This First Friday Lecture is supported by gifts made in memory of Basic Program Instructor Claudia Traudt.
Plato’s dialogue Phaedo tells the story of Socrates’ last day, with Socrates holding a conversation with his friends in his jail cell as he is preparing to have his death sentence carried out. Throughout the dialogue, Plato depicts Socrates attempts to convince his companions that death is nothing to be feared by a true philosopher, but it turns out that even his own closest friends and followers have a hard time accepting this idea, particularly in the face of Socrates’ immanent death. I will argue that Plato depicts Socrates using three different modes of persuasion – argument, myth, and action – in order to convince both the interlocutors in the dialogue as well as Plato’s readers, that a true philosopher does not fear death.
