Phaedo (Focus Philosophical Library)

But who or what plays the role of the Minotaur? From what, in other words, must Socrates’ companions be saved? Is it their fear of death? Or is it the great evil known as misology or “hatred of arguments,” the evil which, near the center of the dialogue, threatens to drown the conversation in disillusionment and despair?

The teaching that the body is the soul’s prison is Pythagorean in origin,

The philosopher is depicted as the man who is, above all, pure and therefore free.

The philosophic core of the Phaedo is usually thought to reside not in its drama but in the so-called “proofs for the immortality of the soul.” Four such arguments are put forth in the dialogue: the argument from contraries, the

argument from recollection, the argument from invisibility and the argument from cause.

Who is the true philosopher, and is he really the most blessed and happiest of men?