Phaedo

Name: Phaedo
Rating: 4 (4 reviews)

Plato

Jan 1875 · Binker North

4.0

4 reviews

eBook

108

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About this eBook

Phaedo is a philosophical dialogue and philosophy classic by Plato. In Phaedo by Plato, "The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and those who are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out.

One of the main themes in the Phaedo is the idea that the soul is immortal. In the dialogue, Socrates discusses the nature of the afterlife on his last day before being executed by drinking hemlock. Socrates has been imprisoned and sentenced to death by an Athenian jury for not believing in the gods of the state (though some scholars think it was more for his support of "philosopher kings" as opposed to democracy)[2] and for corrupting the youth of the city.

By engaging in dialectic with a group of Socrates' friends, including the two Thebans, Cebes, and Simmias, Socrates explores various arguments for the soul's immortality in order to show that there is an afterlife in which the soul will dwell following death. Phaedo tells the story that following the discussion, he and the others were there to witness the death of Socrates.

The Phaedo was first translated into Latin from Greek by Henry Aristippus in 1160. Today, it is generally considered one of Plato's greatest works.

Ratings and reviews

4.0

4 reviews

A Google user

3 January 2011

Nice Work Google!

About the author

Plato (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347 BC) was an Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought, and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the pivotal figure in the history of Ancient Greek and Western philosophy, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle.[a] Plato has also often been cited as one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality.[4] The so-called Neoplatonism of philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry influenced Saint Augustine and thus Christianity. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.[5] Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy. Plato is also considered the founder of Western political philosophy. His most famous contribution is the theory of Forms known by pure reason, in which Plato presents a solution to the problem of universals known as Platonism (also ambiguously called either Platonic realism or Platonic idealism). He is also the namesake of Platonic love and the Platonic solids. His own most decisive philosophical influences are usually thought to have been along with Socrates, the pre-Socratics Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides, although few of his predecessors' works remain extant and much of what we know about these figures today derives from Plato himself.[b] Unlike the work of nearly all of his contemporaries, Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years.[7] Although their popularity has fluctuated over the years, the works of Plato have never been without readers since the time they were written

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