The book is based on Stern's dissertation at the University of Chicago.
II. The Defense of Socrates, p. 9. Overview. The Opening Scene. Socrates' Poetic Defense of Philosophy. Philosophy as Preparation for Death.
III. The Proofs of Immortality, p. 49. Overview. Opposites. Recollection. Likeness. Objections.
IV. Socrates' "Second Sailing", p. 91. Overview. Misology. Socrates' Reply to Simmias: Soul as Harmonia. Socrates' Reply to Cebes: The Second Sailing.
V. Socrates' Final Teaching, p. 147. Overview. Immortality and Imperishability. The True Earth. The Death of Socrates.
VI. Conclusion, p. 179.
The Issues of the Phaedo. The contemporary intellectual rejection of rationalism, based on Nietzsche, condemns Socrates's "unproved" assertion that nature is intelligible. This foundation for all western philosophy rests on the Platonic-Socratic notion of "eternal, unchanging, and incorporeal intelligibles" or Ideas. (p.2) Nietzsche charged that this was a dogmatic "preference for wisdom over life." (p.2) Stern sets out to examine the Phaedo independently in order to judge this contemporary verdict on Socratic rationalism.
Although the Ideas and the doctrine of Immortality pervade the Phaedo, this doctrinal preference for wisdom conflicts with a second characterization of Socratic thought in the Phaedo, which emphasizes the human experience not the otherworldly domain--his "second sailing." (p.3) Stern will seek to show that "the true character of Socratic rationalism" (p.3) lies in the "second sailing" and not in the doctrines of Ideas and Immortality. He will secondly seek to "elicit the underlying knowledge that grounds Socratic rationalism." (p.4) He will find it in the human situation of limited knowledge of self and nature. In this situation knowledge will come by ascending through partial knowledge to less partial knowledge based on self-examination in the context of studying human affairs. This for Stern is the ground of political philosophy. (p.5).
Stern thus intends to refute Nietzsche's assessment of Socratic rationalism.
Mode of Interpretation. Stern announces that his approach to the Phaedo text will be a close reading. He will seek to wring out its meaning by taking account of dramatic details--context, setting, characters--of the dialogue and not just the arguments as such. (pp.4-7)
II. THE DEFENSE OF SOCRATES (pp.9-48)
This close reading includes the following sections: Overview (pp.9-10); The Opening Scene (pp.10-17); Socrates' Poetic Defense of Philosophy (pp.17-30); Philosophy as Preparation for Death (pp.30-48).
In these several approaches to the Phaedo, Stern brings out the human-based characterization of Socrates's dealing with his last day on earth. The atmosphere of the opening scene is found to be heavily colored by the impending human experience of Socrates's death in the presence of a group of sensitive young Pythagoreans, not by a mood of searching intellectual inquiry (p. 12). There is no clarity about the immortal beyond awaiting Socrates. Socrates resorts to a MYTH rather than to reason to explain the dualism of human existence (p. 19). His defense of philosophy rests on a nonrational belief; this strikes at the heart of rational philosophy. (p.26). Throughout, Stern finds that "the question of death [especially the one impending] acts as a solvent of certainty." (p.22)
In "Philosophy as Preparation for Death," we see a Socrates who posits the soul as separate from the body (the orthodox view) but who also examines "life, the human whole" (p. 34). The text thus exhibits for us a "tension between human life and the requirements of perfect [ie., absolute] wisdom" (p. 34). Here we see Socrates's turn toward human wisdom, his "second sailing" (p.36). In the remainder of this section, Stern analyses in detail the grounds of this non-absolutist interpretation of Socrates's approach to philosophy as a preparation for death. Nietzsche's view of Socrates's approach is contradicted by this contextual reading of the dramatic situation of Socrates's last day. Stern finds Socrates moving toward the following "here-and-now" need of philosophers: Philosophers have to overcome "the nearly irresistible desire for certainty" (p. 42) about immortality in order to make philosophy "an ongoing search" (p. 42). Socrates in the end is found by Stern to have failed to separate philosophers from non-philosophers: like other humans, they cannot escape into pure reason from their feelings and desires. Socrates thus has a Nietzschean cast of mind.
III. THE PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY (pp 49-89)
"Overview" (pp. 49-50): Stern observes that the first three proofs of immortality presented by Socrates in the Phaedo are defective. They fail to persuade his listeners that there is perfect harmony between the human mind and the whole immortal structure. That is, they fail to prove that humans can attain perfect wisdom. Drawing upon the methodology of dramatic interpretation, Stern suggests that this failure of proofs lays the groundwork for Socrates's final embarkation on a "second sailing"--a different way of using reason in life. Socrates undertakes this second sailing after acknowledging the imperfect harmony shown in the defective proofs just set forth.
The three proofs then are considered in detail.
Socrates's third proof of the existence of the soul seeks to show the likeness between the human soul and an unchanging, "incomposite", intelligible.
Stern winds up this analysis of the third proof with a paragraph that provides a hinge or fold between (a) Socrates's "first sailing", or, his attempt to show the nature of things by philosophical proof based on the unchanging intelligibles, and (b) Socrates's "second sailing," or, his acknowledgment of the difficulty of accounting for humans in the whole of nature. The Stern paragraph is as follows:
"The third proof attempts to establish the harmony of the soul and the ultimate intelligibles by showing that they share the same composite nature. In its failure to make this case, it in fact lends support to the indications of the preceding failed proofs that the particular beings on the one hand, and the soul on the other must be considered to be in some way complex. This necessity makes elusive a certain and comprehensive account of the whole of nature, for it is not clear that we can give a unified account of either a particular being or of the soul, much less an account of the unity of the soul and the whole of nature." (p. 85)
Stern finishes the chapter by explicating the objections about Socrates's arguments, voiced by two of the young philosophers attending Socrates in his last hours before his death by hemlock, Simmias and Cebes. Socrates's responses to their needs for assurances help dramatically to set the stage for what is to come--the "second sailing." This last section in effect nails down the point that the proofs have failed to show the immortality of the soul.
IV. SOCRATES' 'SECOND SAILING' (pp.91-145)
"Overview" (pp.91-92)
Stern shows that, with the failure of Socrates's "proofs" of an absolute immortality of the soul, the Phaedo text shifts back to those engaged in telling and listening to the story of Socrates's death, Echecrates and Phaedo. This shift structurally "delineates the central section of the dialogue." (p. 91) Stern here announces his main argument about the "second sailing" of Socrates: Socrates did not seek to attain absolute "pure wisdom" associated with the immortality of the soul; rather, he sought understanding through reasoning of "the human situation, the place of humanity in the world." (p.92) "It is knowledge of this human situation that is reflected in Socrates' 'second sailing.'" (p.92)
Misology (pp.92-97)
Socrates' Reply to Simmias: Soul as Harmonia (pp.97-108)
Socrates' Reply to Cebes: The Second Sailing (pp.108-145)
(A) Socrates's varying views of nature: (pp. 108-118)
Cebes wants to know how we can know that a reincarnating soul "does not ultimately disintegrate." (p.108)
In place of a proof of the whole of nature that would give an adequate answer, Socrates offers Cebes his intellectual autobiography. This tells how he became perplexed over Idealism and unsatisfied with a teleological account of nature. The political aspect of human life makes for complexity and a distance "between humanity and the whole of nature." (p. 117)
Socrates tells how he now was prepared for "a renewed search [for truth] with a greater appreciation of the elusiveness of the goal." (p.118) That is, he turned away from seeking a total, circumspect view of nature as a whole. He in effect embraced the messiness and uncertainties of human life as a necessary condition of the search and the finding.
(B) The 'Second Sailing: (pp. 118-145)
Stern gives his interpretation of what the text now presents, Socrates's description of his hypothetical method. (p. 119) Stern tells that his interpretation contradicts the more prevalent interpretion. (p.121) The more prevalent interpretation holds that this section witnesses Socrates's "turn to the separate Ideas." (p. 121) But Stern shows in his reading why he disagrees with this interpreation. He shows Socrates's DOUBT about the connection between Ideas/Intelligibles and the human world of the senses. (p.123, p. 128)
Stern concludes his analysis by asserting, "[T]he hypothetical method as it is presented in the Phaedo is intrinsically related to the beginning point of Socrates' inquiries only if that beginning point is NOT understood as the separate Ideas." (p.128)
For Stern this turn by Socrates toward various causes in human experience--not toward a final, absolutist Ideal--exposes Nietzsche's error when he accused Socrates of being "dogmatically rational" on the basis of Ideas. (p. 128). In the life experience that he tells to Cebes, Socrates tells how he felt compelled to abandon "one view of nature after another" (p.130); how he came to see that these failures taught him the "famous Socratic knowledge of ignorance, the knowledge of what he does not know." (p.130) So, human speeches, not Ideals, are the basis of inquiry. And, "Socrates' knowledge of ignorance is human wisdom." (p.130)
Of great importance to a reading of Stern is his key observation on the perspectival limitation of Socrates's notion of human understanding: "An aspect of the self-understanding that Socrates gains is that there is no stepping outside the mind such that we might speak of it from a vantage point free of the human perspective." (p. 131)
[This is quite consistent with a Nietzschean and postmodern view of the nature of knowledge.]
Stern next examines how the acknowledgment of human perplexity and the application to it of Socratic reason are at the heart of political and moral enterprise throughout life. (pp.131-139).
Stern relates the desire for goodness to the desire to know as the FUNDAMENTAL desire in a human situation such as Socrates sees in his 'second sailing.' (p.140)
So, Socrates, having abandoned teleology, having abandoned ultimate reliance on the Ideal, finds in speeches, in conversations on the political process, the essence of the philosophic life. The philosopher focuses on knowledge gleaned from trial and error, not on the perplexity of the human condition; this avoids the danger of absolutist and arbitrary beliefs designed to finesse the perplexity simplistically. Personal experience is essential to this process--"a way of life rather than a set of propositions."(p.141)
This appears to belie Nietzsche's claim to have been the first to deal with "the question of the value of philosophy for life." (p. 141) The experiential cast of Socratic reason--as Stern has explicated it, anyway--demands a comparison between it and Nietzsche's project. (pp.142-145) [THIS COMPARISON IS AN ESSENTIAL CONTRIBUTION OF THE STERN STUDY TO POSTMODERN INVESTIGATIONS].
NIETZSCHE VS. SOCRATES (pp.142-145): The final three pages of "the second sailing" ask questions that are important to postmodern study. Stern located Socrates's search for knowledge of nature as a whole not in the Ideal but in self-understanding. (p.142) This leads to the question whether it is possible to know anything beyond one's individual perspective. (p.142) Socrates's intellectual autobiography suggests that it is possible, even in the face of the unlikelihood of reaching a perfect understanding. Stern contrasts this Socratic acceptance of a limited human wisdom based on reasoning to Nietzsche's response to the same finding of limits to human perspectives. Stern hazards that Nietzsche's response is different from that of Socrates: Nietzsche shows a "disappointed desire for certainty" rather than a Socratic "desire to know." Contrasted to Nietzsche, Socrates appears to accept that human wisdom is viable without the necessity for it to be "pure wisdom." (p.143)
[It thus appears to us that, in Stern's reading, Nietzsche comes off as less "Nietzschean" in the postmodern understanding of that term than Socrates himself! He is seen to have an unresolved desire for the absolute. However, the line of discussion in these pages about Nietzsche does not develop. Perhaps this reflects editorial concision at the expense of the fuller contrast that we hoped to find.]
Stern ends this chapter by asserting that Socrates's approach to philosophy in his "second sailing" account does not descend to mere self-absorption any more than it depends on an absolute (Ideal) certainty of the nature of the world. That is, the awareness of incompleteness and the use of "human wisdom" in the face of that can lead to a reflective and meaningful process of living. (pp.144-45)
[For postmodern studies, this assertion is relevant. A theme in postmodern critique is that the "subject" becomes so decomposed and objective reality becomes so problematic that no meaningful thought and no productive political process can be pursued. The Socratic "second sailing" as we see it through Stern's eyes offers Socrates as a better inspiration for postmodern political thought than Nietzsche or the likes of Foucault and Derrida. If so, the anti-rational critique of the Enlightenment, leading up to and including postmodernism, deserves to come under the analytical eye of Stern with greater development than his tangential references to Nietzsche allow here.]
SOCRATES' FINAL TEACHING (pp.147-182)
Overview (pp.147-149)
The final proof offered by Socrates in the Phaedo for the immortality of the soul is examined. It seeks to show both the immortality and the imperishability of the soul. The argument is found to be ambiguous. Its final position in the dialogue suggests the overriding finding that there is NO certainty of perfect harmony between nature and humanity, no absolute. (p.148) Finally, after the final argument, Socrates offers up his last myth, "the true earth." It is a myth that seeks to offer comfort without the assurances of perfect wisdom, Ideals, the absolute. Socrates locates human happiness within the terrestrial limits of human experience; "we are fortunate that life is possible in any manner whatsoever." (p.149)
Immortality and Imperishability (pp.149-164)
The True Earth (pp.164-172)
This expands on Socrates's final myth. Stern marshals evidence from the final myth to show that the human body is the most evident link between the human and the non-human. This human link "provides little substantiation for the notion that the cosmos provides support for the human good understood in moral terms." (p. 171) The myth supports living "without deception [from inflated cosmological expectations] and therefore freely rather than tragically."
The Death of Socrates (pp.173-178)
Dramatically, Socrates, in taking a bath at the end rather than pondering destiny, rejects tragic and providential positions. He is thus affirming an awareness of limits on human understanding.
NIETZSCHE VS. SOCRATES (p.178): Stern CONTRADICTS Nietzsche's claim that Socrates's last words "express the view that life is a sickness of which we must be cured." He contrasts Socrates's final demonstration against tragic and providential positions to Nietzsche's view. [He threw them out with the bath water, as it were.] Stern sets Socrates over against the Nietzschean notion of tragedy, linked to a yearning "for something beyond the human good." (p.178)
VI CONCLUSION (pp.179-182)
Socratic rationalism, then, proceeds from a knowledge of human ignorance not a hope for perfect wisdom grounded in universals. Nietzsche charged that Socratic philosophy was based on a dogmatic rationalism. He was wrong. Indeed, Nietzsche's charge "was itself dogmatically asserted." (p.182)
Stern ends by advancing his reading of Socratic rationalism as a contemporary alternative to "the twin dogmatisms of absolute certainty and absolute skepticism."
[The contrast between Nietzsche and Socrates here too is brief. A fuller contrast would be welcome. The Nietzschean "will to power" and Socratic rationalism both are humanly embodied. Stern sees in Nietzsche a yearning for an absolute dogma of the irrational. He sees in Socrates a grounding of the rational in the "perplexity" of the human condition. If that perplexity can be described as irrational, then the Nietzschean will to power and the Socratic use of human reason can be said to have a common origin. Would that call into question the contradiction that Stern finds between the two? We do not know. Again, the book leaves for another time a more detailed treatment of the contrast between the two philosophical views.]
SOCRATIC WISDOM DEFINED: "If we take Socrates' intellectual autobiography as an example of philosophic activity, we would conclude that the result of such activity is not pure wisdom but rather a more accurate account of the persistent problems and perplexities that characterize our understanding of ourselves and the world. This account, a clear view of the human situation, is the essence of Socrates' human wisdom." (p.131)
(A) Socrates's assumption of the existence of absolutes. As he enters into his explanation of the hypothetical-inductive method, he says: "I propose to make a fresh start from those principles of mine which you know so well;; that is, I am assuming the existence of absolute Beauty and Goodness and Magnitude and all the rest of them. If you grant my assumption and admit that they exist, I hope with their help to explain causation to you, and to find a proof that soul is immortal." (Plato: The Last Days of Socrates, Tr. by Hugh Tredennick. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954, p. 159.)
(B) The myth-like "true earth" at the end is inhabited by souls that move in and out of temporal existence.
(C) Socrates urges his followers to a life of denying shallow earthly pleasures and of striving for a "holy" philosopher's life, which will lead to life in a "pure abode," living "altogether without bodies." (Tredennick, p. 178).