The Geography of Finitude: Myth and Earth in Plato’s Phaedo

Plato’s use of afterlife myths is often viewed as an abandonment of rational discourse for a coercive practice designed to persuade citizens to be concerned about the condition of their souls by appealing to their worst fears about the afterlife. But such interpretations overlook the frequently critical tenor of Plato’s myths. In this paper I develop the claim that Plato appeals to muthos as a means of critiquing various specific logoi by focusing upon the relationship between the myth of the earth in the Phaedo and the four logoi about immortality that precede it. I argue that these logoi fail to be persuasive because they rely upon a construal of the relationship between body and soul that denies them meaningful reference to the lives and deaths of embodied beings. The myth of the earth provides a critical engagement with the perspective from which Socrates and his interlocutors have produced these logoi.