ABSTRACT
The dialogue called after Phaedo is interesting in several respects. It purports to describe the last moments in the life of Socrates. What the gospel account of the Passion and the Crucifixion was for Christians, the Phaedo was for pagan or free-thinking philosophers. But the imperturbability of Socrates in his last hour is bound up with his belief in immortality, and the Phaedo is important as setting forth, not only the death of a martyr, but also many doctrines which were afterwards Christian. Death, says Socrates, is the separation of soul and body. It comes under Plato's dualism: between reality and appearance, ideas and sensible objects, reason and sense-perception, soul and body. The distinction between mind and matter, which has become a commonplace in philosophy and science and popular thought, has a religious origin, and began as the distinction of soul and body. It is this theory that Plato seeks to express in the language of philosophy.
