I'm trying to picture what two creatures with one head would look like--one head and two bodies? Wouldn't that just be one creature with two bodies? Wouldn't a more apt simile be something like "like one creature with two heads"? I suppose if pleasure and pain were like that, then one might be able to isolate pleasure without pain or vice versa (by cutting off a head?), and Socrates's point is that one can't have one without the other, which would follow if they shared a head. I know this talk of the relationship between opposites comes up later in the dialogue. I'd like to revisit this passage when it does.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Day 11: Phaedo 57a-62a (pp. 49-54)
At 59a Phaedo says that when he was with Socrates he experienced a feeling of "an unaccustomed mixture of pleasure and pain at the same time". However, at 60b Socrates claims that one cannot have both pleasure and pain at the same time, but instead there is an "astonishing" relation between the two opposites in which if one catches one, one will also catch the other "like two creatures with one head".
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Greetings from the airport. Done the reading.
ReplyDeleteIanH: The denial that there can be mixtures of pleasure and pain is especially strange because Plato seems quite clearly to accept that there are such mixtures in Republic IX and Philebus. But perhaps the crucial difference is that, in those contexts, the pain that gets mixed with pleasure is of a specific sort: it is the pain involved in having some desire, which is (in part) a recognition of a lack or emptiness that you have. The pain in Socrates' leg is not obviously part of a desire he has; though the emotional pain of Socrates' friends might be part of some desire or other (e.g., the desire that Socrates not die that day). That might help to make things a bit more consistent.
ReplyDeleteA few further notes:
1. Did anyone else catch the ship of Theseus reference at 58a-b? That darn ship is everywhere! (Nate knows what I'm talking about.)
2. 60a: This passage about Xanthippe is rather shocking. As far as we can tell, Socrates doesn't even say goodbye to her. Despite his fondness for mythical women, goddesses, and guardians of the Republic, Socrates treats his own wife very badly. (Side note: Dan Dennett owns a boat called "Xanthippe," after Socrates' wife.)
3. 60e-61a: I honestly don't know what to make of Socrates' dream and his last-minute impulse to write poetry. At the very least, he is second-guessing his whole life's project: "In the past I imagined that it was instructing and advising me to do what I was doing ... namely, to practice the art of philosophy ... But now ...".
4. Also: Do we ever find philosophy referred to as an art/skill/craft elsewhere? In particular, as "the highest kind of art"?