Abstract
As a cognitivist about emotions, Socrates takes the fear of death to be a belief that death is a bad thing for the one who dies. Socrates, however, thinks there are reasons for thinking death is not a bad thing at all, and might even be a blessing. So the question considered in this paper is: how would Socrates explain the fact that so many people believe death is bad?
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Notes
All translations are those that appear in Cooper (1997). When we have revised them (as we did in this case), we will say so. In this quotation, we replaced “man” and “men” since the Greek is not gendered.
Throughout this paper when we refer to “Socrates” or “Socratic,” we mean to refer only to the character by that name who appears in Plato’s early dialogues. We leave aside how this character may or may not be related to the historical Socrates. Moreover, our focus in this paper is strictly on how the Socrates of Plato’s early dialogues might have explained the ubiquity and intractability of the belief that death is bad. We make no attempt, herein, to offer our own views about this question.
See also Protagoras 358d5-6, Laches 198b8-9. A recent study of Socrates’ cognitivism with respect to the emotions may be found in Brickhouse and Smith 2015. In this paper, we will make use of some of their account. Neither Brickhouse and Smith nor do we endorse this view about the emotions, though we accept that it is Socrates’ view.
It might seem that we have omitted a most important source of belief from this list, given its role in much of the history of philosophy and also the emphasis put on it in Socratic examinations: introspection. We do not include this as a candidate for explaining why people believe death is bad. Introspection is often regarded as a useful way to have one’s own beliefs become more salient to one. But it is not itself a source of new beliefs. Since our question is how people come to have the belief that death will be bad for them, an answer that assumes they already have that belief fails to provide an adequate answer. The same may be said for the (apparently later) Platonic theory of recollection, which assumes the existence of innate cognitive states. That account, too, cannot provide the explanation we are seeking for the Socrates of the early dialogues, and not just because we do not see that theory presented until the Meno; rather, that theory is explicitly given as an explanation of innate knowledge, and not innate false beliefs. We do not believe that the actual belief that death is a bad thing is innate (though we think that the original source of its etiology is innate), since we do not think the Socrates of Plato’s early dialogues believes people are born with beliefs that are both innate and also false.
We thus set aside the report given by Er in the tale of Alcinous, described in Book X of the Republic. Since Er’s account includes reincarnation and transmigration of souls, it does not seem to be compatible with the “two things” argument in the Apology, or in the accounts Plato gives to Socrates in any of the dialogues before the Meno. (See note 5, above.).
Herodotus, Histories 1.31; trans. Macaulay and Lateiner.
This shift is explained by Sourvinou-Inwood as changing attitudes to death, presumably caused by increasing individualism and development of polis. See Sourvinou-Inwood (1995).
Garland (1985: 66).
This grave stēlē of Ampharete from the fifth century B.C.E. is exhibited in the Kerameikos Archeological Museum in Athens.
Burkert (1987: 21).
Cosmopoulos (2015: 165).
Edmunds (2004): 83.
This is the sort of objection that is sometimes made against Epicurus’s rejection of the fear of death: harms of loss do not require an experiencing agent to qualify as harms.
Scholars have been divided in their assessments of Socrates’ claim here. See Armleder (1966: 46) and Roochnik (1985) for negative assessments. More positive appraisals of Socrates’ argument can be found in Ehnmark (1946), Hoerber (1966), Rudebusch (1991), Brickhouse and Smith (1994: 203–212), Jones (2013), and Smith (2016). We make no attempt here to evaluate Socrates’ argument, so much as simply to note that this horn of the constructive dilemma that Socrates offers effectively rejects such considerations.
Here, too, we believe that Socrates thinks there are convincing reasons not to think death will be bad for one who dies. In the Apology this is presented as at least a possibility. In the closing myth of the Gorgias (523a1–527a8), Socrates makes clear how and why he believes in an afterlife that will be good for all of the dead. Failure to take such a possibility seriously would thus count to Socrates as another kind of epistemic fault.
Brickhouse and Smith (2015: 9–28).
We use this term in the way that has become familiar in the literature on Socratic and Platonic moral psychology. For explanations and discussions, see (in alphabetical order) Brickhouse and Smith (2010, 2012, 2015), Devereux (1995), Irwin (1977, 1995), Jones (2013), Reshotko (2013). To say of a psychological process that it is non-rational is simply to indicate that it is to not to be explained in terms of the operations of reason. Some such processes plainly produce what we would call rational or reasonable beliefs—for example ordinary perception. Whether or not a belief-forming process will produce reasonable beliefs will depend upon the veridical reliability of the process. The kind of process under discussion in this section is treated by Socrates as highly unreliable.
Brickhouse and Smith (2015: 14–15).
Socrates also acknowledges that his own death would be or would have been a bad thing, at least for others—for example at Apology 30d6-e6 and 31c7-32a3. But again, Socrates’ focus is on whether or not being dead will be good or bad for the one who died.
Austin (2013: 33).
For which, see Brickhouse and Smith (2010: 70–81).
This is what is called Socrates’ intellectualism about motivation. Despite differences in their accounts of precisely how we should understand his view, that Socrates does hold such a view is generally accepted among scholars. For some examples of different prevalent opinions as to how this view should be understood, see Brickhouse and Smith (2010, 2012, 2013, 2015), Cooper (1999), Irwin (1977: 76–96, 1995: 75–76), Jones (2012), Penner (1990, 1991, 1996, 1997, 2000), Reshotko (1992, 2006), Wolfsdorf (2008: 33–59).
See Apology 28d6–29a1.
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Deretić, I., Smith, N.D. Socrates on Why the Belief that Death is a Bad Thing is so Ubiquitous and Intractable. J Ethics 25, 107–122 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-020-09354-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-020-09354-y