The Other Night: Dreaming, Writing, and Restlessness in Twentieth-Century Literature

Afterword: The Dream and Writing of Socrates

a f t e r w o r d The Dream and Writing of Socrates Since the day of Socrates’ death, philosophy has been defined as a particular way of approaching death. Being philosophical has meant being philosophical about death. Waiting for sunset—the appointed hour of his death—Socrates discusses calmly what awaits him. No true philosopher, he says, should fear death, because philosophy pursues the separation of the soul from the body that death completes.1 The true philosopher is already ‘‘nearly dead’’ (64b). And, indeed, Socrates shows no fear. From his quasi-suicidal apology up until the end, he shows himself ready to die. The death of Socrates is exemplary in its ease. As with any example, the real difficulty lies in following it. This is especially true for those of us who weren’t there. For us, the example comes in the form of a secondhand tale, a kind of hearsay. Even Socrates’ best student receives the example this way. Plato is not present for Socrates’ final hours. In the Phaedo—his account of these hours—Plato has Phaedo offer an excuse for him: ‘‘Plato, I believe, was ill’’ (59b). By allowing himself to be marked absent, Plato ironically im109 110 Afterword: The Dream and Writing of Socrates plicates his text in the discussion that it represents. As Plato tells the tale, second-hand tales are the very material of Socrates’ final discussion: Indeed, I too speak about this from hearsay, but I do not mind telling you what I have heard, for it is perhaps most appropriate for one who is about to depart yonder to tell and examine tales about what we believe the journey to be like. What else could one do in the time we have until sunset? (61e) Socrates’ inquiry into what happens to the soul in death can proceed only through the examination of second-hand accounts because no firsthand account of death is possible. He or she who dies doesn’t live to tell the tale. As Wittgenstein puts it at the end of the Tractatus: ‘‘Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.’’2 There is, of course, no shortage of second-hand accounts of death. In the irremediable absence of any verifying or falsifying first-hand account, rumors about death abound. In his last discussion, Socrates looks into these rumors without origin. The very first rumor that Socrates examines in the Phaedo does not, on first glance, seem to be about any voyage in the land of the dead. It is a rumor about himself, and it comes to him in the form of a second-hand question. The rumor is that Socrates has been writing poems—versions of Aesop’s fables and a Hymn to Apollo—and the question is why. Cebes asks Socrates the question on behalf of Evenus, who, like Plato, is not present among the discussants on Socrates’ last day (60c, d). As it turns out, the rumor is true, giving the lie to the more widespread rumor, still alive today, that Socrates doesn’t write. Socrates has, in fact, written poems during his stay of execution. (Socrates’ execution is delayed until the return of an annual Athenian expedition to Delos, to honor Apollo.) He has written them, he says, in obedience to a recurring dream he used to have telling him to ‘‘make music’’ (60e). Socrates had always thought he was obeying this dream in practicing philosophy, the highest form of music in his understanding.3 However, in the dead time, or the extra life granted him until the return of the Athenian ship, Socrates tests whether it was not poetry that the dream had been calling him to. To an outsider like Evenus, this literary episode looks like a crisis in Socrates’ sense of his philosophical vocation. But, as Socrates tells the tale, his lyrical turn to Aesop is material for a philo- Afterword: The Dream and Writing of Socrates 111 sophical fable. He recounts his seemingly uncharacteristic explorations in writing as an exemplary story of philosophical openness to death. In answer to Evenus’s question about his writing, Socrates gives an example to be followed. Socrates’ response to Evenus, to be communicated to him by those present, is that he should, if he is wise, follow Socrates as soon as possible into death, the goal of all true philosophers (61b). When Evenus...