Abstract

In an earlier article I sought to analyse the metaphor of withdrawal in the last argument of Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul.1 The key to the metaphor lies, I believe, in recognizing the paradox that in terms of Plato's metaphor something stays as it is, for example continues to be fire and to be hot, or to be cold and to be snow, by running away. Plato's argument is that fire will either ‘run away’, i.e. it will escape the onslaught of cold, and so continue to be fire, or else it will perish. For in terms of Plato's metaphor if something which is characterized essentially by one of a pair of opposites, in the way that soul is, were to ‘stay behind’ then it would have to ‘accept’ the opposite of the form by which it is characterized, and that it cannot do. Fire cannot be cold. Snow cannot be hot. The soul cannot be dead