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[ 16 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
alternative to the view that the soul is material, including an alternative to its
being a simple material thing. Whether Plato himself subscribed to this radical
choice is unclear.
Nevertheless, a fairly straightforward way of interpreting what Plato wrote
in the Phaedo is that the soul is immaterial not only in being without parts but in
being unextended. This is how Plato was interpreted in the second century c.e. by
leading Neoplatonists. It is also the view of the soul to which René Descartes
would subscribe toward the beginning of the seventeenth century. If, in fact,
Plato intended to suggest that the vehicle for survival is not any sort of physical
object, not even breath but, rather, an unextended thing, then this thought was
original to him (or to Socrates). Previously, when others had talked of immate-
rial souls, they usually meant invisible matter. Plato, in the
Phaedo, does not
always distinguish sharply between something’s being immaterial and its being
invisible. But, then, sometimes he does seem to distinguish between these two, at
least to the extent of insisting that the soul is not only invisible but simple and
akin to the gods. As we shall see, in the
third century c.e., Plotinus, a pagan
Neoplatonist, developed Plato’s idea that essentially each of us is (or has) an
immaterial, unextended soul. It was this version of Plato’s view that turned out
to be most influential.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Plato did arrive at the idea of an
immaterial, unextended soul, how might he have arrived at this idea? Although
one can only speculate, there is a natural line of reasoning that would have
brought him to this conclusion. He may have reasoned, as the good student of
geometry that he was, that any extended thing, merely by virtue of its being
extended, is potentially divisible and, hence, potentially corruptible. So, if the
self is immortal not only by accident but necessarily, then it has to be unextended.
But why did Plato suppose that the self is immortal? While Plato’s arguments
for immortality in the
Phaedo
are obscure, the central idea behind the most
important of them seems to be his conviction that the soul is essentially alive. He
reasoned that since the soul is essentially alive it could not die. To Plato, this
meant that at the approach of death, rather than perishing, the soul would sim-
ply withdraw. In any case, it was not Plato’s arguments for immortality but rather
his conception of the soul as immaterial, simple, and thereby naturally immortal
that turned out to be so enormously influential.
The Phaedo, whether or not it faithfully reports Socrates’ views, seems to rep-
resent an early stage in Plato’s thinking about soul and self. Yet even in that early
stage, although the soul is said to be wholly immaterial, a unity, without parts,
and immune to change (like the transcendent Forms), it is described also as a
natural vehicle for psychological continuity, complete with all the complexity
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