Phaedo
Platoc. 385 BCEPlato wrote the most famous death scene in philosophy: Socrates calmly arguing for the immortality of the soul while drinking hemlock.
Read this if you…
- want to hear arguments on immortality of the soul
- want to see how Socrates triumphantly reasons about and accepts death
- want context for later Christian views of the soul
Skip this if you…
- don't like quasi-religious discussion of immortal souls
Why It Matters
Plato wrote the most famous death scene in philosophy: Socrates calmly arguing for the immortality of the soul while drinking hemlock. The dialogue's arguments about what happens after death shaped Christian theology, Islamic philosophy, and two millennia of Western thinking about the soul. It is philosophy at its most dramatic and most human.
The 
Take
Cool ancient meditation on the soul and death
Where to go next
- The Odyssey by Homer. Phaedo built on it. - Socrates argues that the soul commands the body — and he proves it with Homer - The deathbed scene quotes Odysseus rebuking his own heart (Odyssey 20.17–18) to demolish Simmias' claim that the soul is just the body's harmony - Knowing the *Odyssey* moment lets you feel why Plato reached for it: the hero overruling his own rage is the soul-over-body picture in a line
- Aesop’s Fables by Aesop. Phaedo built on it. - The *Phaedo* opens with Socrates versifying Aesop in his cell — Plato names the fabulist and adapts him on the page (60b–61b) - Watch Socrates spin an Aesopic observation of his own, on how pleasure and pain are bound together at the head - Knowing the fables makes the moment land: the simplest popular form, pressed into service at the threshold of death
Depicted in Art
Socrates sits upright on his prison cot, one hand reaching for the cup of hemlock, the other raised mid-argument; his grieving disciples cluster around him.
Jacques-Louis David, 1787
Socrates seated in a dark interior looks sideways toward a shaft of light from the window, calmly raising the chalice to his lips as followers grieve.
Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy, 1650
Socrates is already dead, lying back on the cot, his body lit theatrically while his anguished followers throw up their hands around him.
Giambettino Cignaroli
Bas-relief: the dead Socrates lies extended on the cot as Crito leans in to close his eyelids with a gentle hand.
Antonio Canova, 1792
Socrates upright on his cot grips the cup; one disciple recoils at left, another buries his head against the wall, a third reaches out from the right.
Jacques-Philip-Joseph de Saint-Quentin, 1762
Socrates lies dead full-length on the cot, head fallen back, as his disciples lean over him in collective lamentation.
Vincenzo Camuccini
Recommended Editions
G.M.A. Grube
Hackett Publishing · 2000
Grube in Hackett's Five Dialogues. The death scene is devastating in any translation, and Grube's plain philosophical prose lets it land without varnish. Same volume as Apology and Crito, which is how you'd want to read them anyway.
Please support us by purchasing through these links, at no extra cost to you!
Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?”
“Allegra, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it.”
More by Plato
- Apology
c. 399 BCE · Dialogue
- The Symposium
c. 385 BCE · Dialogue
- The Republic
c. 375 BCE · Dialogue
- Phaedrus
c. 370 BCE · Dialogue