It is interesting that, in Socrates' picture of the afterlife, wrongdoers can only be relieved of torment and punishment by persuading their own victims that they should be released (114a-b). If the punishment is just and correct in the first place, what reasons would properly persuade someone to cease the punishment? Is this persuasion rational argument, or mere pleading? Is Socrates perhaps looking forward to Meletus, Anytus, et. al. trying to persuade him that they ought to be relieved of their punishment? (Has Socrates ever been convinced by anyone's arguments about anything? The afterlife for his accusers doesn't look too rosy ... perhaps this is Socrates' idea of revenge?)
Also, poor Crito ...
Done the reading! Tomorrow will be just a couple pages...
ReplyDeleteColfert: yeah, those are good questions. That's a pretty strange story we get about the afterlife, in a bunch of ways. Presumably one is only pleading to the victims who are suitably purified? At least that way there's a jury of one's moral superiors (in a sense), which would be the kind of jury I'd want...
Nate: Good point. If these sorts of afterlife decisions about punishment and salvation really are to be made by other human souls (funny how little is left up to the gods, even in death!), I'd want those souls to be better than mine! And despite Socrates' aggravatingly aporetic discussion techniques, his own views about punishment (as opposed to education and persuasion) would probably save you. Of course, once he's saved you, you might then be stuck being elenchized for eternity ...
ReplyDeleteRight, **finally** caught up on the reading. It's a shame that we don't have any of the Socratic dialogues written by Phaedo. I think that Crito also wrote dialogues.
ReplyDeleteDL 2.105 says that Phaedo wrote a "Zopyrus", and Cicero quotes from a dialogue about Socrates, Alcibiades, and Zopyrus in de Fato §10--it's probably our best shot at a fragment of a dialogue by Phaedo.
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say in the afterlife to persuade those whom I wronged to end my punishment? Well, the punishment itself is only justified as a form of education or rehabilitation. So, what I need to say to my former victims is: whatever will constitute evidence that I am fully educated and rehabilitated, i.e. that punishment has accomplished its end of making me virtuous.
But in that case, the central function of my speech will not be the giving and receiving of beliefs or reasons, but rather the manifestation of a diagnostic sign of my virtue. I.e., my hearers will not be listening to it asking themselves "is he saying true things? should we believe him?" But rather asking themselves, "is whatever he is saying evidence of successful rehabilitation?"
To put it in Gricean terms, the important function of my speech will be its function as natural meaning, not as non-natural meaning, where natural meaning is exemplified by "those spots mean measles," or "those clouds mean a storm is coming on." Non-natural meaning would involve my saying things with the intention that my hearers come to acquire a certain belief that p in virtue of my having asserted that p, and in virtue of their recognizing that I was saying it with that intent.
So I might just say to them, "how beautiful it is here in Hades!". And they might think to themselves, "ah--that is the sort of statement that is indicative of psychic health", just as they might look at a patient with clear skin and say, "ah, that lack of spots means he is over the measles now."
Now, it might be that the best, or perhaps only, infallible natural sign of rehabilitated virtue would consist in a discourse about virtue, or in profuse apologies, or in a direct argument of the form, "you should now come to believe that I am rehabilitated, for the following reasons: ".
But at the end of the day, I'm not sure whether the auditors should come to believe that I am rehabilitated as the result of following an argument that I deliver. Rather, they should come to believe it as the result of gaining some evidence of my recovery, where the evidence may be only accidentally in the form of rational discourse.
That's a weird view. Not sure I believe it.