Immortality in Ancient Philosophy 9781108832281, 9781108935777, 2021008900, 9781108941006, 1108832288

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Long

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Immortality in Ancient Philosophy

Immortality in Ancient Philosophy Edited by A. G. Long

Cover image: Statue of the Dioscuri in the Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome. Photo: Grant Faint / Getty Images.

IMMORT ALITY IN A NCIENT PHILOS OPHY

Immortality was central to ancient philosophical reflections on the soul, happiness, value, and divinity. Conceptions of immortality flowed into philosophical ethics and theology, and modern reconstructions of ancient thought in these areas sometimes turn on the interpretation of immortality. This volume brings together original research on immortality from early Greek philosophy, such as the Pythagoreans and Empedocles, to Augustine. The contributors consider not only arguments concerning the soul’s immortality, but also the diverse and often subtle accounts of what immortality is, both in Plato and in less familiar philosophers, such as the early Stoics and Philo of Alexandria. The book will be of interest to all those interested in immortality and divinity in ancient philosophy, particularly scholars and advanced students. a. g. long is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Conversation and SelfSufficiency in Plato (2013) and Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy (2019). He edited Plato and the Stoics (2013) and translated, with David Sedley, Plato’s Meno and Phaedo for Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (2010).

IMMORTALITY IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY edited by A. G. LONG University of St Andrews

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108832281 doi: 10.1017/9781108935777 © Cambridge University Press 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Long, Alex, editor. title: Immortality in ancient philosophy / edited by A. G. Long, University of St Andrews. description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2021008900 | isbn 9781108832281 (hardback) | isbn 9781108941006 (paperback) | isbn 9781108935777 (ebook) subjects: lcsh: Philosophy, Ancient. | Immortality. | bisac: PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical | PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical classification: lcc b187.i45 i46 2021 | ddc 129–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008900 isbn 978-1-108-83228-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors

page vii 1

Introduction A. G. Long

1

The Soul and the Celestial Afterlife in Greek Philosophy before Plato

12

Simon Trépanier

2 Pythagorean Immortality of the Soul?

41

Phillip Sidney Horky

3 The Philosopher’s Reward: Contemplation and Immortality in Plato’s Dialogues

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Suzanne Obdrzalek

4 Pre-Existence, Life after Death, and Atemporal Beings in Plato’s Phaedo

93

Catherine Rowett

5 The Immortal and the Imperishable in Aristotle, Early Stoicism, and Epicureanism

118

A. G. Long

6 Socrates and the Symmetry Argument

143

James Warren

7 Immortality in Philo of Alexandria Sami Yli-Karjanmaa

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8 Plotinus on Immortality and the Problem of Personal Identity

178

Lloyd P. Gerson

9 Truth and Immortality in Augustine’s Soliloquies and De Immortalitate Animae

196

Sebastian Gertz

Index of Passages Index of Names and Subjects

215 225

Contributors

lloyd p. gerson is Professor of Philosophy in the University of Toronto. He is the author of many monographs, articles, and reviews on ancient philosophy including Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy (2020). He is the editor and translator (with five others) of Plotinus: The Enneads (2017) and the editor of The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity (2010). sebastian gertz is an independent scholar living in New York City. He has published a translation with commentary of Plotinus’ treatise against the Gnostics (2017) and a monograph (Death and Immortality in Late Neoplatonism, 2011). He has also translated Zacharias of Mytilene’s dialogue Ammonius (2012) and three ancient introductions to philosophy (2018) in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series. phillip sidney horky is Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Durham University. He is author of Plato and Pythagoreanism (2013) and has edited the volume Cosmos in the Ancient World (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He is currently completing Pythagorean Philosophy: 250 BCE–200 CE, for the series Cambridge Source Books in Post-Hellenistic Philosophy. a. g. long is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Conversation and Self-Sufficiency in Plato (2013) and Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He also co-edits with Voula Tsouna the series Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy for Cambridge University Press. suzanne obdrzalek is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. She is the author of numerous articles on ancient philosophy; her current research focuses on Plato’s philosophy of mind.

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List of Contributors

catherine rowett has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia for fifteen years, having previously worked in the Classics Department at Liverpool and the Philosophy Department in Swansea. She is the author of books and articles on many areas of ancient philosophy, including Knowledge and Truth in Plato: Stepping Past the Shadow of Socrates (2018). In 2019 she was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the East of England, for which she stepped aside from her academic career for nine months, returning in February 2020 when the UK left the European Union. simon tre´ panier is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Empedocles: An Interpretation (2004), and various articles on ancient philosophy. His main areas of interest are Early Greek philosophy (also known as the Presocratics), Plato, literary papyrology, and, more recently, Epicureanism and Lucretius. He is currently co-editing, with Professor M. M. McCabe, the proceedings of her 2019 A. G. Leventis conference on Plato, Re-Reading the Republic. james warren is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is the author of Epicurus and Democritean Ethics (2002), Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (2004), Presocratics (2007), and The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists (2014). He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (2009), with Frisbee Sheffield, The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy (2014), with Jenny Bryan and Robert Wardy, Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy (2018) and with Brad Inwood, Body and Soul in Hellenistic Philosophy (2020). sami yli-karjanmaa is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of Reincarnation in Philo of Alexandria (2015) and has conducted research into Philo, Jewish and Christian beliefs about the afterlife, and Alexandrian church fathers.

Introduction A. G. Long

When ancient philosophers describe the fate of the soul or the human being after death, in which cases should we attribute to them a theory of immortality? When their texts describe people – or their souls, parts, or possessions – as being or becoming ‘immortal’, what does the word mean? The research brought together here explores these questions. Whether or not we should stipulate the meaning of immortality depends on which question we are addressing. The first question is about our own use of the words ‘immortal’ and ‘immortality’ when reading and trying to understand ancient theories, and here it may be appropriate to set down that ‘immortal’ means, for example, everlasting. That is how Phillip Horky understands ‘immortal’ and ‘immortality’ in his chapter on whether Pythagorean theories of reincarnation (or, as it is also called, the transmigration of souls) require souls to be everlasting. By contrast, the second question is prompted by the wording of the texts we study, and it requires us to recognize and adapt to the meanings and criteria they set for immortality. Most of the chapters that follow are about the Greek philosophical tradition, and so it is usually the Greek word for ‘immortal’ (ἀθάνατος)1 that will concern us. The chapters that are primarily about the first question examine discussions of the afterlife among early philosophers, such as Pythagoreans and Empedocles. Those concerned with the second question, the meaning of ‘immortal’ and ‘immortality’, are mostly about Plato and Platonists, such as Philo and Plotinus, but they also include my own chapter on Aristotle, Stoics, and Epicureans. This second group of chapters do not all concern the afterlife: sometimes, such as in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, immortality is 1

In the volume Greek words added parenthetically will be kept in Greek letters; otherwise single words and short phrases will be transliterated, except in cases (particularly footnotes) where the discussion is aimed at those studying works in the original Greek. In Catherine Rowett’s chapter transliteration will be used more commonly, particularly for the various words meaning ‘to live’, ‘life’, ‘to die’, ‘to have died’, ‘death’, and so on, as distinctions between them are often crucial for her argument.

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used to describe the best way to live, not a form of survival after death. When authors are looking forward to what awaits people at and after death, immortality can sometimes mean not being subject to, or destroyed by, death, without barring destruction in other circumstances. But sometimes it means everlastingness, or some other kind of resemblance to the divine. Ancient debates about immortality, particularly in Greek philosophy, may appear to be ultimately debates about the soul: what is its nature and, if it is a temporal entity, its duration? In what follows we aim to show – without at all minimizing or denying the importance of theories about the soul2 – how other areas of ancient inquiry and debate bear on the question of immortality, especially theology and the divine, the nature of life and death, and personal identity. For example, if immortality is conceived of as everlasting life, the particular conception of life in the author’s cosmology or metaphysics becomes not merely relevant but criterial. If immortality means being immune to death, but perhaps not to all forms of destruction, then the nature of death will determine what is and is not immortal. In what follows I introduce these additional questions, using for the most part passages from Plato (especially the Phaedo) and the Platonic tradition, and indicate briefly, without an attempt at comprehensive summarizing, where in the collection they will be taken up further. But I begin with a distinction between kinds of immortality to which the contributors will often return. It concerns not the meaning of immortality – deathlessness, everlastingness, and so on – but whether or not immortality is an essential property of the immortal item.

1 Kinds of Immortality: Essential, Achieved, and Derived Apuleius’ Metamorphoses contains the famous story of Psyche and Cupid. When the two finally marry, Psyche, whose name means ‘soul’ in Greek, is made immortal. Jupiter gives her a cup of ambrosia with the words ‘drink this, Psyche, and be immortal’ (immortalis esto, Metamorphoses 6.23). Has Apuleius, a Platonist, forgotten his Plato?3 In the formal arguments of the Phaedo and the palinode of the Phaedrus (245c–246a) Socrates’ conclusion is that all souls are essentially immortal: each soul, no matter how wicked or 2 3

See, for example, Phillip Horky’s chapter and its discussion of the soul in Pythagoreanism and early atomism, or Simon Trépanier’s chapter on the soul in other early philosophy. Hunter 2012: 232 contrasts this moment in the story with the essential immortality of souls in the Phaedrus. For the echo of Roman manumission (‘be free’) see Zimmerman et al. 2004: 545.

Introduction

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ignorant, is immortal, simply because it is a soul.4 That is why, as Socrates says in the Phaedo when passing from argument to myth (107c–d), there is no escape from wickedness apart from becoming better: even the very worst souls will never be destroyed, despite their wickedness. So, we might think, for a follower of Plato there can be no process for a soul of becoming immortal or earning its immortality. Apuleius is of course aware of the Platonic doctrine of essential immortality. Elsewhere he says that all souls are immortal and does not so much as hint that they need to earn their immortality (On the god of Socrates 4.1, 15.3). But we need to go back to Plato’s dialogues and appreciate the complexity of their accounts of immortality, which include passages where immortality is an achievement. One such passage is Diotima’s account of love in the Symposium, according to which the philosopher, during life, either becomes immortal or attains a state close to immortality (212a). A second is Timaeus’ description of a philosopher coming to ‘share in immortality, so far as human nature can’ (Timaeus 90c). Both passages are about human beings or soul–body composites, not souls, and the Symposium passage, where engaging in love makes one immortal, has a particularly obvious relevance to the story of Psyche and Cupid/Love. Perhaps then Apuleius has taken Platonic passages describing human beings attaining immortality and applied them to a story about a flesh-and-blood woman whose name nonetheless means ‘soul’. The relationship between essential immortality and achieved immortality will be a major theme of this book.5 We should not assume that ancient philosophers viewed the two kinds of immortality as mutually exclusive. Perhaps one item achieves immortality (e.g. the soul–body composite) and another related item possesses it essentially (e.g. the soul, or a part of the soul). Or perhaps the immortality that is earned is something different from the immortality that is possessed essentially, as in Philo of Alexandria. According to Philo, the mind is essentially immortal or indestructible, but when joined with a body it is caught up in ‘mortal life’, and it can be said to have been ‘immortalized’ – that is, liberated from mortal life – if it achieves permanent release from reincarnation. Virtue in this sense ‘immortalizes’ 4

5

Here I give my own view of the arguments, and for further discussion see the chapter by Trépanier and the last section of the chapter by Rowett. Rowett argues that immortality, at least in one sense, is achieved by the soul when it regains its own proper condition. The distinction between them was brought to prominence in Platonic studies by David Sedley, who also discusses a third kind: the immortality of created souls and deities in the Timaeus, where immortality is guaranteed by their divine creator. See Sedley 2009, an article to which this collection will often return.

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the essentially immortal. Sami Yli-Karjanmaa argues that we cannot fully understand Philo’s writing on immortality, and the combination of essential and achieved immortality, without recognizing his faithfulness to Plato on the subject of reincarnation. Simon Trépanier explores the similar suggestion of release from reincarnation in the myth of Plato’s Phaedo: we might be tempted to follow Philo and call this earned or achieved ‘immortality’, but according to Trépanier the Phaedo, like the Republic (611a), denies that the number of immortal items ever increases. Trépanier then applies the same distinction between kinds of immortality to earlier Greek discussions of the afterlife: in Heraclitus no soul is essentially immortal, and while a few are divinized, even in their case the new status is not permanent. For Empedocles divinity can be earned, but immortality, at least in the sense of everlastingness, cannot. Suzanne Obdrzalek discusses the achievement of immortality in Plato’s Symposium. She uses the Phaedo to explain why the Symposium appears to deny the immortality of the soul: in addition to the bare everlasting persistence possessed by all souls, there is an achieved or earned form of immortality, shown already in the Affinity Argument of the Phaedo, which is not only to persist but to persist without change. It is the second form of immortality, involving changelessness, that is denied to souls in the Symposium. Sebastian Gertz brings out a similar but distinct contrast in Augustine’s writing on immortality. According to Gertz, Augustine moves from a view of the soul as essentially immortal – that is, immortal because of the soul’s own nature – to one where the soul derives or ‘acquires’ its immortality from something else, namely the truths of an a priori discipline. But Gertz presents the latter as a relation of ontological dependence, rather than as the soul’s achievement of immortality at a particular time in its existence. Indeed, as Gertz observes, Augustine must avoid suggesting that immortality depends on special epistemic achievements, as his argument aims to show the immortality of all souls, including those of the foolish or uneducated.

2

Theology and Resemblance to the Divine

When Homer speaks of the ‘immortals’ (ἀθάνατοι) he often does not add the word for ‘gods’: the connection between the gods and immortality is so robust that nothing more than ‘immortals’ is needed to refer to them.6 It is 6

See e.g. Iliad 2.814, 9.110, 23.788; Odyssey 1.201, 3.242, 4.564, 15.173, 18.252.

Introduction

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not surprising, then, to find reflections on the divine guiding early attempts to show that the soul too is immortal. But successive innovations by philosophers in this area, theology and the divine, make the soul–divine comparison an area of unsettling and even polar change. Consider the contrast between the following two arguments, one attributed to Alcmaeon, the other known today as the Affinity Argument of Plato’s Phaedo (discussed by Catherine Rowett in her chapter). Alcmaeon of Croton produced an argument for the immortality of soul – ‘the very first argument in the field’, as Barnes notes.7 According to Aristotle, Alcmaeon’s argument was that the soul resembles the heavens and the bodies in them, such as the sun and moon, by being in continuous motion. Alcmaeon either took for granted the immortality of these ‘divine’ celestial items or showed it independently. He then argued that, because of resemblance to them in respect of motion, the soul is itself immortal.8 Alcmaeon says that the soul is immortal because it resembles the immortals; and it has this resemblance from its always being in motion. For divine things too – moon, sun, stars and the whole heaven – are continuously in motion. (Aristotle De anima A 2, 405a29–b1)

It is uncertain whether Alcmaeon’s argument was in fact so simple. Scholars still disagree on whether it relied merely on similarity between the soul and celestial bodies in respect of motion, and the immortality of the latter, to show that they and the soul have immortality in common as well. According to another testimony (Aëtius 4.2.2), Alcmaeon also claimed that the soul moves itself – ‘Alcmaeon says that the soul is a nature moved by itself in an everlasting motion, and for this reason is immortal and similar to the gods’ – and this conception of the soul as a selfmover, reminiscent of Plato’s Phaedrus (245c–246a), has been used to reconstruct on Alcmaeon’s behalf more sophisticated arguments for its immortality.9 But the immediate context in Aëtius throws into doubt the attribution to Alcmaeon of a conception of soul as self-mover: the very same view, that the soul moves itself, is attributed also to Thales and 7 8

9

Barnes 1982: 120. Compare Diogenes Laertius 8.83: ‘he [Alcmaeon] said also that the soul is immortal and moves continuously, as the sun does’. In addition to the passage of Aëtius quoted just below, see also Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 1.27; Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 11.28.7–10; Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus 5.66. Barnes 1982: 116–20; Hankinson 1998: 30–3. Barnes relies also on the argument in Phaedrus 245c– 246a, which he treats, as I suspect few others now would do, as a ‘report’ of Alcmaeon’s argument (117). Even in Aëtius’ testimony Alcmaeon’s argument involves similarity to the divine, although now it appears in the conclusion rather than as a premise.

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Pythagoras, as well as to Xenocrates and Plato. As Mansfeld has argued, it looks as if Plato and Xenocrates’ conception of the soul has been projected back onto various earlier philosophers, including Alcmaeon.10 Contrast Alcmaeon’s argument, at least as Aristotle presents it, with the Affinity Argument from Plato’s Phaedo, where Socrates argues that the soul’s similarity to immortal items shows its own immortality. In Plato the divine, ‘immortal’ items include Forms as well as gods, and the former are not only unmoving but completely changeless (78d). According to Plato’s Socrates, when the soul is undisturbed by the body it considers the ‘immortal’, changeless Forms, and takes on their own changelessness: ‘in relation to those entities the soul stays always in the same state and condition, because the things it is grasping have the same kind of stability’ (79d). This is one of several respects in which the soul resembles the divine or immortal, and, Socrates argues, the set of resemblances between them shows that the soul is either indestructible or at least nearly so (80b). The parallel between Alcmaeon’s argument and another Platonic argument for immortality mentioned above, that of the Phaedrus, is widely recognized. But in the Phaedo too Alcmaeon may have a presence, for elsewhere this dialogue seems to show familiarity with his doctrines.11 Perhaps already in the Phaedo Plato has a debt to Alcmaeon’s argument for the soul’s immortality, but if so Alcmaeon’s constantly moving divine items have been replaced by changeless Forms, and the soul’s approximation to their changelessness, rather than its continuous motion, has become the point in favour of its immortality. In my chapter I discuss not a formal argument for immortality but Stoic, Aristotelian, and Epicurean accounts of immortality in the light of the relevant theologies.12 Stoic discussions of the soul’s immortality have puzzled commentators, given that the cosmos in which the soul is located, even after death and separation from the body, will eventually be destroyed. But the Stoic doctrine becomes easier to understand when we compare the virtuous, discarnate soul to the lesser or intra-cosmic gods. Like the soul, those gods will be destroyed with the cosmos, and yet they 10

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‘The emphasis on the concept of self-motion throughout the first part of the chapter and its spread to the doxai [doctrines] of Thales and Pythagoras suggest that the presence of self-motion in the Alcmaeon doxa is also a matter of interpretatio and encroachment’ (Mansfeld 2014). Socrates mentions later in the Phaedo a theory that the brain is responsible for sense-perception (96b). According to Theophrastus (DK A5), Alcmaeon noted that the senses are ‘connected’ to the brain, and (according to Aëtius, DK A8, A13) he located reason, or (in Stoic terms) the ‘commanding faculty’ of the soul, in the head. See Guthrie 1962–81, vol. 1: 349. The chapter uses my discussion of Aristotle, Epicureans, and Stoics published separately within Long 2019.

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too are called ‘immortal’. Their immortality consists in not being subject to death specifically, which is, according the Stoic Chrysippus, separation of soul from body. Virtuous souls too are not, once separated, subject to death, and yet they, like the intra-cosmic gods, will eventually be destroyed. The gods’ immortality has been reimagined as a deathlessness that allows for other forms of destruction, and the soul’s immortality is reinterpreted in precisely the same way. Chrysippus’ conception of death is thus critical for his writing on immortality. All the same, the meaning or meanings given to ‘death’ do not in all cases simply determine that of immortality. Philo of Alexandra sometimes uses ‘death’ to refer to a moral state, and yet, as Sami YliKarjanmaa notes, Philo never uses immortality to mean being immune to ‘death’ in this moral sense. This brings me to life and its continuation.

3

Life as Cognition and the Life of a Soul

What would it mean for life to be prolonged, or even infinitely prolonged? That depends on what we take to be required by life and most characteristic of it. We might include under that heading sense-perception, interaction with prey, threats and companions, and the production of offspring. To appreciate the strangeness, to our eyes, of some ancient views of life, imagine a creature with the following properties. It has no sense-organs, such as eyes and ears or their functional equivalents, and no organs of locomotion, such as feet. It has no limbs or appendages for interacting with its environment, such as arms, hands, or claws. It has no mates and never produces offspring, and has no predators, prey, or companions. It sustains itself, but without needing to take in food from an external environment. Its only actions are to make correct pronouncements on whatever it considers, to attain true opinion and understanding, and to express, through its movements, its own understanding. Its pronouncements are always silent and internal: it never has reason to express itself in sound, as it never encounters a friend, companion, threat, or potential mate. This may seem to us a creature that ‘lives’ in an extremely attenuated sense. But what I have described is the cosmos of Plato’s Timaeus, and, according to that dialogue, of all the visible, changing organisms in existence it is this creature that resembles most closely the Form of Living Creature and best captures its properties in the visible, changing realm.13 One crucial point 13

Resembles the Form most (30c); solitude and self-sufficiency (33a, 34b); no organs of perception, grasping, self-defence, or locomotion (33c–34a); motion expressing intelligence (34a); self-sustaining by recycling waste (33c); internal pronouncements (37a–c). See Sattler (forthcoming).

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I have omitted is that this creature, the cosmos, contains all other organisms. But its own existence is bound up exclusively with thought, intelligence, and the spatial movements that express them, and yet there is no hesitation at all in calling it ‘living’. At an early stage of his description (30a–c) Timaeus says that the cosmos has been created so as to be intelligent, and that requires it to have a soul. Its having intelligence in a soul is enough for him to pronounce it a ‘living creature’.14 Before we are told anything in the Timaeus about human immortality or the afterlife, this is the account we are given of ‘unceasing and intelligent life for all time’ (36e). Treating cognition and intelligence (and now, unlike in the Phaedo, with motion) as sufficient for life – and so, if they continue, for the continuation of life – is thus rooted in Plato’s cosmology. It does not depend solely on reflections about human beings, our souls, and what becomes of us after death. Nor does this view of cognition-cum-locomotion as a form of life, and perhaps the supreme form of life, belong to Plato’s cosmology alone. Empedocles’ cosmology treats gods as created organisms, although they are particularly ‘long-lived’ organisms (B21.12, B23.8). What exactly does a god do during its long ‘life’? Empedocles’ answer seems to be that it moves, thinks, and understands: one god is described by him as being ‘holy mind alone’, ‘racing across the entire cosmos with its swift thoughts’ (B134).15 Even a philosopher as steeped in what we call biology as Aristotle can express such a view of life, or rather in his case a view of life as cognition alone, without movement in space. This is part of his account of the divine unmoved mover: καὶ ζωὴ δέ γε ὑπάρχει· ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή, ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἡ ἐνέργεια· ἐνέργεια δὲ ἡ καθ’ αὑτὴν ἐκείνου ζωὴ ἀρίστη καὶ ἀΐδιος. φαμὲν δὴ τὸν θεὸν εἶναι ζῷον ἀΐδιον ἄριστον, ὥστε ζωὴ καὶ αἰὼν συνεχὴς καὶ ἀΐδιος ὑπάρχει τῷ θεῷ· τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ θεός. What is more, god has life. For actuality of intelligence is life, and that intelligence is such actuality. And the actuality, in itself, of that intelligence is the best and everlasting life. Now we say that god is an everlasting, and the best, living creature, and thus god has life – that is, continuous and everlasting eternity. For that is what god is. (Metaphysics Λ 7, 1072b26–30)16 14

15 16

Compare the following exchange from Plato’s Sophist (249a). Visitor from Elea: ‘should we say that it has intelligence but does not have life?’; Theaetetus: ‘how could we?’ For an opposed view see Euripides Helen 1015: discarnate mind has intelligence but not life. For recent discussion see Picot and Berg 2018. At the end Aristotle exploits the dual meaning of αἰών as life and eternity. I interpret the καί . . . in ζωὴ καὶ αἰὼν . . . as spelling out the nature of god’s ζωή, and ἐκεῖνος/ἐκείνου as a reference to (god’s) intelligence, not god, but I have provided the Greek wording to show the possibility of different interpretations. Cf. Laks 2000: 236–7. For brief discussion of the Metaphysics passage in the broader context of Aristotle’s work on plants and animals, see p. 181 of Gerson’s chapter in this volume.

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This is another conception of life independent of reflections on death and the afterlife and now related to theology. If Aristotle is correct, showing the continuation of intelligence after death is not to show the persistence merely of a feeble afterimage of life. If intelligence is actualized, there is life. Of all ancient Greek reflections on human mortality Plato’s Phaedo is probably the most familiar to students today. In that dialogue Socrates takes the soul as the seat of reason and intelligence and tries to show that its existence and indeed its life are not bounded by its partnership with a body. Catherine Rowett distinguishes between different kinds of ‘life’ and ‘death’ in that dialogue. She argues that the soul’s immortality is not everlasting existence so much as the timelessness it shares with the Forms.17 This is not a view of the soul put forward by the character Socrates, who is no less concerned than his friends to establish whether the soul has survival in time; it emerges, she argues, as a Platonic subtext. Sebastian Gertz’s chapter, mentioned already above, explores texts much less familiar to most students of ancient philosophy: Augustine’s Soliloquies and Immortality of the Soul. Augustine argued from the soul’s possession of intelligence and understanding to the continuation of life after death. A discipline can exist only in something ‘living’, and so something that possesses an everlasting discipline must itself ‘live for ever’ (Immortality of the Soul 1.1).18 But, as Gertz shows, the argument for life after death shows merely that the soul’s understanding of intelligible reality continues after death – not that it continues to possess the full range of traits that might seem essential to its identity.

4 Identity As Socrates’ death approaches in the Phaedo, he is asked by Crito, ‘how should we bury you?’ (115c). Socrates eventually gives Crito an answer to the practical question – whatever Crito wants and deems most conventional – but he does not miss the chance to point out what he sees as Crito’s error. He laughs, warns Crito that he may escape and so foil their attempts to bury him, and then explains the warning to his friends: he, Socrates, is not what will become a corpse, but what has been responsible for a large share of their conversation (115c). What that very item – the conversation-contributor, not the physical body – has long been arguing is precisely that he, or it, will 17 18

By contrast, Gerson later interprets the immortality of the soul, in both Plato and Plotinus, as the immortality of a temporal or ‘temporalized’ entity. Compare Immortality of the Soul 23: the changes the soul undergoes (for example in sleep) do not diminish the soul’s ‘own life’.

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escape at death. Socrates does not actually say in his answer that he is to be identified with his ‘soul’, although there is undoubtedly a reference back to the arguments for the soul’s immortality. Instead he identifies himself as ‘the one who is now holding a conversation – setting out remarks one by one’ (115c). Crito has put a question to that entity about its/his burial, and Socrates is taking him at his word: it, the addressee of Crito’s question and the one now giving a reply to him, will never become a corpse. Two chapters take up the question of immortality and personal identity, and both find challenges to common-sense views of our identity. James Warren’s chapter is about the dialogue Axiochus. He addresses the puzzling combination of a symmetry argument – after death, as before his birth, Axiochus will not exist or have perception – with an assertion by Socrates of the soul’s immortality and our identity as souls. How can Socrates both identify Axiochus with his immortal soul and claim that Axiochus will no longer exist after death? Part of Warren’s answer is to suggest that Socrates is moving Axiochus from a commonsense conception of his identity, as a human living being with a particular date of birth, to another, as a soul, which is itself a kind of ‘living being’ (Axiochus 365e). Lloyd Gerson discusses Plotinus’ writing on the soul’s incorporeality and immortality and Ideas or Forms of individuals. In Plotinus too there is an attempt to shift conceptions of our identity, from the self-conception of a soul–body composite to identification with an intellect that is not, in itself, distinctive or unique. For Plotinus the answer to Crito, back in the Phaedo, gives an important part of the story, but not the whole of it, about Socrates’ true identity. It was Socrates’ soul or intellect, not his body, that led and in other ways contributed to their conversation, and he should certainly identify himself with that intellect more than with his body. And yet it is not even with a distinctive intellect that Socrates should ultimately identify himself.

Bibliography Barnes, J. 1982. The Presocratic Philosophers (rev. ed.). London and Boston: Routledge. Frede, D. and Reis, B. (eds.) 2009. Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Frede, M. and Charles, D. (eds.) 2000. Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guthrie, W. K. C. 1962–81. A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Introduction

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Hankinson, R. J. 1998. Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunter, R. 2012. Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature: The Silent Stream. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laks, A. 2000. ‘Metaphysics Λ 7’, in Frede and Charles (eds.): 207–43. Long, A. G. 2019. Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mansfeld, J. 2014. ‘Alcmaeon and Plato on the soul’, Études platoniciennes 11. Picot, J.-C. and Berg, W. 2018. ‘Apollo, Eros and epic allusions in Empedocles, frr. 134 and 29 DK’, American Journal of Philology 139: 365–96. Salles, R. (ed.) (forthcoming). The Animate Cosmos: Essays on the Intersection of Biology and Cosmology in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sattler, B. (forthcoming) ‘The ensouled cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus: biological science or a guide to cosmology’, in Salles (ed.). Sedley, D. 2009. ‘Three kinds of Platonic immortality’, in Frede and Reis (eds.): 145–62. Zimmerman, M., Panayotakis, S., Hunink, V. C., Keulen, W. H., Harrison, S. J., McCreight, T. D., Wesseling, B. and van Mal-Maeder, D. 2004. Apuleius Madaurensis: Metamorphoses, Books IV.28–35, V and VI.1–24, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Groningen: Egbert Forsten.

chapter 1

The Soul and the Celestial Afterlife in Greek Philosophy before Plato Simon Trépanier

One might also want to inquire on what account the soul up in the air is better off and more immortal (ἀθανατωτέρα) than that in living creatures. Aristotle De Anima A 5, 411a11–13

1.1 The Soul and the Celestial Afterlife This study is an investigation into the soul and the celestial afterlife in Greek philosophy before Plato.1 My main thesis is that the concept of a celestial afterlife did indeed exist before Plato in the philosophical tradition, and I hope to prove it by offering some specifics. At the same time, study of the celestial afterlife throws new light upon different, often competing early Greek philosophical conceptions of the soul, salvation, and immortality. A better grasp of this diversity of views will be my second and related objective. We can begin with a few initial clarifications. In its historic setting, the celestial afterlife seems to presuppose two connected notions. The first is survival of the soul, the notion that some sentient part of us continues to exist after death. The second is the idea that at death this surviving soul goes up, instead of down. Of the two, only the second is new. All souls go to Hades in the Iliad, while Hesiod and the poet of the Odyssey are only slightly more relaxed, allowing a select few to emigrate to Elysium or the Isles of

1

For a general survey of the ancient afterlife, see Bremmer 2002. On death in the Greek archaic and classical periods, see Sourvinou-Inwood 1995. Vermeule 1979 covers the iconography, and Garland 2001 the broader realia. On celestial or astral immortality before Plato, see Burkert 1972: 357–66, discussed later in this chapter, whose negative verdict I will try to overturn. My thanks to Alex Long for the invitation to contribute this chapter and for a number of helpful suggestions during its revision.

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the Blessed.2 In that sense it would even be possible to claim that the immortality of the soul was always assumed. Yet putting it that way is probably too strong.3 Still, against the wider background notion of post-mortem survival, the idea that when the soul separates from the body certain souls go up, instead of down, remains novel. In order to refine this second notion, let us consider two pieces of evidence close to the end of our period. My first is lines 5–7 of the epigram for the Athenians killed in the action at Potideia (IG I3.1179) in 432 bce: 5 II.6

νίκεν εὐπόλεμομ μνε͂μ’ ἔλαβο φθ̣[ίμενοι]. αἰθὲρ μὲμ φσυχὰς ὑπεδέχσατο, σόμ̣[ατα δὲ χθὸν] το͂ νδε· Ποτειδαίας δ’ ἀμφὶ πύλας ἐλ[ύθεν]· victory, the monument of war, they secured in dying. The aether received the souls, the earth the bodies of these men. The two were sundered at the gates of Potideia.

My second passage is from Aristophanes’ comedy Peace, produced in 421 bce. A slave, speaking to Trygaeus, who has flown up to heaven on the back of a giant dung-beetle, asks him what he saw up there, then adds (833–5): οὐκ ἦν ἄρ’ οὐδ’ ἃ λέγουσι, κατὰ τὸν αἰθέρα ὡς ἀστέρες γιγνόμεθ’, ὅταν τις ἀποθάνῃ; Was it then true what they say, that in the aithêr we become stars, when someone dies?

Trygaeus answers: “Yes indeed!” Both passages are meant for public consumption and can be precisely dated, showing that the concept of the celestial afterlife was well established by then. The two may not represent conventional views but there is nothing mysterious about them and the reader or audience is meant to 2

3

As souls or as people? The standard notion is that the soul, alone, travels to a new location, but once there no stress is put on a distinct type of existence. See Garland 2001, ch. 2 on life in Hades and the activities of the ordinary dead. In early sources even special fates are not especially spiritual. For example, at Odyssey 4.565, Menelaus is promised that he will not die, but move to Elysium where “life is easiest for men.” Such an Elysium is more Shangri-La than spiritual plane. For early mythical geography, see Gantz 1993: 123–35. The immortality of the soul only becomes an argued doctrine later. For the Homeric soul, I think it is safer to speak of a vague notion of survival. For fuller discussion see Onians 1951; Jahn 1987; Pelliccia 1995; Clarke 1999; Cairns 2003. Arguably more important than survival is that it is no fun to be dead. As Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 80 puts it, commenting upon Achilles’ reply to Odysseus’ description of him as “king of the dead” at Odyssey 11.488–91: “What is expressed through this image is . . . the early Greek love of life: any life is preferable to death, a wretched servant alive is better off than the king of the dead.”

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recognize them as something current.4 In both we can also note the prominence of the term aithêr, the translucent upper air, which is designated as the home of the souls and/or the location of the stars. The first passage, a public epigram commemorating Athenian war dead, is aiming for a cosmic-heroic tone, although it is less clear that we are also meant to assume that these souls remain distinct selves up in the aithêr or if souls, being made of aithêr, are reabsorbed into the great upper reservoir of soul-stuff. By contrast, the second passage is more specific and democratic since it implies that an astral afterlife is reserved for all.5 But unlike the first, the continuity of these individuals, as stars, is much more directly implied. Given such strong evidence for the celestial afterlife at the end of the period, it is unlikely that the idea sprang from nowhere. The tradition must extend further back. It is all the more surprising therefore that recent scholarship on early Greek philosophy has completely ignored the celestial afterlife. To take but two examples, which I choose for their excellence in other respects, in Huffman 2014, a multi-author volume on ancient Pythagoreanism, not a single mention is made of the celestial afterlife or astral immortality, while Graham’s 2010 text collection has a substantial chapter on Philolaus, but it “exiles” Pythagoras from philosophy, the material on the afterlife being relegated to an appendix of volume II. The reasons for this neglect have to do with modern debates on the boundary between ancient science and philosophy versus religion and the inherent difficulty of defining certain figures.6 But, to say the obvious, our standards of rationality are not those of the fifth century bce, and one can worry that something has been lost sight of. Concern for philosophical respectability may be eclipsing historical accuracy. To do justice to all the evidence is obviously not possible here. That would entail examining, preferably in reverse chronological order, and using Plato’s eschatological myths as starting points, all of the following: 4 5

6

On the inscription and full references to earlier work, see Mihai 2010. I even think that this might actually be the point of it, as a joke, astral apotheosis having been hitherto reserved for the great and good. The most recent commentator, Olson 1998: 232, notes other parallels (but not the joke) and writes: “the idea that ordinary people (as opposed to the occasional hero) became stars when they died . . . is attested in the Classical period only here and at Plato Timaeus 41d–2b.” If we look to specific influences, most important is Burkert 1972 (German original 1962). Burkert rejected the pre-Platonic celestial afterlife, both within Pythagoreanism and beyond it as “wholly preastronomical” (1972: 364). While Burkert rightly rejected earlier, overblown claims for mathematical Pythagorean science, he set the bar too high for what is to count as early astronomy. On Presocratic astronomy, see now Graham 2013. I have not yet seen Finkelberg 2017.

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Plato’s afterlife myths (380s–350s bce: Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus) Philolaus (470–400 bce) The Hippocratics on soul (esp. On Regimen) The Attic Stage (400–460 bce; especially Euripides) Orphism and the Derveni Commentator (pre-400 bce?) Diogenes of Apollonia (active 440–50 bce) Empedocles (active 450–60s bce) Anaxagoras (active 470–60s (?) bce) Pindar, especially the Second Olympian Ode (476 bce) Parmenides (active 490–70) Heraclitus (c. 500 bce) Pythagoras (c. 530 bce) Except for Pythagoras, about whom we know nothing for sure, I think that in all of these sources there is evidence for the celestial afterlife. Since a complete survey is not possible, I offer a sample. Starting from a short analysis of the Phaedo myth, I will then compare it with two other versions of the celestial afterlife, those of Heraclitus and Empedocles. For clarity, I add that I am not claiming that the celestial afterlife was the only option in the period, merely that its very existence as an option has been overlooked.

1.2 The Stratigraphy of the Phaedo Myth No less than other Platonic myths, the Phaedo myth raises a host of questions.7 In this case Plato himself has appended a strong caveat at the end to guard against literal or dogmatic readings (114d). For that very reason I think that it would be wrong to think of the Phaedo myth as metaphorical or an ethical eschatology, only meant to influence human behavior in the here and now. I think that Plato means the myth, if nondogmatically: it reflects his genuine commitment, in the Phaedo and beyond, to the essential immortality of the soul and to the idea of cosmic justice. According to Plato’s Socrates, if the soul is indestructible and not merely long-lived, there is no escape from evils and no salvation other than 7

On Platonic myth, see Partenie 2009. Students of the Phaedo do not all rate the myth’s importance equally. Previous studies I have found most helpful are Burnet 1911; Robin 1926; Hackforth 1955; Guthrie 1975; Annas 1982; Sedley 1990 and 2009; and Rowe 1993. Kingsley 1995, on its PythagoreanSicilian background, contains numerous insightful observations, but his division of the myth into literal and allegorical levels seems to me unprovable. For some criticisms, see Huffman 2007. For a more helpful exploration of the links between the world as a living body and the relation of body and world to soul, see Pradeau 1996 and Gee 2020, ch. 9.

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to be as wise and good as we can (107cd). The myth then illustrates what such a requirement would entail at the level of cosmic design. It is, among other things, an idealized model.8 For my purposes, an initial examination of the Phaedo myth can serve three functions. First, and most straightforwardly, by offering us our earliest extant picture of the celestial afterlife, it can help us to identify and map out the scheme in his predecessors. Second, the dialogue as a whole helps us to define the limits of earlier Greek thinking on soul and the afterlife. In brief, even when they do embrace the afterlife as a possibility, early Greek thinkers remain default materialists.9 Third, the myth features an interesting tension between two different conceptions of the soul’s immortality that can be used to probe both the myth itself and the earlier schemes. Borrowing some terminology from Sedley 2009, I will call these two contrasting conceptions of personal immortality “essential” immortality and “earned” immortality. The first presupposes that all souls already possess immortality, while earned immortality describes an immortality that is not the essential property of all souls but one that can be won or acquired, as in the heroic pattern of apotheosis.10 While the essential immortality of the soul is what the different arguments of the Phaedo seek to establish, the myth tilts strongly toward earned immortality – or so I will argue. Let us now turn to the myth itself. I start with two basic questions that follow from taking it as earnest. How many cosmic levels does the myth contain? And where are we now in this kosmos? On the first question: at a minimum, to have an “up” and a “down,” there must be at least two levels. Indeed, close to the opening of the myth we are told concerning our current life: 8

9

10

As Sedley 1990 and 2007: 93–5 has argued, the cosmos of the Phaedo myth can be taken as a precursor to that of the Timaeus, both of which assume that the world we inhabit is not the product of mindless material causation, but is teleologically psychocentric. On Plato’s myths as engineering work, addressed to a specific end but recognizing various constraints on the achievability of the goal, see Betegh 2009. On Platonic psychology in general, see Robinson 1995 and the essays in Wagner 2001. The Presocratics do not systematically exclude post-mortem survival, but to be retained, the inherited notions of soul and afterlife must now, somehow, be found a place within the order of nature. In another respect, Plato’s new metaphysics and the place of soul within that metaphysical scheme is a first historical end-point for the place of soul in the order of nature. If, according to Plato at his most dualistic, in the Phaedo, the soul is not a body, then naturalistic psychologies can never be adequate accounts of soul. On default materialism, see Aristotle Metaphysics A 8, 990a4 on the Pythagoreans; for discussion, Renehan 1980; Barnes 1982: 475–6; Betegh 2013: 248–50; contra Curd 2013 on Love and Strife in Empedocles. Much of this also applies to the gods, mutatis mutandis (see Gregory 2014 and Trépanier 2010). Lastly, in this chapter, I am not ignoring so much as setting aside early Greek speculation on embodied soul, for which see Laks 1999. In the Symposium, however, and perhaps the Phaedrus, souls become immortal. To be precise, Sedley 2009 proposes three main types of immortality: essential, conferred, and earned, the second being the case when it is granted to souls that could not otherwise acquire it. Here I will only use essential and earned, as the conferred type does not occur in the Presocratics, as far as I can tell, although it is common in myth.

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Now we ourselves do not realize that we live in these hollows; we imagine we live up on the earth’s surface; it is as if someone living half-way down towards the bottom of the ocean were to suppose himself to live on the surface of the sea; he would see the sun and the stars through the water, and believe the sea to be the sky . . . of course if one of us could get to the top of it, or acquire wings and fly aloft, then just as a fish which gets its head above water in this everyday world can see its sights, he would behold the sights of the world above; and if he were one who could endure to contemplate them, he would realize that there was the real heaven, the genuine daylight, the actual earth. (Phaedo 109c and e, trans. Hackforth 1955)

But that is hardly all. After describing the wondrous life led by the aithêrdwellers above us and the various punishments meted out to souls in the system of underground hollows and rivers below, Socrates adds that an even more wondrous level exists beyond (above?) that of the aithêr-dwellers: But lastly there are those that are deemed to have made notable progress on the road to righteous living; and these are they that are freed and delivered from these places here in the interior of the earth, from prison-houses as it were, and come to make their habitation in the pure region above ground. And those of their number who have attained full purity through philosophy live for evermore without any bodies at all (ἄνευ τε σωμάτων ζῶσι τὸ παράπαν εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον), and attain to habitations even fairer than those others; but the nature of these it would not be easy to reveal, even were time enough left me. (114b–c; trans. modified from Hackforth 1955)

From that second passage it seems safe to assume that there are at least three levels. Less certain is what Plato intends by these “fairer habitations” and a prospective life “without bodies at all.” This appears to imply some version of Platonic dualism about non-bodily souls, while retroactively making clear that even the celestial aithêr-dwellers have a body of some attenuated (?) kind. The “fairer habitations” do have specific counterparts elsewhere in Plato, namely the star-homes of souls in the Timaeus (41d and 42b) and the Phaedrus myth (246a–252c) where the gods or “deathless souls” rise to the vault of heaven and there contemplate the “supracelestial” Forms. Admittedly, explaining one Platonic myth in terms of another is inherently risky, but such cross-references or anticipations are less problematic if Plato was working from a traditional scheme in which the celestial afterlife already figured.11 For now, the answer to my first question is that, one way or another, we seem to have at least three levels or habitats of soul. 11

See sections 1.3 and 1.4. For evidence on ancient Platonist views on soul-vehicles, see Boys-Stones 2017, cf. 10. In modern scholarship the link to the stars from the Timaeus is already suggested by Stewart 1905: 109. See also Pradeau 1996 for continuities with Republic and Timaeus. In the Phaedrus

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To turn now to my second question, if we ask where we are now in the scheme as a whole, the only available place is within the earthly level, only not at the very bottom or strictly, the center, which would be Tartarus, but merely “half-way down towards the bottom” (109c5), which is to say: Hades.12 This idea, most likely of Pythagorean origin, is less outlandish than it sounds when we recall that the idea of life in Hades has already featured explicitly in the Gorgias.13 Within the Phaedo this point is corroborated by the opening sections where our life is likened to being in a garrison or prison (φρουρά, 62b4) and death a liberation and purification from the body (66b–68b). Most telling of all, the formulation quoted in translation above describes a single transition for those who are freed “from these places here in the interior of the earth, from prisons as it were,” directly to “the pure habitations upon the earth,” the level of the aithêr-dwellers.14 This leaves no room for another surface between the two, between the “true sky, true light and the true earth” above us (109e9), and our subterranean life. While this is not the only strand to the myth (see Pradeau 1996 and Gee 2020), as far as the stratigraphy goes, I submit that the Phaedo myth locates this, our current life, in Hades. In keeping with my general assessment of the myth as earnest, in the sense explained above, but not literal, I allow that this point, while strictly correct, must have mattered less as a doctrine than as one ingredient in Plato’s general Pythagorean presentation. We can suspect, however, that this revolutionary claim was more significant to his predecessors. In this respect, a promising topic for more careful investigation might be the curative or punitive effects of the different cosmic habitats as portrayed

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myth the gods stand upon the back of the revolving sky and contemplate “the things outside heaven” (τὰ ἔξω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, 247c). Notable as well is the wish for wings in the first quotation above, fully answered in the Phaedrus. Thus the underground rivers only need cost us half a level. If Tartarus, the traditional prison-house of the Titans, is at the core of the spherical earth, then Acheron would be one of the hollows part of the way down. In some Pythagorean testimonies, e.g. Empedocles DK A 62, the moon is the top of the earthly level. Kingsley 1995: 107–8 is notable for simply ignoring the upper levels of the aithêrdwellers. 493a: “and perhaps in fact we have died. For before now I have heard from one of the wise men that we are now dead and our bodies are our graves.” For Pythagorean aspects of the Phaedo myth, see Burnet 1911. Rashed 2009 sees Aristophanes and Empedocles as intermediaries between Pythagoreanism and Plato. οἱ τῶνδε μὲν τῶν τόπων τῶν ἐν τῇ γῇ ἐλευθερούμενοί τε καὶ ἀπαλλαττόμενοι ὥσπερ δεσμωτηρίων, ἄνω δὲ εἰς τὴν καθαρὰν οἴκησιν ἀφικνούμενοι καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς οἰκιζόμενοι (114b–c). Note especially the combination of the deictive τῶνδε with the unusual ἐπὶ γῆς, used here not to denote the zone we currently inhabit, but the “pure habitations” of the aithêr-dwellers, that is the “true earth.” Modern commentators have ignored these details so that the τόποι do not refer to us: e.g. “these places must refer to Acheron etc.” (Rowe 1993: 288). But it can refer to both our level and Acheron.

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in the myth, but instead I turn directly to the tension between essential versus earned immortality. In the myth, what type of immortality does Plato have in mind? The gradual separation of soul from the body, its purification, is framed as a process of physical change with a finite goal: earned immortality. Upon reaching this top level, when completely purified from bodies, Plato appears to say that these souls become secure from future incarnations, or perhaps deaths-as-incarnations. The strongest statement of earned immortality in the myth occurs in the second passage quoted above (114b–c), where it is given by the phrase eis ton epeita chronon, which Hackforth correctly renders “for evermore.”15 Yet how could being fully purified from the body, in and of itself, exclude ever being incarnated again? In another respect, this statement of earned immortality seems to rely, without actually acknowledging it, on essential immortality, since being incarnated, and by the same token, in Hades, does not destroy the soul. Not only that, but if the “true life” is the life we lead among the aithêrdwellers, then against the earlier definition of death as the separation of the soul from the body, the separation of the soul becomes instead a sort of birth. More problematically, since the soul remains apparently indestructible even when it is “dead,” that is, when incarnated, then both incarnation and full separation from the body can only be a change in the soul’s circumstances, but not to its inner nature. For an essentially immortal soul, understood as a sort of everlasting substance, being separated from the body (apotheosis) or punished by incarnation risk becoming merely accidental, external properties and cannot become permanent conditions of soul or alter its inner nature. Thus, despite its prominence in the myth, earned immortality appears to be ruled out.16 15

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It also closely recalls the single strongest instance of earned immortality in Plato outside the Phaedo, the earned immortality reserved for the philosopher found in Diotima’s mouth at Symposium 212a6– 7. On this clash, see O’Brien 1985 and Sedley 2009. The identical phrase εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον occurs at Symposium 200d3–6 in the expanded definition of “desire for things present,” which is explained as the desire for these goods to continue to be present in the future. As it is in the Phaedrus’ 10,000-year cycle. For some useful comments, see Hackforth 1952: 85–91 and Sedley 2009: 156–61. A related difficulty with the scheme of earned immortality comes from the earlier objection to the cyclical argument (72b) that, unless the living come from the dead, this would eventually exhaust the supply of souls. In this case souls, by escaping from future incarnation (earned immortality), would deplete the supply of those available to animate the world. In fact, the same applies to those incorrigible souls that never emerge from Tartarus (113e6). That this objection is not negligible is shown by Plato’s return to the question and explicit drawing out of the same negative consequence in Republic X (611a6–8), where he denies that anything mortal could become immortal and vice versa.

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In the myth, how much does Plato owe to his predecessors and how much does he change? As we will see, I think that at least three of the myth’s features can be shown to have clear Presocratic precedents: (1) the celestial afterlife, that is, a vertically structured cosmos, with us in the middle or bottom and the afterlife above us; (2) the soul’s post-mortem status being at least in part determined by its physical nature, that is, its relation to the wider cosmos and the elements; and (3) a commitment to cosmic justice. With respect to all three, but especially the first two, it may be more accurate to speak of Plato appropriating his predecessors, according to his teleological reform of physics. This teleological superstructure, though it downgrades the materials “not without which” the ends set by “the choice of what is best” (99a5–b1) are served, hardly does away with them. As for cosmic justice, it is perhaps the most constant factor, but in what follows I will say little about it, the better to concentrate on soul’s place in the order of nature.

1.3

Heraclitus: Fire, Death, and Salvation

With Heraclitus, active around 500 bce, roughly one generation after Pythagoras, we are at the earlier stages of the Presocratic physical approach to the soul. Heraclitus’ use of psuchê, “soul”, it is now customary to note, marks the visible endpoint of a gradual shift in meaning of the word. While the predominant use of psuchê in the epics is negative, to denote a sort of ghost that manifests itself only upon leaving the body at death, in Heraclitus psuchê acts as the unified life-faculty within the body, the seat of the emotions and of the faculty of reason. This single internal psuchê takes over from a set of earlier “thinking-organ” terms such as kêr, thumos, prapides, and phrên used in epic to describe, quite interchangeably, the locus of an emotional response or a deliberation.17 Beyond this unification and internalization of soul, Heraclitus marks a further philosophical departure in his exploration of epistemological and ethical questions, in particular the relation between soul, rationality, and the world’s own intelligibility.18 Those aspects will 17

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In epic, different terms may be used largely for poetic contextual reasons: see Jahn 1987. Heraclitus’ internalized psuchê is not a complete novelty, since there are passages in Homer and lyric authors where the meaning of psuchê is closer to “life” or the life-force within the body: see Cairns 2003 and Bremmer 2010. Although there is no direct evidence, it is hard to imagine that Pythagoras did not use psuchê to denote the transmigrating soul, on which see Xenophanes B 7 and Phillip Horky’s chapter in this volume. On soul in Heraclitus, see Nussbaum 1972; Kahn 1979: 216–66; Schofield 1991; Hussey 1999a; Mouraviev 2008; Betegh 2013; and Finkelberg 2013 and 2017. On rationality in Heraclitus, see Long 2013.

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not be ignored, but the focus will remain on Heraclitus’ views about the place of the soul within the physical kosmos. For context I start with B 30, one of Heraclitus’ broadest pronouncements on the world-order: This kosmos, the same for all, no one of gods or men has made it, but it always was, always is and always will be, an ever-living fire, lighting in measures and extinguishing itself in measures.

Heraclitus rejects the idea, found in his Ionian predecessors, that the world had a beginning and an end in time, in favor of an everlasting, stable kosmos. But stable does not mean changeless, and the changeability of the world is captured by its description as an “ever-living fire.” What Heraclitus means by the regular lightings and “extinctions” of this fire is most simply explained in terms of the alternation of day and night, although that hardly exhausts the richness of his fire imagery. Equally important is that fire is one of his cosmic elements: The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea the half is earth, the other half fireburst (πρηστήρ) is poured out as sea, and is measured into the same ratio as it was before it became earth. (B 31)

Heraclitus posits a threefold, stratified elemental cosmic scheme of earth, water, and fire, which undergo reciprocal transformations at fixed rates. These transformations are ongoing and, as seen in both passages, operate in both directions. As he puts it in B 60: “the path up and down is one and the same.” With this as our background, we can now turn to soul. Here there can be little doubt that an important part of Heraclitus’ message was to fix the place of soul within the order of nature: For souls it is death to become water, for water it is death to become earth; from earth water is born, from water soul. (B 36)

In B 36 Heraclitus substitutes souls (or soul) where B 31 has fire, thereby inviting us to identify the two.19 Through this substitution Heraclitus also implies a structural analogy between the macrocosm and the individual: fire is to the world what soul is to the body. That is, Heraclitus suggests that fire is the soul of the world, while soul is fire within individual bodies.20 At 19 20

On the shift from plural to singular, see Betegh 2013: 230–1. Betegh suggests that it is assimilated to a mass term. Beyond the open rejection of Homeric anthropomorphism, which starts with Xenophanes, many Presocratics identify one type of stuff or element as the divine or governing element of the universe, usually located in the heavens. Not infrequently, the governing god is identified as the same as the

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the same time B 36 shockingly introduces the notion of death for these plural souls, who “die into” water. This is a novelty beyond even the internalization of soul, insofar as it flatly contradicts the earlier concept of a soul that only comes into its own at death. Although this identity of fire and soul is a positive advance, one serious difficulty raised by B 36 is how the microcosmic and macrocosmic or celestial soul-fire can differ. To be precise, plural souls are said to “die into” water in B 36, but the “everliving fire” of B 30 does not, even if it does not always burn at full intensity. Before attempting to resolve this clash, it may be useful to take a step back and refine our understanding of cosmic fire and soul. To start with fire, we can now add that, in addition to being an element, the embodiment of change and the soul of the world, fire also functions in Heraclitus as his governing principle or cosmic god. See for example B 64, B 32, and B 41: Thunderbolt steers all. One, the wise alone, both wants and does not want to be called by the name of Zeus. For the wise is one, mastering the understanding by which he steers all things through all.

These three statements explore different aspects of the same, unique cosmic governing power, although the connection with fire is strongest in the first. The second in turn offers a clear acknowledgment by Heraclitus of the pedigree of his reformed theology, while the third stresses the intellectual superiority and centralized cosmic governance that will become an increasingly standard feature of “the one, greatest god” of the philosophers.21 If this characterization is correct, it helps explain or at least reinforce why Heraclitus insists that the fire of B 30 is “ever-living” (ἀείζωον). As a direct heir to Homeric Zeus, Heraclitean cosmic fire is strongly tied to the traditional conception of immortal gods. Here, despite some anachronism, it seems legitimate to think that Heraclitus conceived of his great god as essentially immortal. On this top level, then, we find

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soul-stuff, via a micro- to macrocosmic analogy. The clearest case is Diogenes of Apollonia DK B 5, where God and soul are both declared to be air. There is a good brief survey in Lesher 1995. Though this need not exclude a simultaneous plurality of lesser divinities. For a critique of such monotheistic readings see Trépanier 2010. Long 2007 discusses the separateness of “the one wise alone.” On religion in Heraclitus, see Adoménas 1999 and Most 2013. Here again we have a partial identity – world-soul and great god both govern – which also raises the question of how they can differ, since the great god is arguably a separate person from the other lesser beings within the world. On the solution to this in the Stoic appropriation of Heraclitus, see Mansfeld 2015/2018, esp. section 3.

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nothing to blunt the clash between the immortality of the celestial fire and the apparent mortality of individual souls. There may be more room for maneuver at the level of individual souls, however. This need not go so far as to deny the link between fire and individual souls, where fire seems to be a necessary component. B 117 for instance shows that the connection between fire and individual soul remains central: A man when drunk is led by the hand by a small child, his footing unsure, not knowing which way to go, having his soul moistened (ὑγρὴν τὴν ψυχὴν ἔχων).

This impairment of the man’s cognitive and governing faculty when drunk is explained in terms of the soul being moistened. The adjective “moistened” confirms the role of water as fire’s lethal opposite, while that same opposition invites us once more to identify soul and fire (compare B 50 “ . . . Hades and Dionysus are one and the same”). Yet if we cannot dispense with fire in accounting for plural souls, we may yet be able to add to or refine the account. We can start by noting, following others, that the three-element scheme of cosmic interactions discussed above oddly omits air as a possible fourth element. Given the prominence of air in Anaximenes, Heraclitus’ closest Ionian predecessor, this omission cannot be from ignorance. It must be deliberate and hence significant.22 Next, our oldest ancient testimonies, as opposed to the fragments themselves, are clear in identifying Heraclitus’ soul not with fire, but with anathumiasis, an “exhalation.” Aristotle says as much at De anima A 2, 405a24 and the notion recurs in the doxography, much of which goes back to Theophrastus.23 In ancient thought an “exhalation” is primarily a meteorological term used to describe emanations from a cosmic body, which extend through the air all the way into the upper atmosphere. The same term, not by accident, is used in doxographic accounts of Heraclitus’ meteorology to describe the “emanations” that arise from the sea and earth and which according to him “nourish” the sun and stars.24 22

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See in particular Anaximenes DK B 2 and Aëtius 1.3.4. Contrast Heraclitus B 76, which includes air, leading some to reject its authenticity: “Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire, water the death of air, earth the death of water.” Marcovich 1967 rejects it; Kahn 1979:153–5 gives a more balanced discussion. More recently see Betegh 2013: 234–9 and Mouraviev 2008: 330–7. Aëtius. 4.3.14 (Diels 389): “Heraclitus says that the world’s soul is an exhalation from the moist parts within it, while that in the living is from the exhalations without it and from within, which are of the same kind.” This material may well be contaminated with later Stoic ideas – see SVF (= von Arnim 1903–5) I 141 – but is unlikely to be a complete invention. On Heraclitus and Aristotle’s meteorology, see Wilson 2013: 54–60; on the sources, Mansfeld 2015/2018, section 3. Heraclitus imagines both as bowls into which these emanations collect. See Marcovich 1967, n. 61.

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One fragment that indirectly supports this more complex picture of soul as anathumiasis or fire-plus-something-else is B 67: God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and famine. It changes as does which, when it is mixed with balms, is named after the scent of each.

The first sentence reviews sets of opposites and declares that the (one) god underlies all of them, while the second offers an analogy to explain the first claim. Two related features of the analogy are, first, that the plural balms or scents are each given distinct names by men, even though this ignores the crucial fact that they cannot operate or be activated without fire; and second, that this focus on each separate balm shows an inverted value scale, where fire, the actual god, is ignored in favor of the more expensive, plural balms. For soul, the most important aspect of this fragment is the notion of fire being mixed with each balm to produce a scent. Burning incense is a sort of man-made “exhalation” and structurally must be close to what Heraclitus imagined the natural kind to be. Further and importantly, although it is not directly mentioned, this image also seems to require some neutral medium through which these scents can travel. If we try to draw these different threads together, then by combining the macro- to microcosmic structural analogy with the idea of soul as an emanation of some kind containing fire as its active ingredient, we find that air, the missing fourth element, becomes an indispensable part of the story. It is needed either as a part of soul itself or at least as the medium within which fire and water can meet and clash. This much seems presupposed in B 118 for instance, “Clear light is a dry soul, wisest and best,” an image that evokes a limpid Mediterranean day, not a Stoic ekpurôsis or cosmic conflagration. In the other direction, the “moist” soul of B 117 is only that: to be “moist” is to be wet, but not to be water. As for individual souls, air or some type of neutral middle is needed to allow for variation between them, for some to be more fiery and bright, others more damp and obscure, all the while remaining souls. Support for this connection with air is found in later sources, reflected in Sextus Empiricus (Adv. math. 7.127– 30), which suggest that the Heraclitean logos is “breathed in” and that, when we are awake and perceiving, we are, as it were, reconnected to the objective world around us.25 This direct identity of logos with air may be a 25

Compare the “private world” of the unenlightened dreamers of B 2 and the actual dreamer of B 26: “A man in the night kindles a light for himself when his vision is extinguished . . . .” For commentary, see Schofield 1991: 27–8.

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little forced, but it does capture Heraclitus’ interest in the adjective xunos, whose ordinary meaning is “common” or “shared”. In the fragments xunos is sometimes attributed to the logos itself, but the articular construction to xunon also features on its own, where it develops meanings ranging from “the common” to “universal” or “objective” (see B 114, quoted below). At a minimum, in spatial terms, xunos corresponds to the middle altitude between earth and heavenly fire, the traditional place of air. In civic terms it is the center, the “commons” where transactions and exchanges occur.26 Heraclitean soul thus seems to involve air as well as fire, although it remains unclear if we should conceive of them as mixed together; perhaps air is just the medium fire moves through. To be sure, in B 118, “Clear light is a dry soul,” the stress is more on subjective, qualitative clarity, as an aspect of lived experience, than on the elemental composition of soul. Clear light invokes the natural metaphor of knowledge as vision, with clarity and distinctness its optimal state, and as such prefigures later epistemological contrasts between “clear and unclear” appearances. With this as our outline of Heraclitean soul, we can now tentatively consider some of the evidence for Heraclitus’ views on the afterlife. We can start by noting that the death of individual, plural souls is a genuine possibility for him. This death “down,” of the soul extinguished into water, is a true annihilation of the self, and bleaker, in its own way, than Homeric survival in gloomy Hades. Such a view of death has sometimes been equated with a blanket Heraclitean denial of the afterlife, but many other passages support the possibility of survival.27 But almost certainly, even if some souls do survive, the soul according to Heraclitus is not essentially immortal. More to the point, the possibility of death for the soul is precisely what is required to give posthumous survival its meaning as salvation or, as we will see, celestial apotheosis. A stronger general consideration in favor of a Heraclitean afterlife is that Heraclitus frequently connects post-mortem survival to cosmic justice. In B 25, for instance, “deaths that are greater, greater portions gain,” suggests proportionality within afterlife rewards. This might even be a euphemistic way of demarcating survival from death. Other passages are fuller on the physical aspects of this picture, of which perhaps the most useful is B 114: 26 27

One good Homeric precedent is Iliad 15.193 when Poseidon, told to leave the battle by Zeus via Iris, protests that earth and Olympus are xunos to all the gods. Nussbaum 1972: 169: “Heraclitus’ ψυχή theory recognizes death as necessary and denies posthumous survival.” Nussbaum deflates most of the positive evidence for survival in terms of epic glory, kleos, as in B 29. Since Kahn 1979, however, consensus has been building that Heraclitus advocates some form of upper afterlife. For a recent case against this, see the appendix in Mansfeld 2015/2018.

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simon tre´ panier Those who will speak with understanding (ξὺν νόῳ) must rely on what is common (ξυνῷ) to all, like a state upon the law, and even more firmly. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine (law?). For it rules as much it wishes, and it suffices for all and is not exhausted.

Admittedly, the surface meaning of this fragment is (again) more epistemological than eschatological or even physical. The idea of cosmic law or divine rule is introduced to support an analogy: understanding (νόος) depends upon what is “shared” or “common” (ξυνός), just as a state is constituted from or relies upon law.28 This use of xunos is ambiguous between a subjective epistemological sense, what merely happens to be agreed among all, and a stronger sense of impersonal, objective truth. Heraclitus disambiguates this immediately by declaring for the second: the human law in his analogy is dependent upon the universal, cosmic one.29 Beyond that, however, certain details of expression closely connect B 114 to wider Heraclitean eschatological themes. First, the “one divine,” whether taken as law or “one wise alone,” can be identified with upper cosmic fire, the ruling element, or again with the clear upper atmosphere where it is most manifest. Next, the superiority of this one divine god or law is expressed not only in terms of that which rules, but also as that which “nourishes” all mortal laws. This idea of nourishment is reinforced in the next sentence with the specification that it is an inexhaustible supply. This recalls the nourishment, by anathumiasis, of the sun and stars found in the doxography, except that now it operates in the opposite direction, flowing from the divine top down to human laws (as the light of the sun?). Such movement of exchange “up and down” between stratified elements is, as we have seen, a central structural feature of Heraclitus’ thought. This in turn invites us to imagine two directions of travel, anathumiasis, cosmic exhalations going up, contrasted with divine radiation sent down, and to combine or perhaps identify this two-way process with the fate of souls, which also travel in both directions. This set of ideas may well be connected to later reports in Macrobius (Somnium Scipionis 14.19) and Galen (4.786 Kühn) that identify the Heraclitean soul with the pure brightness of the stars.30 28

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The pun on xun noôi (with understanding) and xunos (common) reinforces the connection. The epistemological point is especially clear if, as Marcovich does, one combines B 114 with B 2: “wherefore one must follow what is common. But although the logos is common, the many live as if they had private wisdom of their own.” The unresolved tension between an understood “one divine law” and “one divine,” i.e. the cosmic ruler, seems a case of deliberate ambiguity. Otherwise, in keeping with his political conservatism and hierarchical conception of political order, he rejects the notion that the state is what creates or sanctions laws, and holds that it is constituted or nourished by a prior law or rational order. See Kahn 1979: 15. The connection is hard to disentangle from later interpretations. See the testimonies collected at Marcovich 1967, n. 58–61 for the sun, and soul at nn. 67–68. For the reception, see Mansfeld 1992

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This leads us to one of the most deservedly famous fragments: Immortals are mortals, mortals immortals, living the others’ death, dying the others’ lives. (B 62)

In light of what has already been said, this passage does not need extensive comment, for we can take it as an encapsulation of the two-way exchange between opposites. All we need add is that it is probably best understood as a vertical exchange (cf. B 60, “the path up and down is one and the same”) and that, as a process, it is ongoing. More widely, this mixed status for soul, as fire-plus-something-else, is also the most plausible means of explaining the difference between the death of individual souls and the permanence of the single divine, ever-living fire. While the great mass of fire may constantly be losing and gaining individual “particles” of fire, it goes on forever. Further support for this reconstruction of Heraclitus’ concept of the afterlife can be found in his attacks on Pythagoras, his elder by a generation, whom he calls a plagiarist in B 129, and possibly “the prince of frauds” in B 81. As noted by others, this suggests a professional rivalry, for which I suggest the most likely topic was afterlife lore.31 If we ask what Heraclitus might have made of Pythagorean reincarnation, then in light of his commitment to the “death of soul,” it seems reasonable to think that he would have despised the very idea. For Heraclitus, post-mortem survival does not involve automatic continued life on the same cosmic or earthly level. For him survival is granted to a select few as the mark of their distinction; it is also a promotion to a new, celestial level of life and consciousness, an apotheosis. By contrast, reincarnation, which comes close to assuming the essential immortality of all souls, makes post-mortem survival available to all and sundry.32 As a final consideration, and to conclude this section, let us consider where the celestial afterlife leaves Heraclitus with respect to essential or earned immortality. In Heraclitus only the kosmos itself and his great god appear to be essentially immortal. As for the lesser deities, although

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and 2015/2018 and Osborne 1987b. Cf. Finkelberg 2013: 157–61, who however does not use B 114. Heraclitus’ celestial bodies are bowls, very much like upside-down incense burners; cf. B 67 above. See Finkelberg 2013 and Huffman 2008 on B 129 especially. B 40 includes Pythagoras among other “polymath” authorities Heraclitus faults for lack of understanding (νόος). The identity of Pythagoras in B 81 is uncertain, but is supported by the end of B 28: “and yet justice shall seize the crafters of lies and their witnesses” (καὶ μέντοι καὶ Δίκη καταλήψεται ψευδῶν τέκτονας καὶ μάρτυρας). If this justice is inflicted after death, then the point has even more bite. For a nice description of the intellectual elitism typical of the early Greek philosophers, see Hussey 1999b: 316. Contrast the account of reincarnation and immortality in Horky’s chapter in this volume.

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nothing excludes their being longer-lived than us, the more fluid internal boundaries of the Heraclitean kosmos, characterized by regulated elemental change, suggest limits to their duration, whether it is by “dying into” mortals at the human-immortals boundary, or perhaps by losing their separate identity at the very top by merging into the ever-living celestial fire. While the latter comes close to earned immortality, it cannot be called a case of individual survival or personal immortality. If, one level down, we consider instead the passage from the human level to something higher, then Heraclitean post-mortem survival is tantamount to earned apotheosis, but even so Heraclitus does not appear to think that these newly promoted “guardians” of the cosmic order (B 63) thereby secure immortality. Yet again, the path up is also the path down.

1.4 Empedocles: Elements, Compounds, and Life in Hades Following Parmenides’ critique of generation and destruction around 490 bce, Greek philosophers accept a set of “laws of conservation” negating generation from nothing or destruction into nothing. Although different thinkers attempt to meet these strictures in different ways, the fourelement scheme of Empedocles (c. 490–430 bce) is one of the most influential ancient attempts to relate the changing phenomenal world to a changeless reality. According to the more common interpretation of his thought, the fundamental ingredients of the world are four immortal Parmenidean elements, earth, air, fire, and water, whose combinations in different ratios produce the full variety of our experience. As Empedocles puts it at B 8.1–3: “there is no growth (φύσις) of any of all/ mortals . . . but only mixture and exchange of things mixed” (μίξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων).33 Mixture and separation of the elements Empedocles accounted for in terms of two further principles, the motive or quasipsychological powers, Love and Strife. These take turns dominating the four elements, and in so doing produce a never-ending cosmic cycle. Under Love, the elements mix and are drawn to another until they fuse into a single, undifferentiated being, a god which Empedocles baptizes the Sphairos. But eventually Strife makes the elements recoil from one another, breaking the Sphairos apart, until they become completely separate. 33

This approach can be termed “Eleatic pluralism.” See Curd 2002 and Graham 2006. For a critique and alternative, Palmer 2009: 260–317 and 2016. For a reply to Palmer, see now O’Brien 2016. Strict Eleatic pluralism excludes Heraclitean transformation into another element, so that, for example, an apotheosis by transformation of e.g. air into fire would not be possible. But emergent properties can arise from mixtures.

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Worlds like ours are created and destroyed in the middle phases, when both powers are active.34 If we ask where this general scheme leaves the soul, then determining its status would appear to be the relatively simple matter of deciding to which of the two basic classes it belongs: is it an element or a compound? Identifying it with one of the elements would align it with essential immortality, whereas, if the soul is a compound of elements, it would necessarily be subject to dissolution and hence mortal. This, however, presupposes that we have a solid grasp of Empedocles’ concept of soul, and that question is one of the most difficult to settle and cuts to the core of a fundamental debate on the unity of his thought. Because Empedocles’ poetry has reached us under two contrasting titles (on the one hand, the On Nature, home to the teachings on the elements, biology and the cosmic cycle; on the other, the Purifications, in which he discloses himself to be a god (B 112) and/or a fallen daimôn (B 115) exiled from the blessed and forced to transmigrate and wander through the elements), it was long thought that his teachings featured in two separate poems that were not formally related or, worse still, theoretically at odds.35 In 1999, however, a spectacular papyrus find, the Strasbourg papyrus of Empedocles, conclusively showed that reincarnation lore featured in the On Nature. At a minimum, the unity of Empedocles’ thought follows, even if the details of that unity are still being debated.36 How does this new context affect the status of soul? Empedocles’ commitment to reincarnation, shown in section d of the papyrus, would seem to make the identification of the transmigrating soul as an eternal element almost necessary. For how could a reincarnated soul be a compound? Though attractive in theory, the identity of the transmigrating soul with one of the principles is not in fact supported by any ancient evidence, despite the comparative embarrassment of riches that is the Empedoclean corpus.37 Can we then fall back upon the details of the cycle and the nature of the elements to decide the issue? Possibly, but these remain controversial. More recently, Long has argued convincingly that Empedocles’ use of 34 35 36

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On the chronology of the cycle, see O’Brien 1969; Trépanier 2003 for the papyrus; and Sedley 2007: 31–74 for an alternative reconstruction. See Zeller 1919–20, vol. 1: 1005, for the most influential critique of this incompatibility. For the papyrus, see Martin and Primavesi 1999 and Janko 2004. Section d is the most important for the unity of Empedocles’ thought. The papyrus has also strengthened the possibility of a single work, as advocated by Osborne 1987a; Inwood 2001; and Trépanier 2004, but the question remains controversial. Love has been the preferred option among modern scholars, but only ever as a conjecture. See O’Brien 1969: 325–36.

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terms such as ἄμβροτος and ἀθάνατος, though standardly rendered by the English “immortal,” are better understood as implying great duration and continuity, instead of everlastingness. As such, these terms can apply equally well to elements as to mixtures, provided they describe constant enough cosmic phenomena.38 Without dismissing these other aspects, my argument is simpler: while there is no ancient evidence to support the identification of the transmigrating soul as an element or principle, there is a lot of evidence for its status as a compound. Admittedly, this is not that clear if we confine ourselves to metaphysical first-principles. But the more detail we enter into, especially once we move from physics to Empedocles’ biology, physiology, and embryology, the cumulative case for soul as a compound becomes unanswerable. For reasons of space, I confine myself to an outline, and rely upon positions that I have argued more fully elsewhere (2014, 2017, and 2020). To begin, a long-lived but still mortal soul is hardly inconceivable for the period. It features prominently in the Phaedo, where, to illustrate the concept, the Pythagorean Cebes advances a simile (87a–88b), comparing the soul to a weaver who makes his own cloaks (which stand for the body). Cebes makes the point that, just as the weaver’s outlasting many cloaks hardly makes him immortal, so the reincarnated soul’s being longer lasting than the body does not entail that it is immortal. A very similar notion of great longevity is found in fragment B 115 of Empedocles, where Empedocles reveals himself as a fallen daimôn. More precisely, at line B 115.5, these are introduced as “daimones that have obtained a life of long span” (δαίμονες οἵτε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο). Following our ancient Platonist sources and the modern scholarly consensus, I identify these daimones with the transmigrating soul.39 Yet against those same Platonist sources, who wrongly think of the daimones in terms of Plato’s immortal soul, it seems obvious that, by so carefully describing them as “long-lived,” 38

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Long 2017: 17: “Empedocles uses ‘immortal’ when making various contrasts, and denying various changes . . . Empedocles saw continuity, over a long but finite time as the more important common feature.” The question becomes even more ambiguous if, following Palmer 2009 and 2016, the four elements are not plural Eleatic beings, but merely long-lasting elements, who lose some of their properties when they “die into each other” (φθίνει εἰς ἄλληλα, B 26.2), that is, disappear into mixtures. Another way out of the difficulty is to reject the Purifications material as doctrinally significant. For example, Primavesi 2008 argues that the exile of the daimôn is only a myth and the long-lived-gods are the elements. Empedocles avoids the word psuchê, except possibly in B138, but the fragment is of dubious authenticity (see Picot 2006). In epic, the word daimôn normally denotes a divinity, sometimes of a minor kind.

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Empedocles is thereby intimating that they are not everlasting.40 And if so, then this finite span seems easier to explain in terms of the soul being a compound than a fragment of Love or a pure element of some kind. Nevertheless, as noted above, the alternative can be defended if the elements themselves are merely long-lived. Treating the long-lived daimones as a single element, however, becomes more difficult in my next passage. There a similarly long but limited span is attributed to a set of plural gods who occur in a poetic formula Empedocles reuses a number of times. In every instance of this formula these gods are listed alongside other elemental compounds such as plants, animals, and men and women: from which all things that ever were, are, or will be hereafter have sprouted up: trees and men and women and wild beasts and birds and fishes reared in water and even gods of long life, mightiest in their privileges.

(On Nature 1.269–72/P. Strasb. a (i) 8–a (ii) 3)

By listing these “gods of long life” (θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες) alongside other living creatures, all of which we know to be elemental compounds, Empedocles is surely inviting us to think of them in those terms as well. And if like all other living things these gods are elemental compounds, then despite being gods they cannot be everlasting, for the cosmic cycle sets outer limits to their duration.41 Let us now turn to Empedocles’ biology and physiology, study of which shows how well suited it is to accommodate transmigration. As just noted, for Empedocles all living things are temporary elemental compounds. Beyond that, however, it is equally important to notice, even though this fact is standardly ignored, that in his theory living things are more complex 40

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Platonist readers, our main sources for Purifications material, fairly consistently identify the daimones of B 115 as eternal souls. See Trépanier 2017: 135–47 and 2020. Platonic demonology on the whole, however, is more diverse, and long-lived daimones are certainly conceivable. For Empedocles specifically, the best example is Plutarch On the Obsolescence of Oracles 418e, where Heracleon raises the possibility of mortal daimones, citing Empedocles as an authority for the view, only to dismiss the notion as “rash and barbaric.” On that wider background, see Boys-Stones 2017, ch. 10, with bibliographical guidance. Of later Platonists, Proclus at In Timaeum Diehl ed. 3.158 mentions “semi-mortal” daimones: see Baltzly 2013: 264 (= 4.158.10). I thank the Press’s anonymous readers for encouraging me to expand this point. Again, if one wanted to defend the identity of these gods with elements, it would be marginally defensible, but it would go against the more obvious reading of the passage, as well as B 21 and B 23, two further instances of the catalogue. In B 23 especially Love and Strife are compared to two painters (Empedocles uses the dual) who fashion votive images, with the elements as their paints/ sources. Just as painters make paintings, not paints (note “from which”), so long-lived gods, plants, and animals are all elemental products, not elements themselves.

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than simple compounds or uniform blends. Plants, animals, and humans are not single or uniform: they have parts. As described in his strange yet wonderful account of the origin of life under Love (fragments B 57–62), all limbs or body parts were mixed or compounded first and separately, and only later came together, if and when they chanced to fit one another. Thus, as determined by these origins, all current living things are complex one-and-many concatenations of multiple parts, the parts themselves being already different elemental compounds. In particular, Empedocles conceives of each body part as having its own, distinct elemental ratio. Plants and animals for him are thus closer to “superorganisms,” like a hive of bees or an ant colony, than to substantial individuals.42 With respect to transmigration, the upshot of this part-and-whole framework is that, in Empedocles, the soul is best understood as one body part among other body parts, one elemental blend-substance among others. Yet having said that, in other respects – and this comes as no great surprise – souls are special parts. First, as suggested by B 134, where a limbless “holy phrên (mind)” is depicted soaring across the cosmos, it can “fly” or survive on its own outside the body. Second, the daimones of B 115 are defined as those “that have obtained a life of long span,” which seems to imply that not all daimones are equally long-lived.43 Unlike most other body parts, which Empedocles tells us are re-mixed with their corresponding mate-part during sexual reproduction, the phrên appears to be relocated entire from one body to the next. Instead of being sexually reproduced, it transmigrates.44 Empedocles’ theory of substantial body-parts thus provides a suitable continuant for reincarnation and offers a bridge between Empedocles’ physical lore and his Pythagorean commitments. If this picture is correct, and the transmigrating soul is a long-lived yet destructible compound, we can next ask: what then is it a compound of? 42 43

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See Sedley 2016 for the term, and Trépanier 2014, esp. 197–200, on body parts. Jouanna 2012a offers parallels in the medical writers. In B 134 the phrên is surely so named to recall its status as a one-time body part. In fragment B 59, whose source, Simplicius, locates in the earliest phase of the zoogony, Empedocles applies the word daimôn to these separate body parts indifferently. The two passages together suggest that phrên is one species, the longest lived, of the genus daimôn, “body part”. See Trépanier 2014: 178–80. Aristotle describes Empedoclean limb-reproduction at De generatione animalium A 18, 722b: “For he says that the male and female contain as it were a tally, and neither produces a whole, ‘But sundered is the limbs’ nature, part in man’s...’ (B 63).” By contrast, in another fragment, B 126, the soul (possibly there called a daimôn, and apparently entire) is “wrapped in a cloak of foreign fleshes.” But as Aristotle points out in De part., if the limbs were not already half-parts, the result should be two offspring. For souls, however, it is harder to imagine that they are re-blended at each generation. Rather, the very idea of a transmigrating soul is that it preserves its identity from one life to the next. If this were not the case, it would have odd implications for cosmic justice.

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The doxography offers the following, generally overlooked, testimony: “Empedocles [says that soul] is a mixture of a certain aithêr-like and airlike nature.”45 Allowing for the change in later Greek whereby Empedocles’ word for air (aithêr) took on a meaning closer to celestial fire, we can unpack this definition of soul as equivalent, in Empedocles’ scheme, to a blend of fire (= aithêr-like) and air. This immediately brings to mind the upper heavens, where those two elements are concentrated, and, by the same token, the celestial afterlife. While this definition is already plausible on its own, since it recognizes the soul as a compound, it also now has a secure anchor in Empedocles’ original fragments at fragment B 9 as recently edited by Primavesi in Mansfeld and Primavesi 2011 (= Plutarch, adv. Col. 11 p. 1113 AB): οἱ δ’ ὅτε μὲν κατὰ φῶτα μιγὲν φῶς αἰθέρι ἢ κατὰ θηρῶν ἀγροτέρων γένος ἢ κατὰ θάμνων ἠὲ κατ’ οἰωνῶν, τό γε μὲν γενέσθαι, εὖτε δ’ ἀποκρινθῶσι, τὸ δ’ αὖ δυσδαίμονα πότμον· ᾗ θέμις καλέουσι, νόμῳ δ’ ἐπίφημι καὶ αὐτός. But they, when a mixed aitherial fire descends into a man, or into the race of wild beasts or that of bushes or that of birds, this they call “coming into being”; and when it is separated out, this they say is “an accursed fate”; which it is not right for them to say, but I too will assent to the custom.

The doxographic identification of soul as a mixture of fire and air can be confirmed when we notice how, in line 1, Empedocles tells us that birth, as commonly understood, happens when “a mixed aitherial fire” (μιγὲν φῶς αἰθέριον) “descends” (κατὰ . . . βῇ) into various living things, from plants to beasts to men. Line B 9.1, as edited, thus seems to confirm the testimonium’s accuracy. Further, as just noted, since the two elements that constitute the soul are celestial ones, the passage appears to involve the celestial afterlife. Indeed, once this connection is made, we can observe that it is hardly the only such allusion in B 9. To see this, however, we must notice how the new text changes the meaning of the passage. Against previous interpretations of B 9, that the views it censures are violations of the Eleatic bans on generation and destruction, what Empedocles is actually faulting here are ordinary conceptions of birth and death as good (birth) and bad (death), which he denounces as not only wrong, 45

ὁ δὲ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μῖγμα ἐξ αἰθερώδους καὶ ἀερώδους οὐσίας. Theodoret Graecarum affectionum curatio V.16.10–19.1 not retained in Doxographi graeci (=Aëtius 4.3 p. 389) and hence not in Diels– Kranz, but Mansfeld and Runia retain the testimony in their forthcoming edition of the material.

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but impious. As such, the fragment appears to be advocating the Pythagorean idea, encountered above in the Phaedo, that death is in fact a good thing, insofar as it is a liberation of the soul/daimôn from the body. To be even more specific, the term used in B 9 to describe the passage of souls into bodies is “descends” (κατὰ . . . βῇ), which in the original could not fail to evoke the noun katabasis, standardly used to describe a descent to the underworld. In this respect we can also note how Empedocles appears to go out of his way to refer to death as “an accursed fate” (δυσδαίμονα πότμον), literally a “harsh-daimôn fate,” which seems a likely enough allusion to his own daimôn-lore. More assuredly, if each birth is framed as a katabasis, then the passage seems to be strongly hinting that our current life is set in Hades. Such a doctrine brings along with it, as its natural correlative, that the true life of the soul is the life it leads above in the heavens.46 On that interpretation, then, B 9 not only confirms the testimony on the elemental composition of soul as a compound of fire and air, but also links it to the notion of life in Hades. Indeed, if that is granted, it becomes much easier to see that the idea has many other instances in the so-called Purification fragments. At fragment B 121 Empedocles speaks of “an unpleasant place” (ἀτερπέα χῶρον, the very phrase used of Hades at Odyssey 11.94), where gore and illness run rampant “along the meadow of Atē”, while in B 118 he says, “I wept and I wailed when I saw the unaccustomed place” (κλαῦσά τε καὶ κώκυσα ἰδὼν ἀσυνήθεα χῶρον). The latter may be a reference to a newborn’s first cry, which Empedocles reinterprets as a fall from a higher and happier station. A number of other testimonies confirm this cosmic-eschatological picture (see e.g. Hippolytus 1.4.3 = DK A62), but they have mostly been “compartmentalized” away as belonging exclusively to Empedocles’ Purifications lore. Against that, B 9 and the other evidence we have considered so far lays bare Empedocles’ synthesizing aspirations, his attempt to coordinate his physics, cosmology, and biology with “Pythagorean” transmigration. If we now go back to the Phaedo myth, it seems highly likely that Empedocles was one of Plato’s likely sources for the “Pythagorean” notion of life in Hades, while the long-lived daimones appear to be our closest extant predecessors to the aithêr-dwellers. This Empedoclean background can be explored in greater detail, but this is not the place to pursue it. At most, to forestall some possible objections, let me point out two main 46

Cf. Plutarch On Isis and Osiris 361c: “Empedocles says that the daimones pay the penalties for their sins and their faults and mistakes . . . until, thus chastened and purified, they regain their natural place and station.”

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directions in which this account could be extended. On the level of physiology, the identification of the soul as a compound of air and fire is probably best understood as an early version of ancient pneuma doctrines. In particular, it looks as if blood, for Empedocles, should be understood as the seat of the soul, but not the soul itself.47 In the other direction, if our life in Hades and the celestial afterlife can be securely attributed to Empedocles, that does not appear to be the end of the story for these daimones. Their ultimate prospects probably include the possibility of graduation to an even higher level, as described at B 146: And in the end they become seers and poets and healers, And leaders among earth-bound men, Whence they sprout into gods, mightiest in privileges.

These sprouting gods must be the same “gods of long-life” from the zoogonic formula quoted above, as shown by the second half of the third line, which reuses the other epithet applied to them in the formula, “mightiest in privileges” (τιμῇσι φέριστοι). What exactly these gods are like, what they do, or where they live, is unclear. At a minimum, their divinity is probably equivalent to escape from the current cycle of incarnation, at least until the end of this world. Beyond that, if Plato is any guide, this time in the Phaedrus myth, the likeliest guess is that they are long-lived but still mortal star-gods, one level above the aithêr-dwelling daimones.48 It remains to consider how Empedocles fares with respect to essential and earned immortality. The only candidates for essential immortality, in the sense of everlastingness, in Empedocles appear to be the six first principles, while all other things, as compounds, are inherently separable and hence mortal. Beyond that, Empedocles downgrades all else, including the kosmos and his great god, the Sphairos, to the status of temporary beings. In Heraclitus, we recall, his great god was essentially immortal, in the sense of everlasting. However, there is a greater similarity between the two at the level of the lesser, plural gods. In Heraclitus, we have seen that the plural celestial “guardians” were probably not immortal, whereas Empedocles has transmigrating, long-lived daimones and long-lived plural gods.49 In Empedocles, however, divinity itself is divorced from everlastingness, so that, while there is apotheosis, there does not seem to be any 47 48 49

See Trépanier 2020. For the evidence, see Trépanier 2017: 173–8. It is unclear how these relate to Love and the cosmic cycle: see Picot and Berg 2015. We can now see a probable area of Heraclitean overlap with Empedocles, which may extend to life in Hades. See Granger 2000.

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way of earning immortality, understood again as everlastingness. Despite that, there are still differences in longevity and blessedness between compounds: that of the transmigrating, long-lived daimones over the other parts of the body, and possibly that of the “long-lived gods” who escape reincarnation (as stars?) over the long-lived daimones still undergoing reincarnation. As for the Sphairos-god, it has a whole phase of the cycle to itself, most likely putting its duration beyond that of all other Empedoclean compounds.

1.5

Conclusion

Although only a sample, the material reviewed is enough to show that the celestial afterlife was a distinct option in early Greek philosophical speculation on the soul. In particular, the Phaedo myth should be understood as Plato’s own revised version of the tradition. As for the soul’s metaphysical status, we have seen that Heraclitus and Empedocles, in seeking to fix the place of soul within the order of nature, locate its true home in the heavens but are also thereby led to reject its essential immortality. This odd type of limited apotheosis may be one reason why Aristotle, when he dismisses the celestial afterlife in my opening quotation, chooses the strange term “more immortal” (ἀθανατωτέρα) to describe the celestial soul. By the stricter standards of later metaphysical distinctions, it seems an apt description of this compromise position.

Bibliography Adoménas, M. 1999. “Heraclitus on religion,” Phronesis 44: 87–113. Annas, J. 1982. “Plato’s myths of judgement,” Phronesis 27: 119–43. Baltzly, D. 2013. Proclus: Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, Volume 5. Book 4: Proclus on Time and the Stars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. von Arnim, H. 1903–5. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Fragments of the Early Stoics), Leipzig; Teubner, with vol. 4, indexes, by M. Adler, 1924. Barnes, J. 1982. The Presocratic Philosophers. London: Routledge. Bartoš, H. and King, C. G. (eds.) 2020. Heat, Pneuma, and Soul in Ancient Philosophy and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Betegh, G. 2009. “Tale, theology and teleology in the Phaedo,” in Partenie (ed.): 77–100. 2013. “On the physical aspects of Heraclitus’ psychology, with new appendices,” in Sider and Obbink (eds.): 225–62. Boys-Stones, G. 2017. Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bremmer, J. N. 2002. The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife. London and New York: Routledge. 2010. “The rise of the unitary soul and its opposition to the body: from Homer to Socrates,” in Jansen and Jedan (eds.): 11–30. Bremmer, J. N. and Erskine, A. (eds.) 2010. The Gods of Ancient Greece. Edinburgh Leventis Studies 5. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Burkert, W. 1972 [1962]. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burnet, J. 1911. Plato, Phaedo. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cairns, D. 2003. “Myths and metaphors of mind and mortality,” Hermathena 175: 41–75. Caston, V. and Graham, D. W. (eds.) 2002. The Presocratics: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos. Aldershot: Ashgate. Clarke, M. 1999. Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer. A Study of Words and Myths. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curd, P. 2002. “The metaphysics of physics: mixture and separation in Empedocles and Anaxagoras,” in Caston and Graham (eds.): 139–58. 2013. “Where are Love and Strife? Incorporeality in Empedocles,” in McCoy (ed.): 113–38. Curd, P. and Graham, D. W. (eds.) 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Everson, S. (ed.) 1991. A Companion to Ancient Thought 2: Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finkelberg, A. 2013. “Heraclitus, the rival of Pythagoras,” in Sider and Obbink (eds.): 147–62. 2017. Heraclitus and Thales’ Conceptual Scheme: A Historical Study. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 23. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Frede, D. and Reis, B. (eds.) 2009. Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Garland, R. 2001. The Greek Way of Death, 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gee, E. R. G. 2020. Mapping the Afterlife: From Homer to Dante. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerber, D. (ed.) 1985. Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of L. Woodbury. Chico, CA: Scholars’ Press. Graham, D. W. 2006. Explaining the Cosmos. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2010. The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013. Science before Socrates: Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New Astronomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Granger, H. 2000. “Death’s other kingdom: Heraclitus on the life of the foolish and the wise,” Classical Philology 95: 260–81.

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Gregory, A. 2014. The Presocratics and the Supernatural. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Guthrie, W. K. C. 1975. A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. IV: Plato. The Man and his Dialogues: Earlier Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hackforth, R. 1952. Plato’s Phaedrus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1955. Plato’s Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huffman, C. 2007. “Philolaus and the central fire,” in Stern-Gillet and Corrigan (eds.): 57–94. 2008. “Heraclitus’ critique of Pythagoras’ enquiry in fragment 129,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35: 19–48. Huffman, C. (ed.) 2014. A History of Pythagoreanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hussey, E. 1999a. “Heraclitus,” in Long (ed.): 88–112. 1999b. “The enigmas of Derveni: a review of André Laks and Glenn W. Most (eds.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 17: 303–24. Inwood, B. 2001. The Poem of Empedocles, 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Jahn, T. 1987. Zum Wortfeld “Seele-Geist” in der Sprache Homers. Zetemata 83. Munich: Bech. Janko, R. 2004. “Empedocles, On Nature, I 233–364: a new reconstruction of P. Strasb. Gr. Inv. 1665–66,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 150: 1–26. Jansen, L. and Jedan, C. (eds.) 2010. Philosophische Anthropologie in der Antike. Frankfurt: Ontos. Jouanna, J. 2012a. “The theory of sensation, thought and the soul in the Hippocratic treatise regimen: its connections with Empedocles and Plato’s Timaeus,” in Jouanna (ed.): 195–228. Jouanna, J. (ed.) 2012b. Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers. Translated by N. Allies. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Kahn, C. H. 1979. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kingsley, P. 1995. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laks, A. 1999. “Soul, sensation and thought” in Long (ed.): 250–69. Lesher, J. H. 1995. “Mind’s knowledge and powers of control in Anaxagoras DK B 12,” Phronesis 40: 125–42. Long, A. A. (ed.) 1999. The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013. “Heraclitus on measure and the explicit emergence of rationality,” in Sider and Obbink (eds.): 201–24. Long, A. G. 2007. “Wisdom in Heraclitus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 33: 1–18. 2017. “Immortality in Empedocles,” Apeiron 50(1): 1–20. Mansfeld, J. 1992. Heresiography in Context: Hippolytus’ Elenchos as a Source for Greek Philosophy. Leiden: Brill.

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2015/2018. “Heraclitus on soul and super-soul, with an afterthought on the afterlife,” Rhizomata. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 3: 62–93; repr. in Mansfeld 2018: 218–50. 2018. Studies in Early Greek Philosophy. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Mansfeld, J. and Primavesi, O. 2011. Die Vorsokratiker. Stuttgart: Reclam. Marcovich, M. 1967. Heraclitus. Merida, Venezuela: Los Andes University Press. Martin, A. and Primavesi, O. 1999. L’Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. 1665– 1666): Introduction, édition et commentaire. Berlin, New York, and Strasbourg: De Gruyter. McCoy, J. (ed.) 2013. Early Greek Philosophy: The Presocratics and the Emergence of Reason. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Mihai, A. 2010. “Soul’s aitherial abode according to the Poteidaia epitaph and the Presocratic philosophers,” Numen 57: 553–82. Most, G. 2013. “Heraclitus on religion,” Rhizomata 1(2): 153–67. Mouraviev, S. 2008. “Doctrinalia Heraclitea I et II: âme du monde et embrasement universel (notes de lecture),” Phronesis 53: 315–58. Nussbaum, M. 1972. “ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus,” Phronesis 17: 1–16 and 153–70. O’Brien, D. 1969. Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2016. “Empedocles and the identity of the elements,” Elenchos 37: 5–32. O’Brien, M. J. 1985. “Becoming immortal in Plato’s Symposium,” in Gerber (ed.): 185–205. Olson, S. D. 1998. Aristophanes, Peace. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Onians, R. B. 1951. The Origins of European Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, C. 1987a. “Empedocles recycled,” Classical Quarterly, New Series 37: 24–50. 1987b. Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Palmer, J. 2009. Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. “Elemental change in Empedocles,” Rhizomata 4(1): 30–54. Partenie, C. (ed.) 2009. Plato’s Myths. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pelliccia, H. 1995. Mind, Body, and Speech in Homer and Pindar. Hypomnemata 107. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Picot, J.-C. 2006. “Aristote, Poétique 1457 b 13–14: la métaphore d’espèce à espèce,” Revue des Études Grecques 119: 532–51. Picot, J.-C. and Berg., W. 2015. “Lions and promoi: final phase of exile for Empedocles’ daimones,” Phronesis 60: 380–409. Pradeau, J. F. 1996. “Le Monde terrestre: le modèle cosmologique du mythe final du Phédon,” Revue Philosophiqe de la France et de l’Étranger 186(1): 75–105. Primavesi, O. 2008. “Physical and mythical divinity,” in Curd and Graham (eds.): 250–83. Rashed, M. 2009. “Aristophanes and the Socrates of the Phaedo,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 36: 107–36.

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Renehan, R. 1980. “On the Greek origins of the concepts incorporeality and immateriality,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21: 105–38. Robin, L. 1926. Platon Phédon. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Robinson, T. 1995. Plato’s Psychology, 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rowe, C. J. 1993. Plato, Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schofield, M. 1991. “Heraclitus’ theory of soul and its antecedents,” in Everson (ed.): 1–34. Sedley, D. 1990. “Teleology and myth in the Phaedo,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 5: 359–83. 2007. Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity. Berkeley, Los Angles, and London: University of California Press. 2009. “Three kinds of Platonic immortality,” in Frede and Reis (eds.): 145–62. 2016. “Empedoclean superorganisms,” Rhizomata 4(1): 111–25. Sider, D. and Obbink, D. (eds.) 2013. Doctrine and Doxography: Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1995. “Reading” Greek Death. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stern-Gillet, S. and Corrigan, K. (eds.) 2007. Reading Ancient Texts, vol. I: Presocratics and Plato: Essays in Honour of Denis O’Brien. Leiden: Brill. Stewart, J. A. 1905. The Myths of Plato. London: Macmillan. Trépanier, S. 2003. “Empedocles on the ultimate symmetry of the world,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24: 1–57. 2004. Empedocles: An Interpretation. London: Routledge. 2010. “Early Greek theology: God as nature and natural gods,” in Bremmer and Erskine (eds.): 273–317. 2014. “From wandering limbs to limbless gods: δαίμων as substance in Empedocles,” Apeiron 47(2): 172–210. 2017. “From Hades to the stars: Empedocles on the cosmic habitats of soul,” Classical Antiquity 36(1): 130–82. 2020. “The spirit in the flesh: Empedocles on embodied soul,” in Bartoš and King (eds.): 80–105. Vermeule, E. 1979. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Wagner, E. (ed.) 2001. Essays on Plato’s Psychology. Oxford: Lexington Books. Wilson, M. 2013. Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zeller, E. (1919–20 [1844–52]), Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, 6th ed. in 3 vols., ed. W. Nestle. Leipzig: Reisland.

chapter 2

Pythagorean Immortality of the Soul? Phillip Sidney Horky

2.1

Introduction

It is agreed by most scholars of Presocratic philosophy that we can ascribe few doctrines to all early Pythagoreans, but that the ones we can identify with some confidence concern the status of the soul. In particular, scholars as diverse as Charles Kahn, Christoph Riedweg, John Palmer, and David Sedley have ascribed to Pythagoras the claims that the soul lives on eternally, beyond death, and that after death it moves into the bodies of other animals: hence, early Pythagorean psychological doctrines are marked by (a) the immortality of the soul1 and (b) its capacity to transmigrate into other bodies, also known as metempsychosis or reincarnation.2 Such claims are accepted despite the fact that the Pythagorean acusmata (sayings) or symbola Thanks especially to George Gazis, Alex Long, and Christoph Riedweg for discussions of this chapter. What is written here of course does not necessarily reflect their views on early Pythagorean psychology. In what follows, all translations are mine unless indicated otherwise.This chapter is dedicated to the enduring memory of Walter Burkert (1931–2015). 1 By ‘immortality of the soul’, I refer to the everlastingness of the soul. Other versions of immortality are explored in this volume. 2 Kahn 2001: 3–4, 11; Riedweg 2008: 62–3; Palmer 2014: 211–12. Sedley asserts: ‘that the soul is immortal, and transmigrates, was the most famous of all Pythagorean doctrines’, although he goes on to qualify this claim by saying that ‘the doctrine of the soul’s immortality is more Platonic property than Pythagorean’ (Sedley and Long 2010: xxiii). Similarly, Palmer notes (2014: 212) that ‘in the end there is little evidence indicating that the early Pythagoreans consider what the soul would have to be to experience the transmigration taught by Pythagoras’. Huffman is not so decisive. He takes it as assumed that there is an early ‘Pythagorean theory of transmigration’ (2009: 22), which he applies to both Pythagoras and Philolaus, despite the fact that no ancient evidence attests to this theory for the latter figure. On the immortality of the soul, however, Huffman says little, noting only that it might have been one of the ‘religious topics which Pythagoras discussed’ (2009: 37 n. 46). A strong commitment to Pythagorean immortality of the soul can be found in Casadesús Bordoy 2013: 161–4, who generally takes his sources at face value. He claims that Pythagoras learned about the immortality of the soul from Pherecydes, on the evidence of Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 1.16.38). But Casadesús Bordoy does not trace Cicero’s source here, which indeed might be Dicaearchus (cf. Tusc. 1.10.21). Pohlenz (1949, vol. 2: 115), who is often cited as the authority to establish Posidonius as the source for Cicero’s description (e.g. Schibli 1990: 104), simply asserts that Posidonius is the source, without any demonstration. At any rate, it is clear that Cicero’s source, whoever he was, has Plato Pythagoreanize (cf. Tusc. 1.17.39). Cornelli (2016) tracks the Pythagorean theory of transmigration, but he assumes the antiquity of the theory of the immortal soul.

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(symbols), the so-called bedrock of early Pythagoreanism, never explicitly mention the alleged doctrine of psychic transmigration, nor yet define or describe the soul as immortal.3 To be sure, independent evidence from Pythagoras’ near-contemporary Xenophanes of Colophon (fl. late fifth century bce) suggests the likelihood that the Pythagoreans believed in transmigration of the soul: we will recall that, when Pythagoras passed by someone beating a puppy, the sage exclaimed, ‘“Stop! Don’t beat it; for surely it is the soul of a dear man / Which I recognized when I heard it howling (ἦ φίλου ἀνέρος ἐστί / ψυχή, τὴν ἔγνων φθεγξαμένης ἀίων)”’4 Most scholars would agree that this does indeed refer to some theory of transmigration.5 But even if this fragment does confirm the transmigration of the soul from human to dog (no doubt with tongue in cheek), does it imply any theory of the immortality of the soul, or are there alternative interpretations available to us?6 At this point, it is worth bringing in the only Pythagorean acusma that refers, in any way, to souls: ‘abstain from [killing/injuring/eating?] ensouled beings’ (ἐμψύχων ἀπέχου).7 This acusma is first attested in the fragments of the fourth-century bce astronomer and philosopher Eudoxus of Cnidus, who himself studied with the fourth-century bce Pythagorean philosopher Archytas of Tarentum. Eudoxus’ explanation of the acusma, preserved and probably embellished by Iamblichus, is: ‘There is a congenital partnership of living beings, since, through sharing life and the same 3

4 5

6

7

To be sure, Huffman (2009: 36) refers to ‘two clear references’ to the acusmata that relate to the soul: the first, ἐμψύχων ἀπέχου, is treated below as an original acusma (for the translation and my own interpretation, see the text to n.8 below); the second, from Iamblichus (VP 85), originally derived from Aristotle’s lost works on the Pythagoreans, states ‘the only animals into which a human psychê does not enter are those which it is lawful to sacrifice’ (trans. Huffman). However, it is unlikely that the second passage as a whole constitutes an acusma – it is not included by Burkert, who instead formulates its content as ‘eat only the flesh of animals that may be sacrificed’ (1972: 172). It would appear to be a summary on the part of Aristotle (or Iamblichus) of a number of acusmata that stipulated various things which it is not lawful to eat (e.g. brains, beans, sacred fish). Even if the passage is to be admitted as altered evidence for an original acusma, it would appear only to testify to transmigration of the soul, not to its immortality. On the acusmata generally, now see Thom 2020. Xenophanes DK 21 B7 = Diogenes Laertius 8.36 = Pythagoras P32 + Xenophanes D64 Laks & Most. See, for example, Schäfer’s discussion (2009) of the various ways in which the fragment has been interpreted by scholars. More recently, Lloyd’s interpretation (2014: 28) is circumspect, claiming that if the evidence from Xenophanes referred to Pythagoras, ‘this would count as the earliest extant Greek evidence for his belief in the transmigration of souls, also ascribed, though on the testimony of much later writers, to the legendary figure of Orpheus’ (italics mine). Even the evidence concerning the Pythagorean–Orphic connections has recently been impressively challenged (in Betegh 2014). It is clear that Heraclides of Pontus, on Diogenes Laertius’ account (Fr. 86 Schütrumpf = Diogenes Laertius 8.4–5 = Pythagoras a P37 Laks & Most), ascribed to Pythagoras transmigration through multiple lives. He was followed by Porphyry (VP 45 = Pythagoras a P38 Laks & Most). Cf. Iamblichus Protr. 21, p. 108.15 Pistelli and n.4 in this chapter. For Eudoxus as student of Archytas, see Diogenes Laertius 8.86 = Archytas P13 Laks & Most.

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elements and the mixture arising from these, they are yoked together with us by brotherhood, as it were.’8 Hence, for Eudoxus, Pythagoras recommends abstention from animals on the grounds that the partnership of living beings requires that justice obtain between kindred members, whether human or (non-human) animal. Transmigration might be implied by Xenophanes’ account, but it is not clear that it influenced Eudoxus’ interpretation of the Pythagorean acusma.9 And, perhaps most importantly for my argument, it is not obvious that we are required to infer Pythagorean immortality of the soul on the early evidence of Xenophanes or Eudoxus.10 Indeed, it is important to keep in mind that transmigration of the soul need not imply immortality of the soul, and vice versa.11 In this contribution to a volume on immortality of the soul, I would like to apply a strong type of historiographical scepticism to the most important 8

Iamblichus VP 108 = DK 31 A 135 (not in Laks & Most; trans. after Dillon and Hershbell): ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῶν πολιτικῶν τοῖς νομοθέταις προσέταξεν ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν ἐμψύχων· ἅτε γὰρ βουλομένους ἄκρως δικαιοπραγεῖν ἔδει δήπου μηδὲν ἀδικεῖν τῶν συγγενῶν ζῴων. ἐπεὶ πῶς ἂν ἔπεισαν δίκαια πράττειν τοὺς ἄλλους αὐτοὶ ἁλισκόμενοι ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ; συγγενικὴ δ’ ἡ τῶν ζῴων μετοχή, ἅπερ διὰ τὴν τῆς ζωῆς καὶ τῶν στοιχείων τῶν αὐτῶν κοινωνίαν καὶ τῆς ἀπὸ τούτων συνισταμένης συγκράσεως ὡσανεὶ ἀδελφότητι πρὸς ἡμᾶς συνέζευκται. Compare with Eudoxus Fr. 325 Lasserre (= Porphyry VP 7; not in Laks & Most): ‘Moreover, Eudoxus, in the seventh book of his Description of the Earth, writes that Pythagoras practiced purity and abhorrence from all murder and murderers, to such an extent that he not only abstained from [killing? eating? beating?] animals, but also held himself apart from butchers and hunters’ (πλὴν τοσαύτῃ γε ἁγνείᾳ φησὶν Εὔδοξος ἐν τῇ ἑβδόμῃ τῆς Γῆς Περιόδου κεχρῆσθαι καὶ τῇ περὶ τοῦς φόνους φυγῇ καὶ τῶν φονεύοντων, ὡς μὴ μόνον τῶν ἐμψύχων ἀπέχεσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ μαγείροις καὶ θηράτορσι μηδέποτε πλησιάζειν). On Eudoxus’ response to this acusma, see also Horky 2020: 185–6. 9 Herodotus associates certain religious practices with the Egyptians and Pythagoreans (2.81.2), but not transmigration. He does associate transmigration with the Egyptians at 2.123.3, but does not explicitly mention Pythagoras there (for example, Laks & Most at Pythagoras c D4–5 cautiously note that ‘any attribution to Pythagoras himself is uncertain’ and that this passage could be referring to Empedocles). Herodotus (4.94–6) mentions the immortal soul theory of the Getae in relation to a divine Salmoxis, although he then counters this by presenting another account involving the human Salmoxis as Pythagoras’ slave; we need not, however, tie the two stories together (as many scholars do; see, e.g., Zhmud 2016: 446–51, with bibliography; more cautious is Taufer 2008: 142–4), and Herodotus did not believe either story. On the above evidence and its bearing on transmigration, see Lloyd 2014: 30 and Pellò 2018: 139–40. 10 Zhmud (2014: 101) notes that ‘Alcmaeon [of Croton] was the sole Pythagorean philosopher to teach the immortality of the soul’, based on evidence from Aristotle’s De anima (A 2, 405a29-b1 = DK 24 A 12 = D9 Laks & Most), where it is clear that Alcmaeon believed that the soul is immortal because it resembles immortal objects such as celestial beings, which are always in circular motion. But there are doubts about whether Alcmaeon was a Pythagorean at all, on which see Huffman 2003. Aristotle does not present him as a Pythagorean, claiming that Alcmaeon ‘appears to have made assumptions [concerning pairs of principles] in the same way [as the “others” from the Pythagorean community], and either he derived the notion from them or they from him’ (Metaphysics A 5, 986a27–9 = DK 24 A 3 = D5 Laks & Most). 11 For example, Alcmaeon (mentioned in the previous note) may have been committed to something like an ‘astral body’ theory of the soul, but there is no hint of transmigration from body to body in his psychology.

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evidence concerning the early Pythagorean theory or theories of the soul, in order to assess whether we can actually say anything firm about their views on the issue of the soul’s immortality. In doing so, I will be investigating chiefly the fourth-century bce evidence that scholars have used to draw up a picture of the Pythagorean soul. That evidence is substantially derived from two figures in the mid- to late fourth century bce: Aristotle and his student Dicaearchus of Messana. My argument will proceed in three stages. First, I will assess the single most important piece of doxographical evidence concerning Pythagorean immortality of the soul and metempsychosis, which is found in a fragment of Dicaearchus’ lost work On Lives, and demonstrate that all so-called Pythagorean doctrines there are ultimately Platonic in origin. Second, I discuss the evidence in Aristotle’s De anima that has been thought to point to Pythagorean metempsychosis and show that it is chiefly derived from arguments advanced by a character named Cebes of Thebes in Plato’s dialogue on the soul, Phaedo. Finally, I will turn to what I take to be the most important evidence concerning early Pythagorean theories of the soul, also preserved in Aristotle’s De anima. I will argue that the Pythagorean theory of the soul is best elucidated by comparison with the philosophical views of the ‘mathematical’ Pythagoreans Hippasus of Metapontum, Archytas of Tarentum, and Ecphantus of Syracuse, in the context of the psychological atomism of Democritus. My proposal will be that the Pythagorean soul had three salient features: like the soul in Democritus’ philosophy, the Pythagorean soul was atomic, material, and perishable. Importantly, I hope to show that there is absolutely no good evidence that Pythagoras, or early Pythagoreans, was committed to, much less proved, the immortality of the soul. However, it does appear to me that the Pythagoreans advocated a theory of the transmigration of the soul, in line with the psychological theories of figures associated with ‘mathematical’ Pythagoreanism, such as Empedocles. And finally, even if the Pythagoreans’ soul is indeed atomic, material, and perishable, this does not exclude and indeed is perfectly consistent with a transmigratory theory.

2.2 Dicaearchus’ Account of the Pythagorean Soul: Pythagorean or Platonic? The most important evidence adduced by scholars for the Pythagorean theory of the soul comes from Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras (late third century ce), where the Neoplatonist is apparently quoting, or at least summarizing, a portion of the Peripatetic Dicaearchus of Messana’s work On Lives, a work not of biography simpliciter, but of various ‘ways of life’ to

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which a philosopher could avail herself, by reference to historical figures such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.12 Here, we see a cluster of philosophical beliefs about the soul juxtaposed in the context of Pythagorean exoterism. After Dicaearchus discusses the kinds of rhetorical display that Pythagoras made to diverse groups of Crotonians (elders, children, and then women), he illustrates Pythagoras’ subsequent fame in these terms: γενομένων δὲ τούτων μεγάλη περὶ αὐτὸν ηὐξήθη δόξα, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν ἔλαβεν ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς πόλεως ὁμιλητὰς οὐ μόνον ἄνδρας ἀλλὰ καὶ γυναῖκας ὧν μιᾶς Θεανοῦς καὶ διεβοήθη τοὔνομα, πολλοῦς δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς σύνεγγυς βαρβάρου χώρας βασιλεῖς τε καὶ δυνάστας. ἃ μὲν οὖν ἔλεγε τοῖς συνοῦσιν οὐδὲ εἷς ἔχει φράσαι βεβαίως· καὶ γὰρ οὐδ’ ἡ τυχοῦσα ἦν παρ’ αὐτοῖς σιωπή. μάλιστα μέντοι γνώριμα παρὰ πᾶσιν ἐγένετο πρῶτον μὲν ὡς ἀθάνατον εἶναι φησι τὴν ψυχήν, εἶτα μεταβάλλουσαν εἰς ἄλλα γένη ζῴων, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὅτι κατὰ περιόδους τινὰς τὰ γενόμενά ποτε πάλιν γίνεται, νέον δ’ οὐδὲν ἁπλῶς ἔστι, καὶ ὅτι πάντα τὰ γινόμενα ἔμψυχα ὁμογενῆ δεῖ νομίζειν. φαίνεται13 γὰρ εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα τὰ δόγματα πρῶτος κομίσαι ταῦτα Πυθαγόρας. After these things happened, his fame grew great, and he won over many followers, on the one hand, from his own city – not only men, but also women, one of which, Theano, made a name for herself – and many kings and rulers, on the other hand, from the neighboring non-Greek lands. Well then, what things he said to those who kept his company not even one person is able to say for certain; for the silence kept among them was not ordinary. Nonetheless, the following became especially well known among all people: first, he says (1) of the soul that it is immortal; second, that (2) it changes into other kinds of animals; additionally, that (3) things that at some point have come-into-being come-to-be again according to certain cycles, and that, in short, nothing is new; and that (4) one ought to believe that all animate things that have come-to-be are of the same kind. For Pythagoras appears to have been the first to introduce these doctrines into Greece. (Dicaearchus Fr. 41a Mirhady = FGrHist 1400 Fr. 56 = Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 19 = Pythagoras D5 Laks & Most)

This passage, which Constantinos Macris has rightly referred to as ‘so remarkable for its precision and concision that it is worth quoting in full’, has raised numerous puzzles for scholars.14 First and foremost is the question of attribution: scholars have lined up on either side of the fence, 12

13 14

There is no reliable complete translation of this work in English, but portions that are relevant to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans can be consulted in English translation in Laks and Most’s Early Greek Philosophy: Western Greek Thinkers (2016: vol. 4, part 1). On Dicaearchus’ On Lives, see White 2001 (esp. pp. 197–8). I follow Laks & Most in reading φαίνεται with the Mss. In the 1886 Teubner, Nauck emended to φέρεται, which would render ‘Pythagoras is reported to have been . . . ’. Macris 2014: 395–6.

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with sceptics such as Wehrli and Zhmud rejecting attribution to Dicaearchus on the grounds that it bears the specific hallmarks of Porphyrian exegesis, and more optimistic scholars such as Mirhady and Huffman affirming it as genuine Dicaearchus.15 I am less concerned about whether the passage is chiefly constituted of Dicaearchus’ original material or Porphyry’s embellishment; for the sake of my argument, I will assume the positive case that Huffman and Mirhady are right, and that at least some portion (although perhaps not all) of this passage originated in Dicaearchus’ On Lives, and hence that it can be admitted to the discussion of early Peripatetic descriptions of Pythagorean ‘doctrines’ of the soul. For the most negative case would conclude that much, most, or all of the evidence for the early Pythagorean theory of soul preserved here is simply Neoplatonic interpolation, and that the passage cannot be used in any straightforward way as evidence for fourth-century bce interpretation of Pythagoreanism. If we accept the positive case, as outlined above, the first order of business will be to assess the content for its possible historical and philosophical value to our discussion. Let us proceed as follows. First: what can Dicaearchus’ account tell us about Pythagoreanism, as it was popularly conceived of (μάλιστα γνώριμα παρὰ πᾶσιν) in the late fourth century bce? Dicaearchus says that it was marked by four tenets, which may or may not have been related: that (1) the soul is immortal; that (2) the soul changes into other genera of animals; that (3) things subject to becoming do in fact cometo-be again according to particular cycles – probably heavenly cycles – and, consequently, nothing is new; and that (4) it is a moral injunction to believe that all things that are subject to becoming and ensouled are of the same or a similar kind.16 Now anyone evaluating doxographical accounts of Pythagoreanism is forced to deal with the challenge of extracting from the account what is historically early ‘Pythagorean’ from what is ‘Pythagorean’ as informed by Platonism – whether that means the Platonism of the Early Academy, Middle Platonism, or Neoplatonism. Let us examine each tenet to see whether it can, in any unproblematic way, be extracted from any possible Platonist substrate. 15

16

Huffman (2014b: 282 n. 8) justifies his claim by saying that ‘there is no break in the train of thought between sections 18 and 19, and Porphyry does not cite a new source until the beginning of 20’; and second, ‘the circumspect tone about the doctrines of Pythagoras in Section 19 is much more plausible for Dicaearchus in the fourth century than for any other author in the later tradition’. Note the format of the expression (πάντα τὰ γινόμενα ἔμψυχα ὁμογενῆ δεῖ νομίζειν), which features δεῖ plus infinitive, like those acusmata classified under τί δεῖ πράττειν in Aristotle’s account (ap. Iambl. VP 82).

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(1) ‘The soul is immortal.’ This is a core Platonic notion in the middle and late dialogues. Elaborate arguments concerning this tenet appear no less than seven times in Plato’s works, with ‘proofs’ of immortality in several circumstances: in the Meno, a short argument from recollection grounds the immortality of the soul at 85e–86b; in the Phaedo, we have the ‘cyclical’ argument at 70c–72e, attributed to an ‘ancient account’ at 70c, which shows in the end that the souls of the living are generated from the dead; the argument from ‘recollection’ at 72e– 77a, which shows that our souls preexisted us; the ‘affinity’ argument at 78b–84b, which shows that the soul is most like the divine, which is immortal, intelligible, uniform, and indissoluble (esp. 80a–b), and that the kind of soul that is nurtured by reason eventually arrives at what is most akin (τὸ συγγενές) to itself (84a–b); and in the ‘final’ argument at 102b–107b, in which it is proved that the soul is not only immortal, but also indestructible; to that list we can add the proof of the immortality of the soul at Republic X, 608c–611a. Finally, there is the argument that arises out of these claims, in the Phaedrus (245c– 246a), which starts from the assertion that ‘all soul is immortal’ and proceeds from there to discuss how its immortality plays out in the sequences of psychic incarnations, as in Republic X (614b–621d).17 (2) ‘The soul changes into other genera of animals.’ One may detect implicit references to metempsychosis in the ‘cyclical’ argument at Phaedo 72d.18 In Meno 81b–d, Socrates associates the argument that the human soul is immortal – ‘coming to an end and being born again’ (καὶ τοτὲ μὲν τελευτᾶν . . . τοτὲ δὲ πάλιν γίγνεσθαι) but never destroyed – with the anonymous priests and priestesses who ‘attempt to be able to give an account’ of it, as well as Pindar (whose Persephone fragment is quoted) and some of the divine poets. The discussion here concludes with a second axiomatic claim, that ‘all nature is akin’ (τῆς φύσεως ἁπάσης συγγενοῦς οὔσης). Again, we see that in Republic X and Phaedrus there is a focus on how the soul’s condition when incarnate is influenced by the bodily matter it clothes itself in, and how this leads to multiple incarnations. In Republic X, there is not much discussion of the mechanics of transmigration beyond the general claim that all sorts of mixtures occurred, including souls of animals becoming human (620d). The Phaedrus 17 18

Catherine Rowett’s chapter provides detailed discussion of the account of immortality in the Phaedo. For my purposes, a summary account is sufficient. Also see Plato Phaedo 81c–82b, 88a–b, 95d, and 107e.

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supplements this account: at 249b we hear that the ‘human soul passes into the life of a wild beast, and what was once a human back into a human from beast’. Finally, in the Timaeus (42c–d), we discover that one’s soul descends the scala naturae during metempsychosis according to virtue, and that the cycle of transmigration only comes to an end when one’s psychic compounds are brought into conformity with the revolution of the Same and uniform movement, which would bring the soul back to its original place and disposition. (3) ‘Things that at some point have come-into-being come-to-be again according to certain cycles, and, in short, nothing is new.’ This is one of the more interesting of the doctrines associated with Pythagoras’ teachings in Dicaearchus’ account of the popular fourth-century bce version of Pythagoreanism. Dicaearchus’ fellow Peripatetic Eudemus of Rhodes also knows a much simpler version of this ‘Pythagorean’ axiom: ‘things are the same again in number’ (πάλιν τὰ αὐτὰ ἀριθμῷ; Fr. 88 Wehrli = Pythagorean Reception R27 Laks & Most). This claim is used to support the argument that time is infinite and recurrent, although Eudemus is more interested in the notion that recurrence is not particular to all generation, but only to motions that are cyclical, for example days, seasons, etc. One might consider that the ‘Pythagorean’ claim in Eudemus, as it is quoted, does not necessarily refer to recurrence; it could easily instead be directed to the problem of numerical identity, a subject I have argued elsewhere fascinated the early Pythagoreans indeed.19 Be that as it may, it is clear that the Platonic corpus presents the same argument as that associated with ‘Pythagoras’ by Dicaearchus: in the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger presents a myth in which time and the motion of the universe move in cycles that affect all creatures. In the retrograde cycle, all generated things, including humans, wither and die; whereas in the prograde cycle, they are ‘put together there again and given life’ (271b). Slightly more circumspect is the Athenian Stranger in Laws X, where we hear both that the universe possesses cyclical motion in all its rational attributes (894c–d; 898a–b) and that the individual soul, which is ‘allied with different bodies at different times and perpetually undergoes all sorts of changes’ (903d), reflects the motions of heavenly bodies (which generate the seasons, etc.) – rational if measured by number, and irrational if unsystematized and disorderly. In the Timaeus, historical time, marked by social and 19

Horky 2013: 127–49.

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technological advancement, is cyclical: Athens is destroyed by the flood and its history forgotten, rendering its people ‘children, as it were, all over again’ (πάλιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς οἷον νέοι; 23b); but it maintains its identity throughout the cycles of floods as the city of Athena. (4) ‘One ought to believe that all ensouled things that have come-to-be are of the same kind.’ This claim, which refers to the uniform kinship of animate things, is evidenced in Plato’s work throughout, and I have mentioned some examples above. To add to those: in the Laws, the fact that human souls are reborn and transmigrate reflects the ‘power of common origin’ (δύναμις τῆς κοινῆς γενέσεως) of the human and the cosmos (903d). In the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger divides all things subject to generation (τὰ γιγνόμενα) into animate (τὰ ἔμψυχα) and inanimate (τὰ ἄψυχα), and then animate creatures into animals (τὰ ζῷα) and non-animals (261b–c); hence, animals are themselves a single kind which is subject to generation and ensouled. In the Timaeus, it is the fact that soul-motions permeate not only the world-soul but also individual souls of people that indicates their similarity (44b–c); the ‘intelligent orbits’ of the universe and of the human are expressly described as ‘akin’ (συγγενεῖς at 47b–c and at 90a–d), and it is humans’ ability to observe the periods of cosmic motion, including day-and-night, months, years, equinoxes, and solstices, that makes it possible for them to understand number, which consequently generates the idea of time.20 Hence, each of the ‘Pythagorean’ doctrines listed by Dicaearchus here is Platonic, typically deriving from those portions of his work that deal with physics, cosmology, and psychology: Phaedo, Republic X, Statesman, Timaeus, and Laws. How can we explain the presence throughout Plato’s middle and late dialogues of the doctrines associated with Pythagoreanism by Dicaearchus? One possibility is that Plato actually adapted these very tenets from Pythagorean doctrines, and developed more complex approaches to them than had the Pythagoreans before him. The advantage of such an argument would be that we could better explain, for example, the abstract reference to the ‘priests and priestesses’ in the Meno passage mentioned earlier on – as I have argued elsewhere, Plato tends to reveal his positive inheritance from Pythagoreans chiefly through tactics of occlusion and misdirection.21 On the other hand, Dicaearchus, like other Peripatetics such as Theophrastus, sought to provide a ‘history of philosophy’ that identified 20

See Broadie 2012: 19–20.

21

Horky 2013, ch. 6.

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the substantial inheritance of Plato from the Pythagoreans, in the absence of actual texts of the early Pythagoreans.22 That Dicaearchus posited a Pythagorean Plato is explicit in a famous testimonium preserved by Plutarch in his Table-Talk concerning why Plato said that god ‘always does geometry’, in which Plutarch’s interlocutor Florus appeals to Dicaearchus in claiming that Plato followed not only Socrates, but also Pythagoras.23 Writing about this passage, Stephen White says the following: Plato’s primary debt . . . is to Socrates, presumably not only as the protagonist of his dialogues but also as the dialectician and moral exemplar portrayed therein . . . A debt to Pythagoras is also intelligible, though we can no longer tell whether Dicaearchus emphasized similarities in their educational and political proposals, shared interests in theoretical speculation and especially mathematics . . . or some combination of these.24

I would go further and venture to say that the account of Pythagorean doctrines was established in On Lives precisely to anticipate Dicaearchus’ account of Plato’s inheritance of Pythagorean physics, psychology, and ethics: the act of ‘recording’ Pythagoras’ doctrines concerning the immortality of the soul, metempsychosis, eternal recurrence, and kinship among animate things that are subject to generation counts as a dubious presentation of Pythagorean doctrines that are, in reality, Platonic in formulation, and probably also in origin.25 This is, in my opinion, a more satisfactory explanation for the evidence from Dicaearchus (assuming it is reliably transferred through Porphyry), given the fact that none of these so-called doctrines of Pythagoras appears in the surviving fragments of the Pythagoreans Philolaus or Archytas, nor in the Pythagorean acusmata, nor in any other earlier doxographical accounts of Pythagoras’ doctrines, such as those of Isocrates, Antisthenes, or even Herodotus, nor in the Pythagorean Precepts of Aristoxenus. An objection to my interpretation, however, could contend that some or all of these claims can be traced back to Dicaearchus’ teacher Aristotle, who apparently did possess the texts of Philolaus and Archytas, and thus could be a ‘missing link’ between Dicaearchus’ account of Pythagorean psychology and lost portions of the early Pythagoreans’ works. Hence, we will next turn to Aristotle’s accounts of Pythagorean soul, in order to evaluate this hypothesis. 22 23 25

It is not obvious from the extant fragments that Dicaearchus had access to any original Pythagorean texts. Plutarch Quaestiones Convivales 8.2, 719a–b. 24 White 2001: 225. Again, if Dicaearchus is the ultimate source behind Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.16.38–1.17.39, we would witness the later transmission of this tradition (see n. 2 in this chapter).

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Aristotle’s Account of the Pythagorean Soul: Materialist Contexts

As is well known, the claim that Plato inherited Pythagorean philosophy is first attested by Aristotle in the Metaphysics (A 6, 987a29–b18), where we hear that Plato’s notion of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) was effectively the same as the Pythagoreans’ notion of ‘imitation’ (μίμησις).26 We do not hear anything about psychology here, although in De anima Aristotle refers to Pythagorean ideas about the soul twice. The first time occurs in the endoxastic account of Book Alpha. After spending several pages raising objections and puzzles concerning Plato’s theory of the circular motion of the soul in the Timaeus, Aristotle turns to the relationship of the soul to the body: ἐκεῖνο δὲ ἄτοπον συμβαίνει καὶ τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τοῖς πλείστοις τῶν περὶ ψυχῆς· συνάπτουσι γὰρ καὶ τιθέασιν εἰς σῶμα τὴν ψυχήν, οὐθὲν προσδιορίσαντες διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν καὶ πῶς ἔχοντος τοῦ σώματος. καίτοι δόξειεν ἂν τοῦτ’ ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι· διὰ γὰρ τὴν κοινωνίαν τὸ μὲν ποιεῖ τὸ δὲ πάσχει καὶ τὸ μὲν κινεῖται τὸ δὲ κινεῖ, τούτων δ’ οὐθὲν ὑπάρχει πρὸς ἄλληλα τοῖς τυχοῦσιν. οἱ δὲ μόνον ἐπιχειροῦσι λέγειν ποῖόν τι ἡ ψυχή, περὶ δἐ τοῦ δεξομένου σώματος οὐθὲν ἔτι προδιορίζουσιν, ὥσπερ ἐνδεχόμενον κατὰ τοὺς Πυθαγορικοὺς μύθους τὴν τυχοῦσαν ψυχὴν εἰς τὸ τυχὸν ἐνδύεσθαι σῶμα. δοκεῖ γὰρ ἕκαστον ἴδιον ἔχειν εἶδος καὶ μορφήν. A further absurdity occurs both in this argument [sc. that of the Timaeus] and in the majority of arguments concerning the soul: for they attach the soul to a body and place it in a body, without specifying through what cause the body exists, and what condition it is in. And yet someone would think that this is necessary: for it is through association that one acts and the other is acted upon, that one is moved and the other moves, but neither of these exists relative to the other in chance occurrences. But they only attempt to explain what sort of thing is the soul, whereas concerning the body that is to receive it, they do not specify anything further, as if it were to be possible, as in the Pythagorean myths, that any chance soul is clothed in any chance body; for each [body] seems to have a peculiar form and shape. (Aristotle De anima A 3, 407b13–24 = DK 58 B 39 = Pythagorean Reception R26/ Pythagorean Doctrines D52 Laks & Most)

Aristotle’s criticism here is leveled against Plato’s Timaeus and ‘the majority’ of arguments that advance the theory that the body is a receptacle for the soul, without specifying what sort of body is able to receive such a soul: at issue here is Aristotle’s commitment to the idea that forms are peculiar to 26

I have discussed this extensively at Horky 2013: 30–4.

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each species, which means that the matter of a dog, for example, cannot be receptive to the soul of a human.27 When Aristotle associates the argument that any sort of soul can be invested with any sort of body with the ‘Pythagorean myths’, to what exactly was he referring, and who is the object of his ridicule?28 In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, John Philoponus refers to Empedocles as one of the Pythagoreans who espoused this theory, even quoting fragment B 117 as evidence.29 We might think that Philoponus has pointed to the right source of Aristotle’s ‘Pythagorean myths’, but there is a problem of correspondence: while Empedocles does say in B 117 that he had ‘once been a boy, a girl, a bush, a bird, and a fish’,30 he does not describe these transmigrations as his soul donning various bodies as some sort of clothing, as Aristotle does (ἐνδεχόμενον . . . τὴν τυχοῦσαν ψυχὴν εἰς τὸ τυχὸν ἐνδύεσθαι σῶμα).31 The closest point of reference here is Plato’s Phaedo, 87a–88b, where Cebes, a Pythagorean and student of Philolaus of Croton, offers his own particular contribution to the argument concerning the immortality of the soul.32 There, he argues that once the soul is separated from the body in death, it may perhaps migrate into another body, but that ultimately, unless the immortality of the soul is proven, we cannot be sure whether or not the soul will die in one of those deaths. Transmigration of the soul is described as someone donning several cloaks throughout his life and discarding them once they have worn too thin: εἰκόνος γάρ τινος, ὡς ἔοικεν, κἀγὼ ὥσπερ Σιμμίας δέομαι. ἐμοὶ γὰρ δοκεῖ ὁμοίως λέγεσθαι ταῦτα ὥσπερ ἄν τις περὶ ἀνθρώπου ὑφάντου πρεσβύτου ἀποθανόντος λέγοι τοῦτον τὸν λόγον, ὅτι οὐκ ἀπόλωλεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἀλλ᾽ ἔστι που σῶς, τεκμήριον δὲ παρέχοιτο θοἰμάτιον ὃ ἠμπείχετο αὐτὸς ὑφηνάμενος ὅτι ἐστὶ σῶν καὶ οὐκ ἀπόλωλεν, καὶ εἴ τις ἀπιστοίη αὐτῷ, ἀνερωτῴη πότερον πολυχρονιώτερόν ἐστι τὸ γένος ἀνθρώπου ἢ ἱματίου ἐν 27 28

29 30 31

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This is at least what I take him to be saying, although other interpretations are possible (e.g. Cornelli 2016: 5–9). In his Paraphrase of De Anima, Themistius (p. 23.33–4 Heinze) adds that ‘that man [sc. Timaeus] employs [the Pythagorean myths] politically (πολιτικῶς), but they [sc. the Pythagoreans?] employ it for natural philosophy (φυσικῶς)’. The claim about Timaeus is interesting in the light of the fact that, as we discussed above, the text of the Timaeus describes a civic metempsychosis in Athens over time; but of course Timaeus is not the authority behind those claims. John Philoponus, In De An. p. 140.5–8 Hayduck. Empedocles DK 31 B 117 (= D13 Laks & Most): ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρος τε κόρη τε / θάμνος τ’ οἰωνός τε καὶ ἔξαλος ἔλλοπος ἰχθύς. To be sure, in B 126 (= Empedocles D19 Laks & Most) Empedocles mentions an unknown female subject that ‘envelops [herself] in an unrecognized cloak of flesh’ (σαρκῶν ἀλλογνῶτι περιστέλλουσα χιτῶνι), but we cannot be sure what the subject is, or the context from which this fragment derives. On the character of Cebes and his status as Pythagorean, see Horky 2013: 171–5 and Sedley 1995: 14– 21. See also the discussion of Simon Trépanier on p. 30.

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χρείᾳ τε ὄντος καὶ φορουμένου, ἀποκριναμένου δή τινος ὅτι πολὺ τὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, οἴοιτο ἀποδεδεῖχθαι ὅτι παντὸς ἄρα μᾶλλον ὅ γε ἄνθρωπος σῶς ἐστιν, ἐπειδὴ τό γε ὀλιγοχρονιώτερον οὐκ ἀπόλωλεν. τὸ δ᾽ οἶμαι, ὦ Σιμμία, οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει· σκόπει γὰρ καὶ σὺ ἃ λέγω. πᾶς γὰρ ἂν ὑπολάβοι ὅτι εὔηθες λέγει ὁ τοῦτο λέγων· ὁ γὰρ ὑφάντης οὗτος πολλὰ κατατρίψας τοιαῦτα ἱμάτια καὶ ὑφηνάμενος ἐκείνων μὲν ὕστερος ἀπόλωλεν πολλῶν ὄντων, τοῦ δὲ τελευταίου οἶμαι πρότερος, καὶ οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον τούτου ἕνεκα ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν ἱματίου φαυλότερον οὐδ᾽ ἀσθενέστερον. τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ ταύτην οἶμαι εἰκόνα δέξαιτ᾽ ἂν ψυχὴ πρὸς σῶμα, καί τις λέγων αὐτὰ ταῦτα περὶ αὐτῶν μέτρι᾽ ἄν μοι φαίνοιτο λέγειν, ὡς ἡ μὲν ψυχὴ πολυχρόνιόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ σῶμα ἀσθενέστερον καὶ ὀλιγοχρονιώτερον· ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἂν φαίη ἑκάστην τῶν ψυχῶν πολλὰ σώματα κατατρίβειν, ἄλλως τε κἂν πολλὰ ἔτη βιῷ—εἰ γὰρ ῥέοι τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἀπολλύοιτο ἔτι ζῶντος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ ψυχὴ ἀεὶ τὸ κατατριβόμενον ἀνυφαίνοι—ἀναγκαῖον μεντἂν εἴη, ὁπότε ἀπολλύοιτο ἡ ψυχή, τὸ τελευταῖον ὕφασμα τυχεῖν αὐτὴν ἔχουσαν καὶ τούτου μόνου προτέραν ἀπόλλυσθαι, ἀπολομένης δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς τότ᾽ ἤδη τὴν φύσιν τῆς ἀσθενείας ἐπιδεικνύοι τὸ σῶμα καὶ ταχὺ σαπὲν διοίχοιτο. ὥστε τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ οὔπω ἄξιον πιστεύσαντα θαρρεῖν ὡς ἐπειδὰν ἀποθάνωμεν ἔτι που ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ ἔστιν. It seems, you see, that like Simmias I too need a sort of thought-experiment (εἰκών). For I think that the way in which these points are made is the same as if one were to give the following argument about a human being, a weaver who had died in old age. One might argue that the human being has not perished but exists intact somewhere, providing as evidence the fact that the cloak that he himself wove for his own use and wore is intact and has not perished. Should someone doubt him, he’d ask which is the longer-lasting kind of thing: a human being or a cloak that is in use and frequently worn. When the other replied that the human being is by far the longer-lasting kind, he’d suppose that it had been proved that the human being was therefore certainly intact, since the shorter-lasting one hadn’t perished. But in actual fact, Simmias, I think it isn’t like that – for you too should consider what I’m saying. Everyone would protest that that is a simpleminded thing for someone to say; for that weaver of mine wore out and wove for himself many such cloaks, and then perished after the whole lot of them; and this was presumably before the last one, yet a human being is not, for all that, inferior to a cloak or weaker than it. Soul in its relation to body would, I think, warrant this same thought-experiment (εἰκών), and someone who says these same things about them would seem to me to be saying something quite reasonable, that the soul is long-lasting, the body weaker and shorter-lasting. None the less, he’d say, although each soul wears out many bodies, especially if it lives for many years (because if the body is in flux and perishing when the human being is still alive, the soul still always reweaves what is being worn out), all the same, when the soul perishes it must at that moment have its last piece of weaving and perish before that

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phillip sidney horky one alone. And, after the soul perishes, only then does the body show its natural weakness and quickly rot and disappear. And so it is not right as yet to put one’s trust in this argument and be confident that our soul still exists somewhere after we have died. (Plato, Phaedo 87b3–e7; trans. Long, with minor alterations)

Cebes describes the thought-experiment (εἰκών) that compares the soul–body relation to the human being–cloak relation as an ‘argument’ (λόγος) which is to be taken seriously, but is not necessarily convincing on its own and requires further investigation. The analogy is as impressive as it is challenging to account for fully, but it is not to the purpose of this chapter to examine it further. The basic point for our argument is this: in the absence of any evidence that the Pythagoreans believed that the transmigration of the soul is similar to its being clothed in various bodies, the most likely scenario is that when speaking of the elusive ‘Pythagorean myths’, Aristotle was referring to Cebes’ thought-experiment in the Phaedo. In fact, Aristotle’s criticism functions effectively as a critical reading of Cebes’ thought-experiment: the latter focuses chiefly on the fact that the soul wears many bodies over time, without critical consideration of how it is that the many bodies are supposed to have the capacity to receive one and the same soul. Hence, the ‘Pythagorean myth’ that the soul wears many bodies would appear to be a reference to the εἰκών of Cebes, the purported student of Philolaus and one of the stand-in ‘Pythagorean’ interlocutors in the dialogue. But, someone might object, what if Cebes’ argument really does reflect genuine Pythagorean ideas about the soul, such as those of his teacher Philolaus, which have not survived? Even in that case, Pythagorean soul, while transmigratory, need not be immortal: at no place in Aristotle’s summary of the ‘Pythagorean myths’, or Cebes’ argument concerning the cloak, do we have implicit or explicit reference to the immortality of the soul.33 On the contrary, Cebes appeals to this thoughtexperiment to illustrate that the soul is ultimately perishable, and that it dies at some point which cannot be predicted. Cebes’ theory of the soul does, however, assume psychic transmigration, raising the possibility that the soul is long-lived but not immortal – a notion that has recently been associated with Empedocles’ psychology by Simon Trépanier and, in a slightly different tenor, Alex Long.34 33

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Similarly with the account of Heraclides of Pontus (Fr. 86 Schütrumpf = Diogenes Laertius 8.4–5 = Pythagoras P37 Laks & Most), who associates with Pythagoras psychic transmigration, but not immortality: in fact, according to Heraclides’ story, Pythagoras was granted by his father Hermes to choose anything except immortality (πλὴν ἀθανασίας), so he chose the capacity to recollect his past lives instead. Cf. Long 2017 (immortal but not everlasting) and Trépanier 2017.

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The second piece of evidence from Aristotle, which I will use to try to develop a more positive account of Pythagorean soul, comes earlier in De anima, in chapter 2 of book Alpha. There, Aristotle lays down the principles that drive his enquiry: those things that seem to the greatest extent to belong to soul according to nature are its movement and perception. He begins with the former, explaining how the atomists Democritus and Leucippus develop their particular theories of soul from the assumption that soul is something that moves. Democritus considers soul to be a sort of fire and heat: both fire and soul are spherical in shape, ‘like the so-called motes in the air, which are apparent in the sunbeams passing through windows’ (404a); he and Leucippus consider spherical atoms such as those of soul as capable of passing through everything and imparting their motion to other things. Soul atoms are constantly in motion and closely linked to respiration. Hence, so Aristotle says, all animals can continue to live as long as they are capable of respiration. At this juncture, Aristotle introduces the psychological theory of some Pythagoreans: ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὸ παρὰ τῶν Πυθαγορείων λεγόμενον τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχειν διάνοιαν· ἔφασαν γάρ τινες αὐτῶν ψυχὴν εἶναι τὰ ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ξύσματα, οἱ δὲ τὸ ταῦτα κινοῦν. περὶ δὲ τούτων εἴρηται ὅτι συνεχῶς φαίνεται κινούμενα, κἂν ᾖ νηνεμία παντελής. ἐπὶ ταὐτὸ δὲ φέρονται καὶ ὅσοι λέγουσι τὴν ψυχὴν τὸ αὑτὸ κινοῦν· ἐοίκασι γὰρ οὗτοι πάντες ὑπειληφέναι τὴν κίνησιν οἰκειότατον εἶναι τῇ ψυχῇ, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάντα κινεῖσθαι διὰ τὴν ψυχήν, ταύτην δ’ ὑφ’ ἑαυτῆς, διὰ τὸ μηθὲν ὁρᾶν κινοῦν ὃ μὴ καὶ αὐτὸ κινεῖται. What is said by the Pythagoreans seems to express the same notion: for some of them used to say that soul is the motes in the air, and others [used to say soul is] what moves them [sc. the motes]. Such things have been said concerning these things [sc. motes] because they are evidently continuously in motion, even when there is total windlessness. And those who say that soul is what moves itself arrive at the same conclusion; for all of them seem to assume that motion is the most distinctive characteristic of the soul, and that everything else is moved due to soul, which [they assume to be] moved by itself, because they see nothing producing movement which does not move itself too. (Aristotle, De anima A 2, 404a16–25 = DK 58 B 40 = Pythagorean Doctrines D49 Laks & Most)

This is fascinating testimony which does not always receive its due attention in the scholarship on the Pythagorean soul.35 First of all, it is clear that Aristotle is linking together the atomists, some Pythagoreans, and Plato: he 35

Huffman’s account of the Pythagorean soul briefly mentions this passage twice (2009: 23 and 29), without examining in any detail the connections between the psychology ascribed to the

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starts with Democritus and Leucippus, then links their arguments about the soul as similar to motes to the Pythagoreans’ claim that the soul is motes, and rounds off the discussion with Plato’s claim that soul is selfmoving. The Pythagorean explanation given for associating soul with motes is based on observation that motes are continuously in motion, ‘even when there is total windlessness’ (this final qualification, as we shall see, will be of significance to our positive reconstruction of the Pythagorean theory of the soul). Now Aristotle’s correlation of Pythagorean and Democritean psychologies is worth further analysis, since it substantiates the possibility that the Pythagorean theory of the soul can be elucidated by comparison with the Democritean theory of the soul. A tiny portion of Aristotle’s fragmentary On the Opinions of the Pythagoreans, preserved by Alexander of Aphrodisias, features the assertion that the Pythagoreans saw mind and soul as identical;36 similarly, in On Breath, (ps-) Aristotle asserts the same of Democritus’ theory of the soul.37 As John Palmer has noted, Democritus’ notion that soul is a kind of fire is directly comparable with the theory ascribed in the doxographical tradition to the mathematical Pythagorean and musicologist Hippasus of Metapontum, that soul (ψυχή) is ‘fiery’ (πυρώδης), and in this sense it arises out of the first principle (which, for Hippasus, was fire – that much is uncontroversial).38 Both Democritus and Hippasus may have believed that the soul obtained the qualities readily ascribed to fire by contemporaries (recall Heraclitus’ famous claim that the generation and destruction of fire are always in measure, and that fire is linked to logos).39 Indeed, Democritus’ links to Pythagoreanism are attested even in his own lifetime: they appear in the lost

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Pythagoreans and that of Democritus or the other atomists. While it appears as a testimonium on the Pythagorean theory of the harmony of the soul in his edition of Philolaus (1993: 325), it does not inform his discussion. It is mentioned by Bernabé (2016: 21), although he does not consider the connections with Democritus or atomism there, and instead discusses the Orphics. It is not discussed by Cornelli (2016). Alexander In Metaph. Α, p. 39.16–17 Hayduck = Aristotle Fr. 203 Rose (not in Laks & Most): ‘And they [sc. the Pythagoreans] used to call the One “mind” and “substance”; for he [sc. Aristotle? a Pythagorean? Pythagoras?] says that the soul is mind, as it were’ (νοῦν δὲ καὶ οὐσίαν ἔλεγον τὸ ἕν· τὴν γὰρ ψυχὴν ὡς τὸν νοῦν εἶπε). [Arist.] De respirat. 4.472a3–8 = DK 68 A 106 (not in Laks and Most): ‘But he [sc. Democritus] does identify the soul with the hot, as primary shapes of his spherical particles. So he contends that when these particles are being forced together by the pressure of the surrounding air, breathing intervenes to help them. For in the air there are a large number of these particles, which he calls mind and soul’ (λέγει δ’ ὡς ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ θερμὸν ταὐτὸν, τὰ πρῶτα σχήματα τῶν σφαιροειδῶν. ἐκκρινομένων οὖν αὐτῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἐκθλίβοντος, βοήθειαν γίνεσθαι τὴν ἀναπνοήν φησιν. ἐν γὰρ τῷ ἀέρι πολὺν ἀριθμὸν εἶναι τῶν τοιούτων ἃ καλεῖ ἐκεῖνος νοῦν καὶ ψυχήν). Aristotle Metaphysics A 3, 984a7 = Hippasus D3 Laks & Most; Aëtius 4.3.4 = Hippasus D5 Laks & Most; cf. Tertullian De Anima 5 (not in Laks & Most). Heraclitus DK 22 B 30 = D 85 Laks & Most; DK 22 B 31 = D 86 Laks & Most.

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writings on music of his younger contemporary, the fifth-century bce musician and historian Glaucus of Rhegium, where the atomist is said to have studied with ‘one of the Pythagoreans’ (Apollodorus, in the passage, goes on to identify that Pythagorean as Philolaus).40 There are other important connections: as Huffman has correctly pointed out, the only surviving fragment of Philolaus which refers to soul (ψυχή) associates it with perception and the heart – the heart being, for Democritus as for Philolaus, the place in the body where respiration is maintained.41 What is more, Democritus’ theory of the motions of the soul, as preserved in a fragment by Stobaeus, is informed by his interest in musicology: ἀνθρώποισι γὰρ εὐθυμίη γίνεται μετριότητι τέρψιος καὶ βίου συμμετρίῃ· τὰ δ’ ἐλλείποντα καὶ ὑπερβάλλοντα μεταπίπτειν τε φιλεῖ καὶ μεγάλας κινήσιας ἐμποιεῖν τῇ ψυχῇ. αἱ δ’ ἐκ μεγάλων διαστημάτων κινούμεναι τῶν ψυχέων οὔτε εὐσταθέες εἰσιν οὔτε εὔθυμοι. For humans achieve contentment through moderation in pleasure and proportioning of livelihood; excess and deficiency are apt to fluctuate and cause great movements in the soul. And movements of the souls42 away from major intervals are neither stable nor cheerful. (Democritus DK 68 B 191 = Stobaeus, Eclogae III.1.210 = Atomists D226 Laks & Most)

Comparison with the fourth-century bce mathematical Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum’s fragments and testimonia reveals, I suggest, a rich cluster of family resemblances between their philosophical systems; and it might help to elucidate not only the ‘Pythagorean’ theory of the soul mentioned by Aristotle, but also Democritus’ psychological theories. As is well known from Huffman’s work, Archytas (Fr. 2 Huffman, quoted directly 40

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Democritus DK 68 A 1 = P 21 Laks & Most = Glaucus of Rhegium Fr. 5 Lanata: ‘However, Glaucus of Rhegium, who lived at the same time as him [sc. Democritus] definitely affirms that he was taught by one of the Pythagoreans. And Apollodorus of Cyzicus, too, claims that he was a companion of Philolaus’ (πάντως μέντοι τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν τινος ἀκούσαί φησιν αὐτὸν Γλαῦκος ὁ Ῥηγῖνος, κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς χρόνους αὐτῷ γεγονῶς. φησὶ δὲ καὶ Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ Κυζικηνὸς Φιλολάῳ αὐτὸν συγγεγονέναι). Philolaus of Croton Fr. 13 Huffman = D 26 Laks & Most: ‘The head [is the ἀρχή] of intellect, the heart of life and sensation, the navel of rooting and first growth, the genitals of the sowing of seed and generation. The brain [contains] the ἀρχή of a human, the heart of an animal, the navel of a plant, the genitals of all things. For all things both flourish and grow from seed’ (κεφαλὰ μὲν νόου, καρδία δὲ ψυχᾶς καὶ αἰσθήσιος, ὀμφαλὸς δὲ ῥιζώσιος καὶ ἀναφύσιος τοῦ πρώτου, αἰδοῖον δὲ σπέρματος καταβολᾶς τε και γεννήσιος. ἐγκέφαλος δὲ τὰν ἀνθρώπω ἀρχάν, καρδία δὲ τὰν ζώου, ὀμφαλὸς δὲ τὰν φυτοῦ, αἰδοῖον δὲ τὰν ξυνπάντων. πάντα γὰρ ἀπὸ σπέρματος καὶ θάλλοντι καὶ βλαστάνοντι). Trans. Huffman, with minor alterations. It is interesting to note that βλαστάνω, the verb employed by Philolaus to relate growth from seed, is used by Empedocles to refer to the birth of creatures in the cycles of nature at DK 31 B 21.10 (= D77 Laks & Most). In Empedocles the verb ἀναβλαστάνω also refers to humans becoming gods at DK 31 B 146 (= D 39 Laks & Most). Or, as Laks & Most have it, ‘among souls, those that move . . . ’

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by Porphyry in On Ptolemy’s Harmonics 1.5)43 called harmonic ratios ‘intervals’ (διαστήματα) and sought to understand how the speed of things in motion, for example rhomboi, correlated with pitch (Fr. 1 Huffman);44 it is also clear from testimonia that he encouraged ethical moderation (T A9 and A9a Huffman).45 Most scholars also accept the claim that Archytas obtained his knowledge of musical intervals ultimately from the acoustic research of his predecessor Hippasus, especially in the musical pitches that obtain when bronze disks are struck.46 We are thus encouraged to take seriously the idea that, when Democritus refers to ‘movements of the souls away from major intervals’, he is using terminology and concepts familiar to contemporary Pythagoreans in referring to musical ‘intervals’. For Democritus, psychic movements that deviate from the ‘major intervals’ are either excessive or deficient, and thereby cause further psychological consternation. The comparisons between Archytas’ and Democritus’ psychological theories are not limited to physics: they also obtain in reference to definitions of key moral concepts. In Metaphysics Εta, Aristotle preserves two definitions for Archytas, both of which are relevant to our discussion of Pythagorean and Democritean psychology. The two relevant terms are ‘windlessness’ (νηνεμία), which, as we saw above, appears prominently in Aristotle’s account of the Pythagorean soul at De anima 404a (νηνεμία παντελής) as the environment within which the agitation of soul-motes is evident; and ‘calmness’ (γαλήνη), which does not appear there, but, as we will see, is associated with the psychological theories of both Archytas and Democritus in other testimonia and fragments. Here is Aristotle’s description of Archytas’ theory of definition: διὸ τῶν ὁριζομένων οἱ μὲν λέγοντες τί ἐστιν οἰκία, ὅτι λίθοι πλίνθοι ξύλα, τὴν δυνάμει οἰκίαν λέγουσιν, ὕλη γὰρ ταῦτα· οἱ δὲ ἀγγεῖον σκεπαστικὸν χρημάτων καὶ σωμάτων ἤ τι ἄλλο τοιοῦτον προτιθέντες, τὴν ἐνέργειαν λέγουσιν· οἱ δ᾽ ἄμφω ταῦτα συντιθέντες τὴν τρίτην καὶ τὴν ἐκ τούτων οὐσίαν (ἔοικε γὰρ ὁ μὲν διὰ τῶν διαφορῶν λόγος τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τῆς ἐνεργείας εἶναι, ὁ δ᾽ ἐκ τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων τῆς ὕλης μᾶλλον)· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ οἵους Ἀρχύτας ἀπεδέχετο ὅρους· τοῦ συνάμφω γάρ εἰσιν. οἷον τί ἐστι νηνεμία; ἠρεμία ἐν πλήθει ἀέρος· ὕλη μὲν γὰρ ὁ ἀήρ, ἐνέργεια δὲ καὶ οὐσία ἡ ἠρεμία. τί ἐστι γαλήνη; ὁμαλότης θαλάττης· τὸ μὲν ὑποκείμενον ὡς ὕλη ἡ θάλαττα, ἡ δὲ ἐνέργεια καὶ ἡ μορφὴ ἡ ὁμαλότης. Wherefore, some of those who give definitions, when they say what a house is, say that it is stones, brick, and wood and speak of the potential house, for these 43 46

Archytas D15 Laks & Most. 44 Archytas D14 Laks & Most. 45 Archytas D24 Laks & Most. On the relationship between Hippasus’ and Archytas’ musical theories, see Horky 2013: 238–50.

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things are matter. Others, proposing that it is a receptacle that shelters property and people or some other such definition, speak of the actuality. Some, combining both of these, speak of the third substance that is composed out of these. (For the account by means of differentiae seems to be of the form and the actuality, but the account from those things which are present in it is rather of the matter.) Archytas also approved of the same sort of definitions. For they are of both. For example, what is windlessness? Stillness in a mass of air. For the air is matter, but the stillness is actuality and substance. What is calmness? Levelness of sea. The sea is what underlies as matter. But the levelness is the actuality and form. (Archytas of Tarentum A 22 Huffman = Aristotle, Metaphysics H 2.1043a14–26 = D1 Laks & Most; trans. after Huffman)

Huffman’s analysis of this testimonium ingeniously seeks to employ Philolaus’ concept of limiters and unlimiteds, which are roughly equivalent to form and matter in Aristotle’s terminology, in order to make sense of the Archytan definitions of ‘windlessness’ and ‘calmness’, but his arguments have met with much resistance.47 I suggest we approach these puzzling definitions from an alternative angle that arises in the context of Democritean and Pythagorean moral psychology. For, according to Diogenes Laertius, Democritus believed that ‘contentment’ (εὐθυμία) is the telos of life, ‘according to which the soul passes through life calmly and with stability (καθ’ ἣν γαληνῶς καὶ εὐσταθῶς ἡ ψυχὴ διάγει), undisturbed by any fear or superstition or any other affection’.48 Note here that Diogenes’ commentary represents a very reasonable explanation of DK 68 B 191, cited above, where it is assumed that humans seek ‘cheerfulness’ as a telos; note too, however, that Democritus, both in B 191 and in Diogenes’ description of it, focuses on the importance of stability as an end that arises out of the soul’s obtaining of cheerfulness (εὐσταθέες; sc. εὐσταθῶς).49 For Archytas, it is clear that the concept of ‘calmness’ (γαλήνη) played a significant role in his philosophy, although Aristotle’s inclusion for exemplary purpose in making definitions might obscure what otherwise could have been its use in moral psychology, as was clearly the case in the philosophy of Democritus. Let us turn to the second term defined by Archytas, which appears conspicuously in Aristotle’s description of the ‘Pythagorean’ theory of the soul as motes, as noted by Huffman: ‘windlessness’ (νηνεμία). ‘Windlessness’ is defined by Archytas simply as ‘stillness in a mass of air’ (ἠρεμία ἐν πλήθει ἀέρος). The definiens in this case is interesting: the term for ‘mass’ (πλῆθος) 47 48 49

Huffman 2005: 494–99. For a dissenting view, see Barker 2006: 314–18. DK 68 A 1 = Diogenes Laertius 9.45 = Atomists D229 Laks & Most. On Democritus and εὐθυμία, see Johnson 2020: 222–27. Atomists D226 Laks & Most.

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indicates that we are dealing with a quantity, an ‘amount’ of air (either as an unlimited stuff, or more likely, in my opinion, as some sort of corporealized collection of minima). The term πλῆθος does not appear in Philolaus’ fragments, where μέγεθος instead is used to refer to the magnitude of harmony, i.e. the fourth and the fifth.50 But it does appear in a remarkable testimonium concerning the (probably) late fifth-century bce philosopher Ecphantus of Syracuse, as preserved by (ps-)Hippolytus: Ἐκφαντός τις Συρακούσιος ἔφη μὴ εἶναι ἀληθινὴν τῶν ὄντων λαβεῖν γνῶσιν, ὁρίζει δὲ ὡς νομίζει· τὰ μὲν πρῶτα ἀδιαίρετα εἶναι σώματα καὶ παραλλαγὰς αὐτῶν τρεῖς ὑπάρχειν, μέγεθος σχῆμα δύναμιν, ἐξ ὧν τὰ αἰσθητὰ γίνεσθαι. εἶναι δὲ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν ὡρισμένον καὶ τοῦτο [?] ἄπειρον. κινεῖσθαι δὲ τὰ σώματα μῆτε ὑπὸ βάρους μήτε πληγῆς, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ θείας δυνάμεως, ἣν νοῦν καὶ ψυχὴν προσαγορεύει. τοὺτου μὲν οὖν τὸν κόσμον εἶναι ἰδέαν, δι’ ὃ καὶ σφαιρειδῆ ὑπὸ θείας δυνάμεως γεγονέναι. τὴν δὲ γῆν μέσον κόσμου κινεῖσθαι περὶ τὸ αὑτῆς κέντρον ὡς πρὸς ἀνατολήν. A certain Ecphantus of Syracuse said that it is not possible to grasp a true knowledge of the things that are; but he defines [things] just as he thinks: the primary things are indivisible bodies, and there are three variations of these, viz., magnitude, shape, and power, out of which the sensibles arise. But [he said] that there is a definite quantity of these, and that this (?) is infinite. And [he said] that bodies are moved neither by weight nor by impact, but by a divine power, which he calls mind and soul; and that the cosmos is an image of this [sc. mind and soul], through which it also has become spherical, under divine power; and that the earth in the middle of the cosmos is moved around its own centre towards the east. (Ecphantus of Syracuse DK 51F 1 = (ps-)Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 1.15 = D1 Laks & Most)

We know from other testimonia preserved by Aëtius that Ecphantus was one of the Pythagoreans, and that he was thought to have believed that the first principles are void and the indivisible bodies, which he is credited with being the first to identify with ‘units’.51 Aëtius also tells us that Ecphantus believed that the cosmos was constituted of atoms;52 and we will recall that Ecphantus and Democritus, as well as unnamed ‘Pythagoreans’ in 50 51

52

Philolaus Fr. 6a Huffman = D14 Laks & Most. Ecphantus of Syracuse DK 51 F 2 = Aëtius 1.3.19 = D2 Laks & Most: ‘Ecphantus of Syracuse, one of the Pythagoreans, [said that the first principles] of all things are the indivisible bodies and the void; for he was the first to show that the Pythagorean units were corporeal’ (Ἔκφαντος Συρακούσιος, εἶς τῶν Πυθαγορείων, πάντων τὰ ἀδιαίρετα σώματα καὶ τὸ κενόν [ἀρχὰς εἶναι]· τὰς γὰρ Πυθαγορικὰς μονάδας οὗτος πρῶτος ἀπεφήνατο σωματικάς). Ecphantus of Syracuse DK 51 F 2 = Aëtius 2.3.3 = D4 Laks & Most: ‘Ecphantus [said that] the cosmos was constituted out of atoms, and that it is overseen by providence’ (Ἔκφαντος ἐκ μὲν ἀτόμων συνεστάναι τὸν κόσμον, διοικεῖσθαι δὲ ὑπὸ προνοίας).

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Aristotle’s lost treatise, all asserted that mind and soul were identical. Hence, at least in the case of Ecphantus, we have evidence of an early Pythagorean who believed that the primary minima, which were furthermore corporeal, were atoms, and that these atoms varied according to magnitude, shape, and power (μέγεθος σχῆμα δύναμις). In this way, he may have differentiated his theory from that of Democritus, who held that atoms (or ‘the full’) differed from void according to position, shape, and arrangement (θέσις σχῆμα τάξις).53 With this information in hand, let us return to Aristotle’s description of ‘Pythagorean’ soul as ‘motes in the air’ which ‘appear to be continuously in motion, even when there is total windlessness’. One possible interpretation that can synthesize all the information provided above is this: Pythagorean soul, on Aristotle’s reading, is the motes which, because they feature a spherical shape, are continuously in motion even when embedded among a mass of air atoms, which also possess a distinctive shape and set of properties of their own. This reconstruction makes the Pythagorean theory of the soul mentioned here very similar to that of Democritus, but it also accounts for Archytas’ definition of ‘windlessness’ as ‘stillness in the air’ and Ecphantus’ unique version of Pythagorean number-atomism. On Aristotle’s reading, the Pythagoreans assume that soul is motes because of the fact that the latter are observed to be continually moving: soul could thus appear to be immortal if and only if we assume that what is immortal is what is continuously in motion. But if Pythagorean soul is the motes as they were conceptualized by Democritus and Ecphantus, it would be corporeal and, thus, material.54 Is it possible to conceptualize the soul as a substance both immortal and material? If soul is atomic in the Democritean sense, then the difficulties would evaporate. Pythagorean soul atoms would be both immortal and material, but subsequent compounds of soul atoms – possibly arranged according to harmonic intervals – would not: hence, human and other animal souls would be subject to death, but soul atoms per se would be everlasting. This interpretation fits with what we know about Democritus’ atomic theory: atoms were immortal, indivisible primary corporeal minima, but the compounds these atoms formed, including humans and their souls, were indeed perishable.55 Hence, we have advanced a version of 53

54 55

So Arist. Metaph. 985b4–20 = DK 67 A 6 = Atomists D31 Laks & Most. Simplicius (DK 68 A 38 = Atomists D32 Laks & Most) probably preserves the original words: contour, rotation, and contact (ῥυσμὸς τροπὴ διαθηγή). Cf. Huffman 2009: 33, who speculates that Philolaus may have believed in a material soul. See Arist. Fr. 208 Rose = Democritus D29 Laks & Most, where Aristotle refers atoms to the ‘nature of eternal things’ (ἀιδίων φύσις), and GC 1.2, 315b8–9 = Atomists D71 Laks & Most, where Aristotle

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Pythagorean psychology that, on the most reasonable construction (as informed by Democritus’ theory), makes the soul into a perishable compound.

2.4 Conclusion: Pythagorean Immortality of Soul? This chapter has explored an early Pythagorean theory of the immortality of the soul through a methodological approach that challenges common assumptions about Pythagorean psychology by appeal to an extreme form of historiographical scepticism. It has concluded that a standard scholarly position on the early Pythagorean soul, that it is immortal (in the sense of being everlasting), is chiefly a product of a historically unreliable doxographical tradition whose terminus post quem is no earlier than the last two decades of the fourth century bce, several years after the Pythagorean communities in Italy had been dispersed. This theory of the soul’s immortality, which is originally derived from a popular view according to its putative source, the Peripatetic Dicaearchus of Messana, effectively reproduces material derived from Plato’s dialogues, and hence cannot be taken at face value as a genuine expression of early Pythagoreanism. However, a thought-experiment advanced in Plato’s Phaedo (87b3–c7) by Cebes, who was thought to have been a student of the mathematical Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton, represents a psychological theory independent of Platonic commitments that could lay claim to being a genuine expression of Pythagorean psychology. Cebes’ theory, which would appear to be the source for the ‘Pythagorean myths’ mentioned by Aristotle in De anima A 4, stipulates that the soul is indeed transmigratory (a theory which is guaranteed by Xenophanes’ witness), but ultimately perishable. Careful examination of Aristotle’s account of Pythagorean psychology in De anima reveals important, if seldom discussed, parallels to the psychological theories of three figures associated with Pythagoreanism in the early fourth century bce: the materialist atomists Democritus and Ecphantus, and Archytas of Tarentum – in addition to the aforementioned Cebes. Democritus and Ecphantus both hold that the soul is material and explains that, for the atomists Leucippus and Democritus, generation and corruption are caused by ‘dissociation and association’ (διακρίσει καὶ συγκρίσει) of atoms in compounds, and alteration by ‘order and position’ (τάξει καὶ θέσει) of atoms in relation to one another. It appears that some soul atoms remained in the body upon death, but that they gradually dissipate over time (cf. Aëtius 4.7.4 = Atomists D 139 Laks & Most; 4.4.7 = D 140 Laks & Most). On death in Democritus, see Taylor (2007: 77–80), who speaks of ‘the cessation of psychic functioning, consequent on the loss of a number of soul-atoms sufficient to sustain that functioning’.

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composed of atoms, and that the atoms themselves are immortal, while the soul only lives as long as its composition in the body persists. Hence, for these figures, the soul is not immortal – if, again, by ‘immortal’ we mean ‘everlasting’. Ancient doxographers and commentators on the Pythagorean soul, however, could have confused the immortality of the components of the soul, atoms, with the immortality of the soul itself. Because ‘soul’ (ψυχή) is understood by these figures to be the persistent arrangement of soul atoms in a single compound, it perishes as soon as this arrangement is dissolved – although this theory would allow for the possibility of transmigration, in the sense that a collection of soul atoms constituted into a new body would retain their quantitative identity, but not their shape or pattern. This theory demonstrates the greatest number of parallels to the theory of the soul ascribed to Cebes in Plato’s Phaedo: for Cebes, and quite possibly for Ecphantus too, the soul is material, mortal, transmigratory, and long-lived. It is possible that this theory reflects a later, or a ‘mathematical’, inflection of a more general Pythagorean theory of the soul that could be traced back to the first or second generation of the Pythagoreans in Italy. Be that as it may, I hope it is clear from this chapter that the old adage about Pythagoras or the Pythagoreans inventing or introducing to Greece a concept of the immortal soul can now be securely dismissed.

Bibliography Barker, A. 2006. ‘Archytas unbound: a discussion of Carl A. Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum’, Oxford Studies of Ancient Philosophy 31: 297–322. Bernabé, A. 2016. ‘Transfer of afterlife knowledge in Pythagorean eschatology”, in Renger and Stavru (eds.): 17–30. Betegh, G. 2014. ‘Pythagoreans, Orphism and Greek religion’, in Huffman (ed.): 149–65. Brancacci, A. and Morel, P.-M. (eds.) 2007. Democritus: Science, the Arts, and the Care of the Soul. Boston: Brill. Broadie, S. 2012. Nature and Divinity in Plato’s Timaeus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burkert, W. 1972. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Translated by E. L. Minar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Casadesús Bordoy, F. 2013. ‘On the origin of the Orphic–Pythagorean notion of the immortality of the soul’, in Cornelli et al. (eds.): 153–76. Cornelli, G. 2016. 'Aristotle and the Pythagorean myths of metempsychosis', Méthexis 28: 1-13. Cornelli, G., McKirahan, R., and Macris, C. (eds.) 2013. On Pythagoreanism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

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Fortenbaugh, W. W. and Schútrumpf, E. (eds.) 2001. Dicaearchus of Messana. New Brunswick, NJ; Transaction. Frede, D. and Reis, B. (eds.) 2009. Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Horky, P. S. 2013. Plato and Pythagoreanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. ‘Approaches to the Pythagorean acusmata in the Early Academy’, in Kalligas et al. (eds.): 167–87. Huffman C. 1993. Philolaus of Criton: Pythagorean and Presocratic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. ‘Alcmaeon’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 edn), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/ alcmaeon/. 2005. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009. ‘The Pythagorean conception of the soul from Pythagoras to Philolaus’, in Frede and Reis (eds.): 21–44. (ed.) 2014a. A History of Pythagoreanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2014b. ‘The Peripatetics on the Pythagoreans’, in Huffman (ed.): 274–95. Johnson, M. R. 2020. ‘The ethical maxims of Democritus of Abdera’, in Wolfsdorf (ed.): 211–42. Kahn, C. H. 2001. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kalligas, P., Balla, C., Baziotopoulou-Valavani, E., and Karasmanis, V. (eds.) 2020. Plato’s Academy: Its Workings and its History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laks, A. and Most, G. 2016. Early Greek Philosophy, 9 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lloyd, G. E. R. 2014. ‘Pythagoras’, in Huffman (ed.): 24–45. Long, A. G. 2017. ‘Immortality in Empedocles’, Apeiron 50(1): 1–20. Macris, C. 2014. ‘Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras’, in Huffman (ed.): 381–98. Palmer, J. 2014. ‘The Pythagoreans and Plato’, in Huffman (ed.): 204–26. Pellò, C. 2018. ‘The lives of Pythagoras: a proposal for reading Pythagorean metempsychosis’, Rhizomata 6(2): 135–56. Pohlenz, M. 1949. Die Stoa: Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht. Renger, A. B. and Stravru, A. (eds.) 2016. Pythagorean Knowledge from the Ancient to the Modern World: Askesis, Religion, Science. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Riedweg, C. 2008. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. Translated by S. Rendall. Second Edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Schäfer, C. 2009. ‘Das Pythagorasfragment des Xenophanes und die Frage nach der Kritik der Metempsychosenlehre’, in Frede and Reis (eds.): 45–70. Schibli, H. S. 1990. Pherekydes of Syros. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sedley, D. 1995. ‘The dramatis personae of Plato’s Phaedo’, Proceedings of the British Academy 85: 3–26.

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Sedley, D. and Long, A. G. 2010. Plato: Meno and Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taufer, M. 2008. ‘Zalmoxis nella tradizione greca: rassegna e rilettura delle fonti’, Quaderni di storia 68: 131–64. Taylor, C. C. W. 2007. ‘Democritus and Lucretius on death and dying’, in Brancacci and Morel (eds.): 77–86. Thom, J. C. 2020. ‘The Pythagorean acusmata’, in Wolfsdorf (ed.): 3–18. Trépanier, S. 2017. ‘From Hades to the stars: Empedocles on the cosmic habitats of soul’, Classical Antiquity 36(1): 130–82. White, S. 2001. ‘Principes Sapientiae: Dicaearchus’ biography of philosophy’, in Fortenbaugh and Schútrumpf (eds.): 195–236. Wolfsdorf, D. C. (ed.) 2020. Early Greek Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zhmud, L. 2014. ‘Sixth-, fifth and fourth-century Pythagoreans’, in Huffman (ed.): 88–111. 2016. ‘Pythagoras’ northern connections: Zalmoxis, Abaris, Aristeas’, Classical Quarterly 66(2): 446–62.

chapter 3

The Philosopher’s Reward: Contemplation and Immortality in Plato’s Dialogues Suzanne Obdrzalek 3.1

Introduction

In dialogues ranging from the Symposium to the Timaeus, Plato appears to propose that the philosopher’s grasp of the Forms may confer immortality upon him. Whatever can Plato mean in making such a claim? What does he take immortality to consist in, such that it could constitute a reward for philosophical enlightenment? And what, exactly, is the process by which the philosopher’s grasp of the Forms renders his soul immortal? Finally, how is this proposal compatible with Plato’s repeated assertions, throughout his corpus, that all soul, not just philosophical soul, is immortal? In response to this final question, O’Brien (1984: 200–1) and Sedley (2009) have suggested that Plato distinguishes different forms of immortality. From Homer onwards, the Greeks appear to have seen no difficulty in proposing both that all human soul persists after the death of the body and that select individuals can achieve immortality, either as a reward for exceptional achievement or as the result of mystical initiation (Burkert 1985: 300; O’Brien 1984: 200–1). O’Brien and Sedley propose that, following in this tradition, Plato distinguishes several forms of immortality. On the one hand, Plato maintains in the Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Laws that all soul is immortal in the sense of being imperishable. On the other hand, in dialogues such as the Symposium and Timaeus, Plato also suggests that certain individuals can attain an enhanced form of immortality, one that goes beyond the continued existence that all soul is assured of.1 In what follows, modifying Sedley’s terminology, I refer to these as general I am grateful to audiences at the University of California, Riverside and the University of California, San Diego, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter, and to Alex Long for the invitation to write it and for providing me with extensive and thoughtful notes. 1 Symposium 208b, 208e–209e, 212a; Timaeus 90a–d. Note that in the Symposium, Plato does not appear to claim that all soul is guaranteed immortality; I discuss this complication further in what follows.

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and earned forms of immortality.2 O’Brien associates earned immortality with a condition of never-ending blessedness that approximates the state of the gods (201); Sedley claims that earned immortality pertains to the individual human being, a soul–body composite, rather than his soul alone, and consists in his production of intellectual progeny or in his identification with reason (158–60). While both accounts are illuminating, they draw insufficient attention to the way in which the philosopher’s earned immortality derives from the immortality of the Forms that he contemplates.3 In this chapter, my aim is to offer a sustained discussion of the way in which philosophical contemplation of Forms gives rise to earned immortality in two dialogues, the Phaedo and the Symposium.4 I shall approach this topic by applying the distinction between general and earned immortality to two related problems in the Phaedo and Symposium: as I shall demonstrate, the solution to the problem that I develop for the Phaedo offers the key to addressing a parallel difficulty that I uncover in the Symposium. In the Phaedo, a tension arises when we consider the relation of the Affinity Argument (78b–84b) to the other arguments for immortality in the dialogue. Whereas the other arguments treat immortality as an essential feature of all soul, the Affinity Argument appears to portray immortality as an achievement of the philosopher’s soul alone. How are these arguments compatible?5 In the Symposium, the problem arises of why Plato should appear to deny the immortality of the soul in the flux passage (207c–208b), given his confidence concerning the 2

3 4

5

For the sake of convenience, I use the expression general immortality to combine Sedley’s categories of essential and conferred immortality. By general immortality, I mean any form of immortality that applies to all human souls. But see Sedley 2009: 158 and 2017: 98–106. For a sustained and insightful discussion of immortality in the Phaedo, see Catherine Rowett’s chapter in this volume. Rowett and I are in agreement in locating a form of immortality in the Phaedo that goes beyond mere extension in time. However, whereas Rowett identifies this form of immortality with timelessness, I identify it with changelessness; on my view, the soul is incapable of the atemporal mode of being of Forms. Furthermore, whereas Rowett takes timeless immortality to be an essential feature of all souls, albeit one they must aspire fully to realize by divesting themselves of their corporeal existence, I take immortality as changelessness to be a state that is only attained by philosophical souls, through their assimilation to Forms. Neither Sedley (2009) nor O’Brien (1984) applies the distinction between general and earned immortality to this problem in the Phaedo. Both authors do address the problem that I go on to describe in the Symposium, but along significantly different lines than myself. Both dissolve the appearance of inconsistency between the flux passage and Plato’s other arguments for the immortality of the soul by arguing that the flux passage does not claim that the soul is mortal, but, rather, that its psychological states are in flux (O’Brien 1984: 192–5) or that the soul–body composite is mortal (Sedley 2009: 159–60). By contrast, I take the passage at face value, as denying that the soul is immortal; I resolve the potential inconsistency by maintaining that the form of immortality that it denies to human soul is earned, not general immortality.

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immortality of the soul in dialogues assumed to pre- and post-date the Symposium.6 Distinguishing between general and earned immortality addresses both problems in ways that are mutually illuminating. I shall argue that, while the Phaedo attributes general immortality to all soul, at the same time, in the Affinity Argument, it proposes that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality as a result of its contemplation of Forms. It is this exact form of immortality that Plato proposes is unavailable to human soul in the flux passage of the Symposium. At the same time, in the ascent passage (209e–212a), he holds out the possibility – albeit with significant reservations – that the philosopher’s soul may transcend its humanity and achieve earned immortality as a result of its communion with the Form. I conclude by arguing that the central puzzle concerning immortality in the Symposium is not – as most critics have maintained7 – why Plato should appear to deny immortality of the soul in the flux passage: the flux passage is concerned with earned, not general, immortality, and thus does not stand in opposition to Plato’s arguments for general immortality in other dialogues. Rather, the central puzzle is why he should express reservations concerning the philosopher’s prospects of attaining earned immortality, given his optimism on this count in other dialogues. Exploring this puzzle reveals an important progression in Plato’s thought. Whereas the Phaedo is confident concerning the philosopher’s prospects of attaining earned immortality, in the Symposium, Plato develops deep reservations on this issue; these doubts are addressed in later dialogues, when Plato modifies his account of earned immortality.

3.2 An Apparent Inconsistency in the Phaedo Let us turn to a closer examination of the problem that I outlined for the Phaedo. In the Phaedo, Plato develops a number of arguments for the immortality of the soul. With the possible exception of the Affinity Argument, each attempts to demonstrate that all soul is immortal. Its immortality consists in its enduring and not perishing. The Affinity Argument, however, stands in a difficult relation to the surrounding arguments for immortality. The 6

7

For the purposes of this chapter, I take the Phaedo to predate the Symposium, and the Phaedrus, Republic, Timaeus, and Laws to postdate it. For a defense of this assumption, see, e.g., Brandwood 1992, Kraut 1992a and, esp., Dover 1965. Contemporary discussion of this problem was initiated by Hackforth 1950 (though for earlier discussion see Bury 1932: xliii–v). Influential responses include Bluck 1955: 27–9; Crombie 1962: 361–3; Dover 1965; Guthrie 1975: 387–92; Luce 1952; and Robinson 1995: 125–7 (1st ed. 1970). More recent discussions include Ademollo 2018: 52–5; Jorgenson 2018: 65–76; Morgan 1990: 90–3; Nightingale 2017; O’Brien 1984; Price 2004: 30–5; Rowe 1998: 185; Sedley 2009: 158–61; Sheffield 2006: 147–8 n. 47; and Woolf 2018: 98.

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argument begins with the explicit aim of proving to Simmias and Cebes that they need not fear that the soul will dissipate upon death (77d–e, 78b). On the face of it, then, the Affinity Argument is a further attempt to demonstrate that all soul is imperishable. However, as the argument progresses, it appears to establish a quite different conclusion, that only the philosopher’s soul is immortal and, indeed, that most souls, by failing to be philosophical, fail to be immortal.8 The argument begins by claiming that whatever is unchanging is most likely to be incomposite, and that what is incomposite is most likely to be insoluble (78c). Socrates’ argumentative goal is to place the soul in the class of the unchanging, incomposite, and hence insoluble. His argument proceeds in three stages. First, he observes that the Forms are unchanging and imperceptible, whereas their instantiations are changing and perceptible; since the body is perceptible and the soul imperceptible, the body must belong to the class of the changing and hence perishable, the soul to the class of the unchanging and hence imperishable (78c–79b).9 So far, so good. It is in the second stage of the Affinity Argument that our problems begin. Socrates states (79c–d): Whenever, on the one hand (μέν), the soul uses the body to investigate something, whether through seeing or hearing or through some other sense – for this is what it is to investigate through the body, to investigate something through the senses – then it is dragged by the body to the things that are never the same, and it wanders and is stirred and is dizzy, as if drunk, because it is in contact with such things . . . On the other hand (δέ), whenever the soul investigates itself by itself, it departs towards there, to the pure and always existing and immortal and always the same, and because the soul is akin to it, it always comes to be with it whenever it comes to be itself by itself and it is able to do so, and the soul ceases from its wandering and, in relation to these things, it is always the same and stable, because it is in contact with such things. And this state of it is called wisdom.10

Cebes concludes on this basis that the soul “is completely and in every way more like what is always the same than that which is not” (79e). But, on the 8

9

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To the extent that the theory of recollection assumes that all souls have a prenatal grasp of the Forms, then they must all, in some sense, possess the kinship to the Forms that is articulated in the Affinity Argument. However, in the souls of the many, this kinship is an unactualized potential, one that is inhibited by their attachment to their bodies; this attachment, in turn, causes them to assimilate to the corporeal and mortal, rather than to the incorporeal and immortal. One puzzling feature of this argument is that it concludes that the soul is more akin to the class to which the Forms belong than to the class to which their instantiations belong (78d–79a, 80a–b). But one might have thought that a virtuous soul belongs to the class of τὰ πολλὰ καλά, the many beautiful things (79d10). Translations are my own, though at points I borrow the phrasings of Nehamas and Woodruff 1989, Rowe 1998, and Sedley and Long 2011.

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face of it, it is difficult to see how this conclusion follows. According to Socrates’ argument, the soul is capable of being both changeful and changeless, depending on whether it devotes itself to sense-perception or to contemplation. The only way to make sense of the argument is to assume that the condition of the soul when it contemplates Forms is somehow more revealing of its nature than its condition when it devotes itself to sense-perception. This assumption can, perhaps, be supported by Plato’s use of the men . . . de (on the one hand . . . on the other hand) construction at 79c2 and d1: he thereby develops a contrast between the condition of the soul when it tries to examine something by means of the body and its condition when it investigates itself by itself. Perhaps the implication is that the soul’s true nature can only be discerned when it acts on its own, but is obscured when it is contaminated by the addition of an extraneous and opposed element, the body.11 Alternately, we might follow Woolf (2004: 112) and Lorenz (2009) in taking the argument to imply that the soul is, in its truest nature, unchanging, because that is its condition when it is performing its proper function and achieving its corresponding virtue, wisdom. Yet on either interpretation, the following difficulty arises. Even as the argument suggests that in its best and purest condition the soul is unchanging, it relies on a contrast that implies that the soul is equally capable of being changeful and hence of belonging to the class of the perishable. A similar difficulty confronts us when we turn to the third, final stage of the Affinity Argument (79e–80a). Here, Socrates argues that since the soul rules over the body, it is akin to the divine, and belongs to the class of the immortal; conversely, the body, insofar as it is ruled, belongs to the class of the mortal. This suggests that souls which fail to rule over the body – in other words, the souls of all those non-philosophers whose lives are ruled by their bodily needs and desires – fail to belong to the class of the divine and hence immortal.12 Things only become more problematic in the discussion that follows. In what amounts to a protreptic to philosophy, Socrates maintains that the prize for contemplation is the purification of one’s soul, and the penalty for a life of bodily pleasure is its corruption. Souls that fail to separate themselves from the body, to the extent possible during life, depart with a corporeal accretion that renders them visible and heavy and condemns them to wander the earth, eventually entering another body (81b–e). Thus, even as Socrates portrays non-philosophical souls as persisting after death, 11 12

Note the parallel to the Glaucus passage at Republic 611b–c. Tellingly, at 66d, in describing the ways in which the body presents an obstacle to contemplation, Plato describes the would-be philosophers as enslaved (δουλεύοντες) to the service of the body.

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he assigns to them the very corporeal attributes that guarantee their membership in the class of the visible, changeable, and perishable. Strikingly, such souls are even described as becoming corporeal (σωματοειδής, 83d5). The argument concludes by harking back to Simmias’ and Cebes’ request that Socrates demonstrate to them that the soul cannot be scattered, but it now makes explicit that his proof depends on the sort of nurture a soul has received: “From that sort of nurture, there is no danger that it should fear . . . that on separating from the body it should be torn apart, blown away by the winds and go flying off, and no longer be anything anywhere” (84b).13 The Affinity Argument, it turns out, delivers something quite different than was promised: far from showing that all soul is immortal, it implies that most souls are intimately connected to the corporeal realm, and that only philosophical souls properly belong to the class of the immortal.

3.3

Two Senses of Immortality in the Phaedo

How, then, are we to address this seeming inconsistency in Plato’s position? I propose that it can be resolved if we distinguish two forms of mortality and immortality. On the one hand, all soul in the Phaedo is immortal in the sense of being imperishable. On the other hand, in the Affinity Argument, Plato proposes that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality through its contemplation of Forms. The Affinity Argument’s further implication, that the souls of non-philosophers are mortal, is not in conflict with the rest of the dialogue because two quite different senses of immortality are at work, general and earned immortality. But what evidence do we have that these two senses of immortality are at work? And how does Plato conceive of earned immortality in the Phaedo? We can begin to make the case that there are two senses of immortality at work in the Phaedo by contrasting the condition of the soul of the nonphilosopher, who is caught in the cycle of rebirth, with that of the philosopher, who escapes it. Both souls are immortal, but their immortality takes on quite different forms. The soul of the philosopher, which avoids the body during life and departs pure, makes its way to Hades, “to the invisible, which is like itself, the divine and immortal and wise, and 13

Woolf provides an excellent discussion of the tensions between the Affinity Argument and the rest of the dialogue, though he resolves them along different lines than myself, proposing that Plato is inviting the reader to enter into conversation with the dialogue by comparing and contrasting the arguments (2004: 111–12 n. 19).

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arriving there, it can be happy . . . and, as is said of the initiates, truly spend the rest of time with the gods” (81a). By contrast, the soul of the nonphilosopher, that is “interspersed with the corporeal, with which it has grown together, on account of its communion and intercourse with the body,” is “never able to arrive purely to Hades, but always exits full of body, so that it falls right away back into another body and grows in it as if sown there, and on account of this, it has no part in the communion with the divine and pure and one-in-form” (81c, 83d–e). Deploying language that is deliberately evocative of religious initiation and apotheosis, Plato suggests that upon death, the soul of the philosopher is able to approach the condition of the gods, to achieve a state of blessed and eternal contemplation.14 By contrast, souls that depart impure retain a corporeal accretion and an attraction to and identification with the sensible world that condemns them to a cycle of death and reincarnation. On the one hand, these passages make clear that the soul of the non-philosopher is immortal in the sense that it continues to exist after the death of the body. Indeed, it almost immediately adopts another body and with it another corporeal life. At the same time, such a soul’s intimate connection with the sensible world precludes it from the form of immortality that the soul of the philosopher achieves. Thus far, we have observed that, whereas the soul of the nonphilosopher and the soul of the philosopher both persist after the death of the body, their post-mortem fates are quite different: the former is caught in a cycle of reincarnation, whereas the latter achieves an incorporeal, godlike condition. But are we correct to conclude that two senses of immortality are at work? Our hypothesis receives confirmation from the fact that Plato offers two quite different treatments of death and, correspondingly, of deathlessness (ἀθανασία).15 In Socrates’ defense, he explicitly defines death as the separation of the soul from the body: “Is [death] anything other than the separation of the soul from the body?” (64c, cf. 67d). In this regard, he describes the soul of the philosopher as experiencing and even welcoming death as an escape from human evils (84a–b).16 14 15

16

Note that at 81a, as well as 82b–c, Plato hints at an affinity principle that he made fully explicit at 67a–b: in order to consort with the gods, we must approximate their purity. See Rowett’s chapter in this volume for further discussion of different senses of death and deathlessness in the Phaedo. Like myself, Rowett observes that there is a shift in the sense of death in the Final Argument, but she takes it to mean the absence of consciousness and life, whereas I take it to mean destruction. Note that the subject of the entire passage at 84a–b is the philosopher’s soul (ψυχὴ ἀνδρὸς φιλοσόφου); there is no shift in subject when Plato describes the soul as living and dying at 84b1– 2. Similarly, at 77d, Plato claims that it is necessary for the soul to continue to exist when it dies

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By contrast, in the Final Argument, Plato argues that insofar as the soul is a principle of life, it cannot undergo death. Its separating from the body is presented as an alternative to its dying. In this context, Plato treats death not as the separation of the soul from the body, but rather as its destruction (105c–107a). According to the Affinity Argument, the souls of nonphilosophers are doomed to a cycle of reincarnation. Thus, in our first sense, they undergo death – that is, separation from the body – repeatedly and are mortal; in our second sense, however, they are deathless and hence immortal.17 I have made the case that there are two forms of immortality at work in the Phaedo: whereas all souls are immortal in the sense of being indestructible, the philosopher’s soul can achieve a further, earned form of immortality. How does Plato conceive of it? We can answer this question by taking a closer look at the mechanism by which the philosopher achieves earned immortality. According to the Affinity Argument, the philosopher achieves immortality as a result of his contemplation of Forms. In particular, should he succeed in maximally dissociating his soul from his body, his soul will become akin to the Forms and hence able to grasp them (67a–b, 79c–d). As a result of his contemplation, the soul of the philosopher not only enters into the realm of the Forms, but, further, it appears to assimilate to them. In particular, Plato emphasizes that his soul assimilates to their changelessness: “it ceases from its wandering and, in relation to these things, it is always the same and stable, because it is in contact with such things” (79d). Why does Plato emphasize that the soul assimilates to the changelessness of the Forms? Here, it will be helpful to look forward to the Timaeus. In the Timaeus, Plato develops a contrast between the eternality of the Forms, which exist outside of time, and the immortality of generated beings, which exist within time (37d–38c). Crucially, Plato emphasizes that the Forms are eternal in virtue of the fact that they are unchanging, whereas generated beings, as subject to change, are only capable of a second-rate form of immortality: persistence in time. My proposal, then, is that the

17

(ἐπειδὰν ἀποθάνῃ εἶναι), and at 80e–81a, he refers to the soul as practicing dying easily. When Cebes develops his weaver objection in response to Socrates, he appears to understand Socrates’ discussion of metempsychosis as implying that the soul is born and dies many times (88a); his worry is that in one of these deaths, the soul may perish. It is perhaps in response to Cebes’ distinction between dying and perishing that Plato introduces a new definition of death at 91d: “this is death, the destruction of the soul.” In this context, it is interesting to observe that, while at 80d, Plato equates Hades with the invisible realm of Forms to which the philosopher’s soul makes its way upon death, in the Final Argument, he claims that “the soul is immortal and indestructible and our souls will truly exist in Hades” (106e– 107a), apparently treating Hades as the realm that all souls occupy after death.

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philosopher’s earned immortality consists not merely in his soul’s persistence in time, but in the changelessness it acquires as a result of its assimilation to the Forms he contemplates; in what follows, I refer to this condition as changeless eternality. It is starkly opposed to the condition of the soul that is condemned to the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, a soul that is quasi-corporeal and subject to endless change.18

3.4

An Apparent Inconsistency in the Symposium

With this understanding of the role of earned immortality in the Phaedo in place, we can now turn to our puzzle in the Symposium. In a volte-face that has long taxed interpreters, in the flux passage of the Symposium, Plato appears to temporarily abandon his commitment to the immortality of the soul. In this passage, Diotima provides a general characterization of mortal nature as subject to constant flux, and hence as incapable of true immortality and condemned to a second-best approximation to it, namely reproduction. As I devote considerable attention to this passage, I will begin by quoting it in its entirety: Well, she said, if you agree that by its nature, love is of what we have often agreed it is of, then do not wonder. For the same account applies to animals as to humans: mortal nature seeks as far as possible to always exist and to be immortal. But it is only able in this manner, through generation, because it always leaves behind another new thing in exchange for the old. For even in the time in which each living being is said to live and to be the same – like how a person is called the same from childhood until he becomes an old man – he is called the same while never being made up of the same things, but while always being both renewed and destroyed19 in his hair, his flesh, his bones, his blood, and his whole body. And this is not just the case with the body, but also with the soul: its manners, customs, beliefs, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, none of these is ever the same in anyone, but some are coming into existence and others are being destroyed. It’s even stranger than this with knowledge: not only do some pieces of knowledge come to exist in us while others are destroyed, so that we are never the same even in terms of our knowledge, but every single piece of knowledge undergoes the same process. For what we call “going over things” exists because knowledge is leaving us. For forgetting is the departure of knowledge, while going over something creates in us a new memory to replace the one that is departing, thereby preserving the piece of knowledge, so that it appears to be the same. 18 19

Compare Sami Yli-Karjanmaa’s discussion in this volume of reincarnation and immortality in Philo. The Greek participle (ἀπολλύς) is active and so the more literal meaning is that the person is always ‘losing’ parts of himself.

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In this way all that is mortal is preserved, not by being always completely the same like the divine, but because what is departing and aging leaves behind in us another new thing that is like it was. It is in this manner, Socrates, she said, that the mortal partakes of immortality, both in body and in everything else, but the immortal does so in another way. So don’t wonder if everything by nature honors its offspring, for this eagerness, this love, which attends every creature is for the sake of immortality. (207c–208b)

Several things are troubling about this passage. In the first place, it draws a sharp distinction between mortal nature and the divine. Mortal nature is able to persist only by replenishing itself during this life and, after death, through a parallel process of replacing itself with its offspring. However, the strong implication is that this is not a genuine form of immortality – the concluding contrast between how the mortal and the immortal partake of immortality is surely loaded. The immortal partakes of immortality by remaining forever the same; the passage appears to identify this with genuine immortality and to claim that humans are incapable of this form of immortality. In a similar vein, at 206c, Plato refers to reproduction as an immortal thing for a mortal creature (ἐν θνητῷ); at 206e, he describes reproduction as something immortal as far as can be the case for something mortal (ὡς θνητῷ); and at 207d, he describes mortal nature as seeking as far as possible (κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν) to be immortal. Plato could not be more explicit in maintaining that, though humans may aspire to immortality, they remain resolutely mortal. In the second place, the passage advances this conclusion by drawing a troubling parallel between the body and the soul. Just as the body is never composed of the same material parts, but must constantly replenish itself, so the soul is never composed of the same psychic elements, but must constantly regenerate itself. Contrast this with the opposition Plato develops between body and soul in the Phaedo, where the soul is placed in the class of the changeless, the body in the class of the changeable (80a–b). The implication of the flux passage is that the soul, like the body, is incapable of true immortality, which requires that it always remain the same; to the extent that it is capable of immortality, it is only capable of a second-rate sort, through constantly regenerating itself. Numerous interpreters have resisted this conclusion. Thus, Dover, for example, maintains that the passage only claims that psychic states are subject to flux, and that it allows for the possibility that the soul itself, as the subject of psychic states, is unchanging and immortal.20 However, such 20

Dover 1987: 149. See also Dover 1965: 19–20; Ademollo 2018: 54–5; O’Brien 1984: 195; and Price 2004: 30. Morgan 1990: 92–3, Robinson 1995: 126–7, Rowe 1998: 185, and Sedley 2009: 159–60,

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a maneuver is rendered implausible by the studious parallel the passage develops between body and soul.21 Plato first claims that each human “is called the same while never being made up of the same things, but while always being both renewed and destroyed in his hair, his flesh, his bones, his blood and his whole body.” The body clearly is not on all fours with the other items in this list: it is not as though the human is renewed and destroyed in his hair and flesh and, in addition to these, in his body. Rather, “and” (καί) here has a summative force: the items preceding the body in this list are constituents of the body. In virtue of the fact that they are subject to destruction and renewal, the body as a whole is subject to flux. Plato continues: “And this is not just the case with the body, but also with the soul (καὶ μὴ ὅτι κατὰ τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ τὴν ψυχήν): its manners, customs, beliefs, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, none of these is ever the same in anyone, but some are coming into existence and others are being destroyed.” Plato’s use of the phrase καὶ μὴ ὅτι κατὰ τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ τὴν ψυχήν is significant. It indicates that whatever he has just established in the case of the body also applies in the case of the soul. What he has just established about the body is that it is never strictly the same due to the flux of its constituents. It follows that what Plato is claiming about the soul is that it is never strictly the same due to the flux of its manners, customs, beliefs, etc. The reason the flux of the human’s hair, flesh, and bones entails that his body is never the same is that his body is made up of these elements; by analogy, the reason the human’s soul is never the same is that it is composed of mental states that are subject to flux. Our passage concludes: In this way all that is mortal is preserved, not by being always completely the same like the divine, but because what is departing and aging leaves behind in us another new thing that is like it was. It is in this manner, Socrates, she said, that the mortal partakes of immortality, both in body and in everything else, but the immortal does so in another way.

Interpreters such as Dover insist that in the final sentence, Plato does not place the soul in the class of the mortal; instead, it belongs to that of the immortal. But note the parallels between the final sentence and its predecessor: whatever belongs to the class of the immortal in the final sentence belongs to the class of the divine in that which precedes it. Thus, on my opponents’ line of interpretation, the souls of humans and other animals

21

following Luce 1952, make a related argument, that Plato is only denying that human nature, i.e. the soul-body composite, is immortal, and does not deny the immortality of the soul itself. See Sheffield 2006: 147–8 n. 47.

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would not just be immortal, but also divine. But that would be extremely jarring in a dialogue in which Plato has been at pains to emphasize the chasm that separates the human from the divine (e.g. 202e–203a). Furthermore, the expression “everything else” in the concluding sentence clearly refers to the mental states that Plato has just characterized as subject to flux. But how can the soul belong to the class of the divine and unchanging if its mental states are mortal and subject to flux?22 Finally, on the alternative interpretation, Plato’s argumentative structure, both within this passage and, more broadly, throughout Diotima’s speech, begins to fall apart. On my reading, the argumentative structure of this passage is as follows. Plato claims that living beings can only achieve immortality through reproduction. He supports this by an analogy to the way in which they count as persisting within a given life: just as the organism only persists within a given life through regeneration, so it only persists across lives by reproduction. He supports the first part of this analogy by arguing that the organism, the soul-body composite, maintains its existence within a given life through regenerating both its somatic and its psychic constituents. If mental states were not psychic constituents, and if the soul were, instead, some unchanging subject of these mental states, then it is utterly unclear what Plato would be accomplishing by including the claim that mental states are subject to flux, and, indeed, by presenting it as a parallel claim to that concerning the body’s constituents. In what follows, Plato argues that we are capable of immortality through two sorts of pregnancy and reproduction: somatic and psychic. If the soul is not composed of its mental states and hence is not subject to flux, but is rather an unchanging subject of mental states, then why ever would humans pursue psychic reproduction? They would already be guaranteed immortality via the persistence of their changeless souls.23 22

23

Thus, the tension I am exploring still obtains, even on those interpretations that deny that the soul is composed of its mental states: even if the soul is a persisting and distinct subject of mental states, the mere fact that its mental states undergo constant flux suffices to demonstrate that the soul does not remain “always completely the same” (208a8), and hence is not immortal. One ground for rejecting the interpretation that I have outlined is that the proposal that the soul is composed of its mental states might seem to be at odds with the status of the soul as the persisting subject of its mental states – see, e.g., Ademollo 2018: 52–5; Dover 1965: 19; and Price 2004: 24–5. However, this need not follow: as Quinton notes, on a bundle theory of the mind, the subject might, quite minimally, be the interrelated set of mental states (2008: 55–7). Thus, this objection would only have force if we had decisive evidence that Plato subscribes to a Berkeleyan view on which whatever is the subject of mental states cannot itself be a set of mental states. However, there is no direct evidence that he is committed to this thesis; indeed, the fact that he uses phrases such as nous and dianoia to refer both to the capacity for thought and to thought itself suggests that he draws no such sharp distinction.

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In sum: the flux passage implies that, just as the perishing of flesh and blood renders our bodies mortal, so the perishing of thoughts and desires renders our souls mortal. But this proposal, that the soul is mortal, stands in obvious conflict with Plato’s arguments for the immortality of all soul in dialogues ranging from the Phaedo through the Phaedrus. How, then, are we to rescue Plato from the appearance of gross inconsistency?

3.5

Immortality as Changelessness in the Symposium

In what follows, I will argue that the traditional problem concerning immortality in the Symposium is, simply put, misplaced. To see why this is so, we should consider more carefully what form of immortality Plato is denying to the human soul in the flux passage. The argumentative structure of the passage is, on the face of it, puzzling. Plato begins by stating that mortal nature is only capable of immortality through reproduction “because it always leaves behind another new thing in exchange for the old” (207d). He then provides a lengthy explanation for why this should be so: it is because “even in the time in which each living being is said to live and to be the same . . . he is called the same while never being made up of the same things, but while always being both renewed and destroyed” (207d); Plato goes on to explain, in detail, how this continuous destruction and regeneration applies to both our somatic and psychic constituents. But why should the fact that, during a given life, we can only maintain our continued existence by regenerating ourselves entail that the only sort of immortality we are capable of involves replacing ourselves after death through our offspring? Why might our souls not, instead, persist after the death of the body by continuing to replenish their psychological states? The force of Plato’s reasoning becomes apparent if we turn to the conclusion of his argument: In this way all that is mortal is preserved, not by being always completely the same like the divine, but because what is departing and aging leaves behind in us another new thing that is like it was.24 It is in this manner . . . that the

24

I understand Plato to be claiming in this passage that the gods are immortal in virtue of being qualitatively unchanged across time. That παντάπασιν τὸ αὐτὸ ἀεὶ εἶναι (“being always completely the same”) is referring to the gods’ qualitative identity, and not merely their numerical identity, is indicated by Plato’s use of the intensifier, παντάπασιν: whereas numerical identity does not admit of degree, qualitative identity does. Furthermore, the context implies a contrast between how gods and humans achieve immortality, where the human mode involves constant change; the implication is that the divine mode does not.

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mortal partakes of immortality, both in body and in everything else, but the immortal does so in another way. (208a–b)

The reason that Plato draws attention to the flux that characterizes mortal beings such as ourselves is that it entails that we are incapable of a very specific form of immortality, “being always absolutely the same.” Given that we are subject to flux in both body and soul, and must rely on replenishment to maintain our continued existence, there is no hope that upon death we should be able to achieve what I have referred to as changeless eternality. But, as we have seen, changeless eternality is not the only way that Plato thinks of immortality; thus, to deny that the soul is capable of changeless eternality is not tantamount to denying that it is capable of general immortality, i.e. persistence in time. In fact, there are several ways in which a soul might realize general immortality. On the one hand, it might persist through time in virtue of being caught in an endless cycle of change – of regeneration and reproduction, as Plato outlines in the Symposium, or of birth, death, and rebirth, as he suggests in the Phaedo. On the other hand, it might persist in virtue of remaining the same forever. This is the form of immortality that we encountered in the Affinity Argument, the earned immortality in which the philosopher’s soul assimilates to the Forms. It is this form of immortality, not general immortality, that Plato is concerned to deny to human soul in the flux passage.25 Why the focus on changeless eternality? The reason for this is that the topic of the dialogue is eros, construed as the pursuit of happiness, eudaimonia.26 Eudaimonia, in turn, is defined as eternal possession of the good (202c, 204e, 205a, 206a, 207a). Commentators have long worried 25

26

Of course, if the flux passage does not contradict Plato’s arguments for general immortality in other dialogues, then we might wonder why Plato should emphasize in the Symposium that mortal nature seeks to achieve immortality through reproduction. If we are already guaranteed persistence in time, then why bother? I can see at least two ways of addressing this concern. First, in describing the mortal pursuit of immortality, Plato is attempting to give an explanation of the behavior of hoi polloi; it need not follow that he considers their behavior to be rationally justifiable (see Obdrzalek 2010). Perhaps the best explanation we can offer of the human drive to reproduce in body or in soul is that for many this seems like the closest they can come to cheating death. Second, Plato maintains that the reason we wish for immortality is to secure eternal possession of the good. But it is not clear that the form of immortality that he argues for in other dialogues is sufficiently psychologically robust to satisfy this desire. If my soul persists after my death as a sort of imperishable psychic stuff, and then assumes a new life in a new body with little or no recollection of my previous existence, then it is not at all clear that this should reassure me, as the person I am now, that I will continue to possess the good after death (see Rowe 1996: 9–10). In that case, reproductive immortality might seem to offer a better, or at least complementary, path toward achieving eternal possession of the good. Sheffield 2012 has an excellent discussion of this point.

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that Plato performs a philosophical legerdemain in moving from the claim at 205a, that humans always want to possess the good, to the claim at 206a that humans want to possess the good always – i.e. to possess the good into eternity.27 This progression is less troubling if we attend to the dialogue’s emphasis on the role of eros in bringing humankind into relation to the divine. Thus, Socrates’ exchange with Diotima begins by establishing that, while Eros is not a god, he is a spirit, whose function is to bind together the mortal and the divine (202d–203a). If we think of gods as beings in the best possible condition, then it should seem a natural continuation of Plato’s eudaimonism that our telos (end) should be, as Plato’s followers maintained, assimilation to god to the degree possible (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν).28 But part and parcel of the gods’ blessedness is that they do not just possess what is beautiful and good (202c), but that they possess it forever and unchangingly. On this account, it is not sufficient for happiness that one should possess the good or that one should exist forever; what is required is that one possess the good forever – in other words, what is required is changeless eternality in possession of the good.29 It is for this reason that, in the Republic, Plato is scandalized by depictions of the gods as subject to change (380c–381e). As beings that are perfect, and hence in the best possible condition, were they to change, they would voluntarily enter into a worse condition, a psychological impossibility. Thus, the reason that Plato specifies in the flux passage that gods enjoy changeless eternality is because this is the only form of immortality that will ensure them eternal possession of the good. In sum, given the eudaimonist focus of the Symposium, it is only changeless eternality that is relevant to Plato’s argumentative purposes. The form of immortality that Plato assigns to all soul in other dialogues – persistence in time – is simply beside the point. A soul that is subject to an endless cycle of birth, death, punishment, and rebirth is simply not the sort of thing to attain the form of immortality – changeless eternality – that 27 28 29

See Dover 1987: 144; Price 2004: 17; Sheffield 2006: 81–2. See the seminal discussions in Annas 1999 and Sedley 1999. One might object that the gods only need changelessness in one respect, in their possession of the good; change in other respects would not compromise their happiness. However, in the Republic passage that I go on to discuss, Plato seems to suggest that were the gods to change at all, they would enter into a worse condition (380c–381e). This implies that Plato assumes that there is only one best condition for the gods to be in, and that to undergo any change whatsoever would compromise their blessedness. It is worth noting that, while in later dialogues, such as the Timaeus and Laws, Plato depicts the cosmic gods as subject to change, he presents them as subject to maximally stable forms of change, rotation, and revolution, because he continues to associate changelessness with perfection (Timaeus 40a–b, Laws 898a–b).

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enables man to approximate the condition of the gods and achieve permanent possession of the good.

3.6

Earned Immortality in the Symposium

While our discussion may have removed the appearance of conflict between the flux passage and Plato’s arguments for general immortality in other dialogues, it gives rise to a different, and I believe more interesting, problem for Plato: to what degree is he confident, in the Symposium, that the philosopher can attain earned immortality, that is, changeless eternality? To answer this, we must first address the question of how, exactly, earned immortality is supposed to be achieved in the Symposium. At the conclusion of the ascent, Plato writes: Or don’t you realize that only there, seeing the beautiful with that by which he ought to see it, will it be possible for him to give birth, not to images of virtue, because he is not in touch with images, but to true virtue, because he is in touch with the truth. And giving birth to true virtue, and nourishing it, it will belong to him to become god-loved and, if indeed to anyone, to become immortal. (212a)

In this passage, Plato describes a very specific sequence of events: the philosopher grasps the Form of beauty and, as a result, is able to give birth to true virtue, become god-loved and, possibly, immortal. But the passage does not make clear the connection between these events: what is it that causes the philosopher to possibly become immortal? On the face of it, his immortality might appear to be related to his giving birth: thus, one popular interpretive proposal is that at the culmination of the ascent the philosopher attains immortality through his moral and intellectual progeny, by transmitting his virtue and wisdom to the souls of his students.30 But this suggestion will not do. For if the philosopher achieves only reproductive immortality at the culmination of the ascent, then his condition will be no improvement over that of the lower lovers; he, too, will fail to secure eternal possession of the good for himself – the stated goal of eros – but will achieve only some metaphorical cousin of happiness, in which he has some causal connection to others’ attainment of happiness. But in describing the ascent as the “final and highest mysteries, for which the [lower mysteries] are done” (210a), Plato sets up an expectation that the philosopher should secure a consummation of eros superior to that of 30

Notably Price 2004: 49–54. Nightingale 2017 makes a related proposal, that the philosopher’s immortality is due to his initiating a chain of discourse.

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the lower lovers.31 Furthermore, as several interpreters have noted, there is simply no mention in the text of the philosopher giving birth to virtue in someone else. On the contrary, there is every indication that he is no longer especially concerned with the education of young minds: whereas at 210c the lover is described as seeking to improve the soul of his beloved, by 210e the beloved seems to have completely disappeared. Indeed, at 211c the beloved is described as a step (ἐπαναβασμός) that the lover climbs over to reach the Form of beauty, and at 211d–e Plato emphasizes that, having grasped the Form of beauty, the initiate no longer sees human beauty as truly worthwhile, but rather as “mortal nonsense” (φλυαρία θνητή; cf. 211a).32 But if his purpose is not to imply that the philosopher, like the lower lovers, achieves reproductive immortality, then why should Plato portray the philosopher as giving birth to virtue? To answer this, we should recall that the goal of eros is not immortality for its own sake, but eternal possession of the good. What sort of good could Plato have in mind in the Symposium when he defines happiness as eternal possession of the good? It takes little prompting to recognize that, for Plato, the greatest good is virtue. Thus, the reason that Plato portrays the philosopher as giving birth to virtue in himself is that it is only through becoming good – that is, virtuous – that the philosopher can truly come to possess the good.33 One might worry that this misinterprets the goal of the philosopher’s eros; after all, the overwhelming focus of the ascent is not so much on the philosopher’s development of virtue as on his quest to understand beauty. But this problem disappears if we recognize that the form of virtue Plato has in mind at the culmination of the ascent is wisdom.34 To grasp the Form simply is to become wise; thus, there is no need to choose between the sight of the Form and the development of virtue as the telos of the ascent, nor is 31

32 33 34

In the following section, I will argue that Plato has significant reservations about whether even the philosophical initiate who comes to grasp the Form will attain changeless eternality. However, even if Plato is skeptical on that count, on the interpretation I go on to offer – according to which the philosopher’s grasp of the Form imparts a certain degree of changelessness to his soul – we can at least see why one might hope that this would give his soul changeless immortality. By contrast, if the philosopher is simply creating psychic offspring in others, then the final mysteries would not even suggest a path by which he might attain true immortality and bring eros to fruition. For further arguments against the claim that the philosophical initiate achieves immortality by proxy, see O’Brien (1984: 196–9); Sedley (2009: 160); and Sheffield (2006: 146). See Sheffield 2006: 120, 134. This assumption receives strong support from the striking parallels between Symposium 212a and Republic 490a–b. In the Republic passage, the philosopher’s grasp of the Forms results in his giving birth to intelligence and truth. Sedley defends the assumption that the virtue in question is purely intellectual through a careful comparison of the Symposium to the Timaeus (2017: 104–5); see also Sheffield 2006: 134.

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there any puzzle as to why the philosopher’s grasp of the Form should cause him to give birth to virtue. But this still leaves us with the question of how the philosopher can achieve not just possession of the good, but eternal possession of it. In other words, how does the philosopher become immortal? We might begin to answer this question by noting that Plato’s description of the Form of beauty in the ascent strikingly draws attention to its changeless eternality. He begins by observing that the Form always is, and does not come into being or cease to exist, wax, or wane (211a). He then adds that it is unqualifiedly beautiful: it does not appear ugly at any time, in relation to any comparandum, context, or perceiver; its beauty is, therefore, immune to change. What Plato is emphasizing is that the Form possesses exactly the form of immortality that he attributes to the gods and denies to mortals in the flux passage.35 This, in turn, suggests that the philosopher’s soul, to the extent that it is able to become immortal, owes its immortality to that of the Forms that he contemplates. This suggestion, that the philosopher’s immortality is somehow indebted to that of the Forms, receives confirmation from our discussion of the Phaedo. In the Affinity Argument, the philosopher’s soul is able to achieve changeless eternality precisely because the objects that it contemplates, Forms, are stable and unchanging (79d). We see exactly the same idea in other dialogues. In the Republic, Plato writes that “the philosopher, having communion with what is divine and ordered, becomes as ordered and divine as a human can be” (500c–d) – the condition of the philosopher’s soul is a direct product of that of the Forms that he grasps. Later, in the Glaucus passage, Plato suggests that the soul can only achieve its truest nature, and with it an effortless form of immortality, in light of its relation to the Forms; Plato’s description of the Forms as “divine, immortal and always existing,” and of the soul as akin (συγγενής) to them suggests that its immortality is parasitic upon theirs (611e). In the Timaeus, Plato writes: If a man has seriously devoted himself to love of learning and true wisdom, and if he has exercised these parts of himself most of all, then it is absolutely necessary for him to think immortal and divine thoughts, if indeed he is grasping truth, and as far as is permitted for human nature to partake of immortality, he will not fall short of this by even a measure. (90b–c; cf. 47b–c)

In this passage, the immortality that the philosopher achieves is a direct product of the immortal nature of his thoughts. Finally, in the Phaedrus, it 35

See also Lear 2006: 114–16.

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is the soul’s grasp of the immortal Forms that enables it to sustain its incorporeal existence, in virtue of which it qualifies as truly immortal, and not as a component of a composite, mortal being (246e, 249c). Suppose that the philosopher’s soul owes its immortality to that of the Forms that it contemplates. How, exactly, does their immortality ‘rub off’ onto him? Plato’s position is difficult to reconstruct, and my account can only be conjectural. Clearly Plato has in mind some sort of view according to which knowledge involves the assimilation of knower to known. But can we say more than that? One clue lies in the flux passage. As we saw, in that passage, Plato develops a parallel between body and soul: just as the body is composed of flesh, blood, and bones, so the soul is composed of its mental states.36 But if the soul is made up of its mental states, then we can see how the eternality of the Forms might rub off onto the philosopher. The Forms, according to Plato, are unchanging and stable; a full cognitive grasp of them, in turn, yields a condition, wisdom, that is unchanging and stable, both because its truth value is not contextually variable and because it is not liable to be contradicted or abandoned. If the philosopher’s wisdom is a constituent of his soul, then the stability and changelessness of its objects will be imparted directly to his soul.37 If we add to this the assumption that the soul is imperishable – defended by Plato in other dialogues – then the conclusion will be that, should the soul come to know the Forms, it will achieve changeless eternality.38

3.7 Skepticism about Earned Immortality in the Symposium But this brings us to what I take to be the fundamental puzzle concerning immortality in the Symposium. At the same time as Plato sketches out how 36

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Readers who instead take the soul to be the subject of its mental states might accept the following, modified version, of the argument that I go on to advance. If the soul is the subject of its mental states, then its being changeful or changeless consists in its mental states changing or remaining stable. Thus, for the soul to be changeless, its mental states must be changeless; in what follows, I propose that this is what knowledge of the Forms effects. Of course, to the extent that one’s soul is composed of eternally true knowledge, it may fail to differ from the souls of other philosophers (especially if we assume that Plato is a coherentist about knowledge, such that it would be impossible to have a full understanding of one form in isolation from understanding all the others). In that case, the form of immortality that Plato envisions here, in which one’s soul is composed of a set of eternally true beliefs, might strike some as overly impersonal. I doubt, however, that Plato would find it problematic. For further discussion see Lloyd Gerson’s chapter in this volume. Thus, even if we assume that all souls are eternal in the sense that they persist in time, only those souls that grasp the Forms have the potential to achieve changeless eternality. Souls that are composed of mere beliefs fail to achieve any sort of cognitive stability, since their beliefs are liable to be contradicted and abandoned; as a result, even if the soul persists in time, it does not remain the same.

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the philosopher’s grasp of the Form might cause his soul to assimilate to its immortal nature, he reveals significant doubts about whether this is in fact something that any human can hope to achieve. These doubts are highlighted at the conclusion of the ascent. Rather than confidently affirming that the philosopher shall become immortal, he writes that he shall become immortal, if indeed any human can (εἴπερ τῳ ἄλλῳ ἀνθρώπων, 212a).39 If the philosopher fails to achieve changeless eternality, then he will fail to achieve true happiness and fall short of the goal of eros. Thus, if Plato were confident about the philosopher’s prospects of becoming immortal, he would not use this qualified phrasing; his purpose appears to be to sketch out what the philosopher hopes to achieve through his grasp of the Forms, while at the same time raising significant doubts about his odds of achieving it. We see these same doubts developed in the flux passage, when Plato claims that human soul, by its very nature, is incapable of stability. Thus, for the philosopher to achieve changelessness, he would have to transcend his human nature and become, as it were, divine. Earlier in the Symposium, Plato argues that eros is conditional upon lack; those secure in their possession of the good would cease to experience eros (200a). In this regard, he argues that the gods are beings beyond eros (202c–d; cf. 204a); by contrast, at 205a he claims that all humans are subject to eros for possessing the good. Thus, were the philosopher to succeed in achieving eternal possession of the good, he would cease to be human and assume quasidivine status. But while Plato frequently portrays assimilation to god (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ) as the human telos, he invariably adds the qualification “to the extent possible” (κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν), suggesting that wholesale divinization is simply not possible for humans.40 What are Plato’s grounds for doubt? On the one hand, his interrelated portrayal of Eros and Socrates suggests significant skepticism regarding our prospects of coming to know the Forms. Plato writes that Eros is neither mortal nor immortal, but is constantly being born, dying, and being reborn; that is, he is subject to flux and incapable of unchanging eternality. He adds that Eros is between knowledge and ignorance: while the gods possess all that is good and are hence wise, Eros is incapable of wisdom (204a–b). As such, Eros is doomed to be a philosophos – one who loves wisdom but, as a precondition of his love, can never achieve it. These facets 39

40

O’Brien (1984: 197–8 n. 34) argues that in this context εἴπερ τῳ ἄλλῳ does not have a concessive sense so much as an emphatic sense: the philosopher, more than anyone, will become immortal. However, as O’Brien himself observes, Plato’s earlier concessive phrasings, such as 207d1, support taking εἴπερ τῳ ἄλλῳ as having a concessive sense in this context. See, e.g., Republic 613b, Theaetetus 176b, Timaeus 90c.

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of Eros are non-accidentally related: it is because Eros is incapable of wisdom that he is incapable of true immortality and is subject to flux. But to the extent that Eros is a philosophos, this suggests that the philosopher, too, is one who cannot hope to achieve full wisdom or immortality. As many commentators have noticed, Plato is at pains in his portrayal of Socrates – poor, unshod, stopping on people’s doorsteps, self-avowedly amorous and ignorant – to suggest that he is to be identified with the spirit, Eros.41 Perhaps we are meant to conclude that even Socrates is incapable of completing the ascent, of grasping the Form and achieving permanent possession of the good. In fact, I believe that Plato is deliberately ambiguous concerning Socrates’ epistemic state: passages such as 177d suggest, by contrast, that he has completed the erōtika and gained knowledge of the Form.42 But this, in turn, gives rise to a distinct, and perhaps more troubling, reason for doubt. Even if Socrates has completed the ascent, far from transcending eros, he appears to continue to thirst after knowledge. He is famously depicted as cycling in and out of contemplative trances (175b, 220c); the implication is that, even if Socrates can grasp the Form, his grasp is only partial and sporadic. Far from achieving stable possession of the good, his knowledge is constantly escaping him and requiring replenishment. Thus, even if Plato believes that knowledge of the Form is something that a human can hope to achieve, he suggests that such knowledge may not, in fact, possess the stability that would be required for it to render the philosopher’s soul unchangingly immortal.43 In fact, Plato raises precisely these doubts about the stability of knowledge in the flux passage. After describing how mortal nature is subject to flux in both body and soul, in an apparently unmotivated aside, he adds that the same account applies to knowledge. Just as our psychic states come into existence and cease to exist, so, too, some knowledge comes into existence in our souls while other knowledge is destroyed. But the instability of knowledge runs deeper than that. For even if we consider a given piece of knowledge that appears to be constant and unchanging, in fact, Plato reveals, it only maintains this appearance through a process of going over (μελετᾶν), in which old memories are replaced with new ones; the knowledge is preserved “in 41 42 43

E.g. Benardete 1993: 67; Bury 1932: xlvii, lx–lxii; Nehamas 1999: 312. For an argument that Socrates has not completed the ascent, see Sheffield 2006: 196 n. 27. As I go on to argue, in dialogues both preceding and following the Symposium, stability is a defining feature of knowledge. Thus, we might have reason to wonder whether the form of knowledge under discussion in Diotima’s speech – liable to being forgotten and requiring constant replenishment – even deserves to be called knowledge.

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such a manner that it seems to be the same” (208a). It emerges that knowledge has no more stability than our hair or toenails: it appears to be the same, but is rather an interconnected series of memories. This is, in fact, a deeply startling claim for Plato to make, given that in other dialogues its stability is the defining feature of knowledge. In the Meno, Plato famously distinguishes knowledge from true belief because knowledge is such as to remain fixed whereas true belief is liable to wander (97e–8a). This imagery is picked up in the Protagoras, when Plato contrasts the power of appearance, which causes the soul to wander (ἐπλάνα), with the measuring art, which gives it stillness (ἡσυχία, 356d–e). Likewise, in the Affinity Argument of the Phaedo, Plato calls wisdom the state of the soul when it is always the same and stable because it is in touch with Forms (79d). And in the Timaeus, Plato contrasts intelligence with true belief, since it is unmoved (ἀκίνητον) by persuasion (51e).44 Given that Plato repeatedly defines knowledge in terms of its stability, his claim in the Symposium that knowledge is subject to flux is striking. What are Plato’s reasons for doubting that the philosopher can achieve stable knowledge and with it, changeless eternality and happiness? In general terms, these doubts stem from a growing awareness of the extreme ontological chasm that separates the philosopher’s merely human soul from the Forms that it contemplates. In the Affinity Argument of the Phaedo we saw Plato divide reality into two kinds and place the philosopher’s body on the side of the perceptible and the mortal, his soul on the side of the imperceptible and eternal Forms. It is the kinship of the soul to the Forms that undergirds its immortality in the Phaedo. By contrast, in the Symposium, Plato is at pains to emphasize the chasm separating mortal soul and immortal Forms. The Form is presented as radically separated from the spatiotemporal realm; it does not appear in the guise of anything belonging to body or soul (211a), but exists apart from “mortal nonsense,” impassive and unaffected. As we have seen, this ontological divide gives us reason to question – perhaps along the lines that Plato develops in the Parmenides (133b–134e) – whether the human soul, situated as it is in space and time, is really the sort of thing that could grasp Forms. In what way 44

It is worth noting that different, though interrelated, forms of stability appear to be at work in these passages. Thus, in the Meno and Timaeus, knowledge is stable in the sense that it is not liable to be abandoned; the Phaedo draws focus to the way in which knowledge is a stable condition of the soul, i.e. one in which the soul is relatively immune to change. This parallels the two forms of instability that Plato attributes to knowledge in the flux passage: on the one hand, much knowledge simply departs from the soul (207e5–208a2); on the other hand, even knowledge that appears to be constant fails to constitute a single, unchanging psychic state, but rather amounts to a series of memories (208a1–7).

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could a soul like ours grasp an object that is so radically different in kind from itself? Furthermore, as the flux passage and the portrayal of Socrates suggest, even if we could grasp the Forms, it is not clear that we could sustain this grasp; our knowledge would always be flowing out of us, subject to replenishment and at risk of being forgotten altogether.45 But a final, and most significant, ground for doubt arises from consideration of the nature of knowledge itself. If knowledge consisted in a direct and unmediated grasp of the Form, then perhaps we might have reason to hope that this would cause knower to assimilate to known, the immortality of the Form to rub off onto the soul of the philosopher. But at 211a, Plato draws a significant distinction. He writes: “Nor will the beautiful appear to him in the guise of a face or hands or anything else that belongs to the body, or any argument (λόγος) or knowledge.” Part of the philosopher’s knowledge of the Form appears to be a recognition that the Form is fundamentally different from his cognitive representation of it; his knowledge of the Form is a mere representation of the Form and as such belongs to the world of becoming, separated from its object by the ontological chasm that he has now come to recognize. Paradoxically, the very separation of the Form that ensures its unchanging eternality, and thereby offers the philosopher the hope of earned immortality, precludes the philosopher’s soul from fully assimilating to it (211b). But in that case, even if the philosopher could come to know the Form, he would have no reason to think that its unchanging nature could rub off onto what is, in the end, merely a human mind.

3.8

Later Developments

What we have uncovered so far is that there is a significant shift in Plato’s position on earned immortality between the Phaedo and the Symposium.46 In the Phaedo, Plato is confident that the soul is akin to the Forms, and that contemplation of Forms can cause the soul to assimilate to their unchanging eternality. By contrast, in the Symposium, Plato treats the soul as subject to flux and places it on the side of becoming; his awareness of the 45 46

See also Nightingale 2017: 144–5. In this chapter, I assume a developmentalist reading of Plato and attribute the shift between Plato’s treatment of earned immortality in the Phaedo and Symposium to a growing skepticism about our prospects of fully assimilating to the Forms. Those who subscribe to a unitarian reading might instead explain the divergence between the two dialogues in terms of their differing dramatic contexts. The Phaedo seeks to explain Socrates’ confidence in the face of his imminent death and to provide a protreptic to philosophy; these features perhaps explain its confidence in the power of philosophy to confer an enhanced form of immortality onto the soul of the philosopher.

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ontological chasm between the soul and the Forms leads him to doubt that the philosopher’s grasp of the Form could cause his soul fully to assimilate to its changeless eternality. This realization leaves Plato with three philosophical alternatives. He can embrace the skepticism about earned immortality that he develops in the Symposium. He can attempt to bring the Forms back to earth, as it were, reducing the separation between the Forms and human souls so that we might hope fully to assimilate to them. And finally, he could downgrade the requirements for earned immortality. After the Symposium, it is the last of these alternatives that Plato adopts.47 Thus, in dialogues such as the Phaedrus and Timaeus, Plato remains emphatic about the separation of Forms. In the Phaedrus, the Forms are described as existing in a place beyond the universe; our souls can only see them at a distance, from the periphery of the universe, but can never exit the universe and enter the realm of Forms (247b–c).48 Just as the Phaedrus places the Forms outside of space, so the Timaeus sets them outside of time. The Forms possess ungenerated being; as such, they exist forever outside of time and are immune to change, “always immovably in the same state” (38a). By contrast, as generated beings, the universe, including cosmic gods and mortal souls that reside within it, is incapable of eternal existence (37d). But at the same time as Plato specifies that our souls are incapable of assimilating to the changeless eternality of the Forms, he offers us a downgraded version. The demiurge creates time as a “moving image of eternity” (37d) – note the contrast with the immovable existence of Forms – and confers immortality within time upon the rational parts of our souls. Though this form of immortality inevitably involves motion, there is still a sense in which our souls can come to approximate – though not fully assimilate to – the changeless condition of the Forms. We see this in how Plato characterizes divine soul. Though he presents the gods as in motion, he emphasizes that the form of motion that they partake of is maximally stable; furthermore, he identifies this form of stable motion with intelligence and wisdom. Thus, at 34a, Plato writes that the demiurge gave the universe the form of motion most associated with intelligence and wisdom: uniform rotation in the same place. Similarly, at 40a–b, the cosmic gods are given rotational and revolutionary motion; “with respect to the other 47

48

For an excellent discussion of the progression of Plato’s thought about immortality, see Bett 1999. Bett notes that the Phaedo treats the soul as immortal in virtue of being changeless, whereas later dialogues connect its immortality to its constant motion; however, Bett does not connect this progression to Plato’s treatment of earned immortality. But see 248a for a possible softening of this degree of separation.

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five motions, [he made them] motionless and still, in order that each of them might be as good as possible” – the gods’ relative changelessness is identified with their goodness and perfection. The gods engage in rotational motion because this state of their souls is wisdom: they move uniformly in the same place so that “they always think the same things concerning the same things” (40a–b). Plato further develops this idea in the Laws, when he argues that the universe is engaged in rotational motion because rotation is the form of motion most appropriate for reason, since it moves “regularly and uniformly in the same place and around the same things and in relation to the same things and according to one principle and order” (898a–b). Though Plato does not fully spell out his reasoning, he appears to think that wisdom and intelligence have a stability that perhaps derives from the unchanging nature of their objects. Significantly, though, wisdom no longer involves the soul’s fully assimilating to the unchanging eternality of its objects, but rather its engaging in a maximally stable form of motion. Thus, in the imagery of the Phaedrus, it is significant that when divine and mortal souls commune with the Forms, they do so in a condition of both stability and motion: they station themselves on the periphery of the universe, and then, carried around by its rotational motion, gaze upon the Forms (247b–c).49 But if divine soul is characterized, not by changelessness, but by stable motion, then to the extent that the philosopher seeks to assimilate to the divine, it is this condition that he seeks to approximate. And this is exactly how Plato characterizes earned immortality in the Timaeus. Though all souls partake of immortality to the extent that they possess reason, an immortal element, most souls are subject to chaotic motion, due to the impact of perceptible objects and the interference of the sub-rational parts of the soul (43a–e). But when the philosopher observes the perfect motions of the world-soul, his soul assimilates to them and assumes a stable form of motion (47a–c). At the conclusion of the dialogue, in a passage I quoted earlier, Plato writes of how the man who devotes himself to philosophy, through thinking divine thoughts and grasping the truth, partakes of immortality to the extent possible (90a–d). His partaking of immortality is specifically characterized in terms of his studying the revolutions of the universe and as a result, adopting its motions. To the extent that human soul observes and thinks about the motions of the universe, it engages in those same motions; as a result, it comes to resemble divine soul. But to the 49

The Statesman is also surely relevant to this discussion: in the myth, the universe adopts a renewed immortality when the god takes over its motion and sets it straight (273e).

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extent that divine soul engages in stable motion, it also approximates the changeless eternality of the Forms.50 What Plato is offering here is no longer the hope that the philosopher’s soul can fully assimilate to the changelessness of the Forms; rather, he is outlining how, as generated beings, our intellects can come to closely resemble divine soul and thereby approximate, to a lesser extent, the Forms.

Bibliography Ademollo, F. 2018. “On Plato’s conception of change,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 55: 35–83. Annas, J. 1999. Platonic Ethics, Old and New. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Benardete, S. 1993. On Plato’s Symposium. Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung. Bett, R. 1999. “Immortality and the nature of the soul in the Phaedrus,” in Fine (ed.): 425–49. Bluck, R. S. 1955. Plato’s Phaedo. London: Routledge. Brandwood, L. 1992. “Stylometry and chronology,” in Kraut (ed.): 90–120. Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bury, R. G. 1932. The Symposium of Plato. Cambridge: Heffer & Sons. Crombie, I. M. 1962. An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. 1. London: Routledge. Destrée, P. and Giannopoulou, Z. (eds.) 2017. Plato’s Symposium: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dover, K. J. 1965. “The date of Plato’s Symposium,” Phronesis 10(1): 2–20. 1987. Plato: Symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fine, G. (ed.) 1999. Plato II: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frede, D. and Reis, B. (eds.) 2009. Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Gerber, D. E. (ed.) 1984. Greek Poetry and Philosophy. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Guthrie, W. K. C. 1975. A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hackforth, R. 1950. “Immortality in Plato’s Symposium,” The Classical Review 64: 43–5. Harte, V. and Woolf, R. (eds.) 2018. Rereading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jorgenson, C. 2018. The Embodied Soul in Plato’s Later Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 50

For an extremely helpful discussion of this passage, see Sedley (1999: 319–22 and 2009: 158–60). Whereas Sedley focuses on the individual’s identification with his immortal element, reason, as the means by which he gains immortality, my interpretation draws more attention to the way in which the philosopher’s soul assimilates to the rational, stable motions of the world-soul.

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Kraut, R. 1992a. “Introduction to the study of Plato,” in Kraut (ed.): 1–50. (ed.) 1992b. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lear, G. R. 2006. “Permanent beauty and becoming happy in Plato’s Symposium,” in Lesher et al. (eds.): 96–123. Lesher, J. H., Nails, D., and Sheffield, F. C. C. (eds.) 2006. Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception. Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies. Lorenz, H. 2009. “Ancient theories of the soul,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/en tries/ancient-soul/ Luce, J. V. 1952. “Immortality in Plato’s Symposium: a reply,” The Classical Review 2: 137–41. Morgan, M. L. 1990. Platonic Piety. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nehamas, A. 1999. Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nehamas, A. and Woodruff, P. 1989. Plato: Symposium. Indianapolis: Hackett. Nightingale, A. 2017. “The mortal soul and immortal happiness,” in Destrée and Giannopoulou (eds.): 142–59. Obdrzalek, S. 2010. “Moral transformation and the love of beauty in Plato’s Symposium,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 48: 415–44. O’Brien, M. J. 1984. “Becoming immortal in Plato’s Symposium,” in Gerber (ed.): 185–205. Perry, J. (ed.) 2008. Personal Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Price, A. A. 2004. Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Quinton, A. 2008. “The soul,” in Perry (ed.): 53–72. Robinson, T. M. 1995 [1970]. Plato’s Psychology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rowe, C. J. 1996. Plato: Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Plato: Symposium. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Sedley, D. N. 1999. “The ideal of godlikeness,” in Fine (ed.): 309–20. 2009. “Three kinds of Platonic immortality,” in Frede and Reis (eds.): 147–61. 2017. “Divinization,” in Destrée and Giannopoulou (eds.): 88–107. Sedley, D. N. and Long, A. 2011. Plato: Meno and Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sheffield, F. C. C. 2006. Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012. “The Symposium and Platonic ethics: Plato, Vlastos, and a misguided debate,” Phronesis 57(2): 117–41. Woolf, R. 2004. “The practice of a philosopher,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 26: 97–129. 2018. “Love and knowledge,” in Harte and Woolf (eds.): 80–100.

chapter 4

Pre-Existence, Life after Death, and Atemporal Beings in Plato’s Phaedo Catherine Rowett

In this chapter I argue that the conversation in Plato’s Phaedo operates on two levels, and appeals to two different kinds of considerations in arguing that the soul is immortal. On the one hand, Socrates and his friends are interested in whether there will be a survival of the soul after the present life, and whether it has existed before. This appears to focus on temporal survival. But, at the same time, as I shall argue, Plato the author is pressing the argument towards a recognition of another kind of immortality, which belongs to the soul as something outside time, to which before and after do not apply. By examining exactly what is meant by its immunity to death (in a number of senses of ‘death’) and its association with life (in one sense of ‘life’), we shall discover in what sense it can properly be said to have no times or changes, no beginnings and no endings, no life or lives of any duration, and no capacity for alteration, having a kind of atemporal being that is akin to the being that is proper to the Forms that are its object of study. Understandably, given the dramatic setting of the Phaedo, Socrates and his disciples tend to think of immortality in terms of whether something continues after death. Socrates is shortly scheduled to die, and from that perspective the chronology of ‘life after death’ seems crucial. He needs to know whether there will be a tomorrow for him, while his companions seek reassurance that though they see him no more, their beloved Socrates will still be somewhere, doing what he loves best. Furthermore, the Phaedo can also be read as a dialogue about methods of proof, such that it asks, among other things, whether it is possible to prove things about the future without needing to wait and see. To discover whether there is life after death, an empirical enquiry involving trial and error is not the best method. So the futurity of the I am grateful to Alex Long, two anonymous readers for the Press, Suzanne Obdrzalek, and Sami YliKarjanmaa for helpful comments and thoughts on earlier versions, as well as the audience at the colloquium on immortality in St Andrews in July 2015, at which the chapter had its first outing.

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future life is important to this issue too, because we are considering what kind of proof could provide certainty about this matter. Those temporal thoughts about survival beyond death prompt Socrates to begin his discussion with theories of reincarnation, in which souls persist through birth and death, undergoing serial embodiments. Socrates explicitly borrows the idea of oscillating between life-states and death-states from what he calls ‘an ancient theory that we remember’ (παλαιὸς μὲν οὖν ἔστι τις λόγος οὗ μεμνήμεθα, 70c5) – a theory according to which we go thither from hence, and arrive hither from thence. This then leads into the so-called Cyclical Argument – actually about linear to-and-fro oscillation, not circular motion – which tries to confirm the mythic vision of periodic incarnations by fitting it into a universal pattern of change between opposite states, a kind of natural law of alteration. But while Socrates and his friends are clearly interested, from their perspective, in what will happen in the future, Plato the author is more interested, I suggest, in the idea of non-temporal being. This alternative undercurrent becomes more prominent as the dialogue progresses: it presents a sequence of arguments that gradually wean us from that initial chronological interest, and drag us towards the conclusion that, in its proper nature, the soul is not really in time, nor affected at all by change and death, since it actually belongs somewhere outside this world of becoming, in the same condition of timeless being as the Forms. If, in truth, the soul has its being outside time altogether, then there is no threat to it from temporal beginnings and endings, such as birth and death. But in that case, it also makes no sense to talk of its future or its past. So it might turn out that its ability to recall information that was not learnt in this life is not really because it learned it earlier, as the temporal strand of the Recollection Argument suggests,1 since the life outside the body, in which that knowledge is learned, does not occur earlier, or later, or indeed at any part of time.2 These thoughts are hinted at in various bits of the Phaedo’s argument sequence, as Socrates moves towards making more abstract and analytical claims about the soul, in his attempt to secure proofs that are not just probable or empirical but based on strict logical necessities. These necessities are, in the end, going to be timeless truths, including timeless truths about the very nature of soul as explored in the Final Argument. In this chapter, I want to suggest that they are not just timeless 1 2

For the distinction between a chronological strand and an atemporal strand in the Recollection Argument see my earlier paper, Osborne 1995. The term ‘this life’ here refers to a period of embodied life, i.e. a bios. (On the distinction between two senses of ‘life’, see Section 4.3.) Although I have used the term ‘life’ of the soul’s experience outside the body here, it is debatable whether that term is strictly applicable.

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truths about a changeable soul, but that Plato also thinks that the soul itself is going to be proved to be outside time, and immune from change and becoming (or destruction) for that reason.3 To work systematically through every episode in the dialogue would be a task too ambitious for a single chapter, so I shall focus on particular parts of the dialogue, beginning with the part about philosophy as a form of practising for death. In this connection we shall need to examine the different terms that Plato uses across the dialogue for death, dying, and being dead, to see which ones can touch the soul, and which ones can affect us only in so far as we are a combination of body and soul. By means of a careful analysis of four or five different senses of ‘death’, and two different senses of ‘life’, we can clarify just what kind of life the soul can experience, and what kind of passages between life and death it can undergo.

4.1

Practising for Death

At Phaedo 60c Cebes needs to know how to respond to Euenos’ enquiry about why Socrates had been writing poetry in prison. Socrates explains that he was doing it as an insurance policy, lest the divine mission, which he had taken as an instruction to spend his life on philosophy, was actually an instruction to write poems. He concludes by telling Cebes to tell Euenos to ‘run after me as quickly as possible’ (61b7). Simmias doubts that Euenos will accept that advice. The whole exchange is clearly meant to be funny, though we know too little about Euenos and his poetry to get all of the humour.4 However, it leads on to more serious reflections, starting at 62a, about whether one can coherently hold both (i) that death is a desirable thing and (ii) that suicide is morally forbidden. Socrates describes this issue in terms of whether it is better to be dead (tethnanai) or to be 3

4

Plato’s interest in timeless eternity is usually investigated in relation to the background in Parmenides, and in connection with the Timaeus and the Parmenides. See e.g. the very brief discussion in Sorabji 1983: 108–12, where he tries to show that Plato thinks of eternity as endless duration, not timelessness; see also the earlier treatments of this issue in relation to the Timaeus, including Whittaker 1968, Owen 1966, and Tarán 1979. Most scholars look to Plato to discover something parallel to Parmenides. There is very little attention to any other dialogues besides the late ones, but see Solmsen 1971. There is surprisingly little attention to the issue in the Phaedo, even in relation to the Affinity Argument. The man in question is Euenos of Paros (otherwise spelt Evenus), who was a poet and rhetorician, also mentioned in Apology 20a–b and Phaedrus 267a. There are extant fragments of elegiac verse (collected in West 1989–92, vol. 2: 2.63–7). See Nails 2002: 153.

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alive (zên).5 We shall return to consider the meaning of those two terms later.6 Text 1 ἴσως μέντοι θαυμαστόν σοι φανεῖται εἰ τοῦτο μόνον τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἁπλοῦν ἐστιν, καὶ οὐδέποτε τυγχάνει τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, ὥσπερ καὶ τἆλλα, ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ οἷς βέλτιον τεθνάναι ἢ ζῆν, οἷς δὲ βέλτιον τεθνάναι, θαυμαστὸν ἴσως σοι φαίνεται εἰ τούτοις τοῖς ἀνθρώποις μὴ ὅσιον αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοὺς εὖ ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ ἄλλον δεῖ περιμένειν εὐεργέτην. It may perhaps seem mysterious to you if this is the only thing that’s absolute, unlike all the rest of human morality, and that in this case only it never happens, as it does for everything else, that at certain times and for certain people it’s better to be dead than alive; and that for those for whom it’s better to be dead, it’s mysterious if it’s forbidden for them to do the good deed for themselves, but they’re obliged to wait for some other benefactor. (62a2–7)7

To address this issue, Socrates outlines several theories (not all of them his own) about the human condition, its obligations and duties, according to which one could hold both views consistently, given certain hypotheses. He then defends the idea that being dead is a desirable condition, one to which philosophers should aspire, and that they should also seek to approximate to that condition even before they die. Dying is worthwhile, he thinks, because one can thereby move into the condition of ‘being dead’; but even before we die, we can try to achieve something similar. Hence, if, ex hypothesi, choosing to die is forbidden, yet being dead is desirable, then trying to be as near to dead as possible, without committing the forbidden act, is the solution.8 This is done by practising philosophy, 5 6

7 8

62a5. See further in Sections 4.2 and 4.3. In Greek, these terms are not (as in English) a combination of an adjective and auxiliary verb ‘be’, but are tensed infinitives of the verbs for dying and living, perfect and present respectively. All translations are my own. By ‘choosing death’ here I mean precisely a case where one chooses one’s own day of death, not waiting for the decision of another, such as a death penalty, or a natural cause or act of God. Killing oneself at one’s own behest is forbidden. Some scholars (see, for example, Long 2019, ch. 7, section 2) think that there is room for some cases of suicide to be permissible, in what Socrates says at 62c (Text 4 below). I disagree, because what he says there indicates that an owner of animals would be annoyed if an animal put itself to death when the master had not given instructions that he wanted it dead (for the tenses and meanings of ‘dead’ here, see below). The argument uses an analogy of a farmer and his livestock to illustrate the relation of the gods to humans and their right to die, but if we press the analogy we obviously will not find that the counter-example would involve the master instructing the

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for philosophy is a practice of being kind-of-dead, since it enables the soul to engage in its own activities, as far as possible, as if it were already rid of the body. This argument is a prime exhibit in discussions about what is sometimes called ‘asceticism’ in Plato – that is, in quests for evidence of an ‘ascetic’ attitude that treats bodily needs as if they were negative in themselves, or impure and a cause of impurity.9 I shall not focus on those issues here: I think that such notions of impurity figure among the traditional motifs and myths that Socrates is referencing, but that Plato is using them, in the mouth of Socrates, to make a different, more Platonic, point, relating to a different, more Platonic, preoccupation with issues around temporality, atemporal knowledge, and atemporal objects. I take these issues to be Plato’s primary focus, both here at the beginning of the dialogue and in the related passage (81a–84b) after the Affinity Argument, where Socrates describes how souls can be so tied to the body that they are unable to escape the earthly region at death. In that passage, too, Socrates is using motifs from chthonic traditions, but (I submit) Plato is using them in support of epistemological conclusions about the soul’s affinity with what is timeless and immaterial. Thus my interest in this chapter is less on the idea that bodily pleasures are bad, because bodily, and more on the idea that the body’s needs are distracting, and tie the soul to temporality and change. A soul left undisturbed, we understand, could freely entertain thoughts about timeless objects, in a timeless way. But while it is embodied, hunger, thirst, and so on keep returning: every time they return they must be satisfied; whether we satisfy them or not, they constantly and repeatedly distract us with pain, desire, and demands for provisions; every time this happens, we must return from our intellectual endeavours, and attend to the temporal order of things that change and decay. The repetitive return of these needs and pleasures repeatedly distracts us from atemporal thoughts and

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animal to kill itself. On the contrary, a death mandated by the owner would be one where he instructs his servants to have the animal killed. This is what I understand Socrates to mean by μὴ σημήναντός σου ὅτι βούλει αὐτὸ τεθνάναι (‘when you had given no sign that you wanted it dead’) at 62c2–3. Socrates does not mean that the gods would give a sign that one could take one’s own life, but rather that they would give a sign that now was the moment that they wish to have you put to death (that death being administered by some other agent, either an executioner or a natural cause). In Socrates’ case the decisive moment is the award of the death penalty, and he understands that this was the time and the means by which the gods have approved that he is to be killed. But it was not his own choice and it was not up to him to choose, even though death would be desirable and beneficial for him. See most recently, for example, Ebrey 2017 and further references in his first footnote.

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ideas; yet it is those timeless objects that the soul needs to contemplate, if it is to be itself by itself in all its intellectual glory. Text 2 μυρίας μὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν ἀσχολίας παρέχει τὸ σῶμα διὰ τὴν ἀναγκαίαν τροφήν· ἔτι δέ, ἄν τινες νόσοι προσπέσωσιν, ἐμποδίζουσιν ἡμῶν τὴν τοῦ ὄντος θήραν. ἐρώτων δὲ καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν καὶ φόβων καὶ εἰδώλων παντοδαπῶν καὶ φλυαρίας ἐμπίμπλησιν ἡμᾶς πολλῆς, ὥστε τὸ λεγόμενον ὡς ἀληθῶς τῷ ὄντι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ οὐδὲ φρονῆσαι ἡμῖν ἐγγίγνεται οὐδέποτε οὐδέν. For the body presents us with a myriad kinds of bother on account of its need for nourishment. And further, if illnesses befall, they impede our pursuit of being. And it fills us with a load of passions and desires and fears and imaginings of all kinds, and a quantity of nonsense, so that in very truth and really in all honesty because of it we never acquire any intelligent understanding, none at all, no never, not ever, as they say. (66b8–c6)

So the pessimism about the senses and bodily pleasures, here and at 81a– 84b, is the converse side of Plato’s optimism about our mind’s natural capacity for timeless contemplation of reality, and its ability, once it is left to its own devices, to escape from the ‘one thing after another’ of bodily experience and discover the Forms. This can be done first through practising philosophy, and later through actually dying, so as to discard the body completely, which it can do at death, provided that it is not too entrammelled with bodily concerns – as explained in the 81a–84b passage.

4.2 Death and Being Dead The argument at 62a–68c presupposes that the condition of ‘being dead’ is desirable for the philosopher. It follows that ‘dying’, being the transition to that condition, is a desirable event or process, whereby we escape from the current undesirable condition (which we can call ‘life’, but see further below on what this means).10 To be precise, we do not exactly want to die – to undergo the process of dying – but we want to be dead. To achieve the desirable condition, of being already dead, we must either die – the sooner, the better – or we must try to be as if dead already, by practising philosophy well.

10

Below, Section 4.3. The distinction between dying and being dead, and the use of different aspects of the verb, is noted by Ebrey 2017: n. 38.

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Text 3 Κινδυνεύουσι γὰρ ὅσοι τυγχάνουσιν ὀρθῶς ἁπτόμενοι φιλοσοφίας λεληθέναι τοὺς ἄλλους ὅτι οὐδὲν ἄλλο αὐτοὶ ἐπιτηδεύουσιν ἢ ἀποθνῄσκειν τε καὶ τεθνάναι. εἰ οὖν τοῦτο ἀληθές, ἄτοπον δήπου ἂν εἴη προθυμεῖσθαι μὲν ἐν παντὶ τῷ βίῳ μηδὲν ἄλλο ἢ τοῦτο, ἥκοντος δὲ δὴ αὐτοῦ ἀγανακτεῖν ὃ πάλαι προυθυμοῦντό τε καὶ ἐπετήδευον. It turns out that those who engage with philosophy in the right way are (unbeknownst to the rest) putting their efforts into nothing else besides dying and being dead. And if that’s true, it would be strange if that’s the one thing they’ve been striving for all their life (bios) and then when it comes along they resent the very thing they’d striven for and put their effort towards achieving. (64a3–9)

‘Practising for death’ is undesirably vague as an English rendering of what Socrates has in mind, because, as we shall see, ‘death’ is an ambiguous term. At this stage of our discussion, it will help (at the cost of some inevitable technicality) to make a careful distinction between the following four kinds of death, which I shall mark with subscript numbers:11 1 Death1 as an event that is the occasion on which a transition from being alive to being dead occurs. 2 Death2 as the state of being dead, which is the state into which we transition at death1. 3 Death3 as the process of dying, which is the process of transition that happens at the event or occasion that is death1 and leads to death2. 4 Death4 as the condition of having previously died, that is, of having undergone the process of dying which is death3 on the occasion that is death1.12 11

12

A fifth kind will be added below: see Section 4.4. Plenty of earlier thinkers have seen a twofold distinction, between ‘dying’ and ‘being dead’ (typically understanding these as items 2 and 3 above): recently for instance, Ebrey 2017: n. 38; Johansen 2017: 20; and in antiquity Damascius in his commentary on the Phaedo (§59.4–5). He makes a twofold distinction between τὸν ἐν τέλει θάνατον and τὸν ἐν ὁδῷ [sc. θάνατον], arguably referring respectively to the state in which one ends up (ὁ ἐν τέλει θάνατος) vs. the process of dying (ὁ ἐν ὁδῷ θάνατος), which would be items 2 and 3 respectively from my list above. Pretty well everyone elides the distinction between death2 and death4, probably because Plato’s term for ‘being dead’ (τεθνάναι) is the perfect tense of the term for dying. (On the importance of understanding τεθνάναι as ‘be dead’ see further below.) Similarly, most people – including probably all those mentioned here, I think – elide the distinction between the occasion of dying and the process of dying. It seems that Plato normally uses the verb ‘dying’ for the process, rather than the noun ‘death’. Damascius also notes some other ambiguities in the meaning of death in §§59–61 of his commentary (pp. 52–3 Westerink), but they do not appear to be the ones noted above. Death4 (having died) does not figure much in the discussion to follow. I emphasize it here – and especially I emphasize that it cannot be equated with ‘being dead’ – because being dead (τεθνάναι), when it is understood as a state of absence of life, or of separation of the soul, need not imply that any

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Using this set of distinctions we should take a look at Phaedo 64a3–9 (Text 3 above), where Socrates observes that the philosophers are, in effect, putting all their efforts into, as he says, dying (apothnêskein) and being dead (tethnanai). As we just noted, this is not because dying (death3) is good in itself, but because dying effects the transition to being dead (death2, tethnanai), which is what is good. The philosopher aims at the desirable good, namely the state of being dead. Both terms (dying and being dead) are used metaphorically here, since the philosopher aims to ‘die’ by detaching himself from the body, and to ‘be dead’ by being as free of the body as he can be.13 Text 3 is preceded by two earlier references to being dead, where the term is meant literally. The first is at 62a5 (Text 1 above), where Socrates says that it might be better for some people to be dead (tethnanai) than to be alive, and then wonders why those people, for whom it is better to be dead (tethnanai), are not allowed to kill themselves. Socrates does not mean (as some have suggested)14 that those people would be better off if they died, or having died: it is not that dying is preferable to living for such people, but that it would be better for them to be already dead (death2). There is nothing good about dying or having died except that these are standardly the way to achieve being dead, which is, ex hypothesi, the better situation for these unfortunate people. A crucial distinction is erased if we translate the perfect infinitive tethnanai (which is clearly used to mean be dead) as ‘to die’ or ‘to have died’ (death3 or death4).

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transition to that state (dying) has previously occurred, since (a) one can – as the cyclical argument shows, for instance – have been in the ‘being dead’ condition before coming to life, and hence before having died, or (b) one can try to achieve that ‘being dead’ via philosophy without undergoing the process of dying, in the literal or conventional sense at least. Furthermore, one may at some point have previously died, and yet now have come to be alive again, in which case one has died and yet is not currently dead. So to have previously died is neither necessary nor sufficient for being dead. On the meaning of τεθνάναι, see further below. When I say that the term ‘dead’ is used metaphorically, I do not mean to say that the separation achieved is merely metaphorical or incomplete, but simply that it is a separation achieved without literally being dead (even if the separation achieved is just as thorough as when we are dead). So the issue is not the one addressed by Pakaluk 2003: 99–100, who asks about the degree of separation, namely whether the philosopher achieves only something analogous to the separation achieved in death, or the real thing to some degree. My point here is that, regardless of whether the separation is real or complete in the way Pakaluk is considering, the fact that it occurs during life and without actually being dead shows that, however similar it is to the separation achieved at death, what is happening is only a kind of dying or a way of being as good as dead. During life we put our efforts into some kind of quasi-dying and quasi-being dead: that is, into detaching ourselves from the body in the way that would also happen at death, but not into literally killing ourselves. Plato does not suggest that there is any limit to how closely we can approximate the desired result, if we practise hard enough. (This is roughly Pakaluk’s conclusion at p. 102, though I do not think that it entails substance dualism, as he suggests, nor any other position on what the soul is.) Burnet 1911 ad loc.; followed by Rowe 1993.

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The second use of the term tethnanai for being dead in a literal sense occurs at 62c3. Text 4 Οὐκοῦν, ἦ δ’ ὅς, καὶ σὺ ἂν τῶν σαυτοῦ κτημάτων εἴ τι αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ ἀποκτεινύοι, μὴ σημήναντός σου ὅτι βούλει αὐτὸ τεθνάναι, χαλεπαίνοις ἂν αὐτῷ καί, εἴ τινα ἔχοις τιμωρίαν, τιμωροῖο ἄν; ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if one of your livestock killed itself, when you hadn’t indicated that you wanted it dead, wouldn’t you be annoyed with it? And if you had some way to punish it, you would?’ (62c1–4)

‘If something you’d acquired killed itself, when you hadn’t indicated that you wanted it dead, wouldn’t you be annoyed with it?’ Socrates asks. What you find annoying in such a situation is that the living creature, which you had acquired because you wanted it as a living creature, is now a dead one. It is not that you did not want it to die, or be killed (death3), but that you did not want it dead, and hence you also did not want it to die. Sometimes you might want a dead chicken (say, for Sunday lunch) but not on this occasion, since currently you want a living chicken (to lay eggs, say). Hence you are cross that you have a dead one, when you had bought it with a view to having it as livestock. So tethnanai is the word that designates the second in our list of kinds of death, the state of being dead. This is the condition that Socrates recommends when he suggests that we as philosophers should practise being dead. By contrast, dying (apothnêskein), which we also practise, is chosen as a means to the desirable end, of being dead. Dying is the third on our list of kinds of death. Thus we can distinguish the desirable state (being dead) from the means of achieving it by literal or metaphorical dying. The noun ‘death’ (thanatos) can be used, in both English and Greek, for both things, dying and being dead. So when Socrates defines ‘death’ (thanatos) as ‘the release of the soul from the body’ (64c2, Text 5), is he defining dying, or being dead, or something else? Here is the text: Text 5 ἡγούμεθά τι τὸν θάνατον εἶναι; Πάνυ γε, ἔφη ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Σιμμίας. Ἆρα μὴ ἄλλο τι ἢ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἀπαλλαγήν; καὶ εἶναι τοῦτο τὸ τεθνάναι, χωρὶς μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπαλλαγὲν αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ τὸ

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catherine rowett σῶμα γεγονέναι, χωρὶς δὲ τὴν ψυχὴν [ἀπὸ] τοῦ σώματος ἀπαλλαγεῖσαν αὐτὴν καθ’ αὑτὴν εἶναι; ἆρα μὴ ἄλλο τι ᾖ ὁ θάνατος ἢ τοῦτο; Οὔκ, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο, ἔφη. ‘Do we think that death (thanatos) is something?’ ‘Definitely,’ Simmias said, taking on the role of interlocutor. ‘Is it anything else but the release of the soul from the body? And the condition of being dead is this: the body having become itself by itself, rid of the soul, and the soul being itself by itself rid of the body? Isn’t death nothing else but that?’ ‘No, just that,’ he said. (64c2–9)

Socrates mentions two things here. First there is death (thanatos). Here (though not always),15 this clearly refers to the change or transition from being alive to being dead – that is, dying. But the next thing that Socrates mentions is the state achieved as a result of that transition, namely ‘being dead’: he says first that death (thanatos) is the release of the soul from the body, and then that being dead (tethnanai) is something else, namely (i) a condition of the body in which it has become separate (chôris) and all by itself, and (ii) a condition of the soul in which that too is separate and all by itself. In each case the body and soul respectively are in a condition of being rid of the other component.16 Thus the transition (thanatos, death1), which is a ‘release’, differs from the condition of being dead (tethnanai, death2), which is a state of being separate, released, or disconnected. The point is that getting rid of something is different from being rid of it. We should also notice the systematic parallel between the state of the body and the state of the soul, when they are dead, in Text 5. The two conditions are exact correlates, with neuter terms for the body and feminine terms for the soul, apart from one thing, namely that the verb that Plato uses for the body being rid of the soul is gignesthai (‘to become’, in this case in the perfect, γεγονέναι), whereas for the soul being rid of the body he uses the verb einai (‘to be’).17 This is our first exhibit that suggests that Plato might be implicitly deploying the distinction between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ that figures in other passages and other dialogues, where he sometimes suggests that only changeless things can be said to be (einai), while changeable things can only be said to become (gignesthai) and never have being. Here, in the claim that the body has become separated from the 15 16 17

See below, Section 4.4. That is, ἀπαλλαγέν or ἀπαλλαγεῖσαν, for body and soul respectively. This variation in usage is also spotted by the ancient commentators, Damascius §59 (p. 52 Westerink) and Olympiodorus 3.13.1–5 (p. 74 Westerink).

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soul and alone by itself, while the soul (in its dead condition) just is separate from the body, we might pick up the implication that the soul itself does not really undergo change, and is not subject to genesis of any kind, even in the process of separation from the body that is ‘dying’. The soul does not become rid of the body; we do not speak of it as having got rid of the body. Instead, it is in a timeless state of being rid of the body, as though the only things that undergo change in the process that is called dying are the body, and presumably the composite entity that is body-plus-soul. The soul, taken by itself, remains essentially unchanged, and separate, being in some way timelessly part of the realm of being, not of becoming.18 With this idea of being dead even in life, and of the soul’s timeless being, achieved even before death (providing it can clear itself of bodily attachments), Plato is, I think, shifting our attention away from thinking of the soul’s freedom as past and future, and towards thinking of it as a timeless condition of freedom from temporal concerns.19 We need not wait for a future death, since what matters is not dying, but being dead; what we want is freedom to contemplate things outside time, without the intrusion of bodily concerns. Achieving that state already during life is good; achieving it timelessly, rather than temporarily, is even better; but since it depends on how we stand to the temporal world, we need not wait for some future occasion for actual dying in order to realize it.

4.3

Life and Being Alive

Should we think of the soul as essentially atemporal and unchanging? If so, how can it undergo an event or process called dying? It seems to me that Plato thinks of temporality as an experience that we have only as a body, and only during a period in which our body is animated. The beginnings and ends belong to lives (which have termini) or to bodies (which undergo change), but the soul itself has no such beginnings or ends, in itself: it undergoes no actual change, and none of its own experiences are temporal or involving change. Soul is distracted when it is in the body because it is impacted by experiences deriving from the body that relate to temporal things, and these impinge upon the capacity of the organism to exercise the 18 19

In other texts (including Text 6 below), ‘become’ (γίγνεσθαι) is used of the soul. I discuss this in Section 4.6 below. For the idea that the dialogue increasingly moves towards the atemporal notion of immortality, see Osborne 1995.

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capacities of the soul itself;20 but when death occurs nothing happens to change the soul, except from the perspective of the organism, which experiences an end of life when the soul’s link with the body is severed.21 One question that now arises is whether these two perspectives, that of the organism, or the body, existing in time, and that of the pure intellect or soul whose perspective is outside time, could coherently be brought to bear on the same period of life, such that the bodily life could be something that the soul experiences, during the time when it is linked to the body, but which does not form part of the soul’s history, in its past or future, since it – being atemporal and having no becoming – has no history, and no past, present, or future. How could we make sense of this connection between something without time and something within time? Perhaps we could conceive the soul’s atemporality on the analogy of a non-linear spatial extension, as in a map, so that all the times can be viewed simultaneously rather than one after the other in a sequence; within this totality of being, the soul’s embodied lives are scattered as self-contained portions of linear time, such that from the soul’s perspective these lives are unrelated temporally: they do not occur along a single time line along which the soul is travelling from before to after, for it has no temporal trajectory. Hence one cannot calculate, from its perspective, a distance in time between its lives, though it would experience the before-and-after within each single biography in the period when it forms one combined organism that is body plus soul. Thus the soul’s own proper timelessness would be this lack of any overarching linear sequence, and the fact that those experiences that properly belong to the soul are not temporally marked and do not occur in succession from yesterday to tomorrow. From the perspective of someone on earth (‘down here’, as it says at 65c–d, Text 6 below), the same soul might have been embodied earlier and again later, because there is a time sequence down here, which is experienced by bodily organisms, in virtue of having a body as well as a soul. From that perspective, every event and every incarnation has to fall somewhere earlier or later on that time sequence. And while the soul is in a body, at any stage on that time line, the body–soul composite that is 20

21

This might seem incoherent, since if the soul can be distracted by bodily experiences, then it must, at that time, be experiencing temporal changes. Furthermore, some manifestly intellectual activities, such as engaging in a process of debate or deliberation, seem to take place in a temporal sequence and involve responses to events that occur in time, such as questions from an interlocutor. In these events, the soul seems to experience and engage with temporal change. I agree that this seems unavoidable, but perhaps we can say that these changes and experiences, although they impinge on the soul over time, do not substantially alter it or destroy its essential unchangeability. See further below, Section 4.6, on the issue of essential vs. achieved immortality.

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occupying that period of time will experience time as a sequence, in virtue of the fact that the body experiences it in that way. Hence, if I have understood Plato’s point, the soul aims to rid itself of those temporal experiences that come from being in a body, to rediscover its proper timeless condition, and its ability to perceive objects that are similarly timeless and real – that is, the beings mentioned in Text 6 (65c5– d3) and Text 7 (65e–66a). The term ‘being’ in these texts is, I take it, a technical term. Text 6 Λογίζεται δέ γέ που τότε κάλλιστα, ὅταν αὐτὴν τούτων μηδὲν παραλυπῇ, μήτε ἀκοὴ μήτε ὄψις μήτε ἀλγηδὼν μηδέ τις ἡδονή, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μάλιστα αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν γίγνηται ἐῶσα χαίρειν τὸ σῶμα, καὶ καθ’ ὅσον δύναται μὴ κοινωνοῦσα αὐτῷ μηδ’ ἁπτομένη ὀρέγηται τοῦ ὄντος. Ἔστι ταῦτα. Οὐκοῦν καὶ ἐνταῦθα ἡ τοῦ φιλοσόφου ψυχὴ μάλιστα ἀτιμάζει τὸ σῶμα καὶ φεύγει ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, ζητεῖ δὲ αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν γίγνεσθαι; Φαίνεται. But it reasons best when none of these things troubles it, neither hearing nor sight nor pain nor any pleasure, but when it becomes as far as possible itself by itself, and yearns for being, letting the body go and not associating with it or touching it, as far as possible.22 Yes, that’s so. So even down here the philosopher’s soul especially despises the body and flees from it and seeks to become itself by itself. Apparently, yes. (65c5–d3)

Text 7 Ἆρ’ οὖν ἐκεῖνος ἂν τοῦτο ποιήσειεν καθαρώτατα ὅστις ὅτι μάλιστα αὐτῇ τῇ διανοίᾳ ἴοι ἐφ’ ἕκαστον, μήτε τιν’ ὄψιν παρατιθέμενος ἐν τῷ διανοεῖσθαι μήτε [τινὰ] ἄλλην αἴσθησιν ἐφέλκων μηδεμίαν μετὰ τοῦ λογισμοῦ, ἀλλ’ αὐτῇ καθ’ αὑτὴν εἰλικρινεῖ τῇ διανοίᾳ χρώμενος αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ εἰλικρινὲς ἕκαστον ἐπιχειροῖ θηρεύειν τῶν ὄντων, ἀπαλλαγεὶς ὅτι μάλιστα ὀφθαλμῶν τε καὶ ὤτων καὶ ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν σύμπαντος τοῦ σώματος, ὡς ταράττοντος καὶ οὐκ ἐῶντος τὴν ψυχὴν κτήσασθαι ἀλήθειάν τε καὶ φρόνησιν ὅταν κοινωνῇ; ἆρ’ οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν, ὦ Σιμμία, εἴπερ τις [καὶ] ἄλλος ὁ τευξόμενος τοῦὄντος. 22

On the term ‘becomes’ (γίγνηται and γίγνεσθαι) here, see below, Section 4.6.

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catherine rowett So the one who would do this most purely would be the person who as far as possible went to each [Form] with just his mind itself, not bringing anything in the way of sight into his thinking, nor dragging in any other sense at all alongside his reasoning, but who tried to hunt down each of the beings, pure and itself by itself, using purely the mind itself by itself, rid as far as possible of eyes and ears and (so to speak) the whole body, on the grounds that it disturbs the soul and doesn’t allow it to capture truth and wisdom when it’s joining in. Isn’t that the one, Simmias, if there’s anyone at all who’s going to strike being? (65e–66a)

To do justice to these texts, we need one further distinction, besides the distinctions between dying and being dead, separating and being separate, finding release and being already released, and becoming and being. Now we need the difference (frequently lost in translation) between bios (life, span of life) and zôê (life, animation). When Socrates speaks of philosophers striving to achieve death throughout their whole life, at 64a7–8, in Text 3 above, the word for ‘life’ is bios. A life is a span of time during which the soul animates a body, whereby the organism has a biography, a narrative of one thing after another. During this bios the soul is tied to a body and (in the case of a philosopher) struggles for release. Release comes at the end of such a life. So a bios is a temporal extension with a beginning and an end. It can belong only to a soul–body pair, and its temporality is evidently given by the body, which is subject to change and becoming. We can therefore say that body–soul organisms have lives in virtue of their embodied state; the body is necessary for life of this kind. No soul could have a bios without a body. The event called birth is the beginning of such a bios, though not an event in it, and the event of death terminates such a bios, though it is not an event in it. But whereas a body is a necessary condition – though not a sufficient condition – for anything to have a bios, it is the soul that is necessary for zôê.23 Without soul, a body has no zôê, and when the soul departs, zôê is gone with it. For zôê one does not require a body, and zôê is not a temporal experience or narrative sequence of events, but a state of being conscious, alive, aware, and so on. Unlike bios, life as consciousness – zôê – is compatible with the unchanging consciousness of the disembodied soul and its contemplation of unchanging eternal Forms. This emerges in the Final Argument in 23

Soul is also sufficient, since anything with soul ipso facto has zôê. But the point here is that soul is a sine qua non for life.

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the Phaedo. There, at 102a10–107b10, Socrates invokes the unbreakable relationship between soul or psuchê and zôê to prove that soul always brings life with it (105c9–d4) and cannot admit death (105e4) – both in Text 8 below. He does not mean that the soul has a long life (bios), or an everlasting life (bios), in the sense of having more and more bios. On the contrary, its aim is to quickly end any bios that it once had, and the end of bios comes to it as a blessed relief. So it always and urgently seeks an end to that kind of life: it seeks an end to each and every bios in which it finds itself bound up. Meanwhile, the body likewise cannot have a life (bios) unless some soul is bringing life (zôê) to it, but arguably the body, unlike the soul, has an interest in prolonging that relation, and having as long a bios as possible. By contrast, for the soul, such a life is of no interest or value, and is indeed an obstruction to its natural pursuit of knowledge and contemplation, free of any body. So it seeks to shorten each and every bios into which it has entered. There is, then, no conflict between (1) the claim that the soul urgently seeks death, and tries to escape from life (bios) with all haste (in the opening pages of the conversation) and (2) the claim in the Final Argument that soul has a necessary link to life (zôê), and hence cannot abide death, cannot be present in something when death is also present, and must depart at that point. There is no conflict, providing (a) we are clear about what kind of life is essential to soul, and (b) we add one more qualification about the range of meanings that can attach to the word ‘death’. Regarding the former, we have just noted that the Final Argument does not claim that a soul’s bios cannot end, but that it cannot lose its zôê. When soul leaves the body, that is the end of a bios, but it does not imply that soul loses its zôê – only that the body–soul organism loses its zôê, since zôê departs along with the soul that brought it. For the organism there is a death, where death is not just a getting rid of the soul, but also an end of a lifespan (bios) and a loss of life (zôê). But for the soul, there is no loss of life (zôê): it has a permanent relation to life, zôê, that cannot be lost. So it certainly does not experience death as a loss of life (zôê), as the body does. When we think of death as a disjunction of soul and body, which leaves each of them rid of the other, that disjunction will incidentally remove zôê from the organism, at the end of its bios. But that aspect of the death was not explicitly noticed in the passage that we examined above, about practising for death. The interest in zôê emerges only in the Final Argument.

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4.4

A Fifth Meaning of Death

In the Final Argument Socrates speaks of ‘death’ (thanatos) again. Although it might seem, at first sight, that thanatos could again refer to the event that marks the transition, or parting of the ways, of soul and body, at the end of an embodied life – so that there would be no fundamental change in the meaning of the term ‘death’ between the earlier passage about practising for death and the later argument where death is a loss of life – in fact, on closer inspection, this seems not to be correct. The meaning of ‘death’ (thanatos) is actually quite different in the Final Argument, as we shall see if we look more closely at the relevant passage. Text 8 Ἀποκρίνου δή, ἦ δ’ ὅς, ᾧ ἂν τί ἐγγένηται σώματι ζῶν ἔσται; Ὧι ἂν ψυχή, ἔφη. Οὐκοῦν ἀεὶ τοῦτο οὕτως ἔχει; Πῶς γὰρ οὐχί; ἦ δ’ ὅς. Ψυχὴ ἄρα ὅτι ἂν αὐτὴ κατάσχῃ, ἀεὶ ἥκει ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο φέρουσα ζωήν; Ἥκει μέντοι, ἔφη. Πότερον δ’ ἔστι τι ζωῇ ἐναντίον ἢ οὐδέν; Ἔστιν, ἔφη. Τί; Θάνατος. Οὐκοῦν ψυχὴ τὸ ἐναντίον ᾧ αὐτὴ ἐπιφέρει ἀεὶ οὐ μή ποτε δέξηται, ὡς ἐκ τῶν πρόσθεν ὡμολόγηται; Καὶ μάλα σφόδρα, ἔφη ὁ Κέβης. Τί οὖν; τὸ μὴ δεχόμενον τὴν τοῦ ἀρτίου ἰδέαν τί νυνδὴ ὠνομάζομεν; Ἀνάρτιον, ἔφη. Τὸ δὲ δίκαιον μὴ δεχόμενον καὶ ὃ ἂν μουσικὸν μὴ δέχηται; Ἄμουσον, ἔφη, τὸ δὲ ἄδικον. Εἶεν· ὃ δ’ ἂν θάνατον μὴ δέχηται τί καλοῦμεν; Ἀθάνατον, ἔφη. Οὐκοῦν ψυχὴ οὐ δέχεται θάνατον; Οὔ. Ἀθάνατον ἄρα ψυχή. Ἀθάνατον. Answer me now, said he, what body will be alive (zôn), when what thing gets into it? The one which the soul gets into, he said. Is it always so? How else could it be? So whatever it occupies, then, soul always comes to it bringing life (zôê)?

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Yes, it does, he said. Does life have an opposite or not? It does, he said. What? Death (thanatos). So soul would never admit the opposite of that which it always brings along, as was agreed from the previous examples? Most emphatically not, said Cebes. So now, what did we just call the thing that won’t admit the quality ‘even’? ‘Uneven,’ he said. And what won’t admit the qualities just or musical? ‘Unmusical’, and ‘unjust’. Okay, but what would we call what won’t admit death? ‘Deathless,’ he said. Well, the soul doesn’t admit death? No. So the soul is deathless (athanatos). Deathless, yes. (105c9–e7)

Notice that when Cebes responds that the opposite of ‘life’ (zôê) is ‘death’ (thanatos), we must expect that the opposites mentioned are items of the same logical kind. So whatever kind of thing zôê is, thanatos should be the contrary, and of the same kind. And since ‘life’ (zôê) refers to a condition of awareness and consciousness, ‘death’, as its correlate, must refer to the condition of lacking such consciousness: that is, a state of being, not an event, or transition to such a state. Socrates’ question, in Text 8, is not ‘What occurrence is opposite to birth?’ but, rather, ‘What state is opposite to life (i.e. consciousness)?’ If this meant (which it does not), ‘What is the state opposite to the state of having consciousness?’, the answer would be ‘The state of being dead, i.e. lacking life and consciousness,’ and that would mean that the term thanatos was denoting what was earlier denoted by the verb tethnanai, which meant ‘being dead’ (that is, our death2, explained in Section 4.2 above). As we saw, death2, which is a state, needs to be systematically contrasted with death1, which is an event or occasion of transition, and with dying (death3), which is the process of undergoing the transition, on the part of the subject affected. But clearly ‘life’ here does not refer to a state of having consciousness (being alive), but rather to the life or consciousness (zôê), which is what one has when one has life, or when one is alive. So life is not referring, here, to a state of the soul, and in this particular text, Socrates is not saying merely that the soul is alive. He is saying that it ‘brings life’ (105d3–4) – that is, it

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brings zôê, which is consciousness or awareness. The state of being alive, by contrast, is something different: it is the state of that which has life, usually because it is something in which the soul is present, and to which the soul brings life.24 ‘Being alive’ is designated by the verb ‘living’ (zên): this verb is used at 105c9 at the start of Text 8, and we also encountered it in Text 1, when we considered whether it was better to be alive (zên) or to be dead (tethnanai). Those two, ‘being alive’ and ‘being dead’, are proper correlates. Life, on the other hand, is the awareness itself, the consciousness, whose arrival marks the birth of a new creature and whose departure marks its end. So clearly we should take ‘life’, zôê, in this passage, to be consciousness, and its opposite, ‘death’, thanatos, is evidently the absence of consciousness, the lack of life; so this is not the same thing as death2, the state of being dead (which would always be the state of some entity that is dead, something that lacks life), but is rather the privation of life and consciousness, the very lack itself, which is what accounts for something being dead. Let us call this death5; it is what thanatos means in Text 8. So the idea, in the Final Argument, is that since soul is by definition the life-bringer, it cannot tolerate the privation of life, which is incompatible with the presence of life. The presence would be eliminated if its absence were admitted in some entity. So the contrast that Socrates and Cebes are drawing here is between life (zôê) as consciousness and death (thanatos, death5) as the privation of consciousness.

4.5

The Deathlessness of the Soul

Does this make the Final Argument work? The key move in Text 8 is to establish that the soul is deathless, because it is essentially and incontrovertibly a life-bringer, and hence it cannot actually tolerate the arrival of death5 (i.e. the elimination or privation of life qua consciousness) and still survive as what it was. This means that it cannot itself let go of life and become a soul with no life (a soul with the privation of life, i.e. death). A body can do that and remain in existence, as a ‘dead body’, for a while, but souls cannot. This yields a perfectly reasonable conclusion: it is not fallacious thus far. It is not saying that there are no events that terminate our lives (our bioi), or 24

A complication here is that the soul itself also has life, even when it is not bringing it to something else. It brings it to other things precisely because it invariably and inseparably has it itself. So although Socrates is not here speaking of the condition of being alive, but of the life which the soul brings, he will in due course conclude that the soul is always alive, precisely because it always has life. See further in Section 4.5.

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that are the death of our composite organisms (including the loss of zôê for those organisms), since those events are perfectly common but are not ruled out by this argument. It simply claims that those events, which end our bodily lives, will never be due to a loss of zôê on the part of the soul itself. This is, as it happens, a good answer to Cebes, who, in his illustration of the weaver and his cloaks (87b2–e5), was concerned lest sometimes death was due to the soul coming to the end of its strength and losing its life. In showing that no such event could ever occur, since soul cannot undergo a death of that kind, Socrates has effectively addressed Cebes’ worry, in letter if not in spirit. But can he thereby establish that the soul is everlasting or unending, and that it never ceases to be? That is not so clear. Perhaps, however, we can make some further progress if we recall, from our earlier reflections, the idea that the soul is, in itself, untouched by the changes that constitute the beginnings and ends of lives. These are not events in the life of the soul nor termini of its life (since it does not have a bios in that sense): they are only ever events in the biography of an organism that could be subject to change, and that has a life (bios) of the kind that has ends. The processes of birth and death of an organism are processes that affect the soul only when the soul is viewed as something occupying a body for a time (at the end of which time it is no longer in that association). The change designated by ‘dying’ does not cause any change in the soul, which remains untouched and is still (if in existence) a life-bringer. So death as the loss of zôê (due to departure of soul) does not affect the soul. Nor, as we have just seen, can the soul have the kind of death that is the absence or privation of zôê. So the soul will be deathless in two senses: it is deathless5 in that it cannot, while continuing to be, also admit death5 (the privation of zôê); it is deathless3 in that the transitions that constitute birth and death3, which are the processes of dying and being born, do not affect the soul in itself, but only the composites of which it forms a part. So although it can ‘be dead’, in a sense of ‘dead’ that we considered in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 of this chapter (namely a state of being free of the body, the desirable state we called death2) and because it can pass to that state it can also be said to be capable of the condition of ‘having died’, that is, having passed through a dying event, which is death4, those kinds of death are not to be equated with having lost its zôê, which is what it cannot do. Do those kinds of immunity to death amount to immortality? So far, they seem to leave open the possibility that the soul might yet come to an end due simply to ceasing to exist, providing that ceasing to exist is not the same thing as losing its life or ending a period of embodiment. Socrates

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tries to infer from the deathlessness of the soul that it is indestructible.25 It might seem that he wants to move from ‘it cannot lack zôê’ to ‘it cannot lack being’, but none of the senses of ‘death’ identified so far has suggested that death means ceasing to exist. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the absence of any of these kinds of death entails the continued existence of something that is immune from that kind of death, since things can simply cease to exist for reasons that are none of these things. There are two ways that we might explore in order to reach a plausible inference from the soul’s deathlessness in the two senses just described, to its indestructibility as implied in the last moves of the Final Argument.26 One would be to appeal to a common-sense notion of deathlessness such as this: suppose we think of something like a god, which supposedly cannot die, so it has immortality in the sense of being immune to the process of dying or ceasing to be alive, which we called death3. Then it seems that it must surely also be immune to any process of ceasing to exist or failing to survive. For surely a failure to survive is a change that is equivalent to dying: what does not survive is no longer alive, so in ceasing to exist or failing to survive one must have come to an end of life, and transitioned from being alive to being not alive anymore. That would amount to dying. It appears, intuitively, that living things cannot fail to survive except by dying, or at least that, in failing to survive or ceasing to exist they would simultaneously be dying, for to cease to exist is one way to die. It seems, then, that something that literally cannot undergo the process of dying (death3) cannot fail to survive, since that would effectively be dying3. This suggestion is roughly the suggestion made by Dorothea Frede and followed by Nicholas Denyer.27 Another, and perhaps better, way to formulate a good argument out of these materials emerges if we look at the soul’s essential immunity to ends and beginnings, which I have been developing as my main focus in this chapter. That is, we might focus on the idea that the soul is not subject to any substantial changes in itself. It does not lose or gain its capacity to bring life, and it is unchanged in itself by the processes that are undergone by 25 26 27

Contrast the distinction in Alex Long’s chapter between ‘immortal’ (that is, not being subject to death) and ‘imperishable’ in Stoicism. There is a very brief attempt to make this inference work in the last paragraph of Denyer 2007, but he suggests only one solution which follows that of Frede (see next note). See Frede 1978: 32 and Denyer 2007: 95; this point depends upon supposing that the soul is a living thing (has life, as well as bringing it), so that its failure to continue in existence would be a case of ceasing to be alive, i.e. dying.

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organisms at birth and death, which apparently affect it only as Cambridge changes– that is, they are merely changes in its relation to other things that are properly subject to change. So if the soul is not subject to real changes, or any kind of becoming, development, or decay, in the way that bodies and composite items are subject to generation and ceasing-to-be (genesis and phthora), then it seems that it has no bios in itself, and is not something that can have beginnings or ends of any kind, including any end of its existence. And this would tie in with the idea that the soul is really not to be thought of as a temporal item with a defined period of existence, but rather as an atemporal being that exists independently of time and change. Its existence, then, is of a different kind from the existence of things that last for a long time. It is, rather, somewhat like the Forms, which are not subject to any of the events that belong to the world as we know it down here. That was the point of the Affinity Argument, and it perhaps bears fruit here in the Final Argument too. For perhaps an atemporal soul that has no bios cannot really be subject to events in time, and that would include events that constitute an end (or beginning) of a period of life or of existence. Not only, then, can it not come to an end by ending a lifespan in death, as living things do, because it has no lifespan to end, but also it cannot come to an end by ceasing to exist, for it has no duration and no terminus or beginning. It just cannot undergo things like beginnings and endings.

4.6 Being and Becoming In Section 4.2 I noted that Plato appears to use the verbs einai (to be) and gignesthai (to become) differentially when he speaks (in Text 5) of the situation for the soul and the body after death, when the soul is rid of the body, and the body gets rid of the soul. I suggested that this usage, which reserved einai for the soul and gignesthai for the body, anticipated the distinction between two worlds, of being and becoming, that are more explicitly described in some other dialogues with this terminology. It would be overambitious to claim that Plato recognizes or follows this rule throughout the Phaedo. There are plenty of uses of gignesthai for the soul: we can see two examples in Text 6 above, for instance; there Socrates speaks of the soul ‘becoming’ itself by itself – this is what it hopes to achieve, once it is rid of the body. In such examples, he is describing the end of an organism’s life, or those occasions when a soul achieves a moment of ‘death in life’, and treating them as a temporal event or change that affects the soul. These are events during the soul’s temporal

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association with the body, which gives to the soul a vicarious period of life and a vicarious capacity for undergoing changes. So besides that one passage in Text 5, what else, if anything, in the Phaedo might suggest that Plato thinks of the soul as immune from temporal changes and endings? In my 1995 paper, I argued that one strand of the Recollection Argument works on the basis of a non-chronological argument about atemporal knowledge, and that this establishes not so much the soul’s prior existence as its access to a kind of knowledge that can never be obtained from experience of particulars at any time or in any history like the one in which we are currently living.28 It also makes sense to see the later parts of the Phaedo as shifting attention more towards the idea of timeless knowledge and the timeless connections between concepts such as ‘three’ and ‘odd’, and between ‘soul’ and ‘life’. In addition, the Affinity Argument is built on the idea that soul is one of the things that belongs in the category of permanent, unchanging, non-composite entities like Forms. So there is plenty in the dialogue to suggest that Plato means to hint not only at the changelessness of the soul, but also its timelessness, that is evidenced by its affinity with, and its ability to cognize, those timeless entities that fall into the category of the eternal and unchanging world of Forms. However, it is also worth asking whether there is any further evidence, besides Text 5, for thinking that the terms ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ are used in a technical way, for eternal and temporal beings respectively. Two things are worthy of comment in this respect: one is the regular use of gignesthai for the change that constitutes the beginning of a life (birth);29 the other is the regular use of einai and onta for objects in the realm of being and the Forms.30 Both these appear to be technical terms, and as a result a soul can be said to gignesthai, using this vocabulary, just in so far as it has a ‘birth’ into a period of life. On the other hand, the objects that it cognizes are technically such as to count as ‘beings’ only if and when they are the timeless Forms. These are what it cognizes when it is itself, by itself, whereas when it is in a body, and observing events and particulars in the life period, through the senses, then those objects that it encounters and reflects on are not technically ‘beings’ (onta).

28 29 30

Osborne 1995: 214 n. 12, 28–33. For normal references to birth of an individual (body and soul) 74b10, c4,7,8, d5, 76c7, c14, d2, e4,6, 77a1, a10, 88a3,5,7,9; of the soul (being born back from the dead) 70c7, d1, e5, 73a2. Onta: 65c2, d14, 66a3,8, c2,4, 82e4, 83b2; einai: 65d4, 76e3,4,6, 77a3, 78d1,5, 79d3; ousia 65d13, 76d9, 77a2, 78d1.

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On the other hand, gignesthai can also be used of the time or change whereby the soul comes to grasp these realities, the Forms, even while it is in its bodily incarnation, whenever it can manage to survey them independently of the body. So, for instance, at 65c, Socrates suggests that it is above all when it is engaged in reasoning that something of those realities becomes clear to it, and that this happens above all when it comes to be itself by itself and lets go of the body (65c7–8). So although it is apparent from the Affinity Argument and several other moves in the dialogue that the soul has something of the same quality of eternal being as the Forms, it occupies a liminal and ambiguous position because of its ability to spend periods of time attached to a body, whereby it is capable of experiencing temporal events and change, vicariously, through its associated body. Thus it acquires, at each occasion of ‘birth’, a capacity to perceive things that are engaged in change and also to undergo, in a sense, the changes that are the beginning and ends of such a period of life (so that it has, intermittently, a biography that includes birth and death). But in itself it is akin to a reality that has no change – that is immune to beginnings or endings of any kind. Hence its beginnings and endings are not really what they appear: they are only the bookends of each temporary association with a body. We might ask, in the light of these reflections, what kind of immortality is being asserted of the soul in the Phaedo. If I am right, Plato’s interest is primarily in proving that the natural condition of the soul is atemporal being, not permanent or lasting duration. However, the dramatic conversation between Socrates and his friends starts with an interest in survival, imagining various kinds of immortality that involve continued existence from one period of life to another, via reincarnation and so on. So the conversation certainly includes plenty of discussion of sequences of lives. But behind Socrates the character is Plato the author. For him, I suggest, the key aim of this work is to argue that the soul is timeless like the Forms, and that having a lifespan of the kind that these traditional reincarnation stories describe is something merely accidental to the soul. Such lives belong properly only to the organisms that comprise body and soul together, while the soul’s essential and immutable relation with life (zôê) is an atemporal connection, which ties the soul to ‘life’ in the sense of conscious awareness, not in the temporal sense of a bios that has ends and beginnings. As a result the answer to the question whether the soul’s immortality is achieved or essential is that it is both.31 The soul, in itself, when it is able to 31

Here I differ a little from Simon Trépanier’s chapter in this volume, since he takes the arguments to be focused on proving essential immortality and the myth to be focused on the idea of achieved

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regain its own essential nature, is essentially atemporal and eternal. It has timeless being, like the Forms; it has an essential bond with consciousness, which it brings to whatever it enters. But regaining its own nature is an achievement, since embodiment ties it down during life, making it hard to realize its own natural activity as a being outside time and with access to the kind of cognition that likens it to the eternal objects that are its natural focus. From this perspective, the soul struggles to achieve freedom from time and change; but from the perspective of the disembodied soul, what is achieved at death is simply a return to what it always was in essence: a thing untouched by time and change, and oblivious to the trivialities of bodily experience.

Bibliography Burnet, J. 1911. Plato’s Phaedo. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Denyer, N. 2007. ‘The Phaedo’s Final Argument’, in Scott (ed.): 87–96. Ebrey, D. 2017. ‘The asceticism of the Phaedo: pleasure, purification and the soul’s proper activity’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99: 1–30. Frede, D. 1978. ‘The final proof of the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo 102a– 107a’, Phronesis 23: 27–41. Johansen, T. K. 2017. ‘The separation of soul from body in Plato’s Phaedo’, Philosophical Inquiry 41: 17–28. Long, A. 2019. Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nails, D. 2002. The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics. Indianapolis: Hackett. Osborne, C. 1995. ‘Perceiving particulars and recollecting the Forms in the Phaedo’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95: 211–33. Owen, G. E. L. 1966. ‘Plato and Parmenides on the timeless present’, The Monist 50(3): 317–40. Pakaluk, M. 2003. ‘Degrees of separation in the Phaedo’, Phronesis 48: 89–115. Rowe, C. 1993. Plato Phaedo. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott, D. (ed.) 2007. Maieusis: Essays in Ancient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Solmsen, F. 1971. ‘Parmenides and the description of perfect beauty in Plato’s Symposium’, American Journal of Philology 92: 62–70. Sorabji, R. 1983. Time, Creation and the Continuum. London: Duckworth.

immortality. In fact, I think the arguments are designed to show how it is both achieved and essential, and are particularly geared to showing that achieving that return to our proper condition is something good and is an aspiration worthy of our most sustained attention.

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Tarán, L. 1979. ‘Perpetual duration and atemporal eternity in Parmenides and Plato’, The Monist 62: 43–53. West, M. L. 1989–92. Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, 2 vols., 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Whittaker, J. 1968. ‘The “eternity” of the Platonic Forms’, Phronesis 13: 131–44.

chapter 5

The Immortal and the Imperishable in Aristotle, Early Stoicism, and Epicureanism A. G. Long

5.1

Immortality and Resembling the Gods

Greek philosophical ethics often encouraged human beings to emulate or imitate the gods, but this is not necessarily to encourage imitation of the gods in respect of immortality.1 Perhaps only the gods’ level of happiness, or their moral and intellectual virtues, should or can be imitated, and godlikeness in these respects is achieved in conditions, or by creatures, that remain mortal. Consider for example the following contrast between two passages of Plato. In Plato’s Symposium Diotima describes the philosopher earning the gods’ love and becoming ‘immortal’ (212a); we might take her to mean, although she does not make the point in exactly these terms, that the god-loved philosopher is also godlike in respect of immortality.2 By contrast, in Theaetetus 176a–177b, which is usually treated as the most important expression in Plato of the ethical goal of godlikeness, there is no mention of immortality. Imitating god is, according to Socrates, ‘to become just and pious with wisdom’ (176b), and it is the most just person who resembles god most closely (176c).3 There is no suggestion here that immortality, as well as virtue, characterizes people’s lives or souls when they become godlike.

1

2 3

As I noted in the Introduction, an older version of this chapter was published as part of Long 2019. For discussion of imitating gods see esp. Sedley 1999. All translations in this chapter are my own, unless indicated otherwise. See the chapter of Suzanne Obdrzalek in this volume. For recent discussion see also Tanaka 2016 and Sedley 2017, as well as chapter 2 of Long 2019. The second passage says explicitly that god is perfectly just (176c). It avoids a puzzle suggested by the preceding passage: if people imitate gods by becoming pious as well as just, are gods too pious, and if so in relation to what? For later uses of this part of the Theaetetus, see the concluding paragraphs of the chapters by Sami Yli-Karjanmaa and Lloyd Gerson in this volume.

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In this chapter I consider first immortality in Aristotle’s ethics and then immortality and imperishability in early Stoic and Epicurean ethics and theology. I begin with Aristotle’s brief discussion of ‘immortalization’ in his writing on ethics. I then turn to Epicureans and early Stoics. As they do not envisage an endless future for the human soul, even for a soul that achieves moral and intellectual perfection, we might expect their accounts of godlikeness, in human beings or their souls, to be closer to the Theaetetus than to the Symposium – that is, we might expect them to describe perfected people as sharing divine virtues or happiness but not the gods’ immortality. But both Stoics and Epicureans also speak of some human beings, or their souls, attaining immortality or imperishability. As we explore the evidence it will sometimes be crucial to keep in mind the distinction between ‘immortal’ (ἀθάνατος) and ‘imperishable’ (ἄφθαρτος), even though other philosophers, such as Philo of Alexandria, use the words as if they were equivalent.4 In order to aid readers without knowledge of ancient Greek I use those translations throughout for the two Greek words.

5.2

Immortality in Aristotle’s Ethics: False Pieties and a Divine Life

In the last book of his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle compares a life of intellectual understanding, or ‘contemplation’, with a life characterized by the moral virtues, such as justice and courage. Neither kind of life expresses every aspect of a human being. There are non-intellectual aspects of human nature, such as emotions and the body, which are not cultivated or fulfilled when people devote themselves to contemplation; similarly, intellect is not fulfilled by the life of moral virtue. But intellect is ‘divine’, and so, he argues, making it characterize our lives is both to prioritize only one part of our nature and to make our lives as good as they can be. This is where Aristotle’s ethical writing touches on immortality: If intellect is something divine in comparison with a human being, a life lived in accordance with intellect is divine in comparison with a human life. And one must not obey the advice ‘you are human, so think human thoughts’ or ‘mortal, think mortal thoughts’.5 No, one must act as an immortal, as far as possible, and leave nothing undone with a view to living in accordance with the best thing one contains. Even if it is small in bulk, in 4

5

See again the chapter of Yli-Karjanmaa. Among the other passages cited there, consider this example, an account of achieving immortality in De posteritate Caini = On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 43–4: God transfers those with whom He is pleased from ‘perishable races’ to ‘immortal races’ (ἐκ φθαρτῶν εἰς ἀθάνατα γένη). For the distinction see also the text of Strato in n.46. See Pindar Isthmians 5.16; Sophocles Tereus fr.290.

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‘Act as an immortal’ translates a single word in Greek (ἀθανατίζειν). Translators do not agree on what Aristotle is recommending. In the translation of Roger Crisp it sounds as if we should do all in our power to become immortal: ‘we ought rather to take on immortality as much as possible’. By contrast, Irwin’s translation suggests that we should favour what is immortal, or advance its interests, without striving to make ourselves immortal: ‘as far as we can, we ought to be pro-immortal’.6 Finally, the translation by Rowe suggests resemblance to immortals: ‘[one should], so far as possible, assimilate to the immortals’.7 Aristotle is recommending a particular kind of life, where intellectual understanding is given special priority, and for creatures like us such a life will have a merely finite duration. As in the passage on self-immortalization near the end of Plato’s Timaeus (90b–c), with which this Aristotelian passage has been compared,8 the length of a life makes no contribution, in itself, to ‘immortalization’: someone abnormally long-lived who never engaged in intellectual contemplation would not come any closer towards what Aristotle is recommending. Everlastingness and, more generally, duration are not at all to the point. So it is hardly surprising that some translators have been reluctant to take Aristotle as exhorting immortalization, or an approximation to it. On the other hand, at first glance the Greek word seems to suggest precisely that, and so other translators have reasonably stuck with ‘make oneself immortal’, or something similar, and avoided any softening of Aristotle’s meaning. The verb is not new in Aristotle. We might expect earlier Greek usage to clarify Aristotle’s meaning, but uses in other authors are not uniform. In Plato a compound form of the verb (ἀπαθανατίζειν) is used transitively to mean ‘make immortal’ (Charmides 156d). Socrates is entertaining his young interlocutor with a tall tale about Thracian doctors whose knowledge overshadows Greek medicine, and according to him these foreign doctors ‘are said even to make people immortal’.9 But in the historian Herodotus the same verb is used, now intransitively, of people who merely believe themselves to be immortal and act accordingly. 6 9

7 Crisp 2000; Irwin 1999. Broadie and Rowe 2002. 8 Sedley 1999: 324–6; Reeve 2014. For Philo of Alexandria’s use of the verb in this transitive sense, ‘make immortal’, see Quod omnis probus liber sit = Every Good Man is Free 109; De aeternitate mundi = On the Eternity of the World 35; De specialibus legibus = On the Special Laws 1.303, as well as the chapter by Yli-Karjanmaa in this volume. Cf. also Polybius 6.54.2.

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The Getae think of themselves as immortal (ἀθανατίζουσι) in the following way: they believe that they do not die, but that each one of them who perishes goes to the god Salmoxis. (4.94)

The Greek word for ‘they believe’ (νομίζουσι) can point to beliefs or attitudes expressed in concrete action, and Herodotus then describes how the Getae act upon their belief: they send members of their supposedly immortal community as messengers to their god by ‘killing’ them (as a bystander, but presumably not the Getae themselves, would say) with spears. Herodotus is certainly not endorsing the truth of their belief in immortality. The Getae are said to have various religious eccentricities or even (to a Greek mind) impieties – they try to intimidate their god by firing arrows into the sky, and do not recognize any god except Salmoxis – and, of these outlandish beliefs and practices, belief in their own immortality is the most memorable, eye-catching, and easily summarized.10 Aristotle himself is said to have used the verb when defending himself against a charge of impiety (Athenaeus 15.697a–b; Athenaeus notes that the speech may not be genuine). He denies according inappropriately divine honours to a mortal, Hermeias. If I intended to sacrifice to Hermeias as if to an immortal, I would never have made him a monument as for a mortal; if I wanted to immortalize (ἀθανατίζειν) his nature I would not have honoured his body with funeral rites.

Here the verb could mean either ‘make immortal’ or ‘treat as immortal’; a defendant in such a trial would deny wanting to do either to a human being, and both are incompatible with giving the person funeral rites.11 The uses of the verb in these other texts do not require us to read the Nicomachean Ethics as encouraging people to strive for immortality itself. From a purely linguistic point of view, the passage in Herodotus is the closest to that in the Ethics, inasmuch as both passages use the verb intransitively, and Herodotus has in mind merely a belief in one’s own immortality (a false belief, in the case he describes) that gives rise to peculiar behaviour. Let us now return to Aristotle’s Ethics and see what has motivated the talk of ‘immortality’ there. I will distinguish between two explanations of 10

11

Later he refers back to ‘the immortalizing Getae’ (5.4), using the same verb. There is a similar intransitive use of the verb in Philostratus (Life of Apollonius 8.7.21; for the story cf. Herodotus 1.65): Lycurgus was not put on trial for ‘acting as an immortal’ or ‘thinking of himself as an immortal’. Contrast Reeve 2014, who suggests that ‘immortalize’ must here mean ‘make immortal’ and that this passage should guide the interpretation of immortality in Nicomachean Ethics 10.

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his wording, one of which I call doctrinal, the other local, in that it tries to explain his wording by means of the immediate context: Doctrinal Explanation Aristotle says elsewhere (De anima Γ 5, 430a23) that active intellect is immortal. His encouragement to ‘immortalize’ can be understood only in light of this doctrine about the intellect: in contemplation we are actively engaging with this immortal part of ourselves.12 Local Explanation In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle has just cited proverbial advice and wishes his reader not to follow it. His encouragement to ‘immortalize’ replaces the proverbs with better advice, and his wording is chosen to echo the wording of the second proverb (‘mortal, think mortal thoughts’). Any reading of the passage must acknowledge that Aristotle, like Plato’s Timaeus in the passage mentioned above (Timaeus 90b–c), is responding to the proverbial advice to think mortal thoughts. But the doctrinal explanation makes the Aristotelian passage a particularly close descendant of the Timaeus. On the doctrinal interpretation, Aristotle takes for granted what Timaeus’ cosmology openly states, namely a divide in the human being between the immortal and the mortal. It might seem an attraction of the doctrinal explanation that it puts Aristotle squarely in a Platonic, or post-Platonic, tradition. But there is a difference between the two passages that so far has not been sufficiently emphasized. Timaeus makes more than one point about immortality: the person who cultivates his immortal part, and succeeds in understanding the truth, both (1) has ‘immortal thoughts’ and (2) becomes as immortal as possible. (There is then a third point, not expressed in the language of immortality: such a person also becomes happy.) The first attribution, immortal thoughts, echoes and rejects the proverbs quoted by Aristotle; but then Timaeus goes further and adds that 12

See Reeve 2014 and the brief comments in the introductory section of Gerson’s chapter below. Aristotle’s lost dialogue Eudemus is said to have contained arguments for the soul’s immortality (Themistius On Aristotle’s De Anima 106.29–107.5; Themistius seems to be suggesting that although Aristotle argued for the immortality of the soul, his arguments, like Plato’s, can be applied to the intellect; for the distinction, see Gerson 2013: 157). In the Eudemus one character (probably the leading speaker, and so perhaps Aristotle himself – see Cicero Letters to Atticus 13.19.4) claimed that the dead are ‘blessed and happy’ (Plutarch Consolation to Apollonius 115b–c). Aristotle is also said to have argued for the immortality of the soul in his ‘works in dialogue form’, which may be another reference to the Eudemus (Elias Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories 114.25–115.12). For a fuller survey of the evidence see Bos 2003: 238–57. Roreitner (forthcoming) examines in some detail the relationship between intellect and body in Aristotle.

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the person can, to some extent, become immortal. Timaeus thus makes an additional point about immortality – becoming immortal or receiving immortality – that somehow goes beyond rejecting the self-limitation urged by the proverbs. The same is not so obvious in Aristotle, who makes only a single point expressed in terms of immortality. In other words, Timaeus is clearly using the language of immortality to make a point over and above his rejection of the proverbs, but we cannot say that of Aristotle with the same certainty. The decisive consideration, I suggest, is whether in an ethical context Aristotle himself finds it helpful – independently of his response to the proverbs – to call intellect ‘immortal’ and the other parts of our nature ‘mortal’. (This is not to ask whether Aristotle believes in the immortality of intellect, but what wording best suits his ethics.) It takes only a glance at this part of the Nicomachean Ethics to see that his preferred terms are ‘divine’ and ‘human’, not ‘immortal’ and ‘mortal’. ‘Immortal’ and ‘mortal’ are used nowhere else in Book 10. Just before the passage quoted at the start of this section he describes the life of contemplation as follows: ‘such a life will be higher than the human level, for someone will lead his life that way not in so far as he is a human being, but in so far as he contains something divine’ (10.7 1177b26–8). This life is then compared with the life of moral virtue, and in his evaluation of the latter he describes as ‘human’ its activities, such as courageous action (10.8 1178a9–14) and the virtues it expresses, such as courage (10.8 1178a20–1). Why, in these other parts of Book 10, does Aristotle favour ‘human’ over ‘mortal’? The answer is probably that ‘mortal’ would suggest that moral activities and virtues derive their particular character merely from the fact that we will die. But that is only a small part of the story: we are social and political, we feel emotions and we have bodies that need continual maintenance and are capable of feeling pain.13 We are different from the gods in each of these respects, not just in our mortality, and so ‘human’ serves better than ‘mortal’ to label a life that deals optimally with these aspects of our nature. Similarly, when we turn to the gods we find that they differ from us in respects beyond immortality. It would demean a god, Aristotle argues, to describe him or it as making just contracts, showing courage in the face of danger, and so on (10.8 1178b7–23).14 Calling the gods, and the life they lead, ‘immortal’ thus risks suggesting too narrow a view of the distinctive quality of gods – they are not deathless creatures capable of pain, fear, justice, and self-control, but rather their activities are purely intellectual. 13

See also the fine outline of mortal existence in Broadie 2007: 114.

14

So Sedley 1999: 324.

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‘Divine’, not ‘immortal’, is thus the right term for a life that incorporates, so far as possible, the intellectual understanding that gods possess. This is not to deny that Aristotle would want, in some other context, to explore and even endorse the immortality of intellect. But for his ethical and evaluative purposes in the Nicomachean Ethics he has good reason to use ‘human’ and ‘divine’ instead of ‘mortal’ and ‘immortal’. That suggests that when he does speak of immortality, there should be a specific counterconsideration – and that, in the passage quoted at the start of this section, is the wording of the proverbial advice to act as a ‘mortal’.15 No, he says, when setting your intellectual goals you should think of yourself as divine – or rather, to maximize the contrast with the old proverb, as ‘immortal’. In intellectual inquiry this means setting yourself no limits at all. In practice the limitations resulting from being human will sooner or later impose themselves, but that does not mean that we should be preoccupied with, and so dominated by, them when launching intellectual inquiries. We can, as it were, leave it to those limitations to assert themselves in the future without letting them shrink our scientific or philosophical endeavours. Aristotle is thus trying to capture the self-conception with which we should apply our intellects, and giving an exhortation of his own in place of the would-be pious advice. I suggest that the translation offered in the quotation above (‘act as an immortal’) is more or less correct, although something even closer to the meaning in Herodotus – ‘think of oneself as immortal’ – may be appropriate.

5.3

Epicureanism: Immortal Goods and Imperishable Gods

Epicurus discusses ‘immortality’ (ἀθανασία) when he considers good and bad ways of taking death to be, in the famous slogan, ‘nothing to us’. So correct understanding of the fact that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, and it (the correct understanding) does this not by adding infinite time but by taking away the desire for immortality. (Letter to Menoeceus 124)

Evidently there is an incorrect, non-Epicurean view of death’s nothingness, which claims that our existence extends infinitely into the future: 15

The closest parallel in Aristotle to the passage in the Nicomachean Ethics is found in the first book of his Metaphysics (Α 2, 982b28–983a11). Notice that the proverbs to which he responds there do not mention mortality, and Aristotle in his response does not speak of mortality or immortality; this provides some confirmation that in the Nicomachean Ethics it is the proverbial advice there, not his doctrines concerning the soul, that motivates the talk of immortality.

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according to this mistaken view, death is nothing to us in the sense that it does not prevent our persisting forever. The ‘immortality’ that Epicureans, armed with the correct view of the slogan, stop desiring is presumably this infinitely extended existence. If the letter ended here, we would conclude that ‘immortality’ is only an object of improper or unrealistic desires and plays no positive role in the letter’s account of how to live and prepare for death. But ‘immortal’ is used later at the end of the same letter in a nonpolemical spirit to describe the kind of good thing that can and should be attained: Practise the above, and what is akin to it, day and night, both on your own and with someone like you, and you will never be disturbed, awake or asleep, but will live as a god among human beings – for a human being living amid immortal goods bears no resemblance to a mortal creature. (Letter to Menoeceus 135)

Epicurean theology roots itself in the conception of gods as both ‘imperishable’ and ‘blessed’ (Key Doctrine 1). Putting this together with the comment at the end of the letter on godlike existence, we can say that Epicureans are encouraged to emulate something ‘imperishable’, a god or the gods, and to possess goods that are ‘immortal’.16 The quotation above suggests a direct connection between the two: someone lives as a god by possessing ‘immortal goods’. In this passage there is no sign of doubt as to whether human beings can possess immortal goods. But it is not stated that human beings themselves can become either immortal or imperishable. The contrast in the closing words between ‘mortal creatures’ and the possessor of immortal goods could be taken to suggest that the latter ceases to be ‘mortal’. But instead we could take Epicurus to mean that the possessor of such goods is in fact mortal, but no longer gives that impression; even this person is still a ‘human being’, as he says, albeit one living ‘as a god’. For now let us note the basic distinction between possessing immortal goods and actually becoming immortal or imperishable; we will return later to Epicurean views about the relationship between them. Before we consider that relationship we must try to understand what Epicurus means when he speaks of the gods as ‘imperishable’. Given that the ‘imperishable’ gods are a suitable object of human emulation, we might 16

Later in this section I will argue that Epicureans do not mean the same thing whenever they describe goods as ‘immortal’. Their theology shows some terminological variety: usually gods are said to be ‘imperishable’, but a later Epicurean text suggests that the gods’ bodies are ‘immortal’. More precisely, it draws a contrast, in respect of durability, between the gods’ bodies and items that are not ‘immortal’. See n.21.

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try to interpret ‘imperishable’ in such a way that it can apply, without equivocation, to humans and gods alike; the gods’ imperishability, as well as their blessedness, could then be achieved by creatures like us. To quote James Warren, ‘we should make sure that we take a similar view of the indestructibility of both god and mortal’.17 The length of our existence is unavoidably finite, but one way to make imperishability attainable by humans is to understand it as a kind of mental attitude. Warren relates the attitude specifically to death: the gods do not fear death, and we can learn not to fear death either. On this interpretation, imperishability is an attitude towards death that is compatible with the fact that we die, and so it is a quality that humans too can possess in full. Warren’s summary of this interpretation uses ‘immortal’ rather than ‘imperishable’: ‘if to be immortal is to live without thinking death relevant at all to one’s life, then the Epicurean sage is indeed “immortal”’.18 If imperishability meant not fearing death or deeming death irrelevant, it could characterize a human life, although achieving it would be demanding and probably rare. After all, a considerable part of Epicurean ethics is given over to attempts to achieve such fearlessness and foster it in others.19 The challenge for this interpretation of imperishability is to reconcile it with what Epicureans say about the gods. The logical structure of Epicurean theology is to attribute two properties to the gods, imperishability and blessedness, and to exclude whatever is incompatible with those properties. These properties gain their special status from belonging to the ‘preconception’ of god – that is, the correct conception of gods that we naturally and inevitably form. If imperishability were a mental attitude, Epicurus would have to show that incorrect attributions to the gods are incompatible with the fact that the gods have this attitude. But that is not how his arguments run. Instead, he argues that various properties are incompatible with the gods being resilient and strong: [God] is not subject to expressions of anger or gratitude. Everything of that sort implies weakness. (Key Doctrine 1)20

The inference is not from a divine attitude to other attitudes and forms of behaviour, but from physical robustness to attitudes and forms of behaviour – or rather, in the case of anger and gratitude, to their absence. This 17 20

18 19 Warren 2000: 245. Warren 2000: 261. The leading discussion is Warren 2004. Cf. Letter to Herodotus 78; Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 1.45, where ‘imperishable’ is rendered ‘eternal’ (aeternus) and then ‘immortal’ (inmortalis), as it is in Cicero’s Latin translation of Key Doctrine 1 at 1.85.

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counts against the view that Epicureans conceive of the gods’ imperishability as fearlessness or some other attitude.21 We hear a distorted echo of Epicurean arguments in Carneades’ sceptical theology. Carneades aims to show that some divine property or behaviour implies that the gods are perishable (Sextus Empiricus Against the Physicists 1.138–81).22 For example, only bodies are capable of action, but all bodies are perishable; if gods are to be capable of action, they must be bodies, but then they are perishable (1.151). Carneades is exploiting the connection between perishability and supposedly divine attributes – that is, the very same connection that Epicurus used to cleanse his theology of impious errors. For Epicurus an emotion or action indicative of perishability cannot be attributed to the gods, whereas Carneades starts with an attribution to the gods and then shows that it entails the gods’ perishability. In these arguments ‘perishability’ means not a mental attitude, such as fearfulness, but being subject to physical destruction or disintegration. On the assumption that Epicureanism was among his targets, Carneades would be guilty of ignoratio elenchi if Epicureans meant by ‘imperishability’ something other than permanence and immunity to physical destruction. This view of Epicurean gods’ imperishability can be defended without taking a side in the ongoing debate between realist and idealist interpretations. The realist reading takes Epicurus to have thought of gods as blessed, everlasting living creatures located beyond the parts of the cosmos accessible by human sight; the idealist reading takes Epicurus to have meant that gods are constructs of the human mind, although our role in creating gods does not make them any less valuable as ethical models for us.23 But both readings take, or can take, the gods’ imperishability to involve endless duration. On a realist reading, the gods must be a special exception to the destructibility of composites.24 On an idealist reading we would have to say that the gods should be regarded or conceived as endlessly long-lived and immune to disintegration.25 This is not a special difficulty 21

22 23 24

Warren himself argues for this point concerning the gods (2000: 250 n.52), but on different grounds: when Epicurean texts discuss the metaphysical make-up of gods, they are trying to explain how gods persist endlessly over time, without ‘physical erosion’, which suggests that the gods’ imperishability is or involves everlastingness. See PHerc. 1055, perhaps written by Demetrius of Laconia, XXI and XXII, which distinguishes between (a) the gods’ bodies and (b) the perceptible bodies that ‘receive powerful blows’, will eventually be destroyed, and so are not ‘immortal’ (ἀθάνατος). For text, Italian translation, and commentary consult Santoro 2000. See also the attribution of these arguments to Carneades in Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 3.29. ‘Idealists take Epicurus’ idea to have been, rather, that gods are our own graphic idealization of the life to which we aspire’ (Sedley 2011: 29). For a recent account see Konstan 2011: 55–61. 25 See Long and Sedley 1987, vol. 1: 146.

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for the idealist reading, but on the same footing as the Epicurean claim that the gods are ‘animals’ or ‘living creatures’. This too sounds incompatible with a view of Epicurean gods as thought-constructs, but exponents of the idealist reading can reply that the gods are merely to be thought of as animals.26 Similarly, on an idealist reading, the gods are to be thought of as imperishable: when gods are described as ‘blessed and imperishable animals’, ‘blessed’, ‘animal’, and ‘imperishable’ all belong to the content of the concept. But here too there is evidence of variety: according to a difficult passage of Philodemus (On Piety cols. 12–13) Epicurus also considered the nature of the concept, not only its content – is it a concept that lasts forever? Epicurus tried to show that the concept itself is imperishable, because of its endless availability through time.27 That Epicurus felt a need to show the endless longevity of the concept is further confirmation that the gods’ imperishability is not a fearless attitude but immunity to destruction and thus endless duration. From this it follows that we simply cannot emulate the gods in respect of imperishability. (We will see at the end of this section that the textual evidence is not, in fact, so simple.) By contrast, the gods’ other attributes – blessedness, human shape, life – have either been received by us without any effort on our part (human shape and life) or can be achieved by us in full (blessedness). Epicurus is adding to that third category of divine attributes – not inevitable for us, but achievable by us – when he introduces, in his account of the best human life, the ‘immortal goods’. As we saw above, it is not certain that the finale of the Letter to Menoeceus envisages a human being actually becoming imperishable or immortal. But in that passage Epicurus clearly envisages people achieving ‘immortal goods’ and godlikeness. Let us now consider what these immortal goods might be. The two passages on these goods are Letter to Menoeceus 135, quoted above, and Vatican Saying 78. To begin with the letter, ‘immortal goods’ are mentioned in the grandiloquent description of godlike life with which the letter closes. It is natural to suppose that the letter has already indicated what these goods are, for Epicurus refers back to the previous contents of the letter (‘practise the above, and what is akin to it, day and night . . . ’, 135). Surprisingly, given that this is a summary of Epicurean ethics, friendship has not been discussed in the letter, and so some items other 26 27

Obbink 1996: 11 (especially n.5), against Mansfeld, whose defence of the realist reading emphasizes the point that the gods are said to be animals (1993: 178–80). On the longevity of the concept see also Long and Sedley 1987, vol. 1: 145–6.

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than friendship must be the immortal goods that Epicurus has in mind.28 Epicurus has just praised the person who lives both pleasantly and with all virtues, including the intellectual virtues of philosophical understanding and practical wisdom (Letter to Menoeceus 133–4). These comments on the person of intellectual and moral virtue look the most promising passage to examine. Such a person has pious beliefs about the gods (which in Epicureanism implies that he never fears the gods), is fearless towards death ‘through everything’, understands that a pleasant life is easily achieved in full, and does not fear pain, convinced, as Epicureans notoriously hold, that pain cannot be both long-lasting and intense. The virtuous person also takes a lofty view of chance and destiny: chance, he thinks, does not make one happy or unhappy, but it provides merely opportunities for pleasure (as well for pain, for more foolish people).29 Chance gives ‘the starting points of great goods or evils’. So chance is not an object of fear or reverence for him; he knows that his happiness depends on what he does with the opportunities chance puts in his way. These sound like negative points about the wise and virtuous person: he does not fear the gods, pain, and death and does not venerate chance. But Epicurus has already explained that it is positively pleasurable, and therefore good, to lack ‘disturbances’ in the soul and pain in the body (131). So the various kinds of fearlessness in the virtuous person are in themselves goods. And they belong to him independently of chance – to lose them he would have to lose his wisdom, which (we are told elsewhere, Diogenes Laertius 10.117) is impossible. These goods are thus inalienable, and that, I suggest, is what ‘immortal’ means in this context: securely possessed for as long as the person is alive. One of these goods is fearlessness towards death, preserved, as Epicurus says, ‘through everything’: so not fearing death is, in the wise person, an immortal good, not immortality or imperishability itself. (In someone else, with a weaker grip on the nothingness to us of death, the same attitude could be lost, and would thus fail to be ‘immortal’.) All the same, it is most unlikely that fearlessness towards death is the only ‘immortal good’ in a wise and virtuous person, for Epicurus uses the plural ‘goods’. The wise person’s fearlessness towards pain, the gods, and chance are also goods, and, as they depend on understanding, are no less inalienable and do not ‘die’. ‘Dying’ can be used metaphorically in Greek 28

29

Frede 2016: 102 (see also 2016: 99) suggests that Epicurus did not in fact compose an ‘extended’ discussion of friendship. For an account of why the letter lacks a discussion of friendship see Erler and Schofield 1999: 671. Unfortunately the text is uncertain when Epicurus touches on destiny and the virtuous or wise attitude to it.

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poetry to describe the end of feelings and attitudes, such as pain.30 The meaning is that a person used to have a painful existence but, when the pain ‘dies’, no longer suffers from it. By contrast, an immortal pain or pleasure would be a constant feature of the person’s existence. Epicurus leans on this poetic use of ‘death’ and ‘die’ to make immortality characterize the goods enjoyed in a godlike life, but not the life or the godlike person themselves. Before we turn to our next text, Vatican Saying 78, it is worth stressing that the Letter to Menoeceus describes a process of gaining immortal goods and becoming godlike that is independent of friendship with others. Nothing in the description of the wise man suggests that his immortal goods include the memories he has of other people, the memories other people will have of him, or the benefits other people derive from him. Moreover, it is consistent with what is said here to suppose that the wise man’s wisdom is itself one of his immortal goods. Vatican Saying 78 must therefore have been written from a quite different perspective. According to that text (at least if the usual emendation is accepted) friendship is an immortal good, but wisdom is a mortal good.31 ‘Immortal’ here cannot mean ‘inalienable’ or ‘inseparable’ from the wise person, for, as we have seen, wisdom too is inalienable, and so wisdom should be included with friendship as ‘immortal’. Probably the author of this saying has in mind the virtuous and wise man as a source of goods to himself and to other people. His wisdom – not his teachings or wise sayings, but his own cognitive condition – dies with him, whereas his friendship will continue to be a source of benefits even after his death. This seems to fall significantly short of immortality, if the benefits are extended only for another generation. But it is possible that his friendship is extended over a longer period, to all those who wish to learn from his example or teachings, and so his friendship and the benefits it offers will be extended as long as memory or records of him survive. Epicureans do not, then, mean the same thing whenever they call certain goods ‘immortal’. In Epicurus’ letter their ‘immortality’ points to the fact that fortune and the prospect of death or pain cannot deprive the wise man of these goods within the span of his life, no more than anything could deprive gods of their goods. But elsewhere, in Vatican Saying 78, it marks the persistence of the wise person’s benefits beyond his own death. We should also take note that, according to the Vatican Saying, at least one of 30 31

See Pindar Olympians 2.19 (pain), Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 611 (trust). νοητόν is usually emended to θνητόν.

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the wise person’s goods is mortal. Possessing a mortal good is thus not, in itself, a sign of incomplete progress. This is compatible with the Letter to Menoeceus, which does not state that all the wise person’s goods are immortal. Epicurus has reason to avoid that: the wise person may enjoy pleasures that are temporary and even brief, and, as all pleasures are good, even fleeting pleasures are genuine goods. We should turn finally to another brief comment on mortal and immortal goods: according to the Epicurean Metrodorus (Seneca Letters 98.9) ‘every good of mortals is mortal’. Seneca suggests (98.9–10) that Metrodorus was drawing a contrast between the fleeting, easily lost goods that most people pursue and the goods that are possessed securely. According to Seneca, the second group, securely possessed goods, has just one member, virtue or wisdom (he equates the two), which is our only ‘immortal’ possession. Seneca is giving his own moral perspective as a Stoic: in the same passage he says that virtue (or wisdom) is the ‘true good’, and no Epicurean would accept the tacit suggestion that other socalled goods (such as pleasure or fearlessness) are anything other than ‘true’ goods. On the other hand, if Seneca’s interpretation of ‘immortal’ as ‘securely possessed’ reflects Metrodorus’ own position, then Metrodorus took a view of ‘immortal goods’ similar to that of the Letter to Menoeceus – which would hardly be surprising. Metrodorus’ comment has, however, a striking implication: if a creature has an immortal good, that creature cannot be mortal. (Seneca ignores or does not notice that implication, describing virtue as the immortal possession of mortal creatures.) So this passage takes us back to the question of whether wise people should be described as ‘imperishable’ or ‘immortal’ themselves. Early Epicurean writing shows some disagreement, or at least uncertainty, on this question. Epicurus in his letter does not explicitly describe the wise man as imperishable or immortal. He says instead that wise people live as gods among human beings – while still being ‘human beings’ themselves – and no longer resemble mortal creatures. But the quotation from Metrodorus suggests a more radical position: if every good of mortals is mortal, and if the wise man enjoys immortal goods, then the wise man cannot be mortal. Plutarch notes, in a highly polemical spirit, that Epicurus urged his pupil Colotes to go around as ‘imperishable’ and to think of Epicurus himself as ‘imperishable’ (Against Colotes 1117c; Epicurus makes a pleasant life impossible 1091c). It is not certain that we should treat this as doctrine: the context is that Colotes has venerated Epicurus for his scientific teaching, and Epicurus graciously venerates Colotes in return (Against Colotes 1117b–c). When Epicurus speaks of them both being

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‘imperishable’, he may be using the language of Epicurean theology to make a similar point: if Colotes thinks of Epicurus as divine (for his scientific teaching), he should have exactly the same view of himself (perhaps for sharing the scientific understanding, and for seeing its enormous value).32 But the passage of Metrodorus shows how one could construct an inference to make Epicurus and other possessors of immortal goods actually ‘immortal’ themselves.33 All the same, the Letter to Menoeceus ends with a different and more guarded formulation, one more in keeping with Epicurus’ suggestion earlier in the letter that people should learn to enjoy the ‘mortality’ of life (124). In descriptions of the gods, imperishability marks a quality that human beings cannot attain, and so it is understandable that in the letter Epicurus did not attribute immortality or imperishability even to the most godlike human beings, but instead used ‘immortal’ to mark their stable possession of certain good things.

5.4 Chrysippus on Immortality To understand early Stoic writing about immortality we must first consider what Chrysippus says about death. Chrysippus’ conception of death is stated and put to work when he considers what happens at the so-called conflagration. The fiery intelligence of the cosmos, or its ‘soul’, absorbs all matter into itself, ending the current structure of the cosmos and all life with it, apart from that of the designer god, Zeus, who survives to design the cosmos all over again and cause further iterations of world history. Should the conflagration be called the ‘death’ of the cosmos? The following is a quotation by Plutarch of Chrysippus’ On Providence Book 1: Death is the separation of the soul from the body, and the soul of the cosmos is not separated – rather, the soul grows continuously until it completely uses up the matter, absorbing the matter into itself. So the cosmos should not be said to ‘die’. (Stoic Self-contradictions 1052c)

32

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For the importance of context see Warren’s recent study (2018) of Usener 68. With the attribution of divinity cf., of course, Lucretius 5.1–13, where again scientific discoveries prompt the attribution, but where (typically of Lucretius) there is only one object of veneration: Epicurus. By contrast, at the end of the Letter to Menoeceus, as in the passage in Plutarch, Epicurus does not keep divinity to himself: the addressee too will live as a god among human beings. Compare the common association in Greek writing between being mortal and having mortal thoughts or possessions, or between being immortal and having immortal thoughts or possessions, as in the advice Aristotle quotes in the passage discussed in Section 5.2 of this chapter.

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The definition of death as the separation of soul from body goes back to Plato (Phaedo 64c).34 Chrysippus uses that definition to deny that the conflagration, however destructive it may sound, is the ‘death’ of the cosmos.35 Death requires the soul to be separated from the body, and this is not what happens at the conflagration. Such a strict criterion for death rules out the extended use of ‘death’ that we saw above in the discussion of Epicurus. If at some point during my life I stop experiencing pleasure, there is no separation of soul from body, and so it is simply incorrect to speak of the pleasure ‘dying’. The only items that can die are soul–body composites, and even they can be said to die only if the manner of their end involves the soul being separated from the body. If something lacks a soul or a body, or if it is destroyed in a process different from soul– body separation, it is not subject to death. I suggest that Chrysippus took the following further step: if an item will be destroyed without dying, it should be called ‘perishable’ but not ‘mortal’. ‘Mortal’ should be used only of entities that truly ‘die’, such as human beings. Keimpe Algra has anticipated my interpretation in distinguishing between ‘mortal’ and ‘perishable’, partly in light of Chrysippus’ discussion of the cosmos’ death, although Algra does not apply the distinction throughout his study of Stoic theology.36 But other scholarship on Stoic theology and cosmology has tended to equate ‘mortal’ with ‘perishable’ or ‘destructible’, and ‘immortal’ with ‘imperishable’ or ‘indestructible’. Ricardo Salles interprets Chrysippus’ argument, in the passage of Plutarch quoted above, that the cosmos does not ‘die’ as an argument that it is indestructible and persists through the conflagration. Tony Long’s discussion of Stoic theology moves from ‘immortality’ to ‘imperishability’ as if they were interchangeable.37 Distinguishing between mortality and perishability enables us to resolve a puzzle about the status of Stoic gods. There is evidence that early Stoics 34 35

36

37

Cf. SVF (= von Arnim 1903–5) I 137, SVF II 790. For discussion of the meaning of life and death across the Phaedo see the chapters by Rowett and Obdrzalek in this volume. See Philo De aeternitate mundi = On the Eternity of the World (or, more literally, On the Imperishability of the World) 9 for Stoic discussion of whether the world is ‘perishable’. On my interpretation, this is a different question, although Philo’s own use of ‘immortal’ and ‘imperishable’ would have made it difficult for him to notice the difference (see n.4). For the cosmos’ ‘soul’ and ‘body’ see Salles 2009a: 120–1. Algra 2004: 185–6. Contrast 2004: 182, where Algra appears to treat ‘immortal’ and ‘imperishable’ as equivalent – he takes Plutarch Common Conceptions 1075e, which speaks of god as ‘immortal’, to show ‘imperishability’. Salles 2009a, esp. 120 and 130. ‘Not a word here about immortality . . . I cannot think that the glaring omission of imperishabilility is inadvertent’ (Long 2006: 121). See also Long 2006: 123 (‘immortality or indestructibility’).

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attributed immortality to the gods – not only to Zeus, who alone persists from one cosmic iteration to the next, but also to the gods who do not outlast the world we know, such as the sun and the moon.38 A god is ‘an immortal (ἀθάνατος) living being, rational, perfect or intelligent in happiness, not receptive of any evil, providential in relation to the cosmos and the items in the cosmos’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.147). Diogenes presents this as simply the Stoic definition of god as such, not as the view of an individual Stoic or a minority group, which would normally prompt him to give the name or names.39 At the start of Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus the god is described as ‘most majestic of immortals’,40 which implies that Zeus is not the only immortal. The other immortals are presumably the gods who constitute a particular part of the world we know and will not outlive it, such as the sun and moon; in what follows I will call them ‘intra-cosmic gods’. If we can trust Plutarch’s wording (Common Conceptions 1075e), when Stoics criticized Epicurean theology they argued that, according to the preconception of god, god is not only ‘immortal and blessed’, but also affectionate, protective, and beneficial towards humanity. Epicurus himself calls gods ‘imperishable’, but in the Stoic response this has been replaced with ‘immortal’, presumably because the Stoics themselves attribute immortality to the gods.41 I note finally that throughout Cicero’s account of Stoic theology, the second book of his On the Nature of the Gods, he treats it as uncontroversial that the gods are ‘immortal’ (inmortalis).42 Cicero does not make the gods’ immortality as prominent as we might expect, but this does not show, in itself, that Stoic gods are anything other than immortal. As Algra has argued, Balbus, the Stoic spokesman in Cicero’s dialogue, focuses on the ‘distinctive’ aspects of Stoic theology, such as the Stoics’ belief in providence, which puts them at odds with Epicureans.43 On the other hand, Cicero’s Latin is weak evidence for the wording of Greek Stoics, as he sometimes translates Greek ‘imperishable’ (ἄφθαρτος) as ‘immortal’.44

38 39 41 42

43

For the divinity of the sun and moon see Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 1.39; Plutarch Stoic Selfcontradictions 1052a. So Algra 2004: 180. 40 I use the translation in Long and Sedley 1987, vol. 1: 541. But see the different Epicurean wording in n.21. See 2.2, 3, 10, 17, 45, 133, 163, 164. Sometimes we may suspect that Cicero is drawing on later Stoics, such as Panaetius (see e.g. Algra 2004: 179 and n.39 below). Given that Panaetius denied the conflagration, he can consistently treat all the gods, not only Zeus, as everlasting. But evidently Cicero is not drawing exclusively on later Stoicism, for he frequently cites Chrysippus and other earlier Stoics. Algra 2004: 180, arguing against Long 2006: 121. 44 See n.20 above.

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The evidence from Cleanthes and Diogenes Laertius suggests that Stoics gods, including the intra-cosmic gods, are immortal. And yet Chrysippus regards them as ‘perishable’, a point Plutarch uses against the Stoics: with the single exception of the Stoics, Plutarch says, everyone who has a conception of the gods regards them as ‘imperishable and eternal’ (Common Conceptions 1074f, 1075a). But in their theory Chrysippus and Cleanthes have virtually filled the sky, earth, air and sea with gods, and leave none of this vast number of gods imperishable (ἄφθαρτον) or everlasting, apart from Zeus alone, into whom they consume all the other gods. (1075a–b)

Plutarch emphasizes the number of perishable gods in order to minimize the respectability Stoics can salvage for themselves from Zeus’ imperishability. It is reasonable to treat with caution the wording in such a polemical response to Stoicism, but elsewhere Plutarch provides quotations of Chrysippus’ On the Gods that explicitly call Zeus ‘everlasting’ and the intra-cosmic gods ‘perishable’ (φθαρτοί, Stoic Self-contradictions 1052a–b). According to a later description of Stoic cosmic recurrence, ‘the gods not subject to perishing’ know what will happen in subsequent iterations of world history; this suggests that other gods do perish.45 Both sides of this evidence can be understood if we suppose that Stoics distinguished between the imperishable (ἄφθαρτος) and the immortal (ἀθάνατος), and that, paradoxically in our eyes, immortality as Chrysippus conceives of it does not imply imperishability or everlastingness. One requirement for immortality is that the item will not undergo the soul–body separation called ‘death’; it does not follow from this that the item cannot be destroyed in some other manner. If deathlessness were the only requirement for immortality, the group of ‘immortal’ items would be expanded to the point of absurdity: sticks and stones do not have souls and so cannot die.46 For now I postpone the question of whether, in Chrysippus’ theory, immortality requires something in addition to deathlessness, in the strictly literal sense outlined above, in such a way as to admit gods to the group but keep sticks and stones out. But already we see 45 46

Nemesius On Human Nature 38 = SVF II 625. Strato of Lampsacus (fr.123 Wehrli) uses against Plato the point that although a stone is immortal (ἀθάνατος), in the sense that it does not admit death, it is nevertheless not ‘imperishable’ (ἀνώλεθρος). In Stoicism stones have ‘tenor’ (ἕξις), not ‘soul’. See Long and Sedley 1987, 47P and Q. To anticipate: in the position I attribute to Chrysippus, some items, such as stones, are neither mortal nor immortal. Separated, morally imperfect souls are perishable, and it may be that they, like stones, are neither mortal nor immortal: they do not die, but they do not share the gods’ longevity either (see Diogenes Laertius 7.157). I explain below the significance of the gods’ longevity.

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grounds for a metaphysical distinction between ‘mortal’ and ‘immortal’ items. Any mortal item will undergo death, and so must be a soul–body composite. By contrast, immortal items are not subject to death; they can, but need not, be soul–body composites. None of the following items undergoes death: an everlasting soul–body composite; a temporary soul– body composite destroyed in a process other than death; a separated soul destroyed in a process other than death. Although we can be confident that any mortal item has both a soul and a body, immortal items may be more heterogeneous.47 The asymmetry is surprising, but it does not, I think, make Chrysippus’ theory incoherent. Plutarch himself indicates, with heavy contempt, that Chrysippus drew a distinction between being mortal and being perishable: Suppose they set against this that fine and ingenious suggestion that a human being is mortal, but a god is not mortal but perishable. Look at what results for them: they will say either (a) that the god is, at one and the same time, immortal and perishable – (b) or that the god is neither mortal nor immortal! Even if you maliciously invented other doctrines incompatible with the common conception, you could not outdo the absurdity of that. (Common Conceptions 1075c–d)

Evidently Plutarch has in mind a passage where Chrysippus called the gods ‘not mortal’, rather than ‘immortal’. The other evidence we saw above suggests that, of the two options Plutarch gives the Stoics, Chrysippus chose (a): the intra-cosmic gods are both immortal and perishable. This results from Chrysippus’ view of how gods perish and his strict criteria for ‘dying’: the gods’ souls are not parted from their bodies, but the entire god is absorbed, body and soul, at the conflagration.48 A different objection to Chrysippus would go as follows: he adopts a very eccentric conception of the gods’ immortality, at odds with the standard conception of immortality in Greek religion. When gods are revered as ‘immortal’, it is because they last forever, not because they will 47 48

I have benefited here from discussion with Sami Yli-Karjanmaa. Another way to retain the essential connection between divinity and immortality is to make Stoic theology less robustly polytheistic: if the intra-cosmic gods, such as the sun, are merely manifestations of Zeus, there is in fact only one god, and he is everlasting. See Algra 2004: 182–3. An attraction of this, to some readers, will be that the connection between immortality and everlastingness is retained. I prefer to see Stoic theology as poised somewhere between polytheism, pantheism, and monotheism (as Algra himself suggests); a Stoic’s reverent attitude to the sun would consider Zeus’ design of the sun, the sun as a manifestation of Zeus, but also what the sun itself does, as an individual part of the cosmos, to sustain the rest of the cosmos, especially life on earth. Chrysippus’ discussion of the sun’s ‘immortality’ should not come at the expense of any one of these perspectives.

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be destroyed in one way rather than another. Chrysippus could simply have emphasized the literal meaning of ‘immortal’ (ἀθάνατος) in Greek, ‘deathless’, and pointed out that, according to his view of the world and its future, the intra-cosmic gods will not ‘die’. But this raises the problem I mentioned above: stones do not die, and so is Chrysippus claiming them to be immortal as well? A better way of constructing a reply on Chrysippus’ behalf is get into the mind-set of Stoic theology and consider the connection between intra-cosmic gods and the world – that is, the world as it is currently structured, with earth, atmosphere, sky, and celestial objects. Stoic piety is to revere the world, or some part of it, that is perfectly rational and conducive to human welfare. Unlike human beings (i.e. the human body–soul composite), human societies, and human artefacts, these gods are a permanent feature of this world, inasmuch as they will last as long as it does. If we believe, as Stoics do, that the world was rationally designed for our benefit, and that its parts contribute to fulfilling that design, it is rational for us to revere not only the overall designer, Zeus, but the divine parts of the world that contribute to our welfare, particularly as they do so rationally and knowingly.49 Their immortality is not everlastingness, but it nonetheless marks a quality that distinguishes them from us and makes worship, on our part, appropriate: for as long as this world-order endures, fostering human life and human moral development, the gods will play their part in that coordinated endeavour. In other words, gods have an abiding or essential connection with the world that individual human beings, and our social or practical creations, lack.50 This brings me to human beings and our chances of attaining immortality. As temporary soul–body composites we are unavoidably mortal, no matter how much moral progress we make: even the people who have perfected their rationality, the wise and virtuous, remain soul–body composites that will be broken apart at death. After death our souls are ‘perishable’, for none of them, however virtuous, will outlast the end of the world (Diogenes Laertius 7.156; SVF II 809).51 According to 49

50

51

See Seneca On Benefits 6.23.5. Divine benefits are a major theme of that work (e.g. 6.20.1–23.8, 7.31.2–4), and Seneca often speaks of what the gods (plural) do for us, rather than of what God does. Notice the reference to the sun and moon in 6.20.1–2. This is admittedly not true of the months or years that, according to Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods 1.36), Zeno regarded as gods. It may be significant that this view is associated with Zeno, not Chrysippus. According to St Augustine Zeno stated that the soul is ‘mortal’ (mortalem, Against the Academics 3.38 = SVF I 146). Here again we cannot be confident that ‘mortal’ in Latin accurately reflects the Greek original. Augustine is emphasizing the contrast between the teaching of the Academy and the falsehoods, as he sees them, introduced by Zeno. He has just said that Plato learned from Pythagoras

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Chrysippus the souls of virtuous or wise people persist until the conflagration (Diogenes Laertius 7.157; Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 15.20.6). This makes their status similar to that of the perishable gods: like these gods, they endure until they come to an end in a process distinct from death, namely being absorbed into the supreme god. [The Stoics] hold that the souls of courageous men wander in the sky like stars, and are immortal (immortales) in this sense, that they do not die but are destroyed, whereas according to Plato souls are not even destroyed.52

This passage suggests that such souls were, on account of their deathlessness, called ‘immortal’. We can add to it Cicero’s testimony that Chrysippus described certain people becoming immortal: when Velleius, the spokesman for Epicureanism, lists the items regarded as gods by Chrysippus, he includes ‘the human beings who have obtained immortality’ (homines eos qui inmortalitatem essent consecuti, On the Nature of the Gods 1.39). As ever, we cannot be sure that ‘immortality’ in Cicero’s Latin translates the corresponding word in Greek, rather than ‘imperishability’. Two points constrain our interpretation: (1) the human soul–body composite cannot become immortal, as it will die; (2) neither the separated soul nor the soul–body composite can become imperishable, as both will eventually be destroyed. The only option remaining is that Chrysippus had in mind the separated souls of virtuous people, and suggested that they become not imperishable but immortal, and gain the essential connection to the world, and its timescale, that the intra-cosmic gods have.53 Treating the immortalized item as souls matches some of our other evidence for divinized or revered human beings in Stoicism: heroes are the ‘souls’ of virtuous people, and daimones or lesser deities are also souls (Diogenes Laertius 7.151; Sextus Empiricus Against the Physicists 1.74; SVF II 1101). As heroes or daimones these souls can be thought to benefit living human beings. According to Diogenes Laertius, daimones ‘watch over human affairs’. The Stoic Posidonius is said to have described ‘immortal souls’ (inmortalium animorum) – the wording is Cicero’s, and the now familiar warning about Latin translation applies – causing divination when people

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(and ultimately from Pherecydes) that the soul is ‘immortal’ (immortalem, 3.37), and it suits his purpose here to make Zeno’s doctrine directly contradict this. Scholia on Lucan 9.6, Usener 1869: 290 = SVF II 817. So Cicero cannot reflect Chrysippus’ view accurately when he later says that divinized human beings are ‘everlasting’ (aeterni, 2.62). Perhaps he is making an incorrect inference from the claim that they are ‘immortal’.

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dream (Cicero On Divination 1.64).54 The Latin word ‘immortal’ has caused puzzlement, when taken together with the evidence that Posidonius believed that the world as we know it will end in the conflagration.55 But there is no difficulty: these souls have achieved the same status as their fellow immortals, intra-cosmic gods. As long as this world-order exists, they will persist within it as contributors to human welfare; when it ceases, their fate will not be to die, in the strict sense of that word.56 Immortality thus never characterizes a human life, however virtuous. Immortality is attained by certain souls after death because of the moral perfection gained by the human being during life. Becoming immortal means to share the gods’ longevity and to be ended in the same manner, and at the same time, as the gods.57 In the previous section we saw Epicurus claiming that the virtuous person receives ‘immortal goods’, if not immortality itself, during life. This compromise, if that is the right term for it, should have little appeal for Chrysippus. It relies on a metaphorical use of ‘die’ that is at odds with the more rigorous, or at any rate literal, criteria for death in his cosmology and theology. Moreover, in Stoicism genuine goodness is much rarer than it is in Epicureanism. For Epicureans every pleasure is good, and so even people who reason poorly receive ‘goods’; it thus becomes important to distinguish their goods from those enjoyed by virtuous people. According to Stoicism, however, as long as people make poorly reasoned choices their lives do not contain goodness at all: anything genuinely good is either virtue, a virtuous act, or somehow dependent on virtue. Until the rare achievement of becoming virtuous, goodness is altogether absent, not merely outweighed. So Stoics do not need to supplement ‘good’ with a further adjective, such as ‘immortal’, that marks the good as possessed uniquely by virtuous people. Anyone who really possesses ‘goods’ has become as godlike as any human being can become. In the section on Epicureanism I emphasized the contrast between different Epicurean texts. To illustrate some variety within Stoicism, and by way of epilogue, I will close with the Stoic who argues that souls are intrinsically mortal: Panaetius (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.79). Cicero 54 55 56

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Kidd 1988: 430–2 and Wardle 2006: 268–9 connect this passage to the Stoic theory of daimones. Kidd 1988: 431–2 argues that there cannot be a reference to immortality ‘in any strict sense’. We might notice in this connection that, according to Epiphanius, Zeno held the mind or intellect to be ‘immortal’ (ἀθάνατος), even though the ‘soul’ is ‘not wholly imperishable’ (On the Faith 9.40; SVF I 146). (Contrast Augustine in n.51 above.) See also Hippolytus Refutation 1.21.3 = SVF II 807: ‘[the Stoics] say that the soul is immortal’. This is similar, in my view, to immortality in Empedocles. See the chapter by Simon Trépanier in this volume and Long 2017.

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exploits the incongruity of Panaetius’ both speaking highly of Plato and arguing against the soul’s immortality. But of course we have to remember that Panaetius also denied that the world will be destroyed in a conflagration (Philo De aeternitate mundi = On the Eternity of the World 76). As long as the conflagration remained part of the theory, the perishability of souls could be taken for granted, even if the word ‘mortal’ is not, strictly speaking, applicable to separated souls. But without the conflagration the soul’s permanent survival becomes a real possibility. Panaetius took souls to be generated, and in fact uses this in one of the arguments, recorded by Cicero, against the soul’s immortality. The duration of souls becomes an urgent question when the conflagration is denied: if (a) souls are everlasting, (b) a soul is generated whenever a human being comes to be, and (c) the world and the human race are endless, it follows that there will be an endlessly increasing number of souls. Without the conflagration, attention focuses on the soul’s inherent durability, and Panaetius argues that the soul is, in itself, mortal. Mortal or perishable? Panaetius probably knew Chrysippus’ discussion of death and immortality. But by now the distinction between perishable and mortal looks like a distraction. The real question is whether souls last forever, whatever term is used.

Bibliography Algra, K. 2004. ‘Eternity and the concept of God in early Stoicism’, in Van Riel and Macé (eds.): 173–90. Algra, K., Barnes, J., Mansfeld, J., and Schofield, M. (eds.) 1999. The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Annas, J. and Betegh, G. (eds.) 2016. Cicero’s De Finibus: Philosophical Approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. von Arnim, H. 1903–5. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Fragments of the Early Stoics), Leipzig; Teubner, with vol. 4, indexes, by M. Adler, 1924. Bos, A. P. 2003. The Soul and its Instrumental Body: A Reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Living Nature. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Broadie, S. 2007. Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broadie, S. and Rowe, C. J. 2002. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bryan, J., Wardy, R., and Warren, J. (eds.) 2018. Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crisp, R. 2000. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Destrée, P. and Giannopoulou, Z. (eds.) 2017. Plato’s Symposium: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Destrée, P. and Zingano, M. (eds.) 2014. Theoria: Studies on the Status and Meaning of Contemplation in Aristotle’s Ethics. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters. Erler, M. and Schofield, M. 1999. ‘Epicurean ethics’, in Algra et al. (eds.): 642–74. Fine, G. (ed.) 1999. Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fink, J. and Gregorić, P. (eds.) forthcoming. Essays on Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mind. Routledge. Fish, J. and Sanders, K. R. (eds.) 2011. Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frede, D. 2016. ‘Epicurus on the importance of friendship in the good life (De Finibus 1.65–70; 2.78–85)’, in Annas and Betegh (eds.): 96–117. Gerson, L. P. 2013. From Plato to Platonism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Irwin, T. 1999. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kidd, I. G. 1988. Posidonius: Volume II, the Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Konstan, D. 2011. ‘Epicurus on the gods’, in Fish and Sanders (eds.): 53–71. Long, A. A. 2006. From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, A. G. 2017. ‘Immortality in Empedocles’, Apeiron 50(1): 1–20. 2019. Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mansfeld, J. 1993. ‘Aspects of Epicurean theology’, Mnemosye 46: 172–210. Obbink, D. 1996. Philodemus: On Piety. Part 1. Critical Text with Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reeve, C. D. C. 2014. ‘Aristotelian immortality’, in Destrée and Zingano (eds.): 289–97. Roreitner, R. forthcoming. ‘The νοῦς–body relationship in Aristotle’s De Anima’, in Fink and Gregorić (eds.). Salles, R. 2009a. ‘Chrysippus on conflagration and the indestructibility of the cosmos’, in Salles (ed.): 118–34. (ed.) 2009b. God and Cosmos in Stoicism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Santoro, M. 2000. La forma del Dio: PHerc. 1055. Naples: Bibliopolis. Sedley, D. N. 1999. ‘The ideal of godlikeness’, in Fine (ed.): 309–28. 2011. ‘Epicurus’ theological innatism’, in Fish and Sanders (eds.): 29–52. 2017. ‘Divinization’, in Destrée and Giannopoulou (eds.): 88–107. Tanaka, I. 2016. ‘Divine immortality and mortal immortality in Plato’s Symposium’, in Tulli and Erler (eds.): 309–14. Tulli, M. and Erler, M. (eds.) 2016. Plato in Symposium: Selected Papers from the 10th Symposium Platonicum. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. Van Riel, G. and Macé, C. (eds.) 2004. Platonic Ideas and Concept Formation in Ancient and Medieval Thought. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

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Wardle, D. 2006. Cicero on Divination: De Divinatione Book 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Warren, J. 2000. ‘Epicurean immortality’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 18: 231–61. 2004. Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2018. ‘Demetrius of Laconia on Epicurus On the Telos (Us. 68)’, in Bryan et al. (eds.): 202–21.

chapter 6

Socrates and the Symmetry Argument James Warren

6.1

Introducing the Axiochus

There is an argument, found prominently in ancient Epicurean sources, that tries to demonstrate the conclusion that death – by which I mean the period after the end of a person’s life – will not be harmful because the period before a person’s birth was not harmful and the two periods of non-existence that book-end a life are relevantly similar to one another. Call this the ‘symmetry argument’. Epicurus argues that we felt no pain before birth and will feel no pain after death. We did not exist before birth and will not exist after death. And, since no one thinks they were harmed in the time before their birth, no one should think that they will be harmed in the time after their death. This argument has justifiably been the focus of a lot of recent interest. Various attempts have been made to resist its force by finding a relevant difference between the two periods of non-existence in terms of the potential harm or loss they might represent. And the discussion rapidly leads to more general concerns about the conditions for the identity and persistence of a person since these might suggest a relevant difference between the period before a person’s birth and the period after that person’s death.1 My topic here is a symmetry argument found in the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus, probably to be dated around the first century bce.2 In The ideas presented in this chapter were tested at seminars at the University of Iceland, the University of Oxford, and the University of St Andrews. I thank the participants in those seminars for their comments, especially Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson, Alex Long, and Christopher Taylor. 1 For brief accounts of the major strands in modern discussions of the symmetry argument see Sorensen 2013 and Warren 2014. 2 For the dating, see Männlein-Robert 2012: 6–7. The earliest reference to the dialogue is in Diogenes Laertius 3.62 where it is included in a list of works agreed to be spurious. A work by the same title is attributed to Aeschines at Diogenes Laertius 2.61. Irwin 2015 provides a reading of the dialogue that sees a rich and detailed engagement with the political events and climate of the late fifth century and therefore tentatively suggests that we should consider a very early date for its composition. The closest cousin we have to the Axiochus is the first book of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations in which, as in the Axiochus, one interlocutor attempts to persuade another that death is not a harm by first using in a dialectical fashion what appear to be Epicurean-inspired arguments and then turning to

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the dialogue, Socrates is called to talk to the old man Axiochus. Axiochus has been ill and, although he has now recovered physically, he has become overcome by a dread of mortality (365a2–3). Socrates talks to him and offers various reasons why Axiochus should not be concerned by death. At the end of the dialogue, Axiochus not only has been relieved of his dread but even says that he is positively looking forward to his life coming to an end (370d7–e4). It is unclear who the author was and what the author’s own philosophical affiliations were, although the general consensus is that the work is the product of the Academy or some other group sympathetic to Socrates and Plato. At first glance, however, the dialogue’s presentation of Socrates’ therapeutic approach is one that brings together Epicurean, Cynic, and Platonist elements. This has sometimes been seen as a symptom of the work’s eclectic nature and, less charitably, of it being a confused and inconsistent work since Socrates relies on a set of inconsistent arguments.3 One of these supposed inconsistencies – indeed, perhaps the most notorious example of the alleged disjointed nature of the work – is the appearance of a symmetry argument at 365d–e which is immediately followed by the argument that death is not to be feared because the soul is essentially immortal and each person really is an immortal soul. These two arguments are often thought to come from such different philosophical perspectives that their juxtaposition reveals most clearly the argumentative fault-lines in the work. The symmetry argument is identified as an Epicurean element in the text and then the later assurance that Axiochus is to identify himself with an immortal soul is held to be a Platonist element, dependent on such genuine dialogues as Plato’s Phaedo. And yet, these two arguments appear cheek by jowl in the Axiochus without the slightest indication of any tension between them.4 Any general interpretation of the dialogue as a whole will have to deal with this problematic juxtaposition, and many interpretations are content to use it as evidence of the confused and second-rate nature of the work. And the most positive interpretation currently on offer holds that this very jumble of arguments is part of the dialogue’s presentation of a therapeutic enterprise in which the goal of soothing the philosophical patient licenses the philosophical

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a positive account of the state of an immortal soul released from the body. These two texts may well be close to one another also in date and may both be indebted to Academic discussions. I discuss the opening arguments of Tusc. 1 in Warren 2013. For example: Nussbaum 2013: 25 n.1: ‘There is a parade of arguments, Epicurean, Cynic, and Platonic, with inconsistent premises and inconsistent views of what death is’; Mayhew 2011: 229 and 231; cf. Joyal 2005: 97 n.3 for references to similar claims in earlier scholarship. See, for example, Furley 1986: 78; O’Keefe 2006: 390–3 and 403–4.

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therapist to use whatever means will be most effective, regardless of overall argumentative hygiene.5 I will not present here any general view of the whole dialogue. Instead I want to explore the possibility that Socrates can sincerely offer a symmetry argument. Indeed, he believes that the pre-natal and postmortem circumstances are alike in so far as the soul is something incorporeal which both survives the separation from the body and also pre-existed its combination with any specific human body. If such an argument is possible, then there might be an internally consistent picture of Socrates’ stance in the Axiochus.6 And, what is more, it will illustrate something that is often overlooked in the growing literature about these arguments against the fear of death. The bare assertion of the symmetry between pre-natal and post-mortem time does not presuppose any particular metaphysical account of the nature of life and death or of the mortality or immortality of the soul. In fact, a symmetry argument is available for use by anyone who is happy to use the rather weak claim that the addressee of this therapeutic argument will be in a state after death relevantly similar to that he or she was in before birth and that, whatever that pre-natal state was, it was nothing harmful. What is more, in antiquity the symmetry argument was certainly not the sole property of the Epicureans and was not thought of as such.7 It is an argument type deployed reasonably frequently in ancient philosophical texts and can be found also in the work of the Stoic Seneca and perhaps even in a report about a saying of Anaxagoras.8 And the Platonist Plutarch also uses a symmetry argument in the Consolation to Apollonius (107D). There, Plutarch notes that in the Apology Socrates was prepared to state that death is either a kind of sleep, or the departure of the soul from the body, or a state of non-existence in which the dead have no perception (Apol. 40c5–9).9 In the event that the third possibility is true, 5 6

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O’Keefe 2006. O’Keefe 2006: 393 n.11 does allow that ‘with some tweaking and twisting’ the majority of the dialogue can be made internally consistent on argumentative grounds. But O’Keefe nevertheless insists that what he identifies as the ‘Epicurean’ material, ‘which is clearly deviant’, is an exception. I assume that if there can be an interpretation of these arguments that makes them consistent with the remainder of the text then that is of itself a consideration in favour of that interpretation. O’Keefe 2006: 403 thinks that the author has not earned the benefit of the doubt that is involved in any interpretation based on the principle of charity; the dialogue is flawed in its construction. See Warren 2004: 68–75. Seneca Letters 54.4, 65.24, 77.11; To Marcia on Consolation 19.5; Anaxagoras DK A34 (Stobaeus 4.52b.39): Ἀναξαγόρας δύο ἔλεγε διδασκαλίας εἶναι θανάτου, τόν τε πρὸ τοῦ γενέσθαι χρόνον καὶ τὸν ὕπνον. Joyal 2005 plausibly argues that the author of the Axiochus looks to the Apology in particular for inspiration for the depiction of Socrates. Nevertheless, Socrates’ explicitly open-minded attitude to the nature of death in the Apology is not similarly expressed in the Axiochus.

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Plutarch argues, death should not be feared since the dead will be in the same state as they were before birth (109E–110E).10

6.2 Socrates’ Symmetry Argument Here is the passage of the Axiochus in which the symmetry argument is found. Axiochus has explained that the various arguments he has heard against the notion that it is reasonable to fear death are of no use. He is still afraid of being deprived of life and various goods and is afraid that he will lie rotting and forgotten, nibbled on by worms and other animals. Socrates replies: συνάπτεις γάρ, ὦ Ἀξίοχε, παρὰ τὴν ἀνεπιστασίαν ἀνεπιλογίστως τῇ ἀναισθησίᾳ αἴσθησιν, καὶ σεαυτῷ ὑπεναντία καὶ ποιεῖς καὶ λέγεις, οὐκ ἐπιλογιζόμενος ὅτι ἅμα μὲν ὀδύρῃ τὴν ἀναισθησίαν, ἅμα δὲ ἀλγεῖς ἐπὶ σήψεσι καὶ στερήσει τῶν ἡδέων, ὥσπερ εἰς ἕτερον ζῆν ἀποθανούμενος, ἀλλ' οὐκ εἰς παντελῆ μεταβαλῶν ἀναισθησίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν τῇ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως. ὡς οὖν ἐπὶ τῆς Δράκοντος ἢ Κλεισθένους πολιτείας οὐδὲν περὶ σὲ κακὸν ἦν – ἀρχὴν γὰρ οὐκ ἦς, περὶ ὃν ἂν ἦν – οὕτως οὐδὲ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν γενήσεται· σὺ γὰρ οὐκ ἔσῃ περὶ ὃν ἔσται. πάντα τοιγαροῦν τὸν τοιόνδε φλύαρον ἀποσκέδασαι, τοῦτο ἐννοήσας, ὅτι τῆς συγκρίσεως ἅπαξ διαλυθείσης καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς εἰς τὸν οἰκεῖον ἱδρυθείσης τόπον, τὸ ὑπολειφθὲν σῶμα, γεῶδες ὂν καὶ ἄλογον, οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος. ἡμεῖς μὲν γάρ ἐσμεν ψυχή, ζῷον ἀθάνατον ἐν θνητῷ καθειργμένον φρουρίῳ· τὸ δὲ σκῆνος τουτὶ πρὸς κακοῦ περιήρμοσεν ἡ φύσις, ᾧ τὰ μὲν ἥδοντα ἀμυχιαῖα καὶ πτηνὰ καὶ εἰς πλείους ὀδύνας ἀνακεκραμένα, τὰ δὲ ἀλγεινὰ ἀκραιφνῆ καὶ πολυχρόνια καὶ τῶν ἡδόντων ἄμοιρα· νόσους δὲ καὶ φλεγμονὰς τῶν αἰσθητηρίων, ἔτι δὲ τὰς ἐντὸς κακότητας, οἷς ἀναγκαστῶς, ἅτε παρεσπαρμένη τοῖς πόροις, ἡ ψυχὴ συναλγοῦσα τὸν οὐράνιον ποθεῖ καὶ σύμφυλον αἰθέρα, καὶ διψᾷ, τῆς ἐκεῖσε διαίτης καὶ χορείας ὀριγνωμένη. ὥστε ἡ τοῦ ζῆν ἀπαλλαγὴ κακοῦ τινός ἐστιν εἰς ἀγαθὸν μεταβολή. In your distraction, Axiochus, you’re combining sensibility with insensibility, without realizing it. What you say and do involves internal selfcontradiction; you don’t realize that you’re simultaneously upset by your 10

The symmetry argument is explicitly invoked at 109E–F: εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν οὖν τάξιν οἱ τελευτήσαντες καθίστανται τῇ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως. Plutarch carefully omits making any reference to Epicurus in this passage, even going so far as to cite Arcesilaus for the observation that ‘Death, the so-called evil, is unique among the other things considered evil because it has never pained anyone by its presence but pains people when it is absent and expected’ (110A: τοῦτο τὸ λεγόμενον κακὸν ὁ θάνατος μόνον τῶν ἄλλων τῶν νενομισμένων κακῶν παρὸν μὲν οὐδένα πώποτ’ ἐλύπησεν, ἀπὸν δὲ καὶ προσδοκώμενον λυπεῖ.). This is probably some kind of response to Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus 125: ὥστε μάταιος ὁ λέγων δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον οὐχ ὅτι λυπήσει παρών, ἀλλ’ ὅτι λυπεῖ μέλλων. ὃ γὰρ παρὸν οὐκ ἐνοχλεῖ, προσδοκώμενον κενῶς λυπεῖ.

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loss of sensations and pained by your decay and the loss of your pleasures – as if by dying you entered into another life, instead of lapsing into the utter insensibility that existed before your birth. Just as during the government of Draco or Cleisthenes there was nothing bad at all that concerned you (because you did not exist then for it to concern you), nor will anything bad happen to you after your death (because you will not exist later for it to concern you). Away, then, with all such nonsense! Keep this in mind: once the compound is dissolved and the soul has been settled in its proper place, the body which remains, being earthly and irrational, is not the human person. For each of us is a soul, an immortal living being locked up in a mortal prison; and Nature has fashioned this tent for suffering – its pleasures are superficial, fleeting, and mixed with many pains; but its pains are undiluted, long lasting, and without any share of pleasure. And while the soul is forced to share with the sense organs their diseases and inflammations and the other internal ills of the body (since it is distributed among its pores), it longs for its native heavenly aether, nay, thirsts after it, striving upwards in hopes of feasting and dancing there. Thus being released from life is a transition from something bad to something good. (365d1–366b1)11

It is easy to see why it has been claimed that here we have an odd combination of Epicurean and Platonist arguments. On this view, Socrates appears to move extremely quickly from what is generally thought of as an Epicurean argument – urging us to think of pre-natal and postmortem times as relevantly similar to one another – to a familiar Platonist thought that our real self is an immortal soul that will survive its separation from the body. To begin, let us notice the two important principles that ground the Epicurean insistence that death is nothing to us: (1) death involves the absence of perception, and (2) death is non-existence. The Epicureans think that the first claim, combined with the thought that the only genuine benefits and harms require the subject to perceive them, will lead to the conclusion that death cannot be harmful. They also think that the second claim, combined with the thought that genuine benefits and harms require some contemporaneous subject of harm, will lead to the same conclusion. Leave aside for now the serious and interesting objections that can be levelled at either of these arguments and notice only that each principle is compatible with the symmetry argument since it can be argued that in both 11

This is the translation that appears in Cooper 1997. The translation in Hershbell 1981 is slightly different.

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cases the period before birth is instructively similar to the period after death. The two forms of the argument – one based on the absence of perception and the other based on the absence of an appropriate subject of harm – are both mentioned in the Axiochus. They are not always clearly distinguished in the text, however, in part because they are obviously related in so far as the existence of an appropriate subject is a necessary condition of there being a subject capable of the requisite perception. But we can consider them separately. In each case, I suggest, we can understand Socrates’ use of the symmetry argument without assuming that he is committed to specifically Epicurean or otherwise unSocratic premises. 6.2.1

Anaisthēsia

Let us first consider the argument from the absence of perception or anaisthēsia. Axiochus’ principal concern, as he expresses it himself, is that after death he will be deprived of the light of day (τὸ φῶς) and various goods (ἀγαθά) and, what is more, will rot and be devoured by worms and other beasts (365c). This is a mixture of concerns that combines thoughts about the absence of perception with thoughts about its continuity: first, he laments not being able to experience life as he now does. And he also is concerned that he will experience the process of decomposition. The symmetry argument will answer both of these. Being deprived of seeing the sun, for example, is no more the case during the time after death than it was before life. And Axiochus is no more going to experience decomposition than he was able before his birth to experience the gradual coming together of what would eventually be his physical body. In so far as Axiochus is concerned about death because it will involve the permanent cessation of sensations and pleasures, then, he ought to reconsider that concern in the light of the fact that death will mark the return to the same position he was in with regard to those sensations and pleasures before his birth. And in so far as he is concerned about the continuity of unpleasant sensations then here too he needs to recognize that there is no reason to hold that they will in fact continue since death is no different in that respect from the time before birth. This is just what Socrates emphasizes when he returns to the question of the absence of perception a few pages further into the dialogue, after Axiochus has finally explained that he is concerned about death because it will deprive him of the various goods he currently enjoys:

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συνάπτεις γάρ, ὦ Ἀξίοχε, ἀνεπιλογίστως, τῇ στερήσει τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀντεισάγων κακῶν αἴσθησιν, ἐκλαθόμενος ὅτι τέθνηκας. λυπεῖ γὰρ τὸν στερόμενον τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἡ ἀντιπάθεια τῶν κακῶν, ὁ δ' οὐκ ὢν οὐδὲ τῆς στερήσεως ἀντιλαμβάνεται. πῶς οὖν ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ παρέξοντι γνῶσιν τῶν λυπησόντων γένοιτ' ἂν ἡ λύπη; ἀρχὴν γάρ, ὦ Ἀξίοχε, μὴ συνυποτιθέμενος ἁμῶς γέ πως μίαν αἴσθησιν, κατὰ τὸ ἀνεπιστῆμον, οὐκ ἄν ποτε πτυρείης τὸν θάνατον. νῦν δὲ περιτρέπεις σεαυτόν, δειματούμενος στερήσεσθαι τῆς ψυχῆς, τῇ δὲ στερήσει περιτιθεῖς ψυχήν, καὶ ταρβεῖς μὲν τὸ μὴ αἰσθήσεσθαι, καταλήψεσθαι δὲ οἴει τὴν οὐκ ἐσομένην αἴσθησιν αἰσθήσει· That’s because, Axiochus, you’re introducing the perception of evils and combining it with the deprivation of goods, without realising it, forgetting that you will have died. What distresses someone who is deprived of good things is having them replaced by bad things, and someone who doesn’t exist cannot even grasp the deprivation. How could anyone feel distress whose condition provides no awareness of anything distressing? If you hadn’t started out, Axiochus, by ignorantly supposing, somehow or other, that the dead also have some sensation, you could never have been alarmed by death. But in fact you refute yourself; because you’re afraid to be deprived of your soul, you invest this deprivation with a soul of its own; and you dread the absence of perception, but you think you will perceptually grasp this perception that is not to be. (369e3–370b1; trans. Hershbell, with modifications)

The argument is dialectical.12 Socrates has already announced that Axiochus should think of himself as a soul (365e6) and therefore Socrates cannot be thought himself to endorse the notion he ascribes to Axiochus here that death is the deprivation of a soul (370a7). Rather, he is merely remarking that Axiochus’ concerns for a loss of sensation and pleasure – indeed for the loss of the soul itself – as a result of his state of being dead are inconsistent with the professed grounds for that concern, since Axiochus asserts that he will somehow perceive various evils after death even as he laments the loss of perception that death produces, and therefore he has still failed to grasp Socrates’ own preferred account.13 When Axiochus complains that he might be left lying somewhere cold and dark and subject to the attentions of bugs and beasts, he is both imagining being without a soul and therefore without the power to move or perceive and is also investing this lifeless body with a soul that gives it the power to recognize 12

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369e3: συνάπτεις γάρ, ὦ Ἀξίοχε, ἀνεπιλογίστως; 370a8: περιτρέπεις σεαυτόν; 370a8: καὶ ταρβεῖς μὲν τὸ μὴ αἰσθήσεσθαι, καταλήψεσθαι δὲ οἴει . . . I take these to be sufficient markers that Socrates is here interested in pointing out an internal inconsistency in Axiochus’ views. Contrast O’Keefe 2006: 392. Cf. Lucretius’ argument at 3.870–911.

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and perceive its situation. Socrates here begins his explanation of Axiochus’ error in precisely the same fashion as he did in his earlier argument, in the passage containing the symmetry argument at 365d, by pointing out Axiochus’ confusion.14 Perhaps the repetition of this charge of inconsistency and self-refutation is meant to show how stubborn is Axiochus’ commitment to these inconsistent premises. It will take more for Socrates to persuade him fully of the truth and, in particular, will require a positive account of the fate that awaits Axiochus’ soul – what Socrates calls the kaloi logoi about the immortality of the soul (370b1–2).15 Beyond insisting that we should interpret Socrates’ deployment of the symmetry argument at 365d as dialectical, it is worth exploring whether Socrates in propria persona could endorse it. And in fact it is not hard to see how he might say that Axiochus is incorrect to imagine harmful postmortem perception if ‘perception’ is understood here as sensory perception through the bodily sense-organs: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. None of these will be present after death since the immortal soul is then freed from the body. Nor were these senses present before the soul’s incarnation in the body (cf. Timaeus 42a). Axiochus will not hear the worms nibbling at his ears and he will not feel the lack of the sun’s warmth on his skin. He is wrong to think that the dead body will be left with any such form of perception or awareness and he would be equally wrong to think the discarnate soul will continue to perceive as he currently perceives. Therefore, the anaisthēsia version of the symmetry argument is compatible with the claim that an immortal soul survives death and exists before birth. After introducing the notion of a soul that persists after death, Socrates goes on to explain how that soul is affected by incarnation. The soul suffers various illnesses and difficulties while it is imprisoned in the body. And the pleasures of the body, he says, are small and fleeting while its sufferings are long-lasting and unmitigated. So there are two counts on which Axiochus is confused. If he is concerned about bodily pleasures and pains then these will indeed cease at death and the resultant state is no different from that before birth. If he is concerned about the affections of the soul itself, on the other hand, these will be much better after death and, once again, the state of the soul at that time will also be just like it was before incarnation. And so, despite the additional complications of this account of psychic incarnation, 14

15

Cf. 365d1–2 συνάπτεις γάρ, ὦ Ἀξίοχε, παρὰ τὴν ἀνεπιστασίαν ἀνεπιλογίστως τῇ ἀναισθησίᾳ αἴσθησιν . . . with 369e3–4: συνάπτεις γάρ, ὦ Ἀξίοχε, ἀνεπιλογίστως, τῇ στερήσει τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀντεισάγων κακῶν αἴσθησιν . . . Indeed, it is so powerful that Axiochus declares that he now has a tremendous longing for death and for the release it promises from his present physical weakness: 370d6–e4.

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it is nevertheless perfectly plausible for Socrates’ response to Axiochus to refer to the state before birth and after death as a kind of ‘absence of perception’, anaisthēsia. On the other hand, the Axiochus does contain claims that seem to attribute to the discarnate soul what seems to be a form of perception. For example, when Socrates relates the tale he heard from the Persian Gobryas about the fate of the soul after death, his description of Pluto’s palace under the earth paints a picture in which the disembodied soul is ferried across a river, meets and speaks with various judges, and, if deemed to have lived a good life, goes to a place where it can enjoy eating fruit, drinking clear water, and seeing the colours and smelling the scents of beautiful flowers (371b–c).16 However, we should distinguish between the perception that Axiochus improperly attributes to his post-mortem self and the kind of perception that Socrates attributes to the immortal discarnate soul. Socrates’ argument begins by allowing Axiochus to imagine harms and benefits in terms of familiar bodily perceptions and shows how on this view the period before birth and the period after death are quite alike. Then, when it elaborates on the preferred picture of an immortal soul, in the place of Axiochus’ initial conception it presents an account in which we imagine a soul capable of a superior form of awareness and enjoyment when it is in its liberated discarnate state. That form of awareness too, whatever it may be exactly, is the same in the period after the soul leaves a body as before it became incarnate and, in that sense, the periods before birth and after death are alike. In both periods there is no sight, hearing, and so on, if those senses are understood as the means we embodied persons have of perceiving the world. If we lament the loss of these at death or imagine some harmful form of these after death, then we are confused and that confusion can be illuminated by calling to mind the state before birth. And in both the period before birth and the period after death the discarnate soul is capable of a form of pure enjoyment and cognition, here described by Socrates as the enjoyment of beautiful and pure tastes, colours, and scents. The perceptions that initially concern Axiochus are replaced by something far better and, moreover, the disembodied soul finds itself returned to a state where it can train its untrammelled forms of awareness on objects far superior to those generally available to it when it is in the prison of the 16

Cf. Furley 1986: 78: ‘The Socrates of the Axiochus wants to have it both ways: death is total unconsciousness (anaisthēsia) and moreover it is the release of the soul from a life of pain into a “purer enjoyment of good things” (370c).’

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body.17 That thought too should cause us no concern. The symmetry argument can be offered with either the absence of bodily perception or the presence of untrammelled discarnate psychic cognition being the manner of awareness relevant to both the periods before birth and after death. On either understanding, it turns out that Axiochus has no reason to fear death.18 6.2.2

Non-Existence

The objection to Socrates’ use of the symmetry argument that also identifies pre-natal and post-mortem periods as periods of non-existence is simple: Socrates cannot endorse such an argument because he goes on to tell Axiochus that each person is in fact a soul and that every soul is immortal. Socrates says very clearly at 365e6: ‘For we are each of us a soul: an immortal living thing incarcerated in a mortal prison.’19 It is therefore false that Axiochus did not exist before his birth and will not exist after his death since the soul that he truly is did exist before its current incarnation and will exist after its current incarnation. If Socrates endorses both the identification of Axiochus with an immortal soul and the claim that death is a period of non-existence, then his arguments are inconsistent. This is a very good objection. However, something very similar to the approach offered in the case of anaisthēsia can also be offered here. First, we can once more allow Socrates to mount a purely dialectical form of the argument: if Axiochus’ grounds for complaint are that he is traumatized by the thought of non-existence after death, then here too he is open to the charge of selfrefutation and can be led to see that the relevant form of non-existence is no 17

18

19

It is interesting to note in this connection a textual variant at Phaedo 67b1. In the current OCT the line runs (a7–b1): . . . ὡς τὸ εἰκὸς μετὰ τοιούτων τε ἐσόμεθα καὶ γνωσόμεθα δι’ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν πᾶν τὸ εἰλικρινές, τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶν ἴσως τὸ ἀληθές. Grube (in Cooper 1997) translates: ‘ . . . we shall likely be in the company of people of the same kind, and by our own efforts we shall know all that is pure, which is presumably the truth . . . .’ (Note that μετὰ τοιούτων might also be neuter: we will be in the company of pure things, the Forms; see note ad loc. to Long’s translation in Sedley and Long 2011.) When Plutarch cites this section of the Phaedo at Consolation to Apollonius 108D, however, he writes: . . . ὡς τὸ εἰκός, μετὰ τοιούτων ἐσόμεθα, δι’ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν πᾶν τὸ εἰλικρινὲς ὁρῶντες· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ τὸ ἀληθές. This includes an explicit reference to seeing all that is pure that the MSS of Plato omit. Perhaps it was thought that this reference to seeing sat uncomfortably with the general message of the state of a soul freed from the body. There is a complication here: the myth at the end of the dialogue refers to the possibility that souls damaged by an impious or criminal incarnation might spend time being tortured and punished (371e–372a). This does not sit easily with the otherwise positive picture of a soul’s discarnate state but is presumably part of a general protreptic to good behaviour during life. The punishments might also be intended to be a way of improving souls thoroughly corrupted by certain extreme incarnations. Cf. Alcibiades I 130c1–7.

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different from what he should – on pain of inconsistency – think was the case in the period before his birth and which he agrees not to have been harmful. And second, we can allow Socrates to mount a form of the argument which includes premises that he will be able to endorse. It will perhaps seem obvious that Socrates cannot possibly agree that Axiochus will not exist after death. After all, it is an important tenet of this text that there is an immortal soul that survives separation from the body and, furthermore, Axiochus is encouraged to identify himself with this soul. However, it is not always clear either here in the Axiochus or indeed in Plato’s own works whether we should say that Axiochus, for example, will exist after his death. Consider once more the form of the argument presented at 365d7–e2: Just as during the government of Draco or Cleisthenes there was nothing bad at all that concerned you (because you did not exist then for it to concern you), nor will anything bad happen to you after your death (because you will not exist later for it to concern you).

If we take a common-sense view of personhood, namely that Axiochus is a particular person with a certain particular personality, certain memories, character traits, and the like – he is described in the dialogue as the father of Cleinias (364b5), an old man (365b2–3), an Athenian (365b3) – then on this understanding Axiochus did not exist before his birth and will not exist after his death. And if, on the other hand, we take the view that Axiochus is in fact an immortal soul, then it is also true that Axiochus was not present during the government of Draco and will not be around in Athens at some later time. It is hard to imagine that it would be correct to say that a discarnate soul was present in Athens in the time of Draco; it is certainly impossible to imagine it could have been harmed, indeed affected in any way at all, by anything going on in Athens at that time. (As Socrates explains, incarnation is a kind of epidēmia for the soul: a brief period away from its natural home: 365b1–6 and 365e2–6).20 So there is a reasonable and non-dialectical understanding of the argument according 20

It is not clear whether the Axiochus imagines that a single soul might be incarnated more than once. There is no mention in the myth at 371a–372a. Even if the soul that is currently in Axiochus’ body were, during the time of Draco, incarnated in another Athenian body, then a part of a different body–soul composite, then that person may have been harmed in some way during that period. But it would be decidedly odd for Axiochus to think that this was a harm that he suffered himself. There is no sign that the possibility of the same immortal soul being present in different bodies at different times should encourage us to identify ourselves with all of the relevant body–soul composites. (There are other ancient philosophical texts that do encourage the thought that the transmigration of souls should make us consider new individuals to be our dead friends now reincarnated. See, for example, the depiction in Xenophanes B 7 of Pythagoras recognizing the soul of a friend from the

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to which Socrates himself can endorse the claim that Axiochus was not there in the time of Draco. This is not, of course, for the reasons the Epicureans think the claim is true: namely that the soul is mortal and does not pre-exist the living body. Rather, it is because – as Socrates points out here – the soul is only temporarily imprisoned in a body during life and when liberated spends its time not in the world of Draco or Cleisthenes, but in its proper place.21 The tricky phrase for this interpretation is the supposed explanation for why post-mortem time cannot be bad: ‘because you will not exist later for it to concern you’ (365e2; the parallel claim about pre-natal time is at 365d8– e1) since it is claimed only a few lines later that ‘we are each of us a soul’ (365e6) and, since the soul is immortal, therefore each of us is immortal. This looks like a simple inconsistency: first Socrates tries to persuade Axiochus not to fear death because, to borrow an Epicurean turn of phrase, ‘when death is, he is not’, and later tries to persuade Axiochus not to fear death because Axiochus is in fact an immortal soul and therefore death is not the end of Axiochus’ existence. But perhaps Socrates is deliberately attempting to move the ailing Axiochus from a common-sense notion of his identity (he is Axiochus, a human animal, born on such-and-such a date, etc.) to a new and surprising understanding of his identity (he is an immortal soul . . .). Certainly 365e6: ‘For we are each of us a soul’ sounds like a grand and novel announcement, which is elaborated further in what is to come. Socrates immediately explains how nature has seen to it that the body (σκῆνος) is a kind of prison that causes us to undergo various pains, suffering, and illnesses with very few pleasures in compensation. The soul, when incarnated, longs to return to its proper place and therefore the release from life is in fact an exchange of harm (κακόν) for something good (ἀγαθόν): 366a1–b1. The overall message, therefore, is that the only correct time to locate harm and suffering is while the soul is incarnated in a body. Outside the period of that imprisonment, the soul undergoes no suffering. Even if Axiochus were initially to assume that the force of the symmetry argument depended upon an Epicurean notion of annihilation at death, he should now realize that in fact Socrates means only that the periods before and after the soul’s incarnation are not harmful. And it is certainly helpful in that case that Axiochus can go back with this new-found identification of his self with an immortal soul and see that the symmetry argument is still

21

cries of a puppy being beaten. See also Inwood 2006 for a discussion of Empedocles’ treatment of personal identity.) In that light, Axiochus’ comment that he longs for death in order to become ‘renewed’ (370e4: καὶ γέγονα καινός) is more significant than he realizes.

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just as relevant. It is also helpful because we learn at the opening of the dialogue that, despite his son’s insistence that Axiochus is at death’s door, the old man has recovered physically from his illness but is still troubled ‘in his soul’.22 The new encouragement for Axiochus to identify himself with a soul helps to explain why Socrates is so interested in helping the old man despite the fact that the physical illness has passed.23 There remains another passage I need to address. After his account of Prodicus’ story of the unremitting miseries of human life in its various stages and various professions (366d1–369a2 = Prodicus 88 Mayhew), Socrates returns to an argument very like the one he mentioned at 365d. This too he ascribes to Prodicus, although we have no reason to be particularly confident in that ascription (369b5–c7).24 ΣΩ. ἤκουσα δέ ποτε καὶ τοῦ Προδίκου λέγοντος ὅτι ὁ θάνατος οὔτε περὶ τοὺς ζῶντάς ἐστιν οὔτε περὶ τοὺς μετηλλαχότας. ΑΞ. Πῶς φῄς, ὦ Σώκρατες; ΣΩ. ὅτι περὶ μὲν τοὺς ζῶντας οὐκ ἔστιν, οἱ δὲ ἀποθανόντες οὐκ εἰσίν. ὥστε οὔτε περὶ σὲ νῦν ἐστίν – οὐ γὰρ τέθνηκας – οὔτε εἴ τι πάθοις, ἔσται περὶ σέ· σὺ γὰρ οὐκ ἔσῃ. μάταιος οὖν ἡ λύπη, περὶ τοῦ μήτε ὄντος μήτε ἐσομένου περὶ Ἀξίοχον Ἀξίοχον ὀδύρεσθαι, καὶ ὅμοιον ὡς εἰ περὶ τῆς Σκύλλης ἢ τοῦ Κενταύρου τις ὀδύροιτο, τῶν μήτε ὄντων περὶ σὲ μήτε ὕστερον μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἐσομένων. τὸ γὰρ φοβερὸν τοῖς οὖσίν ἐστιν· τοῖς δ' οὐκ οὖσιν πῶς ἂν εἴη;

22 23

24

365a2–3: καταλαμβάνομεν αὐτὸν ἤδη μὲν συνειλεγμένον τὰς ἁφὰς καὶ τῷ σώματι ῥωμαλέον, ἀσθενῆ δὲ τὴν ψυχήν. Cf. Joyal 2005: 106–7. The phrases at 365d8–e1 and e2 deserve some further scrutiny: 365d8–e1: ἀρχὴν γὰρ οὐκ ἦς περὶ ὃν ἂν ἦν [sc. κακόν]; 365e2: σὺ γὰρ οὐκ ἔσῃ περὶ ὃν ἔσται [sc. κακόν]. (Männlein-Robert and Schelske 2012: 67 n.31 assume that we should supplement the latter as follows: σὺ γὰρ οὐκ ἔσῃ περὶ ὃν ἔσται [ἡ αἴσθησις]. I see no reason to accept this since the formulation clearly follows the expression οὐδὲν περὶ σὲ κακὸν ἦν at 365d8.) It is easy to see how this can be read as a pair of denials that Axiochus did exist before birth and will exist after death and then an inference that there could therefore be no harm concerning him then. (Punctuating with a comma after οὐκ ἦς in 365d8 might encourage this interpretation.) However, it also appears possible to read both phrases in a different way. For example, d8–e1 might be read as follows: ‘ . . . for back then you were not a subject of harm’; and e2 could be ‘ . . . for you will not be a subject of harm’. Compare the peri + accusative construction here with the pros + accusative construction in Epicurus Key Doctrine 2. Hershbell’s ‘because you did not exist then for it to concern you’ might straddle these two interpretations: it could imply either that Axiochus did not exist at all and therefore it did not concern him, or that Axiochus did not then exist in a way that would allow this to be a matter of concern because, for example, at that time he was a discarnate soul. Mayhew 2011: 235: ‘Although there is no independent evidence for Prodicus having made such an argument, it is perfectly compatible with what we know of him to this extent: he did not believe in the gods or in the immortality of the soul (nor in Scylla and the Centaurs). It also seems likely that a book entitled Horai (Seasons or Hours) would have had something to say about death, and the proper attitude one should take toward it.’ Mayhew includes the text as Prodicus fr. 89.

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james warren Soc.: Once I also heard Prodicus say that death concerns neither the living nor those who have passed away. Ax.: What do you mean, Socrates? Soc.: As far as the living are concerned, death does not exist; and the dead do not exist. Therefore death is of no concern to you now, for you are not dead, nor, if something should happen to you, will it concern you, for you will not exist. To be upset for Axiochus, about what neither does nor will concern Axiochus, is pointless distress, just as if you were to be upset about Scylla, or the Centaur, which, as far as you’re concerned, neither exist now, nor will exist later, after your death.25 What is fearful exists for those who exist; how could it exist for those who don’t? (Trans. Hershbell)

Here, Socrates explicitly ascribes the argument to Prodicus and there is no reason to assume that he endorses it himself. Moreover, Axiochus’ immediate reaction (369d1–e2) is to reject this as trivial sophistic quibbling and to state clearly that what he is really concerned about is the deprivation of death and the loss of all the goods he currently perceives and enjoys.26 This prompts Socrates to show that Axiochus is refuting himself, in the text we have already considered. Nevertheless, the similarities between this passage at 369b5–c7 and the famous Epicurean argument from Letter to Menoeceus 125 are striking and we know that the Epicureans did endorse the view that death is annihilation.27 It is not unreasonable to suspect that the author of the dialogue has borrowed an Epicurean argument, ascribed it to Prodicus to fit the dramatic date, and has Socrates use it in contravention of Socrates’ preferred view that each of us is an immortal soul that will survive death. Here, after all, it does appear that the argument relies on a strong assertion that whenever death is, the person is not. And yet, there is once again no requirement to find an inconsistency in Socrates’ own stance and therefore in the dialogue as a whole. Axiochus and Socrates can agree that this argument is a sophistic triviality that fails properly to offer any assistance to those who are afraid of death. It helps to elicit from Axiochus a clearer account of just what he fears, and Socrates 25

26

27

These mythical creatures are introduced not as examples of ‘things that are not’ and therefore cannot be said to be harmed but rather as examples of things that might be thought causes of fear but neither exist for us now nor will exist for us after death. ‘Scylla and the Centaur’ are analogues for death – the object of Axiochus’ fear – rather than for Axiochus himself. It closely parallels the change in the attitude of interlocutor A. in Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.14: A. recognizes the inconsistency of his original position and is persuaded to change from saying that the dead are wretched to saying that it is wretched to be faced with the inevitable deprivation of what one currently loves and enjoys. Cf. Erler 2005: 87–8. Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus 125: τὸ φρικωδέστατον οὖν τῶν κακῶν ὁ θάνατος οὐθὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἐπειδήπερ ὅταν μὲν ἡμεῖς ὦμεν, ὁ θάνατος οὐ πάρεστιν, ὅταν δὲ ὁ θάνατος παρῇ, τόθ’ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἐσμέν. οὔτε οὖν πρὸς τοὺς ζῶντάς ἐστιν οὔτε πρὸς τοὺς τετελευτηκότας, ἐπειδήπερ περὶ οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν, οἳ δ’ οὐκέτι εἰσίν. Cf. Männlein-Robert and Schelske 2012: 78 n.79.

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can then go on to explain how death is not a loss of goods but rather a change into a better state for the immortal soul (370b1–d6). So, here at 369b–370e we have a repetition of the general pattern we saw at 365c– 366a. First, Axiochus expresses his fear at his coming death. Socrates then argues that there is no reason to be afraid if Axiochus truly thinks that death will be the end of his existence and will be a complete end of all sensation. This is what Prodicus’ argument is supposed to show, and it is also what Socrates has attempted to combat earlier in using the symmetry argument. So, in addition to these moves, Socrates adds the claim that death is the release of the immortal soul from its present wretched incarnation and is in fact something beneficial in so far as it is a return to the natural state of the soul that it was in before being imprisoned in this body at Axiochus’ birth.

6.3

Souls and Platonic Selves

Nevertheless, there may be some lingering concerns that the author of the Axiochus should have been much clearer in marking out what in the text was endorsed by Socrates and what was not. And there is certainly a suspicion that the dialogue has been constructed rather clumsily, with the same or very similar arguments appearing more than once. At the very least, we should admit that the author of the Axiochus has difficulty in negotiating in a consistently sure-footed way the problems involved in trying to make use of a stance that holds both that a person’s death is the separation of the soul from the body and also that a person is in fact the immortal soul of that soul–body pairing. But then again, it should be no surprise that this author should not be as clear as we might like on this matter since it poses difficulties that were also faced by Plato himself. It would be foolhardy to attempt a general account of Plato’s notion of the conditions for a person’s persistence, let alone an account of Plato’s musings on the topic of ‘personhood’ or – even less perspicuously – ‘selfhood’.28 But consider, for example, the very end of the Phaedo when Phaedo says: ἥδε ἡ τελευτή, ὦ Ἐχέκρατες, τοῦ ἑταίρου ἡμῖν ἐγένετο, ἀνδρός, ὡς ἡμεῖς φαῖμεν ἄν, τῶν τότε ὧν ἐπειράθημεν ἀρίστου καὶ ἄλλως φρονιμωτάτου καὶ δικαιοτάτου. 28

See Gerson 2003, esp. 15–29; Long 2005; and, very briefly, Sorabji 2006: 33 and 115–17.

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james warren This, Echecrates, was the end of our friend, a man who, we might say, was the best and also the most intelligent and the most just of those whom we came to know then. (118a15–17)

Phaedo is answering Echecrates’ questions that were posed at the very beginning of the dialogue (57a5–6). There, Echecrates said he wanted to know in particular how Socrates, ‘this man’ (ἀνήρ), was before his death and how he came to his end.29 What is interesting here is the concentration on the fact that Socrates’ life has come to an end; the focus is on Socrates the individual. The particular charismatic person who so captivated his friends – and so frustrated most other Athenians – has died. In this dialogue too, therefore, it is reasonable for two committed followers of Socrates to speak of Socrates ‘coming to his end’ when he drinks the hemlock even though we have repeatedly been shown reasons to believe that death is the separation of an immortal soul from the body and that a true philosopher spends his time ‘practising for death’ in the sense of purifying the soul as far as possible from bodily concerns because he realizes that the soul is indeed what he really is. Indeed, just a couple of pages before the dialogue’s closing words, Socrates himself has been lamenting the fact that he cannot persuade Crito to accept that when he, Socrates, drinks the hemlock he will depart (οἰχήσομαι: 115d4). The body that is left behind to be buried is not Socrates (115c–e).30 So, according to the Phaedo the soul is immortal and death is the release of the soul from the body. The immortal soul currently housed in this body will, after Socrates drinks the hemlock, leave the body and go back to wherever it was before it entered this body at Socrates’ birth. But nevertheless these two friends are still happy to talk about Socrates the individual, the son of Sophroniscus whose life came to an end in an Athenian prison. That individual did not exist before his birth and will not exist after he has been poisoned by drinking hemlock. The details of how to put together those two notions of who Socrates is can be left aside for now. But it is a happy result that, on both views of who Socrates is – a combination of a body and a soul or simply an essentially immortal soul – it is appropriate to argue that Socrates could not be harmed before birth and cannot be harmed after death.

29 30

This answers Echecrates’ question at 57a5–6: τί οὖν δή ἐστιν ἅττα εἶπεν ὁ ἀνὴρ πρὸ τοῦ θανάτου; καὶ πῶς ἐτελεύτα; Cf. also Phaedo 106e4–6: ἔπιόντος ἄρα θανάτου ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον τὸ μὲν θνητόν, ὡς ἔοικεν, αὐτοῦ ἀποθνῄσκει, τὸ δ’ ἀθάνατον σῶν καὶ ἀδιάφθορον οἴχεται ἀπιόν, ὑπεκχωρῆσαν τῷ θανάτῳ.

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Bibliography Bradley, B., Feldman, F., and Johansson, J. (eds.) 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cooper, J. (ed.) 1997. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett. Döring, K., Erler, M., and Schorn, S. (eds.) 2005. Pseudoplatonica: Akten des Kongresses zu den Pseudoplatonica vom 6.–9. Juli 2003 in Bamberg. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Dubel, S. and Gotteland, S. (eds.) 2015. Formes et genres du dialogue antique. Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions. Erler, M. 2005. ‘“Argumenter, die die Seele erreichen”: Der Axiochos und einer antike Streit über den Zweck philosophischer Argumente’, in Döring et al. (eds.): 97–117. Furley, D. 1986. ‘Nothing to us?’, in Schofield and Striker (eds.): 75–91. Gerson, L. 2003. Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hershbell, J. P. 1981. Pseudo-Plato, Axiochus. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Inwood, B. 2006. ‘Who do we think we are?’, in Reis (ed.): 230–43. Irwin, E. 2015. ‘The Platonic Axiochus: the politics of not fearing death in 406 bc’, in Dubel and Gotteland (eds.): 63–84. Joyal, M. 2005. ‘Socrates as σοφὸς ἀνήρ in the Axiochus’, in Döring et al. (eds.): 97–117. Long, A. A. 2005. ‘Platonic souls as persons’, in Salles (ed.): 173–91. Luper, S. (ed.) 2014. The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Männlein-Robert, I. 2012. ‘Einführung in die Schrift’, in Männlein-Robert et al.: 1–41. Männlein-Robert, I. et al. 2012. Ps.-Platon. Über den Tod, SAPERE XX. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Männlein-Robert, I. and Schelske, O. 2012. ‘Text, Übersetzung, und Ammerkungen’, in Männlein-Robert et al.: 43–95. Mayhew, R. 2011. Prodicus the Sophist: Texts, Translations, and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. 2013. ‘The damage of death: incomplete arguments and false consolations’, in Taylor (ed.): 25–43. O’Keefe, T. 2006. ‘Socrates’ therapeutic use of inconsistency in the Axiochus’, Phronesis 51: 388–407. Reis, B. (ed.) 2006. The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salles, R. (ed.) 2005. Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schofield, M. and Striker, G. (eds.) 1986. The Norms of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sedley, D. N. and Long, A. G. 2011. Plato: Meno and Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Sorabji, R. R. K. 2006. Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sorensen, R. 2013. ‘The symmetry problem’, in Bradley et al. (eds.): 234–54. Taylor, J. S. (ed.) 2013. The Ethics and Metaphysics of Death. New York: Oxford University Press. Warren, J. 2004. Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. ‘The harm of death in Cicero’s first Tusculan Disputation’, in Taylor (ed.): 44–70. 2014. ‘The symmetry problem’, in Luper (ed.): 165–80.

chapter 7

Immortality in Philo of Alexandria Sami Yli-Karjanmaa

7.1

Introduction

For the first-century ce Jewish exegete Philo of Alexandria the soul’s quest for God is a topic of supreme importance. For the Platonist Philo – best known for his philosophically oriented allegories of the Pentateuch – God’s immortality is a given, and the soul’s immortality too seems to have been such a self-evident notion that he nowhere engages in any real argumentation to defend it, as Plato does in the Phaedo.1 He also did not consider it necessary to keep reminding his audience of this key attribute when discussing the soul. This much is clear in general terms. Yet on closer inspection it turns out that neither the concept of immortality nor that of the soul is as straightforward as the foregoing implies. To get an accurate picture of Philo’s views of immortality we need to be clear about his anthropology, soteriology (doctrine of salvation), and individual eschatology. This has not always been the case in scholarship, and there are some common misconceptions. Before we proceed further, a preliminary point about Philo’s terminology. For Philo, the terms ‘immortal’ (ἀθάνατος) and ‘imperishable’ (ἄφθαρτος) are interchangeable.2 Thus, for example, he allegorizes the ‘release’ prescribed for the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:10) as the reception by a 1

2

For Philo’s relation to Plato, see, e.g., Runia 1986; Méasson 1986; Dillon 1996: 139–83, 438–41; YliKarjanmaa 2018. The surviving literary corpora of Philo and Plato are of the same order of magnitude, over 500,000 words of Greek (including my estimate of those works of Philo’s that survive only in a sixth-century Armenian translation). Throughout this chapter Philo’s works are cited with abbreviated titles; a full list of titles and abbreviations is provided at the end of the chapter. This is similar to Alcinous, who in Didaskalikos (Did. 25.1) uses these words, as well as ‘indestructible’ (ἀνώλεθρος), about the soul, but different from the Stoic usage, where immortality does not guarantee that the entity in question will not face some other kind of destruction (see Alex Long’s chapter in this volume). Already Plato, Phaedo 106d–e, describes the soul as immortal (ἀθάνατος) and, as a consequence, imperishable (ἀδιάφθορος) and indestructible (ἀνώλεθρος). See Sedley 2009: 148–9 for the entirely uncontroversial nature of the two latter properties, once the immortality of the soul has been established in 105c–e.

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virtuous soul of ‘an immortal (ἀθάνατον) heritage, its place in the order of the imperishable (ἀφθάρτῳ)’ (Congr. 108). Similarly, ‘those who have been well-pleasing to God, and whom God has transferred and removed from perishable to immortal races (ἐκ φθαρτῶν εἰς ἀθάνατα γένη), are no more found among the multitude’3 (Post. 43; cf. also Plant. 44 and Opif. 134).

7.2 The Different Kinds of Death, Mortality, and Immortality in Philo Two questions serve as my starting point in this discussion of the concept of immortality in the writings of Philo: first, what is the subject that is exempted from death through immortality? Second, what does the event, or state, of death mean? Philo has several answers to both questions, and thus several distinct ways of speaking of mortality and immortality. As for the first question, in Philo the three things whose relationship to death and immortality need to be discussed are the higher and the lower part of the soul and the body. Philo employs different ways of dividing the soul into parts.4 In the present context, it is sufficient to note that what remains constant is the existence of a higher and a lower part. Philo’s usual terms for the former, a rational and always unitary element, are νοῦς (‘mind’), λογισμός (‘intellect’) and διάνοια (‘understanding’). The terminology for the latter varies according to the division used, but, whether or not a substructure is involved, the part in question is irrational and mortal (see below). With regard to the second question, the nature of death, it is important to note that in Philo’s thought ‘death’ can concern either the existence or the moral state of an entity. Hence, I will speak of ontological and ethical death, respectively.5 It is worth noting that ‘immortality’, by contrast, is a term employed by Philo in the ontological sense only. On the ethical side, the terminology is that of life and death, both of which are, of course, also used in a concrete, everyday sense: people live, and then they die. When we relate the two basic kinds of death to the three entities discussed under the first question, namely the body and the two soul-parts, we must 3 4 5

All translations from Philo’s works are, unless indicated otherwise, from the Loeb Classical Library edition, Colson, Whitaker, and Marcus 1929–62, henceforth PLCL, with minor changes. For a concise summary with references to a host of Philonic passages, see Grabbe 2000: 166. In this simple classification, ordinary physical death means the loss of existence for the physical body qua body, regardless of the fact that its disintegration will usually not be complete for a considerable period.

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note first that not all of the combinations occur in Philo’s thought. Irrespective of some passing references to myths involving physical immortality (like that of the Dioscuri), Philo does not regard the human body as potentially immortal, and the idea of the resurrection of the body is entirely alien to him.6 Nor does he regard the body as dead in the moral sense, despite sometimes calling it ‘evil’ (e.g. Leg. 3.69). This language occurs when Philo imposes the ethical dichotomy of good and bad on the simplified anthropology of soul vs. body and ignores the internal structure of the former. I have called this phenomenon ‘double dichotomy’.7 When Philo takes a more nuanced approach, it is the soul’s lower, irrational part that is the point of entrance and the primary locus of evil in the human being. The body, in contradistinction to this soul-part, is a venue of the soul’s ethical struggle, much like the world at large. In what follows, I discuss three separate types of Philonic discourse where death, life, mortality, and immortality play their part: (I) human mortality caused by the physical body; (II) the soul’s moral corruption that Philo calls its ‘death’; and (III) the ontological immortality of the mind. 7.2.1

Human Mortality as Caused by the Body

The human being, as the combination of a mortal body and an immortal soul, is ‘mortal by nature’ (Opif. 134).8 Indeed, it seems to be the very definition of the human being for Philo that she is ‘that living being whose nature is a mixture of the mortal and immortal’ (Praem. 13; similarly Ebr. 101). Of the adjacent classes of beings, animals lack the rational (and immortal) element (Anim. 85), and angels lack the irrational (and mortal) one (Spec. 1.66).

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For various views concerning resurrection in the Jewish tradition see Yli-Karjanmaa 2017. For Castor and Pollux, see, e.g., Somn. 1.150–1. There is a consensus in scholarship that there is no room for the idea of the resurrection of the body in Philo’s sharp dualism, in which the soul strives to attain freedom from the body very much in the same way as in Platonic and Platonist philosophy. As for non-human bodies, Philo envisages the universe as a whole ‘by the providence of God to be immortal (ἀθανατίζηται)’ (Decal. 58), and co-eternal (the verb is συνδιαιωνίζω) with the human race (Spec. 1.76). This also applies to the stars, which Philo can sometimes in a ‘surprisingly unpuritanical’ way call ‘gods’ (see Opif. 27 and the comments in Runia 2001: 160) but which, nevertheless, ‘have no unconditional powers but are lieutenants of the one Father of All’ (Spec. 1.14). See Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 39–40. Similarly Plato Phaedrus 245c, 246b–d. Cf. Alcinous, who says that human beings belong among mortal beings (Did. 16.1) but is explicitly uncertain about the mortality of the ‘irrational soul’ (Did. 25.5), by which he probably means the irrational part, not a separate irrational soul (see Dillon 1993: 154–5).

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The lower part of the soul, for its part, can be characterized both in ontological and ethical terms as far as its life, death, and (im)mortality are concerned. Ontologically, following Plato, Philo tells us that God allowed his subsidiary powers ‘to fashion the mortal portion of our soul (τὸ θνητὸν ἡμῶν τῆς ψυχῆς μέρος) by imitating the skill shown by Him when He was forming that in us which is rational’ (Fug. 69). Here Philo is drawing on the similar division of labour between the demiurge and the created gods that Plato presents in Timaeus 6c–e.9 7.2.2

The Death of the Soul: Moral Corruption

Morally, the soul can be made to die by vice: ‘the death of the human being is the separation of the soul from the body, but the death of the soul is the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness’ (Leg. 1.105; see also 1.106–108, 2.78, etc.).10 Philo can even say the soul is ‘killed’: ‘for he who does not honour the One who IS kills his (κτείνει) own soul’ (Agr. 171).11 The death of the soul is a concept central for both Philo’s ethics and his soteriology. That it is about moral corruption is clear, but the concept is less lucid in the following respect. Philo states explicitly that the word ψυχή has a double meaning, but that using it for the dominant part of the soul is not entirely appropriate:12 for ‘soul’ in spoken of in two senses, both for the whole soul and also for its dominant part (ψυχὴ διχῶς λέγεται, ἥ τε ὅλη καὶ τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν αὐτῆς μέρος), which properly speaking is the soul’s soul, just as the eye can mean either the whole orb, or the most important part by which we see. (Her. 55)

Which dies in the death of the soul? Philo nowhere mentions ‘the death of the mind’ (νοῦς) as an ethical concept, and this makes it seem likely that the death at issue is not the death of the leading part only, even though in 9

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Like Philo, Alcinous, who follows the Timaeus much more closely than Philo, in Did. 23.1 changes Plato’s εἶδος (mortal ‘form’) to μέρος (‘part’). For the mortality of the soul’s lower part in Philo, see also Ebr. 70, Migr. 18; cf. Deus 46, Her. 52. For a list of around fifty references to the death of the soul in Philo, see Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 119. Although Philo repeatedly defines physical death in Platonic terms (e.g. Phaedo 67d, 88b) as the separation of the soul from the body, he does not, unlike the Stoics, allow this definition to restrict his freedom of using the term ‘death’ to mean other kinds of destruction and corruption as well (see Long’s contribution in this volume). For various views of the death of the soul in Philo, see Zeller 1995; Conroy 2011; Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 57–70. Trans. Geljon and Runia 2013. Their comment (p. 256), that the question is of one who ‘kills the (rational) soul’, is ambiguous. For the question of which parts of the soul are affected, see below. Conroy 2011: 26 is mistaken when he says that in the death of the soul only the lower part of the soul continues to exist. Pace Colson in PLCL 4.135, note c.

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Her. 52 he implies that the senses effect the mind’s ‘death’.13 Given the comprehensive effect that the death of the soul has on human judgement, it cannot be restricted to the mortal soul-part either – even if we find Philo declaring: For verily nothing so surely brings death upon a soul as immoderate indulgence in pleasures. That which dies is not the ruling part in us, but the part that is under rule, the part that is like the vulgar herd (τὸ λαῶδες). And so long will it incur death (θάνατον ἐνδέξεται), as it fails to repent and acknowledge its fall. (Leg. 2.78)

This passage, relevant in many ways to our concerns here, is a good example of how important it is to be aware of Philo’s exegetical technique in order to know when to press a statement. Here his emphasis on the moblike part of the soul stems from his secondary biblical lemma, Numbers 21:6, ‘And the Lord sent among the people (τὸν λαόν) deadly snakes, and they would bite the people; many people of the sons of Israel died.’14 Philo quotes and allegorizes this verse in order to expand his interpretation of his primary lemma, Genesis 3:1a, ‘now the snake was the most sagacious of all the wild animals that were upon the earth, which the Lord God had made’, the main gist of which is the allegorical interpretation of the snake as pleasure.15 Philo, alluding to the people’s (λαός) complaints to Moses that he brought them to the wilderness to die (Numbers 21:5), says in Leg. 2.77 that when ‘the part of us that corresponds to the turbulent mob of a city’ craves for Egypt (which is a leading symbol for the body in Philo), it encounters pleasures which lead to the death of the soul. Thus, having taken up the verses in Numbers, Philo has an exegetical incentive to say it is the lower part of the soul that dies.16 In the light of his overall thinking, we should not press this. Legum allegoriae 2.78 itself, in fact, points to the whole soul as the subject of death. Philo says that this death is a reversible state lasting until the soul 13

14 15 16

See Colson’s note ad loc. in PLCL 4.568. Cf. below for the concept of the corporealization of the mind. Philo does on one occasion squarely say the mind ‘dies’ (Plant. 147), but the issue here is its incapacitation through intoxication, not (primarily) its moral degradation. This dying is also referred to as ‘going out of one’s senses’ (ἔκστασις) and mental ‘derangement’ (παραφροσύνη), terms which Philo also uses in connection with the mind’s displacement by mental illness (Spec. 3.99), whereby it ‘makes its home elsewhere’. Trans. from Pietersma and Wright 2007 (henceforth NETS), as are all citations from the Septuagint. The connection between the verses is verbal (ὄφις). For Philo’s exegetical technique, see Runia 1984 and 1987; for a recent application of his findings, Geljon and Runia 2013: 10–20 and passim. Cf. Wasserman 2008: 65, who sees in the background of the mob language Plato’s Republic; she does not mention Numbers. These need not exclude one another. Wasserman aptly notes that ‘the text first conveys the corruption of the whole soul’.

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acknowledges its state and repents, or (in Leg. 1.108), until it dies again, now to the life of vice, and becomes truly alive. We may wonder if the lower part of the soul alone really is capable of repentance or giving up vice without the leading part. Indeed, there is ample evidence that in Philo’s thought the latter too is severely affected when the soul dies. The soul’s death affects the soul in its entirety, to the point of the mind (νοῦς) becoming such that it ‘loves the body and the passions and has been sold in slavery to that chief cateress of our compound nature, Pleasure’ (Deus 111). Then it needs to be purified from vice, passions, and the desire for sensual pleasure.17 What exactly is the kind of change that Philo thought mind undergoes upon the soul’s death and revivification is not so easy to say, because the mind is akin to things noetic (see, e.g., Leg. 2.31, Migr. 209), the chief characteristic of which, in the Platonic worldview, is their immutability. There is room for further research here, and the same applies to the exact meaning of the ‘complete corruption’ (παντελὴς φθορά) Philo sometimes envisions as the ultimate threat for the mind or soul, without any reference to reversibility (Det. 168, Leg. 2.33). He also speaks of, for example, folly as an ‘incurable disease’ of the mind (Cher. 10) or soul (Ebr. 140). However, unlike Plato (Phaedo 113e, Republic 615e), he refrains from explicitly stating that some souls are beyond remedy. The ‘death of the soul’ is not the only metaphor Philo uses for describing the morally corrupt state of the soul. In terms of biblical basis, it stems from Genesis 2:17b: ‘on the day that you eat of it, you shall die by death’, allegorized as the primary biblical lemma in Leg. 1.105–8. When it comes to the punishment as it was actually meted out in Genesis 3 – e.g., ‘by the sweat of your face you will eat your bread until you return to the earth from which you were taken, for you are earth and to earth you will depart’ (3:19) – Philo uses different imagery, asking, for example, of the fool ‘having forsaken the wisdom of heaven is he not now ranked with things earthly and incohesive?’ (Leg. 3.252; similarly QG 1.51). I have called this transformation ‘the corporealization of the mind’; in essence, however, it is the same as the death of the soul.18 17 18

See Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 37–8. The choice of the word ‘mind’ here is based on Philo’s own terminology in Leg. 3.252 (‘the foolish mind’, ὁ ἄφρων νοῦς). It does not imply that the lower parts are not affected; they most certainly are. On the death of the soul and the corporealization of the mind, see Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 57–81. In Leg. 1.32 Philo speaks of an ‘earthy’, ‘earthlike’, and ‘corruptible’ mind. These are genuinely Philonic terms for the corporealized mind and do not (pace Zeller 1995: 24) contradict the ontological immortality of the mind (for which see below).

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The Mind’s Ontological Immortality

Finally, the highest part of the soul alone is, in Philo’s view, ontologically immortal. Philo writes about the creation of the human being: What [God] ‘breathed in’ was nothing else then the divine ‘spirit’ which has emigrated here from that blessed and flourishing nature for the assistance of our kind, in order that, even if it is mortal (θνητόν ἐστι) with regard to its visible part, at least with regard to its invisible part it be immortal (ἀθανατίζηται). For this reason it would be correct to say that the human being stands on the borderline (εἶναι μεθόριον) between mortal and immortal (ἀθάνατος) nature. Sharing in both to the extent it is necessary (ἑκατέρας ὅσον ἀναγκαῖον ἐστι μετέχοντα), he has come into existence (γεγενῆσθαι) as a creature (which is) mortal and at the same time immortal (ἀθάνατος), mortal in respect of the body, immortal in respect of the understanding (κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν). (Οpif. 135).19

In Philo’s view, the biblical text speaks of human likeness to God’s image (i.e. to the Logos) exclusively ‘with regard to the director of the soul, the mind’ (Opif. 69; exegesis of Genesis 1:26–7). This is the ultimate cause of the fact that ‘the understanding (διάνοια) alone in all that makes us what we are is imperishable (ἄφθαρτον)’ (Deus 46).20 In an illuminating anthropological statement Philo says ‘the mind . . . can truly be called the human within the human, the better in the worse, the immortal within the mortal’ (Congr. 97). At this point we must recognize a tension related to mortality in Philo’s thought. On the one hand, the human being, taken as a whole, is mortal because of her mortal bodily component. On the other hand, Philo characterizes souls – without qualification, thus including morally dead ones – as (ontologically) immortal (e.g. Somn. 1.137), although the soul too 19

20

Trans. Runia 2001 who, however, translates ἀθανατίζηται ‘would be immortalized’. In light of the logic of the entire passage – note especially the present- and perfect-tense expressions given in Greek – it is, however, evident in my view that the original ontological immortality of the soul’s highest part is being discussed, and my translation makes this clearer. LSJ gives this passage as an example of the meaning of ἀθανατίζω, in passive, ‘to become or be immortal’. The latter meaning appears in QG 4.166 as well, probably also in Decal. 58 (above, n. 6) and possibly in Mos. 2.108. The compound ἀπαθανατίζω lacks the sense ‘be immortal’, at least in Philo. Cf. Spec. 4.14, where Philo emphasizes the ‘participation in reason’ (ἡ πρὸς λόγον κοινωνία) as both the basis of the human kinship with God and that ‘which gives him immortality, mortal though he seems to be’. The mind’s ontological immortality in Philo is thus different from what Sedley (2009: 146–53) calls the soul’s ‘essential immortality’ in Plato, for whom the soul’s ontological death would (in the Phaedo) be a contradiction in terms and a metaphysical impossibility (pp. 150, 152). Nor is the mind’s immortality in Philo like the other kind of ontological immortality of the rational part of the soul that Sedley (2009: 153–6) discerns in Plato, the ‘conferred’ variety, which (formally) results from the demiurge’s causal power and (pragmatically) from his will.

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is composed of both mortal and immortal elements. The explanation I offer is that in the ontological dualism of the Platonic worldview these cases are dissimilar. The difference between the physical body and the invisible soul is much greater than that between the components of the latter. When the body made out of matter dies, the soul moves from the sense-perceptible sphere to the intelligible one, to be ‘with the incorporeal things’ (Cher. 114). This is a radical change, and physical death is itself a phenomenon mentioned often in Philo. By contrast, although the lower part of the soul is mortal for Philo (as noted above), he never discusses its ‘death’ as ontological extinction in so many words. Perhaps the closest he comes is in describing the death of Moses. He says that God ‘resolved his twofold nature of body and soul into a monad, transforming his whole being into a most sun-like mind (νοῦν)’ (Mos. 2.288); if only the mind is left, the irrational part of the soul must have been eliminated. Philo implies elsewhere that something quite similar may happen to advanced individuals more generally (e.g. QE 2.29), and it may thus be that this ‘monadization’ (my term for the phenomenon) is a prerequisite of salvation in Philo’s thought.21 A further concept that should be explained in this connection is mortal life. This is best understood as life lived in the body on earth. For example in Somn. 1.138–9 the body-loving souls’ incarnation and physical death are followed by their reincarnation, which is caused by their having become used to mortal life.22 Unlike the death of the soul, mortal life is not an ethical concept. It reflects the mortality of the compound human being and concerns not only the body-lovers just mentioned but also the most perfect human being, Moses, who upon death left ‘this mortal life for 21

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See Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 85–90. There are some hints in Philo that an incomplete monadization may lead to a new incarnation (see the next footnote). In Cher. 114 the compacted nature of the soul headed for a ‘rebirth’ (παλιγγενεσία) is emphasized (for a detailed analysis of this passage, see YliKarjanmaa 2015: 150–67). Cf. also Det. 27 where Philo says that those who have permanently left the earthly region carry ‘in their train no bodily deficiencies’ – a thought reminiscent of the way in which Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo (81c) talks about bodily contamination that draws the soul to a new embodiment. In any case, however, monadization is tightly connected to the soul’s moral development, not something to be separately sought. I find it to be similar to the ‘double death’ found in Plutarch’s account, possibly drawn from Xenocrates, in the De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet (Moralia 943A ff.): the soul is first freed from the body, and the mind then of the soul. See further Schibli 1993: 156–61; Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 40–1, 85–90. In Philo, the death of the lower part of the soul should not be too tightly connected to the demise of the body (pace Dillon 1996: 177). I have argued that Philo endorsed the Pythagorean–Platonic doctrine of reincarnation, not only in this passage but as a fundamental part of his worldview: see Yli-Karjanmaa 2015. For the connection between mortal life and incarnation, cf., e.g., Ebr. 101: when ‘the mind pure and unalloyed’ is ‘cooped up in the city of the body and mortal life, it is cabined and cribbed and like a prisoner in the gaol’.

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immortality’ (τὸν θνητὸν ἀπολιπὼν βίον ἀπαθανατίζεσθαι, Mos. 2.288; also Virt. 67). Moses, like all human beings, was a mortal (Mos. 2.6), that is, subject to physical death. Hence, we can speak of his becoming immortal upon death, although the ontological immortality of his mind had never been lost. On his death, only the immortal mind was left.23 The soul’s final freedom from mortal life means immortality also in the very concrete sense of not having to be born and die again.24 This can also be understood from the viewpoint of what was noted above about human mortality (and with the caveat regarding the soul’s mortal part): human mortality is the body’s mortality, and, once the bodily sphere is permanently left behind, immortality – based on the mind’s ontological indestructibility – results.

7.3 The Loss of Original Immortality and its Consequences In addition to a purely universal allegorization of the Paradise story, Philo also several times interprets the fall of the first couple from a protological perspective, as referring to the loss of original immortality.25 For example, in QG 1.45 he speaks of ‘giving up immortality and a blessed life, [and going] over to death and unhappiness’, in Opif. 152 of ‘exchang[ing] the life of immortality (ἀθανάτου) and well-being for the life of mortality and misfortune’, and in Virt. 205 of ‘exchang[ing] an immortal (ἀθανάτου) life for a mortal one’.26 Does Philo thus envision a singular transgression event to have taken place at some point of time? This is doubtful.27 The 23

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This is similar to what Sedley (2009: 161), referring to the immortalizing power of virtue at the end of Plato’s Symposium 212a, calls ‘leav[ing] our mortal nature behind’ through ‘intellectual progress’, although he speaks of ‘acquiring’ an immortal nature instead. He leaves open whether this type of ‘earned immortality’ (clearly the most relevant type of those he discusses on pp. 156–61) can be ‘accommodated to Plato’s notion of either essential or conferred immortality’ (see n. 20 above). I think it can, precisely because it is not a matter of acquiring immortality but of ridding oneself of mortality. It is from this perspective that I propose we read such passages as QG 1.33, where Philo says of the serpent in Paradise, ‘in order that they may be, in effect, mortal, he deceives by trickery and artfulness’. The transgression and the death of the soul lead to pronounced mortality in the cycle of reincarnation. In the translation, I have substituted ‘in effect’ for Marcus’s ‘potentially’ based on his literal retranslation from Armenian (the only language the passage survives in), δυνάμει, and taken this to imply an opposition between the outcome for embodied life and people’s underlying nature; the soul itself remains immortal. For different interpretations of Philo’s allegorization of the first chapters of Genesis, see, e.g., Tobin 1983; Yli-Karjanmaa 2016. The passage in Virt. has especially many verbal links to Timaeus 42b–c, which, like the Paradise narrative, describes in a protological setting the undesirable effects of life wrongly lived (see YliKarjanmaa 2018: 125–6). I agree here with Runia (2001: 24) who says that for Philo the transgression ‘is not primarily a historical event’.

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anthropomorphic descriptions of God make it impossible for Philo to take the Paradise story literally, and so he allegorizes it. For example, God does not plant gardens but instead sows virtue in humans (Genesis 2:8, Leg. 1.43–7); God is immobile and does not walk, but instead souls become unstable and mobile and so believe that God moves (Genesis 3:8, QG 1.42). Compare also Philo’s elaboration of God’s question to Adam, ‘Where are you?’ (Genesis 3:9): When He had provided for your enjoyment the tree of life, that is of wisdom whereby you should have power to live, did you gorge yourself with ignorance and corruption, preferring misery, the soul’s death, to happiness, the true life? (Leg. 3.52)

The Paradise story as a whole is not history, nor is the transgression. Rather, the latter seems for Philo to be something that an individual soul undergoes. Paradoxically, although immortality is really an ontological concept in Philo, the loss of pre-lapsarian immortality also means the onset of the death of the soul and the corporealization of the mind: these lead to repeated embodiment – and mortality, because of the body. This is why Philo can present both mortal life and the death of the soul as consequences of the soul’s wrong choice, even though these are not the same thing. Whereas the latter, death of the soul, refers to the loss of the soul’s own or real life in the ethical sense (see Leg. 1.105–8), the former means it losing its immortality in the sense of ending up in a union with a mortal body. That the soul’s death is the cause of its mortal life is the best explanation of such statements as the following:28 Those who strive after low and base and earthly things shall die in respect of true life – the soul, wandering about in the manner of the dead. But those who desire heavenly things and are borne on high shall be saved alone, exchanging mortal for immortal life. (QG 4.46)

It can be inferred that the enticements of the sense-perceptible world lead to a negative transformation in the soul, its death and corporealization. Through this transformation, incarnation changes from the originally ethically neutral and unavoidable will of God to a semi-voluntary, vicious cycle. Philo seems to have held that at first the state of embodiment may be exactly what the desire-driven soul wants (Somn. 1.138–9) but that later it, 28

Whether the soul of Moses was still in the grip of the death of the soul at the outset of its incarnation as Moses is the kind of question Philo never discusses. He may have held that the souls of the sages become incarnate also voluntarily; at least they ‘are used to (εἰώθασι) leaving home [i.e. heaven] for the terrestrial nature on account of their love of seeing and learning’ (Conf. 77–8).

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while willing, is unable (Leg. 2.80) to exit the cycle of reincarnation until it has made enough progress; then God’s grace enables it to do so (QE 2.40).29 Somewhat anomalously, Philo’s comments on the fall in Paradise cited at the beginning of this section seem to suggest that without a transgression the soul would not have lost its immortality, despite being, apparently, incarnate. We may speculate that if the soul lived a virtuous life in the body, resisting bodily cravings, there would be only one embodiment, and such a soul would remain so close to immortal life – never leaving the road that leads to it – that it had not, in effect, lost it. For Philo, becoming embodied is not evil in itself but part of God’s plan.30 Incarnation seems to precede transgression in the history of an individual soul.31 This, at least, is the implication of Philo’s statement in Leg. 1.105 that while ‘there are two kinds of death’, the ‘dying by death’ foreseen as the consequence of the fall does not mean physical death but that of the soul – why specify this if both were not possible? We should also note that Philo’s comments on God making the ‘tunics of skin’ for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) – i.e. the embodiment of the mind and sense-perception – contain no reference to their transgression; incarnation is instead presented as a necessity (QG 1.53).

7.4 Achieving Immortality The discussion above enables us to understand how Philo can speak of immortality as something to be achieved in spite of the ontological immortality of the mind. The paradox is solved when we note that the ontological status of the parties involved does not change. Rather, the subject changes: the soul–body combination is mortal; the mind, immortal. For the good 29 30

31

For the passages in Somn. and QE, see Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 129–50, 167–86. This is similar to Plato Timaeus 41d–42a (on which see Broadie 2012: 88, 107): the mortal creatures were, from the beginning, meant and designed for incarnation; their coming into existence was, according to Broadie, ‘written into the basic nature of the cosmos’ (p. 90). This implies that the requirement that mortal creatures be created in order to perfect the universe (41b) means that bodily creatures were necessary. However, pace Broadie (n. 47 on p. 105), I do not think we can press the myth to imply that ‘there can never be a time when all rational souls have passed beyond reincarnation’ (and thus mortality) on the grounds that mortal creatures are necessary. I also do not think that the mortal embodiment is ‘a fulfilment’ (p. 107) for the soul; instead, this is surely constituted by the reward for successful living: freedom from reincarnation and the return ‘to the semblance of its first and best state’ (42b–d). For an extensive discussion of the reasons for the soul’s incarnation in Philo, see Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 44–81. This too is similar to the Timaeus, where souls are first implanted in bodies (42a) following which they live their first life either justly or unjustly (42b).

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(enough) souls, physical death, which severs their union with the body, suffices for reaching immortality in the sense of an immortal life – that is, permanent disembodiment and an escape from reincarnation. Moses is not an isolated case; Philo mentions a similar change several times in the case of advanced individuals. ‘In the case of the patriarchs, giving up is said to be adding, for when they give up mortal life, they are added to the immortal life,’ he writes in QG 4.169. Likewise, in Migr. 189 the salvific ‘migration from here’ of the virtuous is ‘not death but immortality’, and in Praem. 110 the last stage of life is called ‘the neighbour of death or rather of immortality’.32 Release from life in the body is not always explicitly mentioned. See, for example, Spec. 1.345: ‘For in very truth the godless are dead in soul, but those who have taken service in the ranks of the Sole Existent are alive, and that life can never die.’ In distinction to the sages, wicked souls have something quite different to expect in the hereafter. When discussing the ‘human thought’ that Cain should have received capital punishment for the murder of Abel, Philo comments: ‘for people think that death is the consummation of punishment, but in the divine court it is hardly the beginning’ (Praem. 69).33 Cain-like souls still in the grip of death need to fulfil two criteria in order to reach the immortality of salvation: (1) to become really, i.e., in ethical terms, alive, and (2) to be liberated from the body at death. Condition (1) is the prerequisite for condition (2) to be fulfilled permanently. If it is not met, a new embodiment ensues. We are now in a position to address a few scholarly misunderstandings. In different ways, researchers have seen Philo restricting immortality to some souls only. The basic idea is that immortality is not inherent but only 32

33

This juxtapositioning occurs already in the Pseudo-Platonic treatise Axiochus (on which see James Warren’s chapter in this volume): ‘thus, Axiochus, you change not into death but into immortality’ (370c, trans. Hershbell 1981). Cf. 4 Maccabees 14:4–5, where the martyrs ‘hastened to meet death through the tortures as though running on the path to immortality’. Cf. also Philo Legat. 117 and 369 for the Jewish willingness to accept death – and reach immortality – in the face of Roman oppression, and Prob. 115–17 where too death is, now in examples from Greek literature, connected to immortality and considered better than hideous life. Philo seems to deny this in Abr. 64 when, comparing deportation with the death penalty, he writes, ‘death ends our troubles but banishment is not the end but the beginning of other new misfortunes’. Goodenough (1946: 87) exaggerates when, while admitting that these are not Philo’s ‘usual thoughts about death’, he takes them as an expression of the Epicurean way of thinking that death cannot hurt us, because when it comes, we cease to exist. In the second passage he appeals to, Abr. 230, Philo says death ‘is the end of everything in life (κατὰ τὸν βίον), and particularly of its ills, while the troubles which lie in wait for the living are numberless’. Philo is thus saying that the hardships of life end when life ends. Goodenough ignores the context of the first passage, Abraham’s valiant execution of God’s harsh command to leave his country. Philo is engaged in extolling Abraham’s ‘superior merits’ (§60) which gives him an incentive to belittle death in comparison with exile.

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acquired by virtue.34 If a soul is not virtuous at the moment of physical death, it will perish with the body.35 The problem with the latter view is that Philo nowhere says this. As for the former, although it is certainly clear that Philo would not admit a wicked soul to immortal life, the key question is as follows: what will happen to such souls? Can they not repent, develop, and attain virtue and, thereby – through God’s vital grace – immortality? Segal soundly allows for punishment as an alternative to the annihilation of the wicked.36 He does not specify the kind of punishment, but I think an answer is readily available. There is no disagreement about the most important source of Philo’s thinking about the soul: Plato. Not seeing that Philo followed Plato also with regard to the doctrine of reincarnation is, in my view, a major explanation for the inexact descriptions of Philo’s views of immortality in the scholarship. Wicked souls face not annihilation but reincarnation until they realize their error, turn to God, change their orientation, and become pure enough. As Philo writes about the edible ‘winged creeping things’ (trans. NRSV) of Leviticus 11:21 in Her. 239: ‘These are symbols of the souls which though rooted like reptiles to the earthly body have been purified and have strength to soar on high, exchanging earth for heaven, and corruption (φθορᾶς) for immortality (ἀθανασίαν).’ In the quest for this immortalizing purity, the overarching theme in Philo is the salvific power of reason, virtue, and philosophy. Hence in his thought the question of attaining immortality differs little from asking how salvation can be reached, as this quotation demonstrates: ‘These, then, are the souls of the genuine philosophers, who from first to last practise dying to the life in the body in order to obtain the portion of incorporeal and imperishable life (ἡ ἄφθαρτος ζωή) in the presence of the Uncreated and Imperishable (τῷ ἀφθάρτῳ)’ (Gig. 14).37 Other examples of the means to reach immortality can be given. Those who have successfully practised endurance and self-control are traversing the uphill road which ‘makes immortal (ἀθανατίζουσα) and leads heavenwards those who have not fainted on the way’ (Spec. 4.112). Moreover, ‘the pursuit of philosophy . . . enabl[es] humankind, though mortal, to achieve immortality (ἀπαθανατίζεται)’ (Opif. 77); here the context is the contemplation 34 35 36 37

Zeller 1995: 24; Termini 2009: 108–9; Siegert 2009: 202. Goodenough 1946: 106; Burnett 1984: 465, 470; and, with some hesitation, Dillon 1996: 177–8. Segal 2004: 372. Trans. Winston 1981 with slight modifications. For Philo’s use of the Platonic notions of philosophizing genuinely and practising death, see Yli-Karjanmaa 2015: 122–4, and, for the prerequisites of salvation in Plato and Philo, 90–101.

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of the heavenly realm. Ultimately, this will lead to a visio Dei that is ‘the food of the soul, and true partaking is the cause of a life of immortality’ (QE 2.39).38 Later in Opif. the tree of life symbolizes ‘the most important of the virtues, namely reverence for God, through which the soul is immortalized (ἀθανατίζεται)’ (§154). That these practical and theoretical means form one whole is shown by such passages as the following: ‘The glory of the philosophers rests upon achievements of virtue, freely willed by themselves, and these being what they are, immortalize (ἀθανατίζειν) those who practise them in sincerity’ (Prob. 109).39 In Conf. 149 he says the essential lineage is that of ‘souls immortalized (ἀπαθανατιζομένων) by virtues’, not the one of ancestors of flesh and blood.40 Generally speaking, we can thus say that for Philo the single most important prerequisite of reaching immortality, in the sense of becoming liberated from mortal life, is virtue. Which aspects of virtue he chooses to emphasize is a matter of his context, exegetical or otherwise, and of the specific point he is making. For example, the context of the statement concerning the immortalizing power of pleasing God in Post. 43, cited above in the introduction, is Genesis 5:24: ‘And Henoch was well pleasing to God, and he was not found, because God transferred him.’ On the other hand, despite the importance of virtue we should note that to speak of ‘achieving’ or ‘reaching’ immortality does not imply that this is simply a solitary feat for the soul to perform. In Philo’s thought, the soul cannot see itself through to salvation on its own, without the aid of God: ‘For without divine grace it is impossible either to leave the mortal things (τὰ θνητά), or to stay forever among the imperishable (ἀφθάρτοις)’ (Ebr. 145; cf. QE 2.40). Philo’s soteriology is synergistic: the soul has to do its utmost, but even that will not be enough for it to be saved. I will conclude with a brief comment on the function of ‘immortality’ discourse in Philo. Philo hardly ever invokes the hope of immortality as a source of consolation at death.41 For Philo immortality is a theological concept. He would not discuss an anthropological topic purely for its own 38

39 40 41

For the Platonic background (Timaeus 47a–c) of Opif. 77–8, see Runia 2001: 201. The QE passage reflects the Phaedrus (248a, 251b) where, however, there is no explicit link between the nourishing vision of the super-celestial realm and immortality. For Philo’s view of philosophy as a way of life, see Uusimäki 2018. On the almost synonymous use of the two verbs occurring in the last two quotations, see above, n. 19. However, this is implied in his explanation for Abraham’s restrained – so Philo sees it – conduct after Sarah had died (Genesis 23:3): he refers to Abraham’s having learnt that ‘death is not the extinction of the soul but its separation and detachment from the body and its return to the place whence it came; and it came . . . from God’ (Abr. 258–9).

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sake and without a theological point. Human ontological immortality is founded on God’s immortality, and the main import of (re)gaining it lies in the ethical and soteriological dimensions involved in the soul’s recovery from its death and the permanent liberation from mortal life and the cycle of reincarnation. Thus reaching immortality can also be characterized as the ultimate stage of assimilation to God, which is an ideal Philo endorses, most clearly in the context of an explicit quotation from Theaetetus 176a–b in Fug. 63. Plato’s description of this assimilation – ‘fly[ing] away from earth to heaven (ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε)’ and ‘becoming holy, just, and wise’ – does not explicitly deal with immortality, but in the Philonic perspective these attributes are among its key prerequisites. When these are fulfilled, the divine mind or nous returns to its divine home for good.

Bibliography Avery-Peck, A. and Neusner, J. (eds.) 2000. Death, Life-After-Death, Resurrection and the World-to-Come in the Judaisms of Antiquity. Handbuch der Orientalistik 1.49. Leiden: Brill. Broadie, S. 2012. Nature and Divinity in Plato’s Timaeus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burnett, F. W. 1984. ‘Philo on immortality: a thematic study of Philo’s concept of παλιγγενεσία’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 46: 447–70. Colson, F. H., Whitaker, G. H., and Marcus, R. (trans.) 1929–62. Philo in Ten Volumes and Two Supplementary Volumes. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Conroy, J. T. 2011. ‘Philo’s “death of the soul”: is this only a metaphor?’, Studia Philonica Annual 23: 23–40. Dillon, J. 1993. Alcinous: The Handbook of Platonism: Translation with an Introduction and Commentary. Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1996. The Middle Platonists: 80 bc to ad 220. 2nd edn with a new afterword. London: Duckworth. Frede, D. and Reis, B. (eds.) 2009. Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy. Berlin: De Gruyter. Geljon, A. C. and Runia, D. T. 2013. Philo of Alexandria: On Cultivation: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 4. Leiden: Brill. Goodenough, E. R. 1946. ‘Philo on immortality’, Harvard Theological Review 39 (2): 86–108. Grabbe, L. L. 2000. ‘Eschatology in Philo and Josephus’, in Avery-Peck and Neusner (eds.): 163–85.

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Hershbell, J. P. 1981. Pseudo-Plato, Axiochus: Translation and Notes. Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations 21. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Kamesar, A. (ed.) 2009. The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laato, A. and Valve, L. (eds.) 2016. Adam and Eve Story in the Hebrew Bible and in Ancient Jewish Writings Including the New Testament. Studies in the Reception History of the Bible 7. Turku and Winona Lake: Åbo Akademi University and Eisenbrauns. Méasson, A. 1986. Du char ailé de Zeus à l’arche d’alliance: images et mythes platoniciens chez Philon d’Alexandrie. Paris: Études Augustiniennes. Pietersma, A. and Wright, B. G. (eds.) 2007. A New English Translation of the Septuagint. New York: Oxford University Press. Runia, D. T. 1984. ‘The structure of Philo’s allegorical treatises: a review of two recent studies and some additional comments’, Vigiliae Christianae 38: 209–56. 1986. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Philosophia Antiqua 44. Leiden: Brill. 1987. ‘Further observations on the structure of Philo’s allegorical treatises’, Vigiliae Christianae 41: 105–38. 2001. On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Schibli, H. S. 1993. ‘Xenocrates’ daemons and the irrational soul’, Classical Quarterly, New Series, 43(1): 143–67. Sedley, D. 2009. ‘Three kinds of Platonic immortality’, in Frede and Reis (eds.): 146–62. Segal, A. 2004. Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West. New York: Doubleday. Siegert, F. 2009. ‘Philo and the New Testament’, in Kamesar (ed.): 175–209. Tarrant, H., Renaud, F., Baltzly, D., and Layne, D. A. (eds.) 2018. A Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity. Leiden: Brill. Termini, C. 2009. ‘Philo’s thought within the context of Middle Judaism’, in Kamesar (ed.): 95–123. Tobin, T. H. 1983. The Creation of Man: Philo and the History of Interpretation. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America. Uusimäki, E. 2018. ‘A mind in training: Philo of Alexandria on Jacob’s spiritual exercises’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 27(4): 265–88. Wasserman, E. 2008. The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2nd Series 256. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Winston, D. 1981. Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections: Translation and Introduction. London: SPCK. Yli-Karjanmaa, S. 2015. Reincarnation in Philo of Alexandria. Studia Philonica Monographs 7. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. 2016. ‘“Call Him Earth”: On Philo’s Allegorization of Adam in the Legum Allegoriae’, in Laato and Valve (eds.) 253–93.

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2017. ‘The new life of the good souls in Josephus: resurrection or reincarnation?’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 48 (4–5):506–30. 2018. ‘Philo of Alexandria’, in Tarrant et al. (eds.) 115–29. Zeller, D. 1995. ‘The life and death of the soul in Philo of Alexandria: the use and origin of a metaphor’, Studia Philonica Annual 7: 19–55.

Abbreviations, with Latin and English Titles, of Philo’s Works Abr. Agr. Anim. Cher.

De Abrahamo De agricultura De animalibus De Cherubim

Conf. Congr.

De confusione linguarum De congressu eruditionis gratia De Decalogo Quod deterius poteriori insidiari soleat Quod Deus sit immutabilis De ebrietate De fuga et inventione De gigantibus Quis rerum divinarum heres sit Legum allegoriae Legatio ad Gaium De migratione Abrahami De vita Moysis De opificio mundi

Decal. Det. Deus Ebr. Fug. Gig. Her. Leg. Legat. Migr. Mos. Opif. Plant. Post. Praem. Prob. QE QG Somn. Spec. Virt.

De plantatione De posteritate Caini De praemiis et poenis Quod omnis probus liber sit Quaestiones (et solutiones) in Exodum Quaestiones (et solutiones) in Genesim De somniis De specialibus legibus De virtutibus

English titles are from the Loeb Classical Library.

On Abraham On Husbandry On Whether Dumb Animals Possess Reason On the Cherubim, The Flaming Sword, and Cain On the Confusion of Tongues On Mating with the Preliminary Studies On the Decalogue That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better On the Unchangeableness of God On Drunkenness On Flight and Finding On the Giants Who is the Heir of Divine Things Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2, 3 On the Embassy to Gaius On the Migration of Abraham Moses 1 and 2 On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile On Rewards and Punishments Every Good Man is Free Questions and Answers on Exodus Questions and Answers on Genesis On Dreams On the Special Laws On the Virtues

chapter 8

Plotinus on Immortality and the Problem of Personal Identity Lloyd P. Gerson

In Plato’s Phaedo, the complex web of arguments concluding that the soul is immortal is closely connected to the issue of personal identity. If this were not so, a proof that my soul is immortal would have little interest for me. And yet, insofar as the issue of personal identity focuses on subjectivity, personal identity is difficult to pin down. For personal pronouns like “I” and “me” are indexical. That is, they are purely contextual, varying across occurrent desires and beliefs which on each occasion generate a new subject. The connection among these subjects is a delicate matter for the obvious reason that the one doing the connecting is yet another subject of yet another occurrent state. If, in order to avoid the problem, or at least to lessen it, one uses the personal pronouns to refer not to the subject of an occurrent state but to the biological entity that the human being is, then personal immortality seems to vanish. As Aristotle reasons, if the soul is the first actuality of a body with organs, then the question of immortality is immediately solved.1 The soul cannot survive the destruction of that of which it is the first actuality. And though Aristotle emphasizes the reasonableness of saying that, for example, it is the human being who weaves or walks, and not the soul, nevertheless even he repeatedly refers to the soul as the subject of cognitive and affective states. Despite the fact that Aristotle seems to explicitly deny what Plato explicitly affirms, that is, the immortality of the soul, once we consider their account of personal identity, it turns out that their positions are very close indeed. For Plato’s strategy for proving the immortality of the soul is to identify the immortal soul with the subject of intellection. This is clear in Phaedo in the socalled Argument from Recollection, the point of which is that our ability to make certain cognitive judgments in our present embodied state would not be possible if we had not had disembodied cognition of Forms.2 The subject of intellection of Forms is the only subject adduced throughout the course of the 1

See De anima B 1, 413a3–10.

2

See Phaedo 72e3–78b3.

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arguments. It is, after all, hardly surprising that Plato does not attach to the immortal soul properties of subjectivity that would seem to require a mortal body for their instantiation. So, the proof for the immortality of the soul is in effect a proof for the immortality of intellect. Similarly, Aristotle’s rejection of the immortality of the soul must be set alongside his repeated assertions regarding the immortality of intellect and our personal identity with it. Indeed, the metaphysical basis for this, sometimes missed by readers owing to a mistranslation, is that intellect is a genus different from soul and hence the mortality of the latter does not affect the immortality of the former.3 I have been careful to distinguish Plato’s proof(s) for the immortality of the soul from Aristotle’s assertions regarding the immortality of intellect. In fact, Aristotle does not offer an explicit proof for the immortality of intellect. He does, however, offer an argument for the immateriality of intellect along with a highly elliptical and indirect argument for intellect’s immortality.4 But with the postulation of the immortality of intellect, the problem of personal identity once again arises. For the immortal intellect is characterized in such a way by Aristotle that it is difficult to see how the intellect of one person differs from that of another. And if that is the case, the relevance of immortality to us seems dramatically diminished. Further, if Plato’s immortal soul is really Aristotle’s immortal intellect, the identical problem arises for him. In this chapter, I am going to concentrate on Plotinus’ responses to the problem of personal identity in the light of these questions regarding the immortality of the soul or intellect.

8.1

Plotinus’ Arguments for the Immateriality and Separability of the Soul

Ennead IV 7 [2], “On the Immortality of the Soul,” is entirely devoted to the above matters. It is largely concerned to defend the immortality of the soul by demonstrating its immateriality, first against the Stoic claim that the soul is a body, next against the Pythagorean claim that the soul is, 3

4

See De anima B 2, 413b24–7: περὶ δὲ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τῆς θεωρητικῆς δυνάμεως οὐδέν πω φανερόν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔοικε ψυχῆς γένος ἕτερον εἶναι, καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἐνδέχεσθαι χωρίζεσθαι, καθάπερ τὸ ἀΐδιον τοῦ φθαρτοῦ (“about the intellect and the faculty of intellection nothing is clear yet, but it seems that intellect is a genus different from soul, and that it alone can be separated, as the everlasting from the perishable”). The words usually translated as “a different kind of soul” cannot mean this. They must mean “a genus different from soul.” If intellect were a kind (species?) of soul, then it would be mortal since mortality pertains to all things with souls. Additionally, if intellect were a kind of soul, then Aristotle’s claim that we are especially our intellects and that intellect is separable would be completely unconnected to this passage. See De anima Γ 4 and 5.

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though immaterial, a property of a body, in particular a harmonia (attunement), and then against the Peripatetic claim that the soul is the entelecheia or inseparable form of a body. The overall strategy of the treatise is, following that of Plato’s Phaedo, to show that the soul is both immaterial or intelligible and a separable entity. As such, it is both life and the bearer of life to the body. After considering this barrage of arguments, I shall in the next section move on to Plotinus’ account of personal identity and its relation to intellect. Plotinus begins the treatise with the important definitional point that a human being (ἄνθρωπος) is a composition of soul and body. Hence, a proof of the immortality of the soul is definitely not a proof of the immortality of human beings.5 From this, Plotinus draws what is perhaps a precipitous conclusion that in fact the human being is just the soul (ψυχή). And the soul is the self (αὐτός).6 No doubt, Plotinus in redefining a human being is referencing Plato in the Republic who identifies the soul as the “inner human being” (ὁ ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπος).7 It is, of course, a further inference to identify the “inner human being” with the self. As we shall see, a good deal of the ensuing argument is intended to support this identification. Almost half of the treatise is devoted to arguing against Stoics that soul cannot be a body. The assumption is that if soul were a body, then it could not be immortal. This does not mean that Plotinus rejects the claim that the heavenly bodies are everlasting. On the contrary, he accepts this claim, thereby assuming a distinction between immortality and everlastingness. This distinction, however, is not exactly the distinction between eternity and temporality, another important distinction Plotinus makes, as set out in his treatise III 7 [45]. Plotinus, following Plato, assumes that individual souls are in time. So, though as we shall see, eternity has an important role to play in Plotinus’ account of personal identity, the proof for the immortality of the soul is a proof for the immortality of a non-bodily temporal, or better temporalized, entity. Even if the soul can be shown to be a nonbodily or immaterial entity, why must it then be immortal?8 Here Plotinus will be able to appeal to the Final Argument of Phaedo where Plato shows that “soul” is another name for “life” and that, in addition, soul is the entity 5 7 8

6 IV 7 [2], 1.1–7. IV 7 [2], 1.22–5. Cf. I 1 [53], 7.10; IV 4 [28], 18.10–19. See Republic 589a7–b1. Also, Alcibiades I 130c, about the authenticity of which Plotinus had no doubts. The Stoics maintain that the soul is separable from the body, even though it is itself a body. But they maintain that, once separated, it will itself dissipate in time. See SVF (= von Arnim 1903–5) II 790. For Stoic conceptions of immortality see Alex Long’s chapter in this volume.

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that brings life to the body.9 Therefore, life is an intrinsic property of the entity that is soul. It cannot not have it. Therefore, soul is immortal. The battery of arguments against Stoic materialism are of two sorts. The first sort seeks to draw out absurdities following from the Stoics’ own claims, in particular about the nature of living things. The second sort seeks to employ Platonic and Aristotelian principles to refute Stoic claims. It is not always possible to make a clear distinction between the two sorts of argument, and typically elements of each are found in the other. Both sorts of argument aim at showing that a rigorous application of materialism to the question of the explanation for living things is not possible. If the explanation posits an entity that causes something to be alive, then this cannot be a body. If the explanation denies that it is a non-bodily entity that causes life but rather that life is caused by a bodily entity, then the properties of life cannot be explained. So, only a non-bodily entity can explain the life of an embodied living being. Quite clearly, any consideration of Plotinus’ arguments must focus on his use of the term “life” (ζωή). His use of the term follows Aristotle in assigning life to a hierarchy of functions within plants and animals, beginning with nutrition, growth, reproduction, and deterioration and ascending to affectivity and then to cognition, beginning with sense-perception and ending in rational thought. And, like Aristotle, Plotinus locates the highest form of living in the activity of what Aristotle calls the Unmoved Mover and Plotinus calls the hypostasis Intellect.10 Consequently, “life” is an analogous term with the primary analogate being the activity of a nonbodily principle and cause. The discussion of the immortality of the soul is thus set within a hierarchy of life functions, the highest of which is the activity of a non-bodily principle and cause; the importance of this is that the denial of the bodily nature of the soul depends on the life that soul brings being explicable only as derived from its primary analogate. Since the lives of embodied living beings are all, by definition, said to be lives in a diminished or derivative sense, the explanation for life in general and so for soul can only be found in the primary referent of “life.” Similarly, the Stoic or any other materialistic account of soul will, if it acknowledges that psychical functioning is real, need to be able to explain that, namely, the primary referent of “life,” in unequivocal bodily terms. The hierarchy of functions listed above share the property of productivity. Plotinus supposes with common sense that non-living things do not produce, where accretion or conglomeration or addition are not types of 9

See IV 7 [2], 9.7–9, 11.7–14. See Phaedo 102a10–107b10.

10

See Metaphysics Λ 7, 1072b26–28.

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production. The distinction is, roughly, between activity and passivity. The relevance of this for the Stoic critique is obvious. The Stoics posit two principles in the cosmos, a passive and an active principle, the former being identified with matter and the latter being identified with god. The active principle is pneuma, a mixture of heat (fire) and cold (air) which in the appropriate proportions constitute the body that is the soul of a living being.11 So, for the Stoics who do not deny the functional productivity of living things, it must be the active principle that provides the explanation for the productivity. It is not, however, the active principle as body that explains, but its property of tonos or tension which maintains the passive principle in some sort of organic unity.12 Accordingly, life functions must be explained mechanistically, that is, by the expansion and contraction of the pneuma in the living thing. The type of living thing is determined by the proportion of fire and air in it. Different proportions each have a different tonos. In the light of the above, several of Plotinus’ arguments are made clear. If the soul is a body, then it is a three-dimensional solid of a certain magnitude.13 If this is so, then it is not open to the Stoics to say that it is actually a property of the body or active principle, not the body itself, that explains life. But if, then, it is a quality of a body, not the body itself, soul is not a body.14 What if in reply to this the Stoics were to make a terminological adjustment and say instead that the soul is not a body, but bodily, meaning that it is a property or quality of a body? In that case, either the soul is a property of the whole body or a part of it. But the latter is impossible because in that case, the soul would not be the soul of the parts whose quality it is not.15 So, it must be the quality of the entire body. If this is so, then the body, understood as pure extensional quantity, must explain the existence of the soul. But if, as do the Stoics, we say that quality is not reducible to quantity, then this is not possible.16 To take a contemporary example, one which is not entirely outside Plotinus’ conceptual universe, why can we not say that the soul is like the liquidity in water which supervenes upon or is epiphenomenal to the molecules of water which are not themselves liquid? The answer, which is roughly analogous to the answer Plotinus gives for the sorts of examples he adduces, is that liquidity is unproblematically reducible to the properties of the water molecules, specifically the property of not attaching to but 11 13 16

See SVF II 841. 12 See SVF II 441, 444, 450; Nemesius, De natura hominis 70.6–71.4. 14 See SVF II 381. See IV 7 [2], 81.12–17. 15 IV 7 [2], 81.17–23. Cf. supra 5.24–52. Cf. III 5 [50], 1.38; VI 7 [38], 27.18, 23.

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sliding off of other molecules of water when put in proximity to them. But there is nothing about the non-functional or passive principle of matter that the functional properties of a soul can reduce to. Furthermore, as Plotinus points out, either the powers (δυνάμεις) of the soul are quantities, in which case greater powers would have to correspond to greater quantities, or else they belong to something not a body.17 In fact – though Plotinus does not here directly make this point – materialism has a difficult time accounting for powers or potencies in bodily terms.18 Not surprisingly, Plotinus’ most interesting arguments for the immateriality of soul rest not upon the details of Stoic physics or upon their Platonic alternatives, but upon the phenomenology of cognition. Plotinus thinks that sense-perception (αἴσθησις) and thinking (τὸ νοεῖν) in general cannot occur in a body. Thus, the embodiment of the soul for an agent of cognition is not a sort of containment in which the container provides the properties of the contained. It is more correct to say that the soul contains the body where “containment” means “control” just in the way that the pilot controls the ship. Plotinus’ first point is that sense-perception is a process in which we can distinguish between physical sensation and sense-perception proper.19 The former is explicable entirely in physical terms, whether these be Stoic or Epicurean or Peripatetic. But the former would not be part of the process that is sense-perception unless it were distinguished from the latter. The example Plotinus gives is of being in pain and the perception of pain which, while not strictly speaking one of the five senses, is a clear example straightforwardly applicable to ordinary sense-perception.20 The example is chosen I think because it is easy to see both that pains do not occur without the perception of pain and that nevertheless pain and the perception of pain are distinct. In ordinary cases of sense-perception, however, there is an inclination to say that the sensation can occur without the senseperception, but Plotinus would insist that the former without the latter is like an event in the body of which there is no perception at all, such as a slight rise in body temperature. It is because pain and perception of pain are distinct and mutually irreducible that soul cannot be a body. 17 18

19

IV 7 [2], 81.23–8. The latter point is made forcefully in 82 where Plotinus argues, following Aristotle, that although potency precedes actuality in time in the individual, actuality is logically and ontologically prior to potency. Even if the Stoics admitted that the body was in potency to the property or quality that is soul, either this potency would actualize itself, which is impossible, or the potency is a function of an ontologically prior actuality. Cf. 4.14–24. 20 See Emilsson 1988, esp. ch.4. See IV 7 [2], 7; I 1 [53], 7.9–15.

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This last point is frequently denied for two reasons, I believe. First, it is held that if a pain and the perception of pain are mutually entailing that is because they are extensionally equivalent, in which case the claim that they are distinct does not follow. Second, it is held that a pain is not an intentional object. Pains are not things that one perceives. So, the pain and the perception of the pain cannot be distinct as they would be in the case of an intentional object and the perception of that. The first point, however, begs the question by assuming that extensional equivalence means identity. But though extensional equivalence does not, of course, guarantee non-identity, it does not entail identity either. For Plotinus, as well as for Aristotle and Plato, for any complex entity – including immaterial entities – this complexity alone entails that extensional equivalence does not entail identity. For example, what something is and whether it exists are two different questions. And even if there are no things that exist without being of some kind or other and there are no non-existent kinds, for anything that does exist, the above two questions indicate a real distinction in the entity. The second point assumes that if pain is not an intentional object, then the perception of pain and the pain are identical. But Plotinus insists that the perception of pain has as its intentional object not the pain but oneself in a state of pain. That I in a certain state can be the intentional object of my perception only seems odd if it is assumed that the perceiver of the pain and the subject of the pain, which is identical with the perceiver, are material objects. But this is exactly what Plotinus takes the phenomenology of the experience of pain to show to be false. Plotinus argues that in the case of someone who feels a pain in his toe, the Stoics will say that whereas the pain is in the toe, the feeling of the pain is in the commanding faculty of the soul (τὸ ἡγεμονοῦν). But since the soul is a body, it is spatially separate from the toe. So, the passage of the pain from the toe to the commanding faculty must be by a sort of “transmission” (διάδοσις), whereby the pain is relayed from part to part and finally to the commanding faculty. But then the commanding faculty would not feel the pain in the toe, but in itself as conveyed by the closest transmitting part. Leaving aside the dubious physiology, the underlying point is that that which feels the pain or is its subject must be identical with that which is aware of the pain even though the pain and the awareness of the pain are distinct. But this is not possible if the soul, admitted to be the locus of pain, is a body. For the pain would have to be one state (πάθος) of one part of the body and the perception of the pain would have to be another state, necessarily of another part of the body or else the pain and the perception

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of pain would not be distinct. Although the argument here is generalized for anything capable of sense-perception, which means any animal, I am sure that Plotinus is thinking primarily of human sense-perception.21 His confidence that at least in our own cases sensation is different from senseperception proper is based on the self-evident fact that the latter but not the former is usually set immediately within a conceptual framework. For to perceive that one is in pain is normally to categorize the sensation as a pain. Similarly, seeing is distinct from “seeing that” for the latter unlike the former involves a conceptual categorization of the data of the sensation. But if this were a case of the “transmission” of the data of sensation by one subject to the categorizing activity of a distinct subject of perception proper, then I would not perceive that I am in pain nor would I see that I have experienced a vision of Socrates standing before me. The selfreflexivity of all cognitive acts would not be possible in a body. A fortiori, thinking cannot be the act of a body. For assuming that thinking is not sense-perception, its intentional objects are not sensibles, that is, neither bodies nor properties of bodies.22 On the contrary, thinking is of Form universally.23 If this intentional object is a universal or Formtaken-universally, then it cannot be the property of a body or a part of the body, which is particular. And once again, self-reflexivity is required for us to think these intentional objects. For the subject that is informed by the Form and the subject that is aware of the information must be identical. Plotinus offers as the paradigm of thinking the activity of Intellect whose intentional objects are Forms.24 But the principle pertains to all cases of embodied thinking. If thinking of any sort is possible, then the soul, assumed to be the agent of thinking, is not a body. Just as being in pain and being aware of being in pain, though distinct, have identical subjects, so cognizing a Form universally and being aware that one is cognizing a Form universally, though distinct, must have identical subjects. If they did not, the subject that is cognizing the Form 21

22

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Plotinus certainly believes that animals have souls and that their souls are immaterial entities. But he does not believe this on the basis of empirical evidence; rather, it is a conclusion drawn from his general metaphysical principles. See IV 7 [2], 14. IV 7 [2], 8. Plotinus means proper and accidental sensibles in line with Aristotle’s account of senseperception in De anima. The Stoics, SVF II 85, concede that the objects of intellection are τὰ ἀσώματα. Cf. Aristotle De anima Α 3, 407a10–22. Briefly, Form is neither universal nor particular; it is particular in a material object and it is universal as accessed by intellect. It is a mistake that Plotinus does not make to suppose that Platonic Forms are universals. The term “universal” indicates for Plotinus the “internal accusative” of an act of higher cognition. This would include the higher cognition of human beings involved in senseperception, that is, the categorization of sensations. 8.14–17. Cf. V 3 [49], 13.13.

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universally could do so without the putatively different subject being aware of that cognition. In this case, the state of affairs would not be different from one in which A thinks and B is aware that A is thinking but has no idea what A is thinking of. The only way that the subject that is cognizing the Form universally can be identical to the subject that is aware of the cognizing of the Form is if the subject is an immaterial entity. By contrast, in a material entity the supposed property of cognition and the property of awareness of cognition would have to have different subjects. Indeed, the only way to distinguish these properties would be by the different subjects they characterize. Following his rejection of the Stoic materialistic account of the soul, Plotinus turns to a brief discussion of the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul as a harmonia of the body.25 Several of the arguments against this doctrine are repetitions of the arguments against the soul as a property of bodies. I mention it here to raise an important issue regarding the soul’s compositeness when embodied despite its immateriality. Plotinus says that if the soul is a harmonia of a body in the way that a tuning of an instrument stands to the instrument, then there can be no such things as soul-body conflict, just as a tuning cannot be in opposition to the strings that are tuned.26 The reality of soul-body conflict shows that the soul is an entity distinct from the body and if it is not itself a body, then it is an entity of a different sort.27 The sorts of conflicts to which Plotinus is referring are generally acratic and encratic events, when the soul either capitulates to the body or restrains it. But “body” here does not mean an inanimate lump; rather, it refers to the living body as the locus of the appetites that the soul may or may not oppose. So, the obvious question arises as to the relation between the subject of these appetites and the subject who opposes them. Can the soul be opposed to itself or are there two (or more) souls in the one body? The brief answer to this important question, which I cannot here consider at length, is that the state of the soul when embodied is divided.28 The subjects thrown up by appetitive experiences are as ephemeral as those experiences themselves, whereas the subject capable of assenting to or rejecting the appetites of these ephemeral subjects is the real self, the soul in the primary sense. So, multiplicity of subjects as a function of embodiment does not undercut Plotinus’ objections to Stoic materialism, which is 25 27 28

26 4 IV 7 [2], 84. Cf. Phaedo 85e3–86d4. 8 .9–13. Cf. Phaedo 92e4–93a10. Cf. Timaeus 34c4–35a1; Laws X 896c1–3. See the composition of human souls in Timaeus 41d–42d.

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unable to account for self-reflexivity. Nor can it account for the phenomena of psychical conflict, a phenomenon requiring some sort of disunity of the self. Plotinus’ criticism of Aristotle’s doctrine of soul as the primary actuality, entelecheia, of a natural body having life in potency, references the previous criticisms of Stoics and Pythagoreans and adds additional arguments.29 First, Aristotle himself insists that intellect, nous, itself is a kind of ousia, and therefore impassible.30 Furthermore, as we have seen (n.3 above), intellect is a genos or genus different from soul. Consequently, Aristotle contradicts himself if, given that intellect is an ousia and a genos different from soul and separable, he takes intellect to be an entelecheia of a body. But then in what sense are the other psychical faculties an entelecheia? First, as Plotinus points out, according to Aristotle’s definition of soul, soul is not the form of matter, but the form of a particular kind of body.31 So, at least it cannot be the first entelecheia of matter. But as the entelecheia of a kind of body, namely, one with a potency for life, Aristotle must distinguish the form of that body from the form that the soul is supposed to be. Second, if the soul is now a secondary actuality of matter (primary actuality of a kind of body), then it would have to be a quality of the body which has its own quality. In that case, the arguments against soul being a quality raised against the Stoics would apply to Aristotle’s own account.32 Further, if the soul were an entelecheia as a form or quality, there would be no possibility of conflict between reason and appetite.33 Whereas the Stoics deny that such conflicts exist, Aristotle does not, although Plotinus does not think that Aristotle’s account of the soul is the basis for explaining them. If the soul is really the first actuality of a body, then whatever reason decides would be the decision of the entire substance, and no conflict would be possible. In every case, an “all-things-considered” judgment would prevail. This is in fact what the Stoics hold. So, the Peripatetics are led to separate intellect from soul. If, though, the human soul is a rational soul, then the problem reappears for the rational soul. 29 31

32 33

30 IV 7 [2], 85. See Aristotle, De anima Β 1, 412a27–8. See De anima Α 4, 408b19–20. IV 7 [2], 8.5–11. Whenever Plotinus refers antagonistically to Aristotle’s account of matter, he insists on distinguishing prime matter, that is, unqualified matter, which is by definition without properties, from proximate matter, which is by definition one element of a substance with properties. See IV 7 [2], 81.12–17. See IV 7 [2], 85.11–14. At lines 23–5, Plotinus adds that even the faculty of appetite cannot be the entelecheia of a body. For souls desire things other than food and drink, that is, they possess nonbodily desires. The implication is that these desires could not be the desires of the bodies of which the soul is the putative entelecheia. Presumably, these desires include desires that the desires of the body should not be authoritative in action.

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Psychical conflict is, for Plotinus, conflict within the soul, not literally between the soul and the body, since the latter is always understood to be a living body the life of which is supplied by the soul.34 Hence, the embodied soul must be divided in some sense if psychical conflict is to be explained; it cannot be an entelecheia. But this division must be a function of embodiment alone; otherwise, immortality would not be possible. The relation between the disembodied soul and the embodied soul is the central focus of this chapter, especially the next section. Here, though, it should be stressed that the precise dispute between Plotinus and Aristotle is not concerning the immortality of intellect or our real identity with intellect, claims which they explicitly share. The dispute concerns the relation between our souls and our intellects. Plotinus thinks that Aristotle has no way to connect these two so long as the soul is conceived of as the entelecheia of a certain kind of body and the intellect is conceived of as a separate substance of some sort. Hence, Aristotle has no way to individuate separate intellect, especially no way to do so on the basis of the souls which somehow have access to these intellects.35 In the remainder of the treatise, Plotinus turns to his positive account of the soul now assumed to be an immaterial or incorporeal entity.36 Since soul is life and the entity that provides life, its living existence is a se, not ab alio.37 Necessarily, therefore, the existence of the living body is derived. Plotinus says that soul is the principle (ἀρχή) of life.38 But he also frequently asserts that Intellect is the paradigm of life.39 There is in fact no contradiction. While Soul is the principle of embodied life, Intellect is the principle of life itself. And, we should add, the One is the principle of being, though it is not the principle of complex being, that is, essential (living) being. Again, Intellect is the principle of this. So, there is a strict parallel between One and Intellect and Intellect and Soul in that in each case the latter is a principle of a restricted, limited, and inferior version of the former.40 By a sort of metaphysical transitivity, the One is to Intellect and Soul as Intellect is to Soul. This important distinction will allow 34 35

36 39 40

See III 2 [47], 7.23–5; III 9 [13], 3.2–4; IV 3 [27], 22.8–10, 4.14–21; IV 7 [2], 2.20–1; VI 7 [38], 26.7–12. Plotinus argues that we do indeed have such access. See I 1 [53], 8.1–8. We here below possess Forms “unfolded” and separated; in intellect, we possess them altogether. Note that “we” is used ambiguously for the subject of human thinking and the subject of undescended intellection. At III 4 [15], 3.21–7 there is a similar ambiguity in the use of “we.” See Rist 1967. 38 See IV 7 [2], 9–15. 37 See IV 7 [2], 9.1–5. See IV 7 [2], 9.12–13. See I 4 [46], 3.33–4; V 4 [7], 2.44–5; VI 6 [21], 18.12–19; VI 7 [38], 17.10–11, 31.1–4; VI 9 [9], 2.24–5. See Caluori 2015: 101–11. Thus, the principle of being: the principle of essential being: the principle of life: the principle of embodied life.

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Plotinus to say, on the one hand, that there is a radical break between the intellect or intellectual soul and the non-intellectual soul and its lowest part, and, on the other hand, that there is continuity in all living things. The principle of embodied life is nested within a hierarchy of principles, concluding in the only logical stopping point, a first principle of all that is unqualifiedly simple and that somehow contains everything within it. The fact that Soul is nested within Intellect will provide the metaphysical basis for Plotinus’ response to Aristotle’s unsatisfactory account of personal identity.41 The human soul acquires imperfections and accretions as a result of embodiment.42 It is important to note that these are impediments to the recovery of one’s true identity.43 This is so because appetites and emotion, in general, states of the embodied living thing, all generate ephemeral subjects along with the states themselves as well as intentional objects. The principal impediment to the recovery of identity is confusion or occlusion of the true subject. In fact, when one abstracts from these transient subjects and their states, one differs but a “little” from an intellect.44 Plotinus distinguishes the immateriality of the soul from its immortality, but argues that the former entails the latter.45 The argument is that, though the soul is composite – as indeed is everything other than the One – it does not have the sort of compositeness that necessitates destructibility. The necessity of destructibility follows from destructibility being the contrary of generation. If something was generated, it is at least possible that it be destroyed by a process the opposite of that according to which it was generated as some composite or other. Since it has been demonstrated that soul is not a quantity or a body having parts outside of parts, it cannot be generated.46 All Plotinus needs is the premise of the possibility of destructibility for all and only bodies in order to conclude that the nonbodily is indestructible. The suggestion that, granted that all bodies are destructible, it does not follow that the non-bodily is indestructible, meets Plotinus’ reply that if the supposed destructibility is not quantitative, that is, the deconstruction of the quantity of the body, but qualitative, then this 41

42 44 46

Plotinus is thus committed to a “top-down” metaphysics according to which no version of supervenience, emergentism, or epiphenomenalism can explain how the immaterial or living can arise from the material or non-living. A “bottom-up” metaphysical explanation for life and immateriality is mentioned by Alexander of Aphrodisias De anima 24.18–24, 26.26–30. See Horn 2012. 43 See IV 7 [2], 10.7–11. Cf. III 6 [26], 5.13–29. See Caluori 2015: 146–51. 45 See IV 7 [2], 10.19–21, 32–7, 13.1–3; V 1 [10], 3.12. See IV 7 [2], 12.12–20. Naturally, Plotinus does not countenance the possibility of generation ex nihilo for the soul, or for anything else.

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would require that the substance of the soul undergo this qualitative change. But then the soul would have to be matter to its form – life – whereas soul is not composed in this way.47 If soul, separate from body, is really just intellect, then how does soul acquire a body at all?48 His terse answer is that it “acquires” (προσλάβῃ) desire.49 This claim is impossible to understand outside of the larger metaphysical context. For Plotinus, every principle has an “internal” and an “external” activity (ἐνέργεια).50 The basis for this metaphysical claim is simply that the first principle of all, the Good or the One, is essentially diffusive (bonum est diffusivum sui).51 The premises for the argument that concludes with the diffusiveness of the Good are that the Good is the source of the being of everything that is and that it itself is nothing but unlimited or infinite activity.52 So, there is nothing that could be that is not. We determine what could be from what is (ab esse ad posse). So, if there is such a thing as this cosmos, then we know that, ultimately, the cause for the being of this is the Good or One and that there could not not be a cosmos. For if, per impossibile, there were no cosmos, then the Good would be grudging or withholding or defective in some way. But that is impossible. Similarly, if human beings – uniquely individual human beings – exist, then they can possibly exist. And the possibility is a function of that which is found in Intellect, or more specifically, in the undescended intellects of individuals. Hence, the desire to be embodied is a desire implicit in each undescended intellect. The desire is to be an embodiment of that which the undescended intellect is paradigmatically.

47

48 50

51 52

See IV 7 [2], 12.16–20. One supposes that Plotinus might also have referred to his earlier argument that soul is both substance and life, in which case life can no more be separated from it by some sort of change than oddness can be separated from three. See IV 7 [2], 13. 49 See IV 7 [2], 13.4, 5 (τῇ προσθήκῃ τῆς ὀρέξεως). For the important distinction between “internal” and “external” activities, see II 9 [33], 8.22–5; IV 5 [29], 7.15–17, 51–5; V 1 [10], 6.34; V 3 [49], 7.23–4; V 4 [7], 2.27–33; V 9 [5], 8.13–15; VI 2 [43], 22.24–9; VI 7 [38], 18.5–6, 21.4–6, 40.21–4. For the specific employment of this principle to the relation between soul and embodied living being, see I 1 [53], 4.13–16; IV 3 [27], 10.31–5; IV 4 [28], 14.1–10, 18.4–9, 29.1–15; IV 5 [29], 6.28–32, 7.17–18. For the embodied expression of soul as a “shadow” and “image” of the soul itself, see IV 4 [28], 14.1–10, 18.4–9, 29.1–5. Also, I 1 [53] 12.24; IV 3 [27], 27.7–8. See Noble 2013; Caluori 2015: 186–92. The Platonic provenance of this is Republic 508b6–7, where Plato says that the power of the Good “flows out” (ἐπίρρυτον) as from an upended treasure trove. On Plotinus’ use of the term ἐνέργεια for the One see V 4 [7], 2.28–39, esp. 35, συνούσης ἐνεργείας; V 1 [10], 6.38; VI 7 [38], 18.6: παρ᾽ ἐκείνου [the Good] ἐνεργείας; VI 8 [39], 20.9–15, esp. 14–15: εἰ οὖν τελειότερον ἡ ἐνέργεια τῆς οὐσίας, τελειότατον δὲ τὸ πρῶτον, πρῶτον ἂν ἐνέργεια εἴη; VI 8 [38], 12.22–37, esp. 25, ὅτι μὴ ἕτερον ἐνέργεια καὶ αὐτός and 36, ἢ γὰρ ἐνέργεια μόνον ἢ οὐδ᾽ ὅλως ἐνέργεια; VI 8 [38], 13.5–9.

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So, here we finally have the tools with which to address the question of personal identity.

8.2 Plotinus on Personal Identity Plotinus wrote a brief treatise V 7 [18] titled by Porphyry “On the Question of Whether There are Ideas of Individuals.” The treatise begins with a clear statement of an affirmative answer to this question. Is there an Idea of each individual? In fact, there is, if I and everyone else have a means of ascent to the intelligible, and the principle for each of us is in the intelligible world. If Socrates, that is, the soul of Socrates is eternal, there will be a Socrates Itself,53 insofar as each individual is its soul and, as was just said, the principle for each of us is in the intelligible world.54 If the principle does not always exist, but the soul that was at one time Socrates comes to be different individuals at different times, say, Pythagoras or someone else, the individual soul will no longer be in the intelligible world. If, though, the soul of each contains the expressed principles55 of all those it will successively enter, then, again, all will be in the intelligible world. And we do say that such expressed principles as the cosmos contains, each soul also contains. If, then, the cosmos contains the expressed principles not only of human beings but also of individual animals, so, too, does the soul. There will be, then, an unlimited number of expressed principles, unless the cosmos is recycled periodically, in which case the unlimitedness will reach a limit when the identical things recur.56

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The word Αὐτοσωκράτης refers to a Form of Socrates, but it is not yet clear what the inferential connection is between the eternal soul that is Socrates and this Form. Cf. V 9 [5], 12.1–4. That is, the undescended intellect. Cf. III 4 [15], 3.24; IV 3 [27], 5.6, 12.3–4; IV 7 [2], 10.32–3, 13.1–3; IV 8 [6], 4.31–5, 8.8; VI 4 [22], 14.16–22; VI 7 [38], 5.26–9, 17.26–7; VI 8 [39], 6.41–3. See Chiaradonna 2005. Correcting the typographical error λόλους to λόγους. V 7 [18], 1.1–14 (my translation). At V 9 [5] 12.1–4, Plotinus seems to contradict this claim, saying, “But if there exists in the intelligible world a Form of Human Being, that is, of Human Being qua rational or craftsman, and of the crafts which are generated from Intellect, it is necessary to say that Forms of universals exist: not of Socrates, but of Human Being.” But the next sentence should give us pause: “We should examine whether in regard to Human Being there is also a Form of an individual human being.” In other words, the necessity of the existence of a Form of Human Being does not entail a Form of an individual human being. That is a separate question, answered in the affirmative by V 7 [18]. Blumenthal 1993 takes the passage at V 9 to contradict V 7 and thus to indicate that Plotinus was ambivalent about Ideas of individuals. Igal 1973: 93–5 showed that this passage, properly punctuated, need only be taken to mean that given the existence of Forms of things taken universally, the existence of Forms of human beings remains a question to be explored. In any case, the context of this passage indicates that the individuality here considered is that of the

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As we have already seen, the soul of Socrates, when separated from the body, differs “little” from an intellect. From this alone, it does not follow that there is an Idea of Socrates. For it remains possible that all that is distinctive about Socrates pertains to his embodied soul, not his disembodied one. But if we add the principle that all that is in the sensible world is a rational expression of what is eternally present in the intelligible world, then it would seem to follow that Socrates is “there.” Does this not, however, prove too much? Does it not require Forms for all individual living beings, including plants and animals? Not necessarily, since differences among these may be accounted for by matter.57 Still, the problem remains of what this supposed eternal personal identity is. The problem is made all the more difficult by the fact that the relevant principle – that all that is contained here is there – is supplemented by the principle that “everything is in everything,” that is, each Form or Idea contains implicitly all the rest.58 So, the putative unique undescended intellect of Socrates is cognitively identical with all the Forms. This is the identical situation for the undescended intellect of Plato. So, the logos of Plato is in the undescended intellect of Socrates just as it is in the undescended intellect of Socrates. What, then, is unique about each? It seems that in principle there cannot be anything unique about the content of each intellect.59 What then becomes of personal identity? And yet one would think that the theory of Forms requires that each Form be a “one,” that is, a unique ousia, whatever its connections to other Forms might be.60 The prior question, of course, is what personal identity is supposed to be in a Platonic context. The beginning of an answer must be Plotinus’ claim that “we” (ἡμεῖς) are found in our embodied discursive intellects and what extends from this point “upwards.”61 I take it that “upwards” indicates the identity between the embodied discursive intellect and the undescended intellect of the individual. The discursive intellect of Socrates is a logos of his undescended intellect.62 More precisely, Socrates is the subject of the

57 58 59 60 61 62

concrete sensible composite, not of the soul alone. There could not be a Form of the former insofar as it is at least in part dependent on matter for its existence. At V 7 [18], 3, Plotinus allows that it is not clear if, say, a litter of animals have one Idea or many. See IV 7 [2], 10.32–7; V 8 [4], 11; VI 7 [38], 12.4–19. This would preclude Plotinus availing himself of the Stoic doctrine of ἰδίως ποιόν, the unique characteristic of each individual. See SVF II 395. That the Form is one does not mean it is an individual in the sense that it cannot be in many things at once. See VI 5 [23], 2.1–3.15, 11.30–6. See I 1 [53], 7.16–18; IV 4 [28], 18.11–15. Cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Ι 4, 1166a16–17. See IV 8 [6], 1.1–11 where Plotinus identifies his own ascent to and descent from the intelligible world as between intellect and the subject of discursive reasoning (εἰς λογισμὸν ἐκ νοῦ). Also, V 3

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faculty of discursive intellection. Supposedly, just as this sensible world looks and acts exactly the way a sensible world must look and act if it is to be the unique copy of the Living Being used as a model by the Demiurge, so Socrates looks and acts the way an embodied Socrates must look and act.63 What is distinctive about the Idea of Socrates is, then, not distinctive about the Idea as such but about what such an Idea will appear to be when it is instantiated in Socrates. There is thus a remarkable inversion of the idea that the desire for immortality is naturally a desire for the immortality of this sensible composite or at least whatever the sensible composite regards as the content of its identity. For the idea is the elimination of all that the sensible composite could possibly regard as constituting its identity, especially given the fact that it considers the question from the point of view of the embodied subject.64 What could I aim to be other than what I consider myself to be, where this “I” could only be the subject of embodied discursive reasoning? Perhaps I could aim to be a better version of myself, but could I aim to be other than what I conceive myself to be now? Plotinus views philosophy as the activity in which one is best able to recover one’s true identity. In I 3 [20], he argues that philosophy first gives its practitioners confidence in the existence of the immaterial.65 Then, it leads them in the direction of unity, that is, in the direction of the first principle of all.66 Contemplation of this can certainly be repeated among intellects indefinitely, but it cannot be varied. The practice of philosophy seems directed to the extirpation of personal identity insofar as this is conceived from the perspective of the embodied self. Paradoxically, the motive for engaging in philosophy thus described seems to belong more to something that we are not than to something we are.67 The slogan “losing oneself in order to gain oneself” is particularly apposite in characterizing Plotinus’ exhortation to philosophy. But the Plotinian interpretation of this slogan is neither Christian nor Buddhist. It is not the former because the ideal self is not embodied; it is not the latter, because the undescended intellect is definitely a self, although divested of any idiosyncrasies of embodiment. Disembodied personal identity is, for Plotinus, found within

63 64

65

[49], 3.23–9. See D’Ancona 2002 for an interpretation of Forms of individuals and the undescended intellect that is substantially identical to the one presented here. See Wagner 2002a, esp. 300. At IV 8 [6], 8.9–11 Plotinus says that our desires are present in our desiderative faculty but only known to us when we apprehend them by an inner awareness or by discursive reasoning or by both. It would seem, though, that this apprehension inclines us to identify ourselves with the newly discovered subject of desire. 66 67 See I 3 [20], 3.5–7. See I 3 [20], 4.18. See Remes 2007: 252–352.

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a community of intellects all the members of which are contemplating the entirety of intelligible reality. If the soul separated from the body differs at all from the undescended intellect, then it does so by retaining the effects of some of its previous bodily states.68 Memories are definitely not among these.69 At this point, one might speculate that the state of the soul once having rid itself of any bodily accretions is the moment when the soul desires to be nothing other than the intellect with which it is eternally identical. Any soul that desired anything but this would presumably be reincarnated, having failed to recover its identity. For Plotinus, and for Platonists generally, the main task of philosophy is to seek out an identity of which an embodied person can at best be imperfectly aware. It is difficult to imagine how the abstruse metaphysical could otherwise be connected to the practical and personal. In the last words of the Enneads (in Porphyry’s edition), Plotinus offers his own understanding of Plato’s famous imperative in Theaetetus: “assimilation to god as much as possible” (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν).70 For Plotinus, this amounts to “the refuge of a solitary in the solitary” (φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον).71 As in Phaedo, the proof for the immortality of the soul is the philosophical beginning to the recovery of the “solitary” self.

Bibliography von Arnim, H. 1903–5. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Fragments of the Early Stoics), 3 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, with vol. 4, indexes, by M. Adler, 1924. Blumenthal, H. 1993. “Did Plotinus believe in Ideas of individuals?” in his Soul and Intellect: Studies in Plotinus and Later Neoplatonism. Aldershot: Variorum: 61–80. Caluori, D. 2015. Plotinus on the Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Canone, E. (ed.) 2005. Per una storia del concetto di mente. Florence: Olschki. Chiaradonna, R. 2005. “La dottrina dell’anima non discesa in Plotino e la conoscenza degli intelligibili,” in Canone (ed.): 27–62. D’Ancona, C. 2002. “To bring back the divine in us to the divine in all: Vita Plotini 2, 26–27 once again,” in Kobusch and Erler (eds.): 517–65. Emilsson, E. 1988. Plotinus on Sense-Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 68

69

See IV 7 [2], 14.8–14. Here Plotinus is acknowledging the existence of the tripartite embodied soul which really does express our identity under the unusual condition of embodiment. When disembodied, traces of embodied life can still be detected. See Plato Phaedo 81cff. on the “bodily element” (σωματοειδές) that remains with the soul when separated from the body. 70 71 See IV 4 [28], 1.1–2, 4.14–20, 5.11–12. Theaetetus 176b1. VI 9 [9] 11, 51.

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Horn, C. 2012. “Aspects of biology in Plotinus,” in Wilberding and Horn (eds.): 214–28. Igal, J. 1973. “Observaciones al texto de Plotino,” Emerita 41: 75–98. Kobusch, T. and Erler, M. (eds.) 2002. Metaphysik und Religion: zur Signatur des Spätantiken Denkens. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur. Noble, C. 2013. “How Plotinus’ soul animates his body: the argument for the soultrace at Ennead 4. 4.18.1–9,” Phronesis 58: 249–79. Remes, P. 2007. Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the “We”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rist, J. 1967. “Integration and the undescended soul in Plotinus,” American Journal of Philology 88: 410–22. Wagner, M. 2002a. “Plotinus, nature, and the scientific spirit,” in Wagner (ed.): 277–329. (ed.) 2002b. Neoplatonism and Nature: Studies in Plotinus’ Enneads. Albany: SUNY Press. Wilberding, J. and Horn, C. (eds.) 2012. Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

chapter 9

Truth and Immortality in Augustine’s Soliloquies and De Immortalitate Animae Sebastian Gertz

9.1

Introduction

Our ability to make use of abstract concepts in everyday reasoning and to discover general truths through a process of deduction from first principles deeply impressed ancient thinkers. It is the cornerstone of one of Plato’s most celebrated teachings, the theory of recollection, which states that all learning consists in recovering innate knowledge that has become forgotten over time. For Plato, knowledge of a priori truths cannot have been acquired at any particular point during our lifetimes: we require little instruction to understand the necessity of elementary logical and mathematical truths (“Everything is equal to itself ”) and, with some moderate coaxing, are able to derive other truths on their basis (“Nothing is greater or lesser than itself ”). Quite when and how our souls do acquire such knowledge, Plato does not say, beyond suggesting that it cannot simply be at birth, since, paradoxically, we would then forget our knowledge as soon as we acquire it! In dialogues such as the Phaedo and the Meno, Socrates and his interlocutors agree that the soul’s ability to “recollect,” in the special sense of bringing to awareness prenatal knowledge that has previously been forgotten, demonstrates that it must have existed prior to the physical body into which it enters when a human being (a compound of body and soul) is born.1 As the example of Platonic recollection shows, therefore, what the soul can know may serve to guide us toward an understanding of its nature. In particular, if the soul carries with it knowledge that it could never have acquired while present in a body, it follows that a soul is the kind of being 1

See Meno 80d–86c and Phaedo 72e–78b. I leave aside here the question whether Socrates supposes that souls have innate, and not only prenatal, knowledge. For a case against this view, see Fine 2014, ch. 5.

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that can exist independently of the body for at least some period of time. It is tempting to think that once it can be established that the soul must have some limited preexistence separate from the body, some conclusions about the possibility of its independent existence after the body perishes could also be drawn. This, in fact, is very much the situation we face in Plato’s Meno, where Socrates argues that the soul must always exist because it possesses knowledge both when someone is an embodied human being (or “a man,” in his parlance) and when they are not. Yet the argument from recollection only shows that there is a time at which humans have knowledge without being embodied (namely, before birth), not that at all times at which they are not embodied, they also have knowledge (they might perish after death and so be neither human beings nor carriers of innate truths). Therefore, we should not follow Socrates’ conclusion that “if the truth about reality is always within our soul, then the soul will be immortal” (86b1–2). Even if it could be shown that the soul can preexist the body and that it has had its knowledge within itself for the whole of past time, it is a fallacy to infer on that basis alone that it will continue to exist upon separating from its union with the body, as would surely be required by any claim to its “immortality,” i.e. its ability to outlast death and possibly to exist for an indefinite amount of time.2 Plato may have been well aware of the fallacy, which promptly leads the eager Meno astray; elsewhere in the dialogues, little attempt is made to draw conclusions about the post-mortem fate of the soul from its capacity for knowledge.3 For this reason, I suggest that Plato’s confidence that the soul is immortal is grounded not in epistemological concerns, but instead rests on his understanding of cosmology and metaphysics. Accordingly, Plato’s two most sophisticated and serious attempts to prove immortality take as their point of departure the soul’s ability to initiate motion (in the Phaedrus) or a more general investigation of metaphysical causes (in the Phaedo), rather than appealing to the soul’s ability to reason deductively or to judge sensible particulars by transcendental standards in the realm of Ideas.4

2 3

4

By insisting that the truth is always in our soul, Socrates seems to intend the strong claim that the soul not only never dies but also always exists, but I do not wish to press this issue here. Note that Meno embraces the conclusion of Socrates’ argument (“the soul is immortal”) but admits that he is unable to offer a rational justification (“I think you’re right, Socrates, but I don’t know how”), which may serve to illustrate his philosophical temperament as well as cautioning the reader not to endorse the immortality thesis too hastily. See esp. Phaedrus 245c–d and Phaedo 106c–107a.

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It is against the background I have sketched thus far that we can appreciate Augustine’s own distinctive contribution to the Platonic tradition. Unlike Plato, Augustine makes the soul’s special relationship to abstract truth the centerpiece of his demonstration of immortality. Over the course of the second book of his Soliloquies and the unfinished De Immortalitate Animae, he aims to show that individual souls capable of reasoning are immortal, both in the narrow sense that each soul can never come to be “dead” and in the wider sense that there is nothing whatsoever that could bring the existence of the soul – and therefore its life – to an end.5 According to this argument, the soul (animus/anima) cannot perish because it acts as the “carrier of truth”6 (vehiculum veritatis), that is to say, because it contains knowledge of a structured body of timeless truths (disciplina), for example geometry or arithmetic. The relevant kind of “immortality” undergoes an important shift in De Immortalitate Animae: Augustine begins by arguing that the soul must be immortal by nature because the very existence of eternal truths depends on their being present in some subject, namely rational souls. At a second stage, however, the focus shifts from “essential immortality” to “acquired immortality”: instead of soul being the “carrier” of truth, the soul and truth stand in a relationship (coniunctio) of ontological dependence, with the truth giving being (and thus immortality) to the soul.7 In this contribution, I will leave to one side the vexed question of Augustine’s sources and supposed reliance on Plotinus or Porphyry through a Latin translation or some doxographical presentation of Neoplatonic thought; my main focus will instead be on the argument 5

6 7

Although the question is not explicitly raised, nothing in Soliloquies or De Immortalitate Animae would rule out the possibility that souls can preexist any particular body that they animate. The alternative to preexistence, that each soul comes to be created in time at the moment of conception or birth, would in fact be incompatible with the core argument as Augustine presents it: the truths of geometry, for example, presumably have no beginning in past time and no end in future time; therefore, if these truths exist and can only exist in a subject, the subject they exist in cannot have come to be in time or cease to exist. I am borrowing the expression vehiculum veritatis from Wolfskeel 1977: 1; it is not, to my knowledge, used by Augustine. Note that when speaking of the soul’s “acquired immortality,” one should not assume that the immortality in question is in fact acquired at some particular point in time. In this chapter, “acquired immortality” is better understood to describe a relation of ontological dependency, where some entity, e.g. the soul, depends for its continued existence on the activity of some more powerful cause, e.g. real being or the truth. In his later thinking about the bodily resurrection, Augustine moves away from this timeless and hierarchical conception of the relationship between different levels of being; see, for instance, De Civ. Dei XXII.16, where he sets forth the notion that we achieve immortality through conformity with Christ, just as Christ had made himself conform to us by assuming mortality.

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itself.8 I argue that on either construal of the relationship between truth and the soul, Augustine’s proof of immortality faces serious objections. As we will see, if the truth exists in the soul as in a subject, the soul needs to be an unmoved mover; and if the soul and the truth are independent substances, the soul must be impervious to any kind of change that could destroy it. But De Immortalitate Animae fails to demonstrate both that the soul is an unmoved mover and that the soul is imperishable in its nature. In my conclusion, I offer a diagnosis of this double failure. I should say at the outset that Augustine’s conception of immortality in Book 2 of the Soliloquies and the De Immortalitate Animae is thoroughly impersonal.9 His demonstration, if successful, would show only that the rational soul is capable of outlasting death; it says nothing about whether anyone could survive death with all the varied characteristics that we customarily associate with persons, such as the ability to form memories, to have attitudes toward the world, or to relate to the past, present, and future in distinctive ways. In a different context, and given different aims, Augustine may have proceeded to equip his readers with a richer conception of the immortal life, where the distinguishing features of each individual person are in some ways preserved or perhaps transfigured. But in the context of De Immortalitate Animae, Augustine is operating with what we might call a thin description of rational souls: the only two features pertinent to his demonstration are that (i) rational souls are capable of animating a body and (ii) they are able to think with some logical consistency.10 Even when Augustine brings up the question of fearing death at the end of Book 2 of Soliloquies, he is not primarily concerned with the question whether his life in all its individuality will come to an end; instead, he is afraid of death only insofar as it may threaten to erase his memory of “all things and of truth itself” (rerum omnium et ipsius veritatis): AUGUSTINE: I cannot emphasize enough how much this evil is to be feared. For of what sort will eternal life be, or what death would not be preferable to it, if the soul only lives as we see it living in a new-born child, 8 9

10

For an important recent contribution to our understanding of Augustine’s use of Neoplatonic source materials, particularly Porphyry’s Isagoge, see Tornau 2017. Compare Lloyd Gerson’s chapter in this volume for Plotinus’ attempt to ground personal identity in the intelligible realm, by admitting Forms of individuals. Augustine, in his later work, countenances the possibility that the souls of the blessed in the heavenly city may retain some intellectual knowledge (scientia rationalis) of their past tribulations, but insists that the memory of their own lived experience will be “quite blotted out” (penitus deleantur) (see De Civ. Dei XXII.30). Cf. De Quantitate Animae 13.22, which defines “soul” (animus) as “a kind of substance that participates in reason and is fit to rule the body” (substantia quaedam rationis particeps regendo corpori adcommodata).

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Although the passage leaves open the precise scope of “all things,” which could in principle include life events and personal memories, we will soon see that the argument of De Immortalitate Animae addresses a more specific question: is there a kind of death for the soul that could rupture its connection to eternal and unchanging truth, such as it is able to recollect when engaging in a priori reasoning?12 On the account Augustine will go on to give, it transpires that death is nothing fearful, not because dying is compatible with possessing the full gambit of mental traits that make a person, but because it does not necessarily or irrevocably lead to a state of ignorance about intelligible reality. The argument, in short, aims to show that the soul’s power to contemplate its innate knowledge and thereby to understand objective reality at the most fundamental level outlasts death – and nothing more.

9.2

The Immortality Argument in Context

Before looking more closely at Augustine’s core argument for immortality, it is worth recalling how it fits into the wider context of Soliloquies, where its main premises are explored and defended. As part of his inquiry into God and the soul in Book 1, Augustine examines what it means to know anything true at all, and it is in this context that the subject of immortality first arises (chapters 28–30). On the account that Augustine defends in chapters 27–8, “truth” (veritas) is to be distinguished from “true” (verum) and has priority over the latter, in the sense that the many “true” (or, as we would say, “genuine”) things in the world owe their common property to the truth, which itself does not depend on them. We might balk at the idea that being “true” should attach to objects, rather than to statements or thoughts about them, but Augustine’s main thought here, that there are different degrees of reality, from things that stand in a relation of ontological dependence to entities that hold some kind of explanatory priority over anything that participates in them, will be familiar to any reader of 11

12

Non potest satis dici, quantum hoc malum metuendum sit. Qualis enim erit illa aeterna vita vel quae mors non ei praeponenda est, si sic vivit anima, ut videmus eam vivere in puero mox nato? ut de illa vita nihil dicam, quae in utero agitur; non enim puto esse nullam. Here and in the following, I will use Watson 1990 as the basis for my translation. For a different interpretation of this passage, see Krylow 2014: 61, who argues that the end of Soliloquies 2 “suggests Augustine’s actual intention and concern in De Immortalitate Animae was to demonstrate a personal immortality.”

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Plato. To illustrate this point, we can take any particular thing, say the tree in my back yard, and suppose that it perishes; in this case, a genuinely existing thing could have ceased to be, but the fact that it has perished still remains true. Likewise, even if the totality of all existing things came to perish, the truth would still exist, since it would still be true that the world had come to perish.13 The upshot of Augustine’s argument in Soliloquies 1, then, is that truth transcends the changing things of the world of sense and does not perish with them. But if the truth is not in particular things, then where does it exist? This way of putting the question may strike us as odd, especially since Augustine himself readily agrees that the truth cannot be located in space: it is not, after all, perceived simply by the senses but requires intellectual judgment.14 Presumably, if the truth must exist somewhere to exist at all, and if it cannot exist in space, some other meaning must be given to the question “where is the truth?” Book 1 of Soliloquies does not probe more deeply into what could be meant by saying that the truth must exist somewhere; it leaves off with the negative conclusion that the truth, wherever it may be found, cannot be in perishable things, and that if truth exists, it must be among those entities that are not subject to death and destruction. It will fall to Book 2 to connect this insight with an investigation into the nature of the soul. In a brief passage on the proper methodology for his enquiry, Augustine identifies the following three questions, in order of priority: (1) Does the soul exist forever? (2) Does the soul live forever? (3) Does the soul always have knowledge?15 Behind this threefold division of questions stands the Neoplatonic triad of Being, Life, and Intellect, with which Augustine will have been well acquainted through his study of the libri Platonicorum, that is, the works of Porphyry and possibly those of Plotinus.16 Apart from being a testimony to the grip of Neoplatonic thought on Augustine at the stage of writing Soliloquies and De Immortalitate Animae, the three questions neatly 13 15

16

Cf. Soliloquies 2.28, pp. 82.21–83.3. 14 See Soliloquies 1.29. Soliloquies 2.1–2, p. 47.15–20: “REASON. If therefore we prove that we will live forever, it will also follow that we will exist forever. AUGUSTINE. Yes, that will follow. R. So there will remain the question of knowledge. A. The proper order of progress as I see it is very clear and straightforward.” (R. Si igitur probaverimus semper nos esse victuros, sequetur etiam semper futuros. A. Sequetur. R. Restabit quaerere de intellegendo. A. Manifestissimum ordinem video atque brevissimum.) For a remote ancestor of the triad of being, life and intellect, see Plato Sophist 248c–249d, and cf. e.g. Plotinus Enneads 1.6.7.11–12; 5.4.2.43–4; 5.6.6.20–2. See also Majercik 1992 for the uses of this triad in Gnostic circles.

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separate a range of philosophical issues with any conception of soul as immortal being. Demonstrating the bare existence of souls, for instance, tells us little about what kind of existence souls lead (whether in conjunction with bodies or separately by themselves); they could be no more than inert reflections of the body, much as shadows acquire a derivative existence from physical objects. The imperishability of souls, therefore, should be distinguished from their immortality, where the term “immortality” describes their particular way of existing as essentially living beings. And finally, imperishability and even immortality do not guarantee that souls will continue to live a life worth having; as we have seen in the passage quoted from the end of Soliloquies 2 (text to n.11 above), Augustine is concerned that the immortal life may be one of perpetual ignorance, such that the separation of the soul from the body could be rationally feared insofar as it might deprive us of the intrinsic good of knowledge. The threefold agenda above is at best loosely followed in the remainder of Book 2, which grapples at length with philosophical conundrums such as the nature of deception and falsehood that at first sight bear little direct relevance to the central question of truth and its location in the soul. In particular, the meandering discussion of whether the source of falsehood lies in being like or unlike the truth appears to contribute little of philosophical importance to Augustine’s account of disciplina in the later portion of Book 2. Its main conclusion, that there is a kind of falsehood that “strives towards being and yet does not exist” (17, p. 67.19), however, helps to bring out more clearly that the inquiry of Soliloquies aims at a kind of truth that always appears true and never false – unlike, say, mirror images or artistic imitations, which mix together truth and falsehood (falsehood, because they represent what they are not, and truth, because they genuinely are something, namely reflections or imitations of something). Unambiguous truth, Augustine will go on to argue, can only be found in disciplina, that is, a structured body of knowledge; we find its fullest characterization in the following passage: Indeed, no form of discipline occurs to me where there aren’t definitions and divisions and processes of reasoning which have carried out in its entirety this task by which it is called a discipline, determining what each thing is, attributing what belongs to it without confusion of the parts, and making sure that no property is omitted and nothing extraneous is included. (Soliloquies 2.20, p. 73.1–5)17 17

nec ulla mihi occurrit cuiusvis facies disciplinae, in qua non definitiones ac divisiones et ratiocinationes, dum quid quidque sit declaratur, dum sine confusione parti sua cuique redduntur, dum nihil praetermittitur proprium, nihil adnumeratur alienum, totum hoc ipsum, quo disciplina dicitur, egerint.

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While disciplina encompasses a range of possible subject matters, such as grammar and geometry, the study of dialectic (the “art of disputation” or disciplina disputandi, as Augustine has it) carries a special connection with the truth, because it directly studies the “principles” (rationes) of definition, division, and collection, rather than applying them to a specialized field of enquiry like the more particular disciplines. Disciplina and truth, then, stand in such close proximity as to be virtually identical; dialectic is “through itself and by itself true truth,” as Augustine puts it.18 At this point in the argument of Soliloquies 2, we return to the central issue that was raised earlier and led to an impasse: where is the truth to be found? Instead of thinking about truth as being located in something else spatially, “Reason” (Augustine’s interlocutor in Soliloquies) suggests another relevant sense of “being in”: The second possibility is when something is in a subject in such a way that it cannot be separated from it, as, for instance, the form and appearance which we see in this particular piece of wood, or as light in the sun, or heat in fire, or a discipline in the mind and such like. (Soliloquies 2.22, p. 75.6–10)19

The passage clearly draws inspiration from Aristotle’s Categories, where what is “present in a subject” is defined as “‘what is in something, not as a part, and cannot exist separately from what it is in” (1a24–5).20 On Aristotle’s account, Socrates’ knowledge of grammar, for example, is inseparably present in his soul, is not a part of him, and cannot exist outside him; it is, as modern commentators put it, a non-substantial particular. Within the category of inseparable properties, Augustine distinguishes between accidents properly speaking, which can pass away without destroying the subject that carries them, as for example the color of a wall, and those properties that complete the essence of the subject in which they are present and without which the subject would not be able to exist, for example the heat in fire.21 Note, however, that Augustine sets out to put the notion of “being in a subject” to very peculiar use: as we will see in the next section, he aims to prove that an individual rational soul, such 18

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See Soliloquies 2.21, p. 74.16–18: “Who will be surprised then if that discipline through which all things are true is through itself and in itself true truth?” (Quisquamne igitur mirum putabit, si ea, qua vera sunt omnia, per se ipsam et in seipsa vera sit veritas?) altero autem, quo ita est aliquid in subiecto, ut ab eo nequeat separari, ut in hoc ligno forma et species quam videmus, ut in sole lux, ut in igne calor, ut in animo disciplina, et si qua sunt alia similia. Aristotle’s Categories would have formed part of Augustine’s early education; cf. Soliloquies 2.22, p. 75.11–14. Tornau 2017: 329–30 argues convincingly that Augustine’s source for this way of distinguishing between two kinds of inseparable accidents can be traced back to Porphyry; cf. Isagoge 9.7–16.

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as that of Socrates, must be immortal, since the knowledge within him, being eternal, could not exist unless it were present in a subject.

9.3

The Core Argument

Augustine’s core argument for immortality is best summarized in the following passage: (A2) For everything which is in a subject, if it lasts forever, it follows necessarily that the subject lasts forever. (A3) Every discipline is in the soul as its subject. It is necessary, therefore, that the soul lasts forever, if the discipline does. (A1) A discipline, however, is truth, and the truth remains forever as “Reason” persuaded us at the beginning of the book.22 (B1-4) Therefore the soul lasts forever and can never be called “dead.” (Soliloquies 2.24, p. 79. 1–7)23

It can be understood to comprise two sub-arguments, one arguing for the eternal existence of the soul and the other arguing for the soul’s immortality in the narrow sense of “never being dead.”24 Using Augustine’s text as our basis, we can represent both sub-arguments schematically: A. The soul always exists 1. 2. 3. 4.

A discipline exists always. That in which a discipline always exists must itself always exist.25 A discipline exists in the soul. Therefore the soul always exists.

B. The soul is immortal 1. 2. 3. 4. 22 23

24 25

If the soul exists, then it is also alive. The soul always exists, therefore it is always alive. Therefore the soul is never dead. Therefore the soul is immortal.

“At the beginning of the book” probably refers back to the initial discussion of the nature of truth at Soliloquies 1.27–8, summarized at Soliloquies 2.28, pp. 82.22–83.15. Omne, quod in subiecto est, si semper manet, ipsum etiam subiectum maneat semper necesse est. Et omnis in subiecto est animo disciplina. Necesse est igitur semper animus maneat, si semper manet disciplina. Est autem disciplina veritas et semper, ut in initio libri huius ratio persuasit, veritas manet. Semper igitur animus manet nec animus mortuus dicitur. See the text to n.5 above for the distinction I draw between a “narrow” and a “broad” sense of immortality. As Catapano 2014: 70 n. 13 correctly notes, the phrase omne, quod in subiecto est, si semper manet should be understood to mean “if anything eternally inheres in a subject, the subject exists eternally,” not “if everything eternally inheres in a subject, the subject exists eternally.“ Augustine”s argument does not require that all properties that exist in a soul should exist in it eternally, only that at least one such property can be found, viz. knowledge or disciplina.

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It might seem to count against the interpretation offered here that subargument B is only so much as hinted at with the statement “and [the soul] can never be called ‘dead’” (nec animus mortuus dicitur).26 But in the context of the argument, “Augustine” can rely on a concession he had made earlier to “Reason,” namely that a soul that has died would no longer be a soul, such that the death of the soul is tantamount to its nonexistence.27 Talk of dead souls, in other words, is logically contradictory, in much the same way that a cold fire would constitute a contradiction in terms. A fire that has become cold is simply no longer a fire, and likewise, Augustine opines, a soul that has died, far from being a dead soul, is no longer a soul at all. Therefore, the eternal existence of souls (established by the conclusion of sub-argument A) logically implies their immortality (the conclusion of sub-argument B), since souls, unlike rocks or paperclips, are essentially alive.28 I submit that Augustine’s core argument for immortality, as reconstructed here, is formally valid only if we accept that the term disciplina in premise 1 (“A discipline exists always”) and 3 (“A discipline exists in the soul”) of sub-argument A is used in the same sense. But in Soliloquies 2, Augustine fails to provide good reasons why the knowledge of dialectic in Socrates should have the same status as the truths about dialectic that are supposed to be unchanging and eternal. The two alternatives which he considers, that (1) the truth perishes along with the subject, if we suppose that the soul is perishable, or that (2) the truth continues to exist after the subject perishes, suffer from the same flaw as the argument as a whole does: options (1) and (2) are not exclusive, since “truth” in both cases means something different, and, if properly understood, neither option leads to absurdity.29 The truth as known by someone might perish along with the knower, while the objects of knowledge continue to exist. 26 27 28

29

Cf. Plato Phaedrus 245c–246a for a similar argument designed to show that immortal souls are also always alive or “in motion” (c5). See Soliloquies 2.23, pp. 76.18–77.2. In places where I refer to the speaker “Augustine” in Soliloquies (and his interlocutor “Reason”), rather than the author of the work, I use quotation marks. Note that the reverse is not necessarily the case: mortality implies perishing, but immortality (in the narrow sense of “being incapable of admitting death” or “never dying”) need not imply eternal existence or imperishability. It may be true that a soul can never die while remaining a soul, but it could still come to perish in some way other than by dying. (Cf. Long’s discussion of Stoicism in Chapter 5 Section 5.4.) Unlike the “great philosophers” (magni philosophi), viz. Plato and Plotinus, who base their confidence in the soul’s continued existence on its inability to receive death, Augustine maintains that souls cannot cease to live because they cannot cease to be. See Soliloquies 2.23, pp. 77.2–78.2, and Doucet 1993 for a detailed discussion of the Platonic and Plotinian background of this passage. See Soliloquies 2.33.

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A second objection to the core argument is that Socrates would be shown to be immortal only if the knowledge of disciplina were indeed present within him. An ignorant or foolish Socrates, on the other hand, does not obviously have truth present within himself, with the result that Augustine’s disciplina would prove at most the immortality of some souls, but certainly not all of them (we may call this the problem of ignorance). Likewise, Augustine’s argument would imply that souls acquire the property of being immortal with the acquisition of knowledge, such that the soul of a person would be immortal and only survive death once it has acquired sufficient knowledge of disciplina, perhaps some time in late adolescence. In later life, this knowledge could potentially be lost again, and with it any hopes for immortality (the problem of oblivion).30 According to this line of reasoning, if Socrates dies as a man in full possession of his faculties, his soul would survive death and could exist separately from his body, only to risk perishing once it is joined to an embryo, where knowledge of disciplina can presumably be said to exist in potentiality at most. We will have to keep both of these difficulties in mind when turning to the De Immortalitate Animae. Written as a kind of “reminder” (commonitorium) for himself, as Augustine puts it in his Retractationes, the work continues the core argument of Soliloquies 2 until an important break in chapters 10–11, which examine the relationship between soul and reason (ratio) more thoroughly.31 In the very first chapter of De Immortalitate Animae, we find an extended version of the core argument (arranged in logical order below) that spells out more carefully why disciplina needs to exist in a soul, rather than a physical body: Discipline exists in a living thing 1 2 3 4 5 30 31

What exists must exist somewhere. A discipline exists. Therefore, a discipline exists somewhere. Whatever learns anything must be alive. A discipline cannot exist in something which learns nothing.

For the problems of ignorance and oblivion, see also the helpful discussion by Catapano 2014: 78–9. See Retractationes 1.5, pp. 15.2–16.5: “After the books, Soliloquies, and after my recent return from the country to Milan, I wrote a book, On the Immortality of the Soul. I had intended this as a reminder to me, so to speak, to complete the Soliloquies, which had remained unfinished; but it fell, I know not how, into the hands of men against my will and is listed among my works” (trans. Bogan) (Post libros Soliloquiorum iam de agro Mediolanum reversus scripsi librum de immortalitate animae, quod mihi quasi commonitorium esse volueram propter Soliloquia terminanda, quae imperfecta remanserant: sed nescio quomodo me invito exiit in manus hominum, et inter mea opuscula nominatur.)

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6 Therefore, a discipline exists in something that is alive. Discipline exists eternally in something that is alive 7 8 9 10

Whatever exists unchangeably always exists. A discipline exists unchangeably. Therefore a discipline always exists. Something in which a thing exists always cannot but exist always itself.

The living thing in which a discipline exists is the soul 11 We think with the soul, not with the body, which is a hindrance to thought. 12 If discipline were not present in the soul, we would not be able to think. To establish his main conclusion, that the living thing in which a discipline exists is the soul, Augustine does not, as he might have done, appeal to the Platonic notion that the body, with its attendant desires and aversions, impedes the kind of focused attention that is required by philosophical thinking. Instead, he argues that the objects of thought must always be identical with themselves, which is impossible for a body, presumably either because a spatially extended entity must consist of individuated parts which cannot be identical to one another or because any body is liable to change and therefore not absolutely identical with itself over time.32 As before, the extended version of the core argument appears to equivocate between disciplina in the sense of “ability to reason in accordance with the rules of logic,” as required in premise (12), and disciplina in the sense of “unchanging truth,” as required in premise (8). However, this objection is less damaging than is often thought: all that is required is some compelling link between subjective and objective truth, i.e. disciplina as immanent knowledge and disciplina as a body of abstract relationships. The link, I suggest, comes in the form of a tacit premise that underlies the core argument: (Assumption) Knowledge is possible only if the objects of knowledge are present in the soul. 32

Cf. De Immortalitate Animae 1, p. 102.4–5: “The object of intelligence is always identical with itself, and no body is always identical with itself” (Quod enim intellegitur, eiusmodi est semper nihilque corporis eiusmodi est semper).

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Evidence that Augustine is relying on a premise to this effect can be found in a later chapter of the De Immortalitate Animae, where the following principle is formulated: “When they are grasped by the intelligence, the intelligibles are not positioned, so to speak, anywhere else than the soul that understands them; they are understood at the same time not to be contained in a place.”33 We may quibble about the exact wording of this principle, which uses spatial language (quasi . . . posita) to describe the presence of presumably immaterial entities in the soul (hedged, however, with an apologetic quasi), but its import is clear: the soul, insofar as it has understanding, contains the objects of knowledge within itself. The possible equivocation of disciplina in the core argument, therefore, presents no real threat to Augustine’s argument. Likewise, the twin problems of ignorance and oblivion can be effectively addressed by distinguishing between the possession of knowledge and the act of bringing one’s knowledge to awareness. Thus, while a foolish or forgetful Socrates might not be able to bring his knowledge of disciplina to conscious awareness (cogitatio), it is still present within him and can be recovered through introspection or guided questioning.34 As De Immortalitate Animae 6 makes clear, such knowledge is never really lost or acquired, and therefore belongs to the soul as an essential property, in much the same sense that heat belongs to fire. Augustine’s core argument, therefore, does not use the crucial term disciplina equivocally nor is it unable to account for the fact that only some souls have sufficiently recollected their innate knowledge to the extent that they are able to engage in dialectic, for example. However, the claim that knowledge exists in the soul as in a subject (the existence-in claim) brings with it unintended consequences that bog down the first half of De Immortalitate Animae and ultimately lead Augustine to reconsider the relationship between truth and the soul. For a natural corollary of the existence-in claim is the principle that anything that exists in a subject will be affected by the changes that the subject itself undergoes.35 The rationality in Socrates, for example, will be affected if the philosopher should become inebriated, and, we may suppose, the knowledge in Socrates could likewise be affected through some changes in the soul. Throughout 33 34 35

De Immortalitate Animae 10, p. 110.22–111.2: Ea vero, quae intelleguntur, non quasi alibi posita intelleguntur quam ipse qui intellegit animus; simul enim etiam intelleguntur non contineri loco. De Immortalitate Animae 6, p. 107.16–17. For a clear formulation of this principle, see e.g. De Immortalitate Animae 8, p. 108.21–2: “if the subject changes, everything which is in the subject also changes by necessity” (mutato subiecto omne, quod in subiecto est, necessario mutari).

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a number of chapters, Augustine tries to resist this possibility, first arguing that the soul can move the body without being moved itself (chapters 3–4), and later that the only kind of change that could affect the soul’s knowledge is substantial rather than accidental (chapters 8–9). To illustrate this last point, we might think of a piece of wax changing from cold to hot (an accidental change), which does not change the nature of the wax itself, whereas vaporizing it with intense heat would.36 It is unclear what precisely the analogue to vaporizing wax would be in the case of the soul, but it is at least conceivable that a rational soul, through some sinful inclination, for example, could choose to lead a life that would transform it into an altogether different entity devoid of knowledge, thereby threatening both the supposed immortality of souls and the unchangeable nature of knowledge.

9.4

Moving beyond the Core Argument

Up to this point in the argument, then, the paradox of Augustine’s position comes down to the following: in order to prove the immortality of the soul, he needs to prove that the soul cannot be changed substantially, that is, that the soul cannot cease to be what it is. Unless he is able to forestall this possibility, he would encounter the problem that knowledge, which is supposed to be unchangeable, would be affected by any change that the soul might undergo in its substance, which would be contradictory and hence untenable. By the end of chapter 9, therefore, the question whether the soul can change substantially has emerged as the central issue in the discussion; up to this point in the De Immortalitate Animae, that possibility is simply rejected without further argument. The second half of the work, beginning with chapter 10, makes a fresh start with the inquiry by distinguishing more clearly than before the different senses in which the soul can be said to relate to ratio: Ratio is either (1) the mind’s capacity of seeing, by which it looks at the truth by its own means and not through the body, or (2) the very contemplation of the truth, not through the body, or (3) the truth itself which the soul contemplates. (De Immortalitate Animae 10, p. 110.9–11)37

36 37

Cf. De Immortalitate Animae 8, pp. 108.24–109.13. Ratio est aspectus animi, quo per seipsum, non per corpus verum intuetur, aut ipsa veri contemplatio, non per corpus, aut ipsum verum, quod contemplatur.

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Neither the soul’s ability to grasp the truth nor its actual contemplation of the truth license the inference to its immortality in the strong sense that would imply its ceaseless existence: we could not assume that contemplation will take place for all future time (whether in potentiality or actuality) without already having sufficient reason to believe that the soul is immune to perishing of any kind. Yet, as the ensuing discussion (chapters 12–19) shows, it is immortality in precisely this sense that Augustine is concerned to prove.38 It comes as no surprise, then, that Augustine focuses his efforts on ratio in sense (3) above, as what is contemplated or the object of knowledge. He distinguishes between a number of relevant alternatives that could account for the connection (coniunctio) between truth and the soul without which no knowledge would be possible at all: (3a) The soul is the subject and the truth is in the subject. (3b) The truth is the subject and the soul is in the subject. (3c) Both of them are independent realities (utraque substantia). Alternative (3a) leads back to the core argument and its claim that disciplina, with its close connection to the truth, exists in the soul as an essential attribute. The reverse of this relationship, (3b), is one that Augustine does not explore at length; it would imply no less than that the truth is necessarily alive, since by the hypothesis the soul would have to exist in the truth as an essential attribute of truth. In that case, the eternity of the truth, as the subject, would of course guarantee the eternity and immortality of the soul. Yet although Augustine does not formally decide between the three alternatives, it is evident that only (3c), according to which the soul and ratio are separate substances that, while in principle capable of independent existence, are conjoined for at least some length of time, emerges as a serious contender to the core argument. The implications of this last possibility occupy the entire second half of De Immortalitate Animae: only if it can be shown that the soul is permanently associated with reason in some way could any conclusion about its immortality be drawn. For if the soul is a substance and ratio is a substance with which the soul is associated, one could reasonably think it possible that ratio persists while the soul ceases to be. But it is clear that as long as the soul is not separated from

38

I take the guiding concern of these chapters to be the question put forward at 6, p.112.15–16: an etiamsi separari non potest exstingui potest? (“Or can the soul, even though it cannot be separated from ratio, be extinguished?”).

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ratio but remains associated with it, it necessarily persists and lives. (De Immortalitate Animae 11, p. 111.11–17)39

Why would the soul “necessarily persist and live” as long as it remains “associated with ratio” (rationi . . . cohaeret)? According to Augustine, whose Neoplatonic influences come to the fore rather markedly at this juncture, ratio has “the greatest degree of being” (est . . . maxime) and gives being to whatever is connected to it; the permanence of the soul’s connection to the truth would thus ensure the permanence of its existence. In this way, the soul’s ontological dependence on a higher reality, namely ratio or real being, exemplifies the broader causal principle that the more powerful realities transmit their form to those of inferior rank.40 With this new conception of the relationship between ratio and the soul, the core argument has effectively been abandoned: if disciplina or the truth is immanent in the soul, as the core argument states, then the truth cannot be an independent substance, and if disciplina and the soul can exist independently, as the revised argument maintains, one cannot be present in the other as in a subject.41 However, despite their prima facie incompatibility, both arguments for immortality need to respond to the same threat to the soul’s existence, namely the possibility that the soul could undergo a kind of change that would make it a radically different kind of being (or no being at all) and cut it off from any connection with reason. In the case of the core argument, the problem of change presented itself as a threat to the unchangeable nature of truth: if the soul were truly the subject in which truth in the form of disciplina existed, a substantial change in the soul would imply a change in what is changeless, thereby leading to contradiction. In the case of the revised argument, we face a more complex situation, since a change in either ratio or the soul could break their mutual connection. But in fact the possibility of ratio withdrawing its influence from the soul and thereby depriving it of being can quickly be ruled out; 39

40

41

Nam si animus substantia est et substantia ratio coniungitur, non absurde quis putaverit fieri posse, ut manente illa hic esse desinat. Sed manifestum est, quamdiu animus a ratione non separatur eique cohaeret necessario eum manere atque vivere. Note the affinity between Augustine’s view that forms are transmitted by cascading down the ontological hierarchy and the philosophy of Plotinus, who accounts for the emanation of Forms by distinguishing a primary activity constitutive of each entity from a secondary activity that is the necessary by-product of the primary kind and directed toward lower orders of reality. See Enneads 5.1.6, 30–9; 5.4.2, 27–33. On the incompatibility of the two parts of De Immortalitate Animae, see also Catapano 2014: 83, who views it as a “paradox,” and cf. Tornau 2017: 338, who argues that Augustine was aware of the deficiencies of the argument in Soliloquies 2 and intended to improve upon it in De Immortalitate Animae.

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not only would it imply a change in what is changeless and eternal, but it also contradicts the Platonic notion that the divine is ungrudging in the bestowal of its gifts onto lower orders of existence.42 What remains, therefore, is the possibility that some change in the soul could sever its connection with reason, and Augustine’s argument is successful only to the extent that it can forestall such an eventuality. When we look at the arguments in the second half of De Immortalitate Animae, it is far from clear if the revised argument succeeds in demonstrating the perpetual connection between soul and ratio. For example, Augustine’s insistence that the soul could not cut itself off from ratio by its own volition (voluntate) because there can be no separation between entities that are not contained in place hardly addresses the problem at all; whatever “separation” (separatio) means in the case of immaterial entities, it can obviously not involve spatial distance.43 Elsewhere, Augustine in fact concedes that the soul’s wisdom consists in turning to the source of its being, namely ratio or the truth, and that it can lose its wisdom by the opposite process of “turning away” (aversio).44 Why should such a “turning away” from being not result in the soul’s eventual destruction?45 The suggestion offered in chapter 19, that the soul cannot perish because it could lose its being only through the contrary of being, which does not exist, cannot fully address this concern.46 For while substances such as Socrates do not have contraries, nothing whatsoever follows about the possibility of their destruction into non-being. It is therefore incorrect to assume that the being of a soul could only perish through the contrary of being, just as it would be incorrect to think that the heat in a fire could be quenched only through the approach of the cold. Similarly, nothing in De Immortalitate Animae effectively demonstrates that a soul could not perish through the gradual diminution of its power, however precisely such a decline may come about. Augustine’s argument, that the soul cannot diminish to the point of ceasing to exist because even a body cannot be reduced to nothingness through repeated acts of cutting, can at best claim a specious kind of plausibility; it is, after all, a fact of experience that the motive force in a given object can diminish to the point of ceasing to exist, 42 43 44 45

46

See Plato Phaedrus 247a7 and Timaeus 29e1–2. See De Immortalitate Animae 11, p. 112.9–11, and cf. Retractationes, 1.5, p. 16.22–7. See De Immortalitate Animae 19, p. 121.22–4. In his later work The City of God, Augustine describes the death of the soul as its abandonment by God, although he stops short of stating that a soul bereft of God will lose its life-giving power altogether. See De Civ. Dei XIII.2.18–20: mors igitur animae fit, cum eam deserit Deus, sicut corporis, cum id deserit anima. See De Immortalitate Animae 19, p. 121.16–22.

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quite irrespective of whether or not physical compounds are constituted by some indivisible units at which any process of diminution must come to a halt.47

9.5 Conclusion We thus find in the De Immortalitate Animae two very different and incompatible accounts of the relation between truth and the soul: first, the core argument, which continues the train of thought of Soliloquies 2, according to which the truth is immanent in the soul and requires an eternal subject in which it can exist eternally; and second, the revised argument, which seeks to derive the soul’s immortality from its unceasing connection with the source of its being, ratio. As I have argued above, each of these approaches faces serious objections that Augustine does not address convincingly. If the truth would have to be present in the soul in order to exist, as the core argument implies, profound changes in the soul would threaten to affect abstract and presumably unchanging truths such as 2 + 2 = 4. If, on the other hand, the soul’s existence depended on being connected to the truth, any turning away from fundamental reality toward falsehood would threaten to diminish the soul’s power of existence, leading to its eventual destruction. The source of Augustine’s difficulties in De Immortalitate Animae, I suggest in closing, lies in his inability to conceive of the soul as both being the source of its own existence and depending on some higher reality for its access to truth. Only in this way could Augustine avoid the dilemma of having to countenance either that the truth could be affected by changes in the soul or that the soul might cut itself off from the source of its own being. It will fall to others in the history of Platonism to lay out more clearly the metaphysical principles that would be required to reconcile ontological self-sufficiency and dependence, and it is far from clear whether they arrive at a defensible position.48 At the time of writing Soliloquies 2 and the De Immortalitate Animae, Augustine had not absorbed Neoplatonism deeply enough to square this particular circle.

47 48

See De Immortalitate Animae 12, p. 113.21: “No process of cutting leads to nothingness” (At nulla praecisio perducit ad nihilum). Particularly relevant here is Proclus’ treatment of the “self-constituted” in Elements of Theology, propositions 40–51. See also Steel 2006 for a discussion of the link between reflexive thought and self-constitution in Proclus.

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Bibliography Balido, G. (ed. and trans.) 2010. De immortalitate animae – L’immortalità dell’anima. Naples: Editrice Domenicana Italiana. Cary, P. 2000. Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Catapano, G. 2014. “Augustine’s treatise De immortalitate animae and the proof of the soul’s immortality in his Soliloquia,” Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 25: 67–84. Doucet, D. 1993. “Soliloques II, 13, 23, et les magni philosophi,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 39: 109–28. Fine, G. 2014. The Possibility of Inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hörmann, W. (ed.) 1986. De inmortalitate animae liber unus, CSEL 89: 99–128. Karfík, F. and Song, E. (eds.) 2013. Plato Revived: Essays on Ancient Platonism in Honour of Dominic J.O’Meara. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 317. Berlin: De Gruyter. Karfíková, L. 2013. “Das Verhältnis von Seele und ratio in Augustins Abhandlung De immortalitate animae’, in Karfík and Song (eds.): 117–37. Krylow, J. E. 2014. “It doesn’t concern you,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88(1): 47–62. Majercik, R. 1992. “The existence–life–intellect triad in Gnosticism and Neoplatonism,” Classical Quarterly 42(2): 475–48. Mourant, J. A. 1971. “Remarks on the De Immortalitate Animae,” Augustinian Studies 2: 213–17. Penaskovic, R. 1980. “An analysis of St. Augustine’s ‘De Immortalitate Animae’,” Augustinian Studies 11: 167–76. Perkams, M. and Piccione, R. M. (eds.) 2006. Proklos: Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik. Leiden: Brill. Steel, C. 2006. “Proklos über Selbstreflexion und Selbstbegründung,” in Perkams and Piccione (eds.): 230–55. Tornau, C. 2017. “Ratio in subiecto? The sources of Augustine’s proof for the immortality of the soul in the Soliloquia and its defense in De immortalitate animae,” Phronesis 62(3): 319–54. Verbeke, G. 1955. “Spiritualité et immortalité de l’âme chez saint Augustin,” in Augustinus Magister I: Congrès International Augustinien Paris, 21–24 septembre 1954. Paris: Études Augustiniennes: 329–34. Watson, G. (trans.) 1990. Saint Augustine, Soliloquies and Immortality of the Soul. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Wolfskeel, C. W. 1972. “Ist Augustin in De Immortalitate Animae von der Gedankenwelt des Porphyrios beeinflusst worden?” Vigiliae Christianae 26: 130–145. (ed. and trans.) 1977. De immortalitate animae of Augustine. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

Index of Passages

fr.2, 57 Aristophanes Peace 833–5, 13 Aristotle Categories 1a24–5, 203 De anima 404a16–25, 55, 58, 59 405a24, 23 405a29–b1, 5, 43 407a10-22, 185 407b13–24, 51 408b19–20, 187 411a11–13, 12, 36 412a27–8, 187 413a3–10, 178 413b24–7, 179 430a23, 122 De generatione et corruptione 315b8–9, 61 De generatione animalium 772b, 32 De respiratione 472a3–8, 56 fr.208, 61 Metaphysics 982b28–983a11, 124 984a7, 56 985b4–20, 61 986a27–9, 43 987a29–b18, 51 990a4, 16 1043a14–26, 58–9 1072b26–8, 181 1072b26–30, 8 Nicomachean Ethics 1166a16–17, 192 1177b26–8, 123 1177b30–1178a2, 120 1178a20–1, 123

Aëtius 1.3.4, 23 1.3.19, 60 2.3.3, 60 4.2.2, 5 4.3.4, 56 4.3.14, 23 4.7.4, 62 Alcinous Didaskalikos 16.1, 163 23.1, 164 25.1, 161 25.5, 163 Alcmaeon A3, 43 A5, 6 A8, 6 A12, 43 A13, 6 Alexander De anima 24.18–24, 189 26.26–30, 189 On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 39.16–17, 56 Anaxagoras A34, 145 Anaximenes B2, 23 Apuleius Metamorphoses 6.23, 2 On the God of Socrates 4.1, 3 15.3, 3 Archytas A9, 58 A9a, 58 A22, 58–9 fr.1, 58

215

216 Aristotle (cont.) 1178a9–14, 123 1178b7–23, 123 Athenaeus 697a–b, 121 Augustine Against the Academics 3.38, 137 De Civitate Dei XIII.2.18–20, 212 XXII.16, 198 XXII.30, 199 De Immortalitate Animae 1, 9, 206, 207 3–4, 209 6, 208 8, 208, 209 8–9, 209 9, 209 10, 208, 209 10–11, 206 11, 211, 212 12, 213 19, 212 23, 9 De Quantitate Animae 13.22, 199 Retractationes 1.5, 206, 212 Soliloquies 1.27–8, 200, 204 1.28–30, 200 1.29, 201 2.1–2, 201 2.17, 202 2.20, 202 2.21, 203 2.22, 203 2.23, 205 2.24, 204 2.28, 201, 204 2.33, 205 2.36, 200, 202 Axiochus 364b, 153 365a, 144, 155 365b, 153 365c, 148 365c–366a, 157 365d, 150, 155 365d–366b, 146–7 365d–e, 144, 153, 154, 155 365e, 10, 149, 152, 153, 154 366a–b, 154 366d–369a, 155

Index of Passages 369b–370e, 157 369b–c, 156 369d, 156 369e, 149, 150 369e–370b, 148–9 370a, 149 370b, 150 370b–d, 157 370c, 151, 172 370d–e, 144, 150 370e, 154 371a–372a, 153 371b–c, 151 371e–372a, 152 Bible, Hebrew Genesis 1:26–7, 167 2:17b, 166 2:8, 170 3:1a, 165 3:8, 170 3:9, 170 3:19, 166 3:21, 171 5:24, 174 23:3, 174 Leviticus 11:21, 173 25:10, 161 Numbers 21:5, 165 21:6, 165 Bible, Hebrew (Apocrypha) 4 Maccabees 14:4–5, 172 Cicero Letters to Atticus 13.19.4, 122 On Divination 1.64, 139 On the Nature of the Gods 1.27, 5 1.36, 137 1.39, 134, 138 1.45, 126 1.85, 126 2.2, 134 2.3, 134 2.10, 134 2.17, 134 2.45, 134 2.62, 138 2.133, 134

Index of Passages 2.163, 134 2.164, 134 3.29, 127 Tusculan Disputations 1.14, 156 1.21, 41 1.38, 41 1.38–9, 50 1.39, 41 1.79, 139 Cleanthes Hymn to Zeus, 134 Clement Protrepticus 5.66, 5 Damascius Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo 59, 102 59.4–5, 99 59–61, 99 Democritus A1, 57, 59 A106, 56 B191, 57, 59 Dicaearchus fr.41a, 45 Diogenes Laertius 2.61, 143 3.62, 143 7.147, 134 7.151, 138 7.156, 137 7.157, 135, 138 8.36, 42 8.4–5, 42, 54 8.83, 5 8.86, 42 9.45, 59 10.117, 129 Diogenes of Apollonia B5, 22 Ecphantus A1, 60 A2, 60 A4, 60 Elias Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories 114.25–115.12, 122 Empedocles A62, 18, 34 B8, 28 B9, 33, 34

B21, 8, 31, 57 B23, 8, 31 B26, 30 B57–62, 32 B59, 32 B63, 32 B112, 29 B115, 29, 30, 31, 32 B117, 52 B118, 34 B121, 34 B126, 32 B126, 52 B134, 8, 32 B138, 30 B146, 35, 57 P. Strasb. a(i)8–a(ii)3, 31 Epicurus Key Doctrines 1, 125, 126 2, 155 Letter to Herodotus 78, 126 Letter to Menoeceus 124, 124, 132 125, 146, 156 133–4, 129 135, 125, 128 Vatican Sayings 78, 130 Epiphanius On the Faith 9.40, 139 Eudemus fr.88, 48 Eudoxus fr.325, 43 Euripides Helen 1015, 8 Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 11.28.7–10, 5 15.20.6, 138 Galen 4.786 Kühn, 26 Glaucus of Rhegium fr.5, 57 Heraclides of Pontus fr.86, 42, 54 Heraclitus B2, 24, 26 B25, 25

217

218 Heraclitus (cont.) B26, 24 B28, 27 B29, 25 B30, 21, 22, 56 B30, 22 B31, 21, 56 B32, 22 B36, 21, 22 B40, 27 B41, 22 B50, 23 B60, 21, 27 B62, 27 B63, 28 B64, 22 B67, 24 B76, 23 B81, 27 B114, 25, 26 B117, 23 B117, 24 B118, 24, 25 B129, 27 Herodotus 2.123.3, 43 2.81.2, 43 4.94, 121 4.94–6, 43 5.4, 121 Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies 1.15, 60 1.21.3, 139 Homer Iliad 2.814, 4 9.110, 4 15.193, 25 23.788, 4 Odyssey 1.201, 4 3.242, 4 4.564, 4 4.565, 13 11.488–91, 13 11.94, 34 15.173, 4 18.252, 4 Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Way of Life 82, 46 85, 42 108, 43

Index of Passages Protrepticus 21, 42 IG I³ 1179, 13 John Philoponus On Aristotle’s De anima 140.5–8, 52 Leucippus A6, 61 Lucretius 3.870–911, 149 5.1–13, 132 Macrobius Somnium Scipionis 14.19, 26 Nemesius On Human Nature 38, 135 70–1, 182 Olympiodorus Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo 3.13.1–5, 102 PHerc. 1055, 127 Philo Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2, 3 1.32, 166 1.43–7, 170 1.105, 164, 171 1.105–8, 166, 170 1.106–8, 164 1.108, 166 2.31, 166 2.33, 166 2.77, 165 2.78, 164, 165 2.80, 171 3.52, 170 3.69, 163 3.252, 166 Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter 44, 162 147, 165 Every Good Man is Free 109, 120, 174 115–17, 172 Moses 1 and 2 2.6, 169 2.108, 167 2.288, 168, 169 On Abraham

Index of Passages 60, 172 64, 172 230, 172 258–9, 174 On Dreams 1.137, 167 1.138–9, 168, 170 1.150–1, 163 On Drunkenness 70, 164 101, 163, 168 140, 166 145, 174 On Flight and Finding 63, 175 69, 164 On Husbandry 171, 164 On Mating with the Preliminary Studies 97, 167 108, 162 On Rewards and Punishments 69, 172 110, 172 13, 163 On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses 27, 163 69, 167 77, 173 77–8, 174 134, 162, 163 135, 167 152, 169 154, 174 On the Cherubim, The Flaming Sword, and Cain 10, 166 114, 168 On the Confusion of Tongues 77–8, 170 149, 174 On the Decalogue 58, 163, 167 On the Embassy to Gaius 117, 172 369, 172 On the Eternity of the World 9, 133 35, 120 76, 140 On the Giants 14, 173 On the Migration of Abraham 18, 164

189, 172 209, 166 On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 43, 162, 174 43–4, 119 On the Special Laws 1.14, 163 1.66, 163 1.76, 163 1.303, 120 1.345, 172 3.99, 165 4.112, 173 4.14, 167 On the Unchangeableness of God 46, 164, 167 111, 166 On the Virtues 67, 169 205, 169 On Whether Dumb Animals Possess Reason 85, 163 Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.29, 168 2.39, 174 2.40, 171, 174 Questions and Answers on Genesis 1.33, 169 1.42, 170 1.45, 169 1.51, 166 1.53, 171 4.166, 167 4.169, 172 4.46, 170 That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better 27, 168 168, 166 Who is the Heir of Divine Things 52, 164, 165 55, 164 239, 173 Philodemus On Piety col. 12–13, 128 Philolaus fr.6a, 60 fr.13, 57 Philostratus Life of Apollonius 8.7.21, 121 Pindar Isthmians 5.16, 119

219

220 Plato Alcibiades I 130c, 152, 180 Apology 40c, 145 Charmides 156d, 120 Gorgias 493a, 18 Laws 894c–d, 48 896c, 186 898a–b, 48, 80, 90 903d, 48, 49 Meno 80d–86c, 196 81b–d, 47 85e–86b, 47 86b, 197 97e–98a, 87 Parmenides 133b–134e, 87 Phaedo 57a, 158 60c, 95 61b, 95 62a, 95, 96, 100 62a–68c, 98 62b, 18 62c, 96, 101 64a, 99, 100, 106 64c, 72, 102, 113, 133 65c, 114, 115 65c–d, 104, 105, 113 65d, 114 65e–66a, 106 66a, 114 66b–68b, 18 66b–c, 98 66c, 114 66d, 70 67a–b, 72, 73, 152 67d, 72, 164 70c, 94, 114 70c–72e, 47 70d, 114 70e, 114 72b, 19 72d, 47 72e–77a, 47 72e–78b, 178, 196 73a, 114 74b, 114 74c, 114 74d, 114

Index of Passages 76c, 114 76d, 114 76e, 114 77a, 114 77d, 72 77d–e, 69 78b, 69 78b–84b, 47, 67 78c, 69 78c–79b, 69 78d, 6, 114 78d–79a, 69 79c, 70 79c–d, 69, 73 79d, 6, 69, 70, 73, 83, 87, 114 79e, 69 79e–80a, 70 80a–b, 69, 75 80b, 6 80d, 73 80e–81a, 73 81a, 72 81a–84b, 97, 98 81b–e, 70 81c, 72, 168 81c–82b, 47 81cff., 194 82b–c, 72 82e, 114 83b, 114 83d, 71 83d–e, 72 84a–b, 47, 72 84b, 71 85e–86d, 186 87a–88b, 30, 52 87b–c, 62 87b–e, 52–4, 111 88a, 73, 114 88a–b, 47 88b, 164 91d, 73 92e–93a, 186 95d, 47 96b, 6 99a–b, 20 102a–107b, 107, 181 102b–107b, 47 105c, 110 105c–107a, 73 105c–d, 107 105c–e, 109, 110 105d, 109 105e, 107 106c–107a, 197

Index of Passages 106d–e, 161 106e, 158 106e–107a, 73 107c–d, 3, 16 107e, 47 109c, 18 109c–e, 17 109e, 18 113e, 19, 166 114b–c, 17, 18, 19 114d, 15 115c, 9 115c–e, 158 115d, 158 118a, 158 Phaedrus 245c, 163 245c–246a, 2, 5, 47, 205 245c–d, 197 246a–252c, 17 246b–d, 163 246e, 84 247a, 212 247b–c, 89, 90 247c, 18 248a, 89, 174 249b, 48 249c, 84 251b, 174 Protagoras 356d–e, 87 Republic 380c–381e, 80 490a–b, 82 500c–d, 83 508b, 190 589a–b, 180 608c–611a, 47 611a, 4, 19 611b–c, 70 611e, 83 613b, 85 614b–621d, 47 615e, 166 620d, 47 Sophist 248c–249d, 201 249a, 8 Statesman 261b–c, 49 271b, 48 Symposium 175b, 86 177d, 86 200a, 85

200d, 19 202c, 79, 80 202c–d, 85 202d–203a, 80 202e–203a, 77 204a, 85 204a–b, 85 204e, 79 205a, 79, 80, 85 206a, 79, 80 206c, 75 206e, 75 207a, 79 207c–208b, 67, 74–5, 76 207d, 75, 78, 85 207e–208a, 87 208a, 77, 87 208a–b, 79 208b, 66 208e–209e, 66 209e–212a, 68 210a, 81 210c, 82 210e, 82 211a, 83, 87, 88 211b, 88 211c, 82 211d–e, 82 212a, 3, 19, 66, 81, 82, 85, 118, 169 220c, 86 Theaetetus 176a–177b, 118 176a–b, 175 176b, 85, 118, 194 176c, 118 Timaeus 23b, 49 29e, 212 30a–c, 8 30c, 7 33a, 7 33c–34a, 7 34a, 89 34b, 7 34c–35a, 186 36e, 8 37a–c, 7 37d, 89 37d–38c, 73 38a, 89 40a–b, 80, 89 41b, 171 41d, 17 41d–42a, 171 41d–42d, 186

221

222 Plato (cont.) 42a, 150, 171 42b, 17, 171 42b–c, 169 42b–d, 171 42c–d, 48 43a–e, 90 44b–c, 49 47a–c, 90, 174 47b–c, 49 51e, 87 69c–e, 164 90a–d, 49, 66 90b–c, 83, 120, 122 90c, 3, 85 Plotinus I 1 [53], 4.13–16, 190 I 1 [53], 7.10, 180 I 1 [53], 7.16–18, 192 I 1 [53], 7.9–15, 183 I 1 [53], 8.1–8, 188 I 1 [53], 12.24, 190 I 3 [20], 3.5–7, 193 I 3 [20], 4.18, 193 I 4 [46], 3.33–4, 188 I 6 [1], 7.11–12, 201 II 9 [33], 8.22–5, 190 III 2 [47], 7.23–5, 188 III 4 [15], 3.21–7, 188 III 4 [15], 3.24, 191 III 5 [50], 1.38, 182 III 6 [26], 5.13–29, 189 III 7 [45], 180 III 9 [13], 3.2–4, 188 IV 3 [27], 5.6, 191 IV 3 [27], 10.31–5, 190 IV 3 [27], 12.3–4, 191 IV 3 [27], 22.8–10, 188 IV 3 [27], 27.7–8, 190 IV 4 [28], 1.1–2, 194 IV 4 [28], 4.14–20, 194 IV 4 [28], 5.11–12, 194 IV 4 [28], 14.1–10, 190 IV 4 [28], 18.10–19, 180 IV 4 [28], 18.11–15, 192 IV 4 [28], 18.4–9, 190 IV 4 [28], 29.1–15, 190 IV 4 [28], 29.1–5, 190 IV 5 [29], 6.28–32, 190 IV 5 [29], 7.15–55, 190 IV 5 [29], 7.17–18, 190 IV 7 [2], 1.1–7, 180 IV 7 [2], 1.22–5, 180

Index of Passages IV 7 [2], 2.20–1, 188 IV 7 [2], 5.24–52, 182 IV 7 [2], 7, 183 IV 7 [2], 8, 185 IV 7 [2], 8.14–17, 185 IV 7 [2], 8.5–11, 187 IV 7 [2], 8 1.12–17, 182, 187 IV 7 [2], 81.17–23, 182 IV 7 [2], 81.23–8, 183 IV 7 [2], 82, 183 IV 7 [2], 84, 186 IV 7 [2], 84.9–13, 186 IV 7 [2], 85, 187 IV 7 [2], 85.23–5, 187 IV 7 [2], 85.11–14, 187 IV 7 [2], 9.1–5, 188 IV 7 [2], 9.7–9, 181 IV 7 [2], 9–15, 188 IV 7 [2], 9.12–13, 188 IV 7 [2], 10.19–21, 189 IV 7 [2], 10.32–3, 191 IV 7 [2], 10.32–7, 189, 192 IV 7 [2], 10.7–11, 189 IV 7 [2], 11.7–14, 181 IV 7 [2], 12.12–20, 189 IV 7 [2], 12.16–20, 190 IV 7 [2], 13, 190 IV 7 [2], 13.1–3, 189, 191 IV 7 [2], 13. 4–5, 190 IV 7 [2], 14, 185 IV 7 [2], 14.8–14, 194 IV 8 [6], 1.1–11, 192 IV 8 [6], 4.31–35, 191 IV 8 [6], 8.8, 191 IV 8 [6], 8.9–11, 193 V 1 [10], 3.12, 189 V 1 [10], 6.30–9, 211 V 1 [10], 6.34, 190 V 1 [10], 6.38, 190 V 3 [49], 3.23–9, 193 V 3 [49], 7.23–4, 190 V 3 [49], 13.13, 185 V 4 [7], 2.27–33, 190, 211 V 4 [7], 2.28–39, 190 V 4 [7], 2.43–4, 201 V 4 [7], 2.44–5, 188 V 6 [24], 6.20–2, 201 V 7 [18], 191 V 7 [18], 1.1–14, 191 V 7 [18], 3, 192 V 8 [4], 11, 192 V 9 [5], 8.13–15, 190 V 9 [5] 12.1–4, 191

Index of Passages V 9 [5], 12.1–4, 191 VI 2 [43], 22.24–9, 190 VI 4 [22], 14.16–22, 191 VI 5 [23], 2.1–3.15, 192 VI 5 [23], 11.30–6, 192 VI 6 [21], 18.12–19, 188 VI 7 [38], 5.26–9, 191 VI 7 [38], 12.4–19, 192 VI 7 [38], 17.10–11, 188 VI 7 [38], 17.26–7, 191 VI 7 [38], 18.5–6, 190 VI 7 [38], 18.6, 190 VI 7 [38], 21.4–6, 190 VI 7 [38], 26.7–12, 188 VI 7 [38], 27.18–23, 182 VI 7 [38], 31.1–4, 188 VI 7 [38], 40.21–4, 190 VI 8 [39], 6.41–3, 191 VI 8 [38], 12.22–37, 190 VI 8 [38], 13.5–9, 190 VI 8 [39], 20.9–15, 190 VI 9 [9], 2.24–5, 188 VI 9 [9], 11, 194 VI 9 [9], 51, 194 Plutarch Against Colotes 1113a–b, 33 1117b–c, 131 1117c, 131 Common Conceptions 1074f–1075b, 135 1075c–d, 136 1075e, 133, 134 Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon 943aff., 168 Consolation to Apollonius 107d, 145 109e–110a, 146 109e–110e, 146 115b–c, 122 Epicurus makes a pleasant life impossible 1091c, 131 On Isis and Osiris 361c, 34 On the Obsolesence of Oracles 418e, 31 Quaestiones Convivales 719a–b, 50 Stoic Self-contradictions 1052a, 134 1052a–b, 135 1052c, 132

Polybius 6.54.2, 120 Porphyry Isagoge 9.7–16, 203 Life of Pythagoras 7, 43 19, 45 45, 42 On Ptolemy’s Harmonics 1.5, 58 Proclus Elements of Theology propositions 40–51, 213 In Timaeum 3.158, 31 Seneca Letters 54.4, 145 65.24, 145 77.11, 145 98.9–10, 131 On Benefits 6.20.1–23.8, 137 6.23.5, 137 7.31.2–4, 137 To Marcia on Consolation 19.5, 145 Sextus Empiricus Against the Logicians 1.127–30, 24 Against the Physicists 1.74, 138 1.138–81, 127 Sophocles Tereus fr.290, 119 Stobaeus Eclogae 3.1.210, 57 Strato of Lampsacus fr.123, 135 SVF I 137, 133 I 146, 139 II 85, 185 II 381, 182 II 395, 192 II 441, 182 II 444, 182 II 450, 182 II 625, 135

223

224 SVF (cont.) II 790, 133, 180 II 809, 137 II 817, 138 II 841, 182 II 1101, 138 Tertullian De anima 5, 56

Index of Passages Themistius On Aristotle’s De anima 23.33–4, 52 106.29–107.5, 122 Theodoret Graecarum affectionum curatio V.16.10–19.1, 33 Xenophanes B7, 20, 42, 153

Index of Names and Subjects

Academy, 46, 127, 144 Aëtius, 60 Affinity Argument (Plato’s Phaedo), 5–6, 47, 67, 68–71, 73, 79, 83, 87, 95, 113, 114, 115 afterlife, 12, 13, 93, 132–40, 143–58 celestial, 12–36 Alcmaeon, 5–6, 43 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 56 Anaxagoras, 145 Anaximenes, 23 annihilation, 25, 143–58, 205, 212 apotheosis. See god, gods Apuleius, 2–3 Archytas, 42, 44, 50, 57–9, 62 Aristophanes, 13 Aristotle, 1, 8, 23, 32, 36, 42, 51–62, 119–24, 178–9, 181, 183, 184, 185, 187–9 atomism, 55–62, 63 Augustine, 4, 9, 137, 196–213 and Neoplatonism, 198, 201–2, 211, 213 awareness, 109, 115, 116, 146, 147, 148–52 Axiochus, 10, 143–58 Carneades, 127 Cebes, 30, 44, 52–4, 62, 63, 69, 95, 110, 111 change and changelessness, 6, 66–91, 93, 95, 103, 104, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 166, 199, 209, 211, 212 Chrysippus. See Stoicism Cicero, 41, 134, 138, 139, 143, 156 Cleanthes, 134, 135 Colotes, 131, 132 conflagration, 24, 132, 133, 138, 139, 140 consciousness. See awareness contemplation. See intellect cosmos, 6, 15–36, 48, 132–40 Cyclical Argument (Plato’s Phaedo), 94, 100 Damascius, 99, 102 death. See also soul

deathlessness, 2, 7, 72, 73, 109, 111, 112, 132–40, 205 moral death, 7, 162–9 nature of, 7, 72, 73, 116, 132–3, 162–9 outcome of, 25, 27, 41, 62, 93, 115, 137, 138, 139, 143–58, 197 Demetrius, 127 Democritus, 44, 55–62 Dicaearchus, 41, 44–50 Diogenes of Apollonia, 22 Diotima, 3, 19, 74, 77 disciplines, 9, 198, 200–13 Ecphantus, 44, 60–1, 62, 63 Empedocles, 4, 8, 28–36, 52, 54, 57, 139 daimones, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36 Epicureanism and Epicurus, 124–32, 139, 143–4, 145, 147, 148, 154, 156, 172 Eudemus, 48 Eudoxus, 42, 43 everlastingness, 31, 35, 36, 41, 61, 62, 63, 111, 115, 127, 135, 136, 138, 180 exhalation, 23, 24, 26 Final Argument (Plato’s Phaedo), 47, 73, 94, 106, 107, 108–13, 180, 197 flux. See change and changelessness Forms, Platonic, 6, 7, 9, 17, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 98, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116, 178, 185 Forms of individuals, 10, 191–4, 199 friendship, 128, 130 Glaucus, 57 god, gods, 6, 8, 22, 24, 26, 27, 72, 78, 80, 81, 85, 96, 97, 112, 163 apotheosis, 16, 19, 28, 35, 36 Empedoclean, 28–36 Epicurean, 124–32 godlikeness, 4–7, 47, 67, 72, 80, 81, 85, 90, 118–19, 120, 124–32, 175, 194

225

226

Index of Names and Subjects

god, gods (cont.) in Augustine, 200, 212 in Philo, 163, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175 Stoic, 132–40 goodness, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 90, 100, 116, 129, 139, 149, 190 goods, immortal, 124–32, 139 Hades, 12, 13, 18, 19, 23, 25, 34, 71, 72, 73 heavens. See afterlife, celestial Heraclides of Pontus, 42 Heraclitus, 4, 20–8 Hermeias, 121 Herodotus, 43, 120, 124 Hesiod, 12 Hippasus, 44, 56, 58 Homer, 4, 12, 13, 25, 66 Iamblichus, 42 identity, 9–10, 28, 84, 143, 147, 149, 152, 153, 154, 157–8, 178–9, 180, 184, 186, 188, 189, 191–4, 199, 200 immortality. See also death; everlastingness; timelessness achieved, 2–4, 16, 18–19, 27, 35–6, 66, 67, 71–4, 79, 81–8, 89, 115, 119, 169, 171–5, 198 derived, 2–4, 67, 83, 88, 163, 167, 198 essential, 2–4, 16, 18–19, 22, 25, 27, 29, 35–6, 66, 67, 71–4, 110, 112, 115, 144, 167, 169, 198 loss of, 169, 170, 171 meaning of, 1, 2, 7, 71–4, 75, 79, 162, 197, 202, 204, 210 renewed, 90 within a life, 2, 118–32, 139 imperishability, 66, 71, 124–40, 161, 202, 205 intellect and intellectual understanding, 10, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 82, 84, 89, 90, 98, 119–24, 129, 130, 178, 179, 185 knowledge, 74, 84, 86, 87, 88, 107, 114, 200, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209 life, 2, 7–9, 93, 94, 95, 103–7, 108–13, 181–2, 188, 190, 198, 201, 202, 204, 205, 210, 211 love, 79, 80, 82, 85 metempsychosis. See soul Metrodorus, 131, 132 Moses, 165, 168, 169, 170, 172 myth, 15–20, 115, 151, 152, 153 non-awareness. See awareness non-existence. See annihilation

Olympiodorus, 102 Orphics, 42, 56 Panaetius, 134, 139, 140 perception. See awareness persons and personhood. See identity Pherecydes, 41 Philo, 3, 161–75 Philodemus, 128 Philolaus, 41, 50, 52, 54, 57, 62 philosophy and identity, 193, 194 and immortality, 66–91, 173 and preparation for death, 95–8, 101, 158 Pindar, 47 Plato, 2–3, 5–6, 9, 15–20, 34, 44–50, 51, 66–91, 93–116, 144, 157–8, 161, 169, 178–9, 196. See also Forms; myth and Augustine, 198, 201 and Philo, 161, 163, 164, 168, 173 and Plotinus, 180, 184, 190 developmentalist interpretation, 88 Plotinus, 10, 178–94, 201, 211 Plutarch, 31, 50, 135, 136, 145, 152 Porphyry, 42, 44, 46, 201 Posidonius, 41, 138 preconceptions, 126, 134 Proclus, 31 Prodicus, 155, 156 Pythagoras, 20, 27, 42, 43, 45, 48, 50, 153 Pythagoreans, 18, 27, 30, 32, 34, 41–63, 179, 186 Recollection Argument (Plato’s Phaedo), 47, 94, 114, 178, 196 reincarnation. See soul reproduction, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82 resurrection, 163 Seneca, 131, 137, 145 Simmias, 69, 95 Simplicius, 32 Socrates distinguished from Plato, 9, 94, 115 epistemic state, 86 soul, 2–3, 16, 20, 21, 143–58. See also death; identity; immortality; intellect; timelessness as harmonia, 180, 186 constitution, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30, 32, 33, 35, 44, 51–62, 63, 77 death of, in Augustine, 200, 205, 212 death of, in Heraclitus, 21, 22, 25, 27 death of, in Philo, 164–6, 168, 170, 171, 172 destruction of, 6, 22, 25, 27, 29, 32, 51–62, 132–40, 168

Index of Names and Subjects distinguished from intellect, 122, 179, 187, 189, 192, 194 immateriality, 179–91 parts, 89, 90, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168 philosopher’s soul, 66–91 reincarnation, 4, 19, 27, 28–36, 41–63, 71, 72, 73, 74, 80, 94, 153, 161–75, 194 soul–body relationship, 9–10, 18, 19, 21, 51, 52–4, 70, 76, 97, 100, 102, 103–7, 113, 154, 157, 162–9, 183, 186, 197 Stoicism, 6, 22, 23, 132–40, 179, 180, 181–7 Strato, 135 suicide, 95, 96, 100 Symmetry Arguments, 143–58

227

Theophrastus, 23, 49 time, 48, 180, 198 timelessness, 9, 89, 93–116, 180, 198 transmigration. See soul truth, 200–13 virtue, 7, 48, 69, 70, 81, 82, 118, 119, 123, 129, 137, 171, 173, 174 wisdom. See intellect Xenophanes, 21, 42, 43, 62 Zeno, 137, 139