Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Plato's Phaedo Explained with Dr. Christopher Frey – Part II (October 21, 2025)

Hosts: Deacon Harrison Garlick & Adam Minihan
Guest: Dr. Christopher Frey, McFarlane Professor of Philosophy, University of Tulsa

Episode Overview

This week’s episode continues the deep dive into the second half of Plato’s Phaedo, focusing on the arguments for the soul’s immortality, Plato's mythic narration about the afterlife, and the death of Socrates—culminating in discussion about Socrates’ enigmatic final words. Dr. Frey helps make the complex reasoning accessible, connecting Plato’s thought to later philosophers and the Catholic tradition.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Argument from Recollection (03:13–14:06)

• Summary: The soul must have existed before birth because we are able to recognize the imperfections of sensory experiences (e.g., imperfect beauty) only by comparing them to an idea of “the perfect,” which couldn’t have been learned from experience.
  • Dr. Frey: “Whenever we see something beautiful, we know it’s not perfectly beautiful… to make this judgment, we need some standard of perfection. And the only way to have it is if it’s somehow built into us.” (07:40)
• Key Example: No one has seen a perfect circle, but we all know what a perfect circle is thanks to the intellect. Similarly, the concept of perfect beauty can't come from any particular experience.
• Role of Sense Knowledge: The journey towards the forms (e.g., Beauty itself) begins with sense perception, even if sense perception is insufficient for full knowledge.
  • Dr. Frey: “You start with beautiful bodies, and then care about beautiful souls, and then beautiful city…eventually you want to get to beauty itself.” (09:46)
  • Deacon Harrison and Dr. Frey discuss how sense experience is indispensable for starting the journey to knowledge in both Platonic and Aristotelian terms.

Clarifying Recollection vs. Ideas in Other Traditions (17:45–22:20)

• Discussion: Platonic recollection is one way to explain the source of “innate ideas,” but later thinkers like Augustine locate the Forms in the Divine Mind, enabling the same experience without pre-existence of the soul.
  • Dr. Frey: “That's not the only option, though…there are other options available to where these ideas came [from].” (19:10)

2. The Argument from Affinity (22:20–31:53)

• Summary: The soul is akin to the unchanging, invisible, immortal Forms, whereas the body is changeable, visible, and mortal.

  • Dr. Frey quoting Plato: “The soul is most like that which is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble and ever self-consistent and invariable. Whereas body is most like that which is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, dissoluble, and never self-consistent.” (24:29)

• Powerful Imagery: “Every pleasure or pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together.” (24:52, Plato 83d)

  • Dr. Frey: “It’s as if the body is a prison that actually tightens its own chains over time.” (25:12)
  • Both hosts connect this with Christian and Aristotelian ideas about habits, vice, and the struggle for virtue.

3. Challenges to the Immortality Arguments (32:40–37:16)

• Alternative Views: Interlocutors Simmias and Cebes challenge Socrates with the “harmony theory” (soul as harmony of bodily parts) and the “cloak argument” (soul outlasts many bodies but not infinitely).
  • Dr. Frey: These represent views still recognizable in modern materialism.
  • Socrates responds that such views get the order of explanation backwards: “It’s the soul that should be explaining why the body’s alive, not the other way around.” (35:41)

4. The Danger of “Misology” – Hatred of Argument (37:26–47:54)

• Discussion of 88c–89e: Socrates compares misology (hatred/distrust of reasoning) to misanthropy: both arise from repeated disappointments.
  • Dr. Frey quoting Socrates: “There's no greater evil than to hate reasonable discourse.” (39:00, c. 89d)
  • Hosts: Relate this to modern society's distrust in rational debate, emphasizing the necessity—and rarity—of good arguments.
  • Dr. Frey: “The philosophical life is one in which you have to be comfortable with not knowing while still pursuing knowledge.” (46:19)

5. The Argument from Final Cause (Teleology) (48:28–59:26)

• Socrates’ “Intellectual Autobiography”: He rejected materialist explanations for causes and turned to understanding the world in terms of purpose (final causes).
  • Dr. Frey: “If you ask, ‘Why did you go to the gym?’ and answer only with muscle and bone movement, you miss the true explanation—which is the purpose, the good.” (53:28)
• Fire Analogy for Life/Soul: The soul, like fire to heat, essentially possesses “life” and cannot receive its opposite (death).
  • Dr. Frey: “The soul is always alive, just like fire is always hot. But being always alive is a way more unique property… If you always have life, that’s being immortal.” (54:02, expanded through 59:26)
  • Hosts: This is judged “the most convincing of the arguments, or at least the most clever.” (60:32)

6. Myth of the Afterlife and the Role of Myth (61:53–69:07)

• Transition: If the soul is immortal, where does it go? Socrates presents a mythic vision of the afterlife, with intricate geography and a purgation process.
• Nature of the Myth: Is it a “noble lie” or something the philosopher must believe for a good life?
  • Dr. Frey: “He thinks it may be true… but [the myth] has outstripped what rational argument can provide.” (69:07)
  • The afterlife myth, while not literal in every detail, upholds essential moral truths: “The way you live your life is going to matter for the status of your soul after death.” (64:06)

Myth as Pedagogy vs. Philosophy’s Limits

• The myth serves both as a teaching device and as a way of expressing what philosophy can’t establish by reason alone.
• The myth’s structure (ascent, purgation, judgment) aligns with similar themes in Plato’s Republic and Gorgias, and is paralleled in Christian notions of purgatory and final judgment.

7. Hope, Purification, and Socrates’ Death (73:46–83:20)

• Hope in a Pagan Context: Socrates’ hope for union with perfect knowledge parallels the Christian hope for beatitude and inspires greater faith.

  • Deacon Harrison: “If someone like Socrates...can enter [death] with this much hope...I think it’s a wonderful lesson for our life.” (82:41)

• Socrates’ Final Words:

  • Socrates: “Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius. See to it and don't forget.” (76:27)
    • Analysis: Traditionally interpreted as a thank-offering to the god of healing, signifying that death is the soul’s healing and release from bodily life.
    • Dr. Frey: “For Socrates, the malady...for which he wants to be cured is embodied life itself.” (77:35)
    • Alternative readings abound, but the Nietzschean interpretation (death as cure) fits best with the dialogue’s themes.

8. Plato’s Legacy and the Christian Tradition (83:20–84:29)

• The discussion finishes with how Plato's vision of the soul’s ascent and search for the Good prefigures Christian theology—especially Augustinian and Boethian thought.
  • Dr. Frey: “It’s not a difficult transition from the Form of the Good to God, whose goodness itself. The similarities aren’t accidental...” (83:20)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Whenever we see something beautiful… we need some standard of perfection. And the only way to have it is if it's somehow built into us.” – Dr. Frey (07:40)
• “The soul is most like that which is divine, immortal, intelligible… while the body is most like that which is mortal, unintelligible, dissoluble.” – Dr. Frey quoting Plato (24:29)
• “Every pleasure or pain provides… another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together.” – Plato (24:52)
• “There's no greater evil than to hate reasonable discourse.” – Plato/Socrates via Dr. Frey (39:00)
• “You desire things you don’t have.” – Dr. Frey (47:54)
• “The soul is always alive, just like fire is always hot…” – Dr. Frey (54:02–59:26)
• “He thinks it may be true. It’s not a lie…but it has outstripped what rational argument can provide.” – Dr. Frey (69:07)
• “Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. See to it and don’t forget.” – Socrates (via Dr. Frey, Nietzsche’s reading) (76:27)

Conclusion

Dr. Frey skillfully unfolds Plato’s intricate reasoning about the soul’s immortality, the soul–body relationship, and the moral and metaphysical implications for the afterlife. The dialogue’s richness is linked to later Christian, philosophical, and pedagogical traditions. Socrates’ calm embrace of death is presented as a model of philosophical hope—one that inspires both pagans and Christians to pursue virtue and wisdom.

Next Episode Teaser

In the coming weeks, the show moves on to discussions of Plato’s Meno and Gorgias. For more guides and community discussions, listeners are encouraged to visit thegreatbookspodcast.com.