The Afterlives of Socrates

We get at the conclusion of the Apology and the Republic of Plato several versions of the afterlife as described by Socrates. In the Apology, it is a description (two, in fact) qualified with ambiguity, with the characteristic indecisive conclusions of the early Platonic dialogues. The Republic contains a third version, often referred to as the Myth of Er, but in this text Socrates describes the rewards and punishment of the just and unjust soul in the afterlife, and discusses the continued blessing that justice and the rational recognition of and affinity for the good, conveys even after death. The Myth of Er seems at first a problematic passage for the Republic, and has many points of contrast with those of the Apology. This paper compares these Socratic visions of the afterlife and discusses their philosophical consequences and implications in the larger context of the Apology and the Republic of Plato.

Of the competing versions of the afterlife, the Myth of Er ironically seems the least compatible with the main text of the Republic, which argues for the intrinsic goodness of justice for the soul, as it seems to offer us a consequentialist motivation to be just. This afterlife of punishment and rewards sits uncomfortably in the dialogue as a whole, as it seems to echo a similar speech by Glaucon earlier in the text, which argued that justice was good only for its effects, and is not intrinsically good. Even more contradictorily, the recount of the myth is preceded by an affirmation that the just will be rewarded with good fortune during their lives:

[…] when they grow older, will hold office in their own city if they choose. They will marry into the families they favour and likewise marry off their children into families of whom they approve. (613 d)

While the unjust will face punishment and ridicule, and will be unable to continually hide their injustice during their lives, and eventually “[i]n old age they will be mocked and made miserable by their townsmen and strangers alike.” (613d) Such words are especially peculiar and incongruous when placed into the posthumous mouth of Socrates, who in the end was put to death by his own city, and enjoyed no degree of the good fortune as described here in these passages.

The main body of arguments in the Republic began with the challenge presented by Thrasymachus, that the benefits of justice was not independent of its effects, and in the subsequent discussion Socrates establishes that it is “profitable to live one’s life in the course of justice and beauty, whether or not anyone takes notice.” (445a) The point was to make the goodness of justice, of being just, independent of its external effects.

We see in the Apology that one key idea that may motivate such a line of argument is Socrates’ assertion that “a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods” (41d), and so even when mistaken and mistreated as an unjust man, a just man is still better off being just than unjust. In the Republic, Socrates argues for a point that, in its wording, seems very close to this one. It is that “the gods will hold the just dear […] for surely the gods will never neglect the man who yearns to be righteous” (612e, 613b). But here, the favour of the gods is shown in consequential benefit, in the effects it has on a person’s life and afterlife. This is a very different statement from the one in the Apology, which is spoken under the circumstances of Socrates’ death sentence, and is immediately preceded by a speech on the ambiguous unknowability of the afterlife. In Socrates on Trial, Brickhouse and Smith [1] likewise observe that when Socrates asserts in the Apology that “neither Meletus nor Anytus could harm him” the passage should be read “presupposing the limitation that the form of harm in question was harm to his soul” since making “an unqualified reading of Socrates’ claim would bring it into unnecessary conflict with a variety of other passages” (p. 262). This is in marked contrast with the claim in the Republic, which seems much more comprehensive, comprising many material and social aspects (such as marriage, and marriage of one’s children) of a just person’s eventual rewards in life.

In Socrates in the Apology [2] C. D. C. Reeve places Socrates’ remarks on his lack of knowledge of the afterlife as part of his general disclaimer of knowledge, which may be summarised as his claim that “I know myself to be wise in neither a great nor a small way.” Regarding what happens to the soul after death, Socrates disclaims that “I have no adequate knowledge of things in Hades” and “I do not know whether it [death] is a good or bad thing” (29b, 37b, as quoted in Reeve, p. 54). While Socrates does observe in the Apology that death “may well be a good thing,” (40c) since his ‘divine sign’ did not prevent him at any step when coming to his trial, Reeve convincingly argues that this so-called daimonic argument of the goodness of his death is merely comparing his “continued life in present circumstances” to dying, and not a statement about death in general. It is merely a qualification that “there is no way we are right if we suppose that death is always a bad thing, or that it is a bad thing absolutely speaking” (Reeve, p. 182) instead of an affirmation that Socrates as a just man will definitely go on to a good death and afterlife. The goodness or lack thereof of death remains an open question in this first part of Socrates’ speech on death in the Apology, the only claim he firmly makes is to disclaim any knowledge of the afterlife.

These are remarks that differ greatly from the detailed descriptions of the Fates and the throne of Necessity in the Myth of Er. It is a comprehensive katabasis which makes explicit the entire process of the afterlife: from when the really heinous souls are dragged to Tartarus, until the departure of the souls into their new births. Of the long narrative that is the Myth of Er, I shall merely retell one portion, that of the choosing of lives. Socrates describes how all the souls of animals and humans alike gathered and were made to choose the next life they would go on to, and their measure of virtue in that life is up to them “such that each will possess as much virtue or as little as he does honour her.” (617c) Some souls, not knowing better and lacking “the requirements for reasoned inference and choice” (618c) choose badly to live unjust lives of powerful tyrants, being greedy, while other souls choose lives that would better them and “bring it closer to justice.” It is an account that makes justice seem at once never-endingly beneficial, for its effects are cumulative, where a well-cultivated soul controlled by its rational part will choose to lead a just next life, but it also makes the acquisition of justice seem a long and far-extended process, for it appears that it would take more than one lifetime to approach closer to acquiring justice.

These depictions of the afterlife live in two very different texts. In particular, in discussing the afterlife in the Apology, Socrates is specifically and personally describing his own afterlife, immediately after he had been condemned to death by the Athenian jury. It is a speech made in personal response to the very reality of his coming death. The speculative ambiguity of the text in the Apology may then be interpreted as a mark of sincerity, since Socrates cannot really make a claim to possess certain knowledge of the matters of the afterlife. What then might we make of the firm statements concerning this matter that he makes in the Republic? What is the intention of concluding the Republic with a myth of such concreteness of detail and tone?

It may in fact seem that the first of the afterlives given in the Apology may actually be better suited to be used as a conclusion for the Republic than the Myth of Er itself. Socrates offers only two possible existences of the afterlife, and Brickhouse and Smith [1] observe that “it is typical for Socrates to view opposites as exhausting the possible options in a given issue.” (p. 258). Indeed these two afterlives are the complete opposite of the other: one of an unending oblivion, and the other of an eternal life crowded with all the heroes and poets of antiquity as companions. In the case of the first, oblivion is described as a deep a dreamless sleep, where “all eternity would then be no more than a single night” (40c). It is a beautiful description of an otherwise frightening condition, as though it were a great state of rest and bliss that exceeds in the measure of its blessedness the sum of pleasures and pains of any human life. But in terms of its relation to justice, if death were indeed such an outcome, then both the just and unjust go to the same state at their death, and both will receive this deep and endless rest, wherefore there is no additional benefit to receive in terms of consequences in being just in the afterlife. Then if justice were indeed good, it must be good of itself, in life, and not just in life but intrinsically good even if the life were lived without good fortune. This is a version of the afterlife that seems most compatible with the intrinsic goodness of justice argued in the Republic, as it would have served to confirm that no additional measure of blessedness or cursedness is necessary to redress the benefits that living justly in a poor life had failed to convey, and that we should not even need to expect additional benefits from being just, save the very benefit of justice in the first place. This would carry Socrates’ analogy that justice is to the soul as good health is to the body to its completion: just as we do not expect the benefits of good health to extend in the afterlife, so too we need not expect the benefits of justice to extend beyond death. If justice were good as good health is good, then it is its own goodness, of itself.

The second version of the possible afterlife is one of everlasting life, where for “the rest of time they [the dead] are deathless.” (41c) While I may agree with C. D. C. Reeve that the daimonic argument only suggests that, on the balance of his misfortune in life, death may be a better state specifically for Socrates under his present circumstances, here in both versions of the afterlife in the Apology we cannot avoid reading that Socrates makes death seem a very pleasant and wonderful state. How much of this was psychologically motivated by the fact that he was a condemned man, we can only speculate, but when we compare the afterlives of the Apology to that of the Myth of Er, we may draw at least two interesting points of contrast.

The first is that death in the Apology in both cases is a static and persistent state: we are either in oblivion, or conscious forever and unchangingly, while death in the Myth of Er is cyclic, and the soul upon death will be reincarnated and have its memories wiped freshly clean by the water of the river Lethe. This is an account full of changes and metamorphoses, from one life to another, with animals turning into humans and humans turning into animals. While in the afterlife from the Apology there is a sense of continuity even from life into death, as Socrates decides that he wants to persist in doing exactly the same thing he has been doing while alive, i.e. constantly question people about their wisdom.

The second point of contrast is that the tone in the Apology is speculative and (perhaps self-) reassuring, while the account of the afterlife in the Republic is an admonishment. It warns its listeners to be vigilant; otherwise they will doom themselves to choosing the wrong subsequent life when their time comes to stand before the throne of Necessity. There is a dynamic sense of vital urgency in the text from the Myth of Er,

It admonishes each of us — even if we neglect all other studies –that a man should be concerned first of all with searching out and studying that which enables him to discern the good. (618c)

It is a call for preparedness and vigilance, while ironically it is the Socrates from the Apology that needs most to be prepared for what comes after death. Why does Plato make the Myth of Er so concrete, and why is it almost taken for granted that the Myth of Er is really the real process that the soul undergoes in the afterlife, so much so that the listener is warned to specifically prepare for the exact circumstances as described in the Myth?

One explanation that I wish to advance is that the Myth of Er may be understood as a noble lie, similar to the one described at the end of Book III (414) of the Republic, of “mixing gold at the birth” of the rulers, silver in the birth of the auxiliaries, and iron and brass at the birth of the farmers and craftsmen. The noble lie of the metaled souls was meant to persuade the citizens of an ideal city of the justice in staying in their own social positions and committing to their own work without meddling in the other classes, a fable to “have a good effect in making them care more for the city and for one another.” (415a) But instead of being a noble lie to an audience of hypothetical citizens of an imagined ideal city, this noble lie is directed at the very listener or reader of the Republic itself.

Unlike the myth of the metaled souls, which was admitted to be an invented falsehood with a noble aim, the Myth of Er is presented as though it were a historical artefact, prefaced as an account “of a brave man” named Er who died in battle, and was given all the necessary rites and laid on a pyre. This reads like a narration of real events, and Socrates emphasises that this story was retained and preserved, that this “tale was saved and not lost” (621c). While Plato had elsewhere in the Republic and other dialogues appealed to myths to explicate his ideas, I argue that the Myth of Er is not one such myth. The text does not make it such that this myth is meant as a sort of analogy, as with the allegory of the Cave. I posit that we really are to believe this myth, or at least act as though we do believe this myth, for Socrates at the end of the recounting says of the myth that “if we believe it, it will save us too, and we shall […] keep our souls undefiled” (621c). It is a parable, meant to produce some good effect in the listener, as a means of preserving and improving their soul contingent on their belief in the tale. In this respect, the parallel between the Myth of Er and the myth of the metaled souls is clear, and the listeners of this dialogue are being made to better guard the justice of their souls and refine its rational faculties, for we are made to believe that we may otherwise be punished or choose our next lives poorly. Then the Myth of Er does not sit at odds with the main body of the Republic after all, and is in fact foreshadowed by this reference to the noble lie earlier in the text. In its explicit content, its argument seems to bewilderingly depart from those of the arguments earlier in the dialogue, but its intention is likewise to explicate and impress on the listener the importance of abiding by this principle of justice, of cultivating our rational discernment of what is good for the soul.

Holding to this hypothesis, we may provide an explanation of why Socrates made such a sudden turnaround of reclaiming that living a just life necessarily attracts the outwards and extrinsic rewards of justice as well, “the ways, gifts and prizes that gods and men give the just man during his lifetime” and the even greater ones after his death as “companions to the blessings justice herself confers” (614a). While the truth of the nature of justice is that it is intrinsically good, just as the truth of the just city is that having its citizens kept well-ordered in their roles is an intrinsic form of good governance, a noble lie may be helpful — or even necessary — to ensure that there is motivation for people to abide by this justice, for the individual as it is in the city. We may therefore read the Republic not just as a discursive text, but also as an instructional one, ending with a myth that provides a noble but fictitious motivation for its listeners to be just. By this fictitious myth, we do not only include the Myth of Er, but the myth that the just will be protected by the gods, and will be rewarded and made well in this life and in their subsequent afterlives, insofar as they abide by virtue. The words are too ironic when spoken by Socrates (considering manner of his death) to be taken at face value as a straight pronouncement that being just really entails receiving such external benefits and blessings.

Ultimately, these visions of the afterlife are exactly suited to the texts which they are written in and complete. The two in the Apology are serene and defiant, describing death as some great and pleasant good. In the second of them especially, Socrates almost teasingly affirms that he will go on questioning and practising his philosophy even after his death, except this time with better subjects such as Ajax and Odysseus than his contemporary Athenians to question. It is a triumphal complement to his assertion that others will come and “more people will test you” (39d); not only will the Athenians left in the world of the living continue to be questioned, but Socrates himself will unstoppably continue his philosophising in the afterlife. The Myth of Er gives an extra utility to the Republic, so that it serves a pedagogical role. Earlier in the Republic, Socrates affirmed the effectiveness of stories and art in shaping people’s understanding of what is good and beautiful, and the Myth of Er vividly does exactly that.

References

[1] Brickhouse, Thomas C., and Nicholas D Smith. Socrates On Trial. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.

[2] Reeve, C. D. C., Socrates In the Apology: An Essay On Plato’s Apology of Socrates. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989.

The translation of the Apology of Plato used throughout this essay is from:

G. M. A Grube. The Trial and Death of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Death Scene From Phaedo. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1988.

The translation of the Republic of Plato used throughout this essay is from:

Richard W Sterling, and William C Scott. The Republic. New York: Norton, 1985.