Phaedo
Death doesn’t look so scary when it’s sitting in a cup on the table. Nor does it feel scary when what it amounts to is the culmination of life’s work. Now my soul can be freed from my body. In death I will live. In this, hemlock tastes quite sweet.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Mini-saga #2
Posted by Jessie at 9:50 AM
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oi... this sounds more morbid than it actually is. This mini-saga is about the death of Socrates. He was sentenced to death by the city for "corrupting the minds of the youth" and sentenced to drink hemlock - poison. His friends came before he died and offered to help him escape, which he refused to do, saying that as a citizen of Athens, he's obliged to keep all of the laws of Athens, including the decree that sentenced him to death. He was confident in his death as well because he held a belief in the immortal soul - so much so that he wasn't afraid of death, and only saw it as a passing, the body being profane, the immortal soul sacred. The last dialogues of Socrates, the Phaedo, Crito, and Apology talk about all these things, and The Phaedo in particular talks about his belief in the immortal soul. I read all the dialogues once last semester the night before a philosophy test, and we talked about the Phaedo in class today, which is why I was thinking about it. :D
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