ABSTRACT
In a crucial passage in the Phaedo Socrates describes his development as a philosopher (96 A ff.). Apart from the question of the historical veracity of this ‘autobiography’, what is decisive is that Plato states precisely where and when his Socrates is compelled to make a break with traditional natural philosophy. What is being discussed is the cause for the coming to be and perishing of things. Socrates relates that as a young man he was quite preoccupied with the question of how natural philosophy could provide answers to such questions, and he commences with a standard materialistic explanation, which for example allows ‘the hot and the cold’ or the elements to be the causes of non-materialistic phenomena such as perception or consciousness. Now, by means of mystifying questions his aim is to show what it is that such a theory fails to provide answers for. To be sure, it may explain how one grows by eating and drinking. But if one man is a head taller than another, is the head then the cause of both greatness and smallness? And why does one plus one equal two? If one adds one and one, the result will be two; but that is also the case if one entity is broken in the middle.
