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An Exploration of the Myths in Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic

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An Exploration of the Myths in Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic 2017 3rd International Conference on Management Science and Innovative Education (MSIE 2017) ISBN: 978-1-60595-488-2 An Exploration of the Myths in Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic JIAYING YU ABSTRACT In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is not only pictured as a rigorous philosopher but also a proficient storyteller. At the end of Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic, Socrates chooses to use a myth about afterlife to end the conversation. Socrates’ myth, which is told differently to different people, is in a very different style from his logic deduction and plays a unique role in the process of persuasion. The significance of the myth does not merely consist in the storyline itself but has a far-reaching influence on people, the influence of tying philosophy together with literature. KEYWORDS Plato, Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic, Myth. INTRODUCTION Among Plato’s dialogues, Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic are comparable in that Socrates chooses to end each of the dialogues in a myth about what will happen after our death. All these myths share a relatively similar pattern, yet they are different in a lot of ways; so is Socrates’ attitude when he is describing them to different people. Why the myths are different from each other and what can the contradictions in the myths show us? Does Socrates believe in his myths? Why are they always at the end of the conversation and how can they help us in our philosophical exploration? It is obvious that there is a shared pattern in the myths, connecting all three of them together. All the myths are developed from this original pattern, while Socrates keeps changing and adding details to it as it gets more and more complex. Regardless of the chronological order of the three myths, which we do not know, suppose that we can place them in an order, from simpler to more complex, the order will be from Gorgias, to Phaedo, then to Republic. In analyzing the myths one by one and paying close attention to how they are connected to each other as well as how they are different in details, we may be able to understand more about Socrates’ myths and get closer to the answers of the questions listed earlier in this paragraph. ORGANIZATION OF THE TEXT The Myth in Gorgias. In Gorgias, where Socrates is talking to Callicles, a student of the famous Sophist Gorgias, he brings in the simplest myth. Before getting in the myth, we need to first _________________________________________ Jiaying Yu, St. John’s College, Annapolis 21401, U.S.A. [email protected]. 469 find out what takes place prior in their conversation and what kind of person Callicles is. Socrates has talked to Callicles for a while before he begins the myth, trying to persuade Callicles that we should never do what is unjust but should practice self- control and try to be good in our soul, but Callicles has trouble following Socrates’ arguments. Being perfunctory all the time, Callicles fails to get much from Socrates even till the end of the conversation. All his responses to Socrates’ questions demonstrate that he stubbornly believes in his own opinion and is not at all interested in what Socrates’ point is. He repeatedly responds “Why do keep up this nonsense?” [1] And states a couple of times that “I couldn’t care less about what you say, either. I gave you these answers just for Gorgias’s sake.” [1] From Callicles’ reactions, we can see that Socrates’ logical persuasion does not work out for him that much. Thus, Socrates relates a myth to Callicles at the end of the whole conversation, in which he claims that dying is a separation of the soul and body from each other, and after death the soul will be judged nakedly and separately from the body by Zeus’ sons Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aiacus. A just and pious soul can go to the Isles of the Blessed, where complete happiness is, while on the contrary, the unjust and godless soul will go to Tartarus, the prison of payment and retribution. Throughout the entire myth, Socrates emphasizes that after the separation of the soul and body, the soul is judged nakedly, without being attached to body, which directs at Callicles’ main mistake, since Callicles is still insisting in that what is good is good outwardly. This theory of the soul being judged nakedly can force him to treat his soul separately from body and realize his vanity in soul, so that he could stop doing what is bad for his soul, which is, injustice. The Myth in Phaedo. In Phaedo, Socrates tells a similar myth at the end of the conversation. This time, his listeners have changed from those people who hold totally opposite opinions from him to his friends and students. Meanwhile, with different audiences, both the details and the highlights of the myth have consequently shifted. Socrates first gives a detailed description of the earth, and then he sets out the three kinds of afterlife: Those people who have lived an average life go to Acheron and from there to the lake, where they get penalties and rewards for what they have done before. Those people who have committed great but curable crimes are thrown into Tartarus. They have to suffer until the people they have wronged forgive them. Those people who have lived an extremely pious life can make their way up to a pure dwelling place just as being freed from a prison. Additionally, those who have been purified by philosophy can live without relying on body and get to even more beautiful places that are hard to describe yet can be supposed to be places that belong to the divine. In this myth, there are three paths instead of two, which belong to those who have lived an average life, those who have lived an extremely pious life and those who have committed great but curable crimes respectively. However, there is no room for those who committed incurable crimes, which suggests the possibility that all crimes are curable and can be forgiven. Socrates comments that it involves risk to believe in this myth: “but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief - for the risk is a noble one - that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places, since the soul is evidently immortal, and a man should repeat this to himself as if it were an incantation, which is why I have been prolonging my tale.” [2] This suggests that we 470 should constantly use this myth to check against our soul. Why does Socrates think it is better for forgiveness to take the place of eternal punishment this time, and why does he say that believing in it involves risk? For those people who have just realized what is truly good and truly wrong, if the mistakes they have made before are not forgivable, will they be willing to examine themselves honestly? Knowing that they will be punished forever if they admit their mistakes, people will be more likely to disavow what they have done wrong, and they will never be able to face their soul uprightly. Only if the mistakes can be forgiven, can these people be brave enough to admit their previous mistakes and make the final transition. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we can just let our mistakes go, but as Socrates says, we still have to suffer from them for quite a long time. These small deviations from Gorgias' myth do not impact the whole framework of the myth that much, but they focus more on encouraging people to examine themselves honestly, be brave enough to admit what they have done wrong and be responsible for the mistakes they have made. The Myth in Republic. In the Republic, Socrates uses the myth of Er, which is the most complex out of the myths we have previously talked about, to end the conversation. Er, the son of Armenius, is killed in the battle, however his body does not putrefy. Twelve days later he comes back to life again with a vivid story of what his soul has experienced in another world during the days he was gone. After his “death”, his soul leaves the body and goes on a journey, which is the path that every soul has to go through after the body has died. The souls will be judged first. Among them, the moral souls go up to heaven to get rewarded and the immoral souls go down to hell to get punished. After a thousand years, the souls will gather together again to choose their next life, which is the most critical test for them. Only the truly virtuous souls can choose the right life and reach the real happiness. Others are easily fooled by the appearances of the sample lives in front of them; they are attracted by the wrong feature and have to suffer from the next life. After the souls have all finished choosing their lives, they are all required to drink a certain amount of water from the River of Neglect, which makes them forget everything they have done. Then they lay down to sleep and will be lifted up and darted away in various directions for rebirth. Compared to the previous two simpler myths, the primary change of this myth is the addition of choices. We are not only judged by others after death, but also have to make choices by ourselves, and take full responsibility of it, just as Lachesis tells the souls: “Goodness makes its own rules: each of you will be good to the extent that you value it.
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