the superlative are logically distinct. Neither entails the other, and they call for different kinds of support. On neither interpretation would it follow that the soul shares all the features of the Forms, or that it shares any particular feature with them, or that it shares every feature that the body lacks. These inferences would be stronger on the intensive interpretation. But the claim that the soul is 'very similar' to the Forms is hardly warranted by the foregoing argument, which has shown merely that it has a few properties in common with them.
At 80b9—10 Socrates concludes that soul must be completely indissoluble 'or something close to it'. It is not clear whether this last phrase is meant to qualify the soul's indissolubility, or to signal reservations about the argument. Does Socrates mean that the soul may be nearly (but not quite) indissoluble, or that the argument nearly (but not quite) proves the soul indissoluble? Or are these two things confused? No suggestion that the soul might be 'nearly indissoluble' appears elsewhere, nor would it be consistent with the final conclusion that soul is 'immortal and imperishable' (106e9- 107al). On the other hand, 'nearly indissoluble' seems the more natural way of reading the present text.
80c2—d7. The meaning and text at 80c2—9 have been much disputed—see note 35. But the main argument is clear: even the body lasts for a considerable time after death, so the soul, being of superior nature to the body, may be expected to last longer still. The best comment on this argument is supplied by Simmias' and Cebes' parodies of it at 86a6—b5 and 87b6—c5.
It is somewhat odd that 'the body' should here be said to last for 'a fairly long time' (c5—6) after death, when only a few lines above (80b8) 'body' was said to be 'quickly dissolved' (cf.87e5). 'Body', which occurs at 80b8 without the article, as often (79b 16, 80a 1, 80b5, 81e2, 91d3, 91d7, 105c9), might be used generically ('matter'), or might perhaps mean 'a body' (i.e. 'a material thing'). However, 'the body' normally means 'the human body' (cf.79c2—6), and is explicitly equated with the corpse at 80c2—4. If its meaning varied in the course of the argument, there would be serious equivocation. For what is true of 'body' in the generic sense need not be true of individual 'bodies'. The same goes for 'soul'—see on 64e4—65a3 (p.89-90).
At 80d5—7 (cf.81a4, 81cl 1) there is a play on the words 'Hades' (haides) and 'invisible' (aides). The Form world is 'Hades in the true sense', i.e. 'unseen' but an object of thought. For Hades as the place of departed souls, cf.58e5,68bl, 70c4, 71e2,83d9, 107al. The place is named after the god whose realm it is. This suits the identification of Forms and gods as the soul's destination—see on 81a4—11, The derivation of 'Hades' from 'unseen' is rejected at Cratylus 404b, but may be sound—see L.S.J. s.v. q8rj<; and Bluck, 197.
80d8-81a3. 'Blown apart' (80dl0) is a reference to the materialist view of the soul under attack. Cf.70a2-6, 77d7-e2, 84b4-8. The cumbersome sentence beginning 'Far from it' (80el) has been broken up in the translation, which assumes a comma after 'shunned it' (e4). The sentence breaks at 80e5, and the sense is not completed until Socrates' next speech, the 'suppose' clause beginning at 80e2 being picked up by 'if it is in that state' at 81a4.
81a4—11. 'The divine and immortal and wise': Hackforth (88, n.4) says that these epithets belong properly to the gods or God (cf.80d7) rather than to the place of the departed soul. But in this section of the dialogue, God (or gods) and the Forms are spoken of interchangeably as the soul's destination. They are, in effect, identified, and divine attributes are applied to both alike. See 79d2, 83e2, 84a8, and on 80c2-d7.
81c4—d5. Unpurified souls are here portrayed not as immaterial substances, but as phantoms or insubstantial wraiths. They are described in terms that could not literally apply to the soul in its essential, incorporeal nature. How could an incorporeal thing be 'interspersed with a corporeal element' (c4—5), be 'weighed down' (clO), or 'fall back into another body, and grow in it' (83dl0—el)? Such language, taken literally, describes interaction between one material substance and another. Even the purified soul of the philosopher is said to 'gather itself together' (83a7-8, cf.67c8, 80e5), which suggests, as Hackforth says (52, n.3), the spatial diffusion of a vital fluid throughout the body. The fact is that, despite the tenor of his argument for the soul's nature, Socrates does not consistently speak of it as immaterial. Note also that at 83d7 he speaks of the soul as 'sharing opinions and pleasures with the body', implying, strictly, that the body as well as the soul can have pleasures and opinions. He may be speaking 'loosely' here, as Hackforth says (93, n.l), but his language at least is not that of a Cartesian dualist, for whom soul and body could have no attributes in common.
81d6—82d8. The notion of reincarnation in animals is Pythagorean (cf. DK 21 B 7), and is developed here with savage irony. Cf. Phaedrus 248e-249b (ed. Hackforth, 88-91), Republic 619e-620c, and Timaeus 41e-42d, 91d-92c. See also 113a5 below.