My thesis for this paper is that the fable of Pleasure & Pain explains the immortality of the soul.
This passage is a conversation between Socrates and his students, whom went visiting at his cell during the day of his death; furthermore, this quote represents the preliminary part of the conversation between them. Yet, this preliminary part is none other than a fable where "Socrates is the author who has just produced some formally verified textual compositions of Aesopic content.” In this fable, Pleasure and Pain fight with each other until God, who was trying to reconcile them, joint their heads together, so that when one occurs, the other one comes after. The fable came up on Socrates’s mind when he experienced that the pain of the chains was replaced by a feeling of pleasure; the purpose of the fable was to illustrate how these sensations are reciprocally inclusive even though they exclude their opposite. Furthermore, this will provide to Plato the foundations for the doctrine of the alternation of the opposites, and in conclusion that the soul is immortal since life and death are opposites like pleasure and pain. His purpose was just to anticipate in a clear and much understandable way his metaphysical view.
Giving a deeper look at the structure of the passage will point out that the quote is mainly composed in two parts: the first one is a description of what the relationship of pleasure and pain is; the second one is a narrative part where Socrates wanted to make a fable like Aesop would have done in order to justify the relationship of pleasure and pain. Yet, these two parts are subordinated to each other, since one of the two without the other would leave to the reader a feeling of emptiness for not fully understanding the meaning of the quote. The interpretation of each part of this quote though lead to the same conclusion, namely that pleasure and pain are related so that when one occurs the other follows. Under different points of view, Socrates clarified what he would have liked to say, and this is his belief in the immortality of the soul.
In order to give a proof of Socrates’s belief of the immortality of the soul, I will provide some points deducted from the passage. Yet, giving to these points an order will provide a clear and right interpretation of this passage which, as said before, will lead to the conclusion that the soul is immortal. Actually, the passage is clear enough to be understood, but it has to be organized in a proper way to reach easily the conclusion of Socrates. Hence, the order will be the following: the allegory of the Aesopic fable, the relationship of pleasure and pain, which describes the theory of opposites.
First of all, there is the allegory of the fable where Pleasure and Pain, which are non-human characters, act like they were human, without losing their essential meaning. ‘Not losing their essential’ means that they will not admit the contrary of that characteristic. Like fire: Since fire is essentially hot, it cannot combine with coldness—if the fire gets cold, it ceases to be a fire. Socrates during his time in jail, had several dreams that led him to think about starting to write his fables, and the fable of pleasure and pain is one of them he has dreamt. It is a story where pleasure and pain were fighting with each other, and from here it could be inferred that Pleasure and Pain are the reciprocate opposites. If they were not their opposites there would not be a “fight” between them. In addition, Socrates represents them as human characters, because the act of fighting is not something that belongs to abstract qualities, but it does to human beings. In this fable, God wondered about reconciling them, but he was not able to do that due to their different nature. So, God let them made peace with each other by putting both in the same head. But it is clear that Socrates did not mean that they were really fighting, and that they became a character with two bodies and the same head; it would have been absurd. It is just an allegory that allowed his listeners to understand clearly the main point of his whole discourse. pleasure and pain actually represents the experiences of the soul or of the body, and that always a mixture of the both will occur is due to the fact they were joint in the same place for God’s sake.
Furthermore, this fable will not appear anymore in the Phædo since Socrates considered the fables he had been versifying the days before as they did not have any useful purpose. So, just before his students came visiting him, he actually experienced pleasure and pain, and it suggests that the tendency towards abstraction that is often associated with his philosophy must be reconciled with the fact that his inquiries begin here and elsewhere with everyday observations and occurrences. If Socrates would not have told this self-made fable, it would have been hard making an intelligible explanation for his friends to understand the reason why when a man pursues the one and seizes it, he is usually obliged to seize the other also, as if there were two things joined together.
Another reason why Socrates decided to come up with this fable could be that he is gladly preparing for his forthcoming death as it would mean a release from the shackles of the body and from the distractions of the mundane pleasures. However, his explanation is mainly focused on the behavior of the two qualities such the pleasure and the pain.
It is asserted that “Pleasure and pain produce each other in series, the simultaneous presence of the two opposite states of pleasure and pain, neither having been generated out of the other, should be recalled as standing against the reasoning there to be proposed.” So, if the pleasure deals with the pain, the life of the soul does the same with its death, demonstrating how everything that has a quality came to be from the opposite of that quality. In order to give a proof that attributive adjectives come from their opposite, I will quote the passage Phaedo 70e-72e, where Plato explains how the correlation of opposites works for the life and the death of the soul:
“If someone is tall then they must have been short, and if someone is alive, they must have been dead before, and will return to being dead in the future. According to this, all states arise from their opposites, thus there must be opposites.” So, if opposites are generated by their opposites, life is followed by death by following this idea from Plato. Yet, life and death of the soul alternate each other. “This alternation of life and death of the soul is also based on an old belief that souls from here go to another world and that from there they return hither. Therefore, it is a particular example of the general principle that all things are born from their opposite. Living souls then come from souls that are dead from the living.” This eternal cycle where attributes come from their opposite is reported by Plato written as “when occurs one the other one follows it.” This statement means that when a body is crossed by a quality, the opposite of that quality comes after in every circumstance. Before even going through a further investigation and explanation of that statement, I have to point out something “a priori” (it is a Latin expression which indicates something said before going through the experiment); however, it is going to be said later in the reading of the Phaedo. The “a priori” statement is that the existence of one of the quality is granted by the existence of its opposite; otherwise, they would not be defined as such, and they both would not exist. It is implicitly described that pleasure and pain have to both exist for being able to be defined as contradictory or opposite qualities. They belong to a set of contradictory sentences where they give the definition of their quality, if and only if they both exist, and at the same time just one of them has to be true.
I want to call attention to the scene set up by Plato, where Socrates—once he has been released by the chains, or in other words relieved from pain—experiences its opposite: the pleasure. So, it can be understood that when pain ceases to be, it is substituted by its opposite, and concluded that pleasure is none other than the cessation of its opposite: pain, and the same happen with the reverse scenario, when pleasure becomes pain. Therefore, opposites generate a harmony, which means that the pleasure's ending coincides with the beginning of pain; in addition—supporting what I have said before—pleasure is defined only if pain is defined as pleasure's opposite, so when it will not be perceived anymore, pain will occur thereby replacing it. For giving a better presentation of how pleasure and pain are in constant alternation when one of them set down and the other one follow, Plato uses the words ‘always’ and ‘never’. Plato uses those words to describe the essence of beings. Some beings like fire and snow, have a specific quality that give them their essence; in fact, fire is essentially hot, and snow is essentially cold; moreover, fire is always hot, and snow is always cold. Giving to their essence the property of being always the same, it means that they will never be their opposites; otherwise, they will lose their essence and they would not be defined as fire and snow. Therefore, pleasure is always a good feeling, and pain is always a bad feeling; so, if something does not give a good feeling it would not be said that it is pleasant, and the same is for pain: if that thing does not give a bad feeling, it is not something painful. Actually, that does not mean that when pleasure occurs it will always be there; it means that pleasure is always a good feeling and not something else; otherwise it will not be pleasure. By that I mean that pleasure is defined only as a good feeling. Yet, in the instant where in a human being raises a good feeling, pleasure, it is not possible that it will be a feeling of pain. However, in the instant when a good feeling disappears, the feeling of pain replaces it until the condition of ‘feeling defined as pain’ is broken. Again, this give a picture of how pleasure and pain alternates each other in the human beings, and they provide a valid proof for the theory of opposites which represents the reality of the beings. In fact, from the relationship of pleasure and pain it could be generalized that a subject possesses in a period of time a property which at another period of time it lacks, and this theory is called diachronic view of change.
If pleasure derives from pain, and pain derives from pleasure, do they derive from the same place? According to Socrates’s fable yes; they occur together because they have the same source. In fact, Socrates uses this tale to give a reason why when he rubbed his leg after being released from the chains, that were giving him pain, a sensation of pleasure followed. So, the linkage between these qualities is justified by him in this such way. Yet, they come from the same source, so when one appears, the other one has to do it too. Moreover, the human beings are crossed always by both, so that when one arises up and then ceases to be, the other do the same. In order to make the sentence “opposites come from their opposite” true, the two qualities have to be contradictory and they do not have to belong to a case of simple generation. This gives a reason to say that the soul is immortal since the two-way transition between alive and dead conforms the theory of opposites. Socrates, in fact, uses this analysis as an argument for the immortality of the soul.
However, my interpretation of this passage deals also with the epistemology (which is a subfield of Philosophy that is focused on the study of knowledge and beliefs). Going deeper in the passage, it will be realized that it is everything about what is known about pleasure and pain. In fact, Socrates did not say what pleasure really was; he said that after he removed his chains, he felt what people call pleasure because there is no actually a definition about that feeling; it can be described, but it cannot be given a definition. Something can give pleasure rather than something else from different points of view. However, a definition of pleasure could be that it is the opposite state of being of pain, or better, the not-pain. Every single human being has in mind the concept of his/her own pleasure. Pleasure, then, is something attributed to what makes them feel good, yet something that does not make them feel bad. As a matter of fact, pleasure is associated with the Form of the Good, and the pain to the Form of Bad. Plato’s will explain later what is this theory of the Forms, and the relationship between pleasure and pain is just a springboard for his explanation. What gives support to my interpretation is the passage of the Phaedo where Plato talks about his metaphysical epistemology:” Things are perceived differently by different observers, so if things may appear different to someone at a specific point of view, they may appear the same to another ore at a different point of view. Moreover, the equals themselves have never appeared unequal, nor equal inequality.” It means that something that gives to someone the feeling of pleasure, may not be perceived as it from a different stand point, so it could not be generalized that pleasure is the feeling that happen when that thing occurs. This last analysis of the relationship between pleasure and pain will be the second argument for Socrates to prove the immortality of the soul because there is no knowledge about being dead or being alive.
In conclusion, Socrates started telling a fable about two abstract characters whom were antonyms, and became the same thing for the purpose of not fighting anymore; then, he explained how these two characters, as opposites, experience the reality, and how wonderful is their connection so that when one occurs the other one follow. This whole narration and description has the purpose of giving proof that souls are immortals, since being death and being alive are opposites. Socrates, explaining how pleasure and pain are related, gave proof that if death souls were alive before, a passage of transition in change happened, and if it has happened from being alive to being death, it means that it will happen or has already happened from the state of being death to being alive, just like pleasure comes from pain, and vice versa.