The Deathbed Dream of Reason: Socrates' Dream in the Phaedo

In this paper, I discuss the dream that Socrates, as depicted in Plato's Phaedo, reports he had while in prison the night before his execution. I do so hoping that, in addition to illuminating Plato's conception of dreams, my discussion will provoke some thoughts about Platonic philosophy in general. Specifically, I hope to show how reflection on Socrates' deathbed dream leads to a fruitful discussion of one of the central issues pervading the dialogues, namely the relationship between philosophical (rational account) and poetic (myth, story).¹

I

While Socrates was in prison awaiting the ship from Delos to return to Athens, and thus for the city's ban against execution to end (58b), the rumor had circulated that he had been composing poetry. Specifically, Cebes has heard that Socrates had been setting the tales ( 60d1) of Aesop into a metrical scheme and doing the same with the hymn to Apollo.² Naturally, this puzzles those who know Socrates; after all, the philosopher, the champion of rationality, seems to have been the dire enemy of poetry throughout his career. As "recently" as the Apology, Socrates had condemned the poets for not being able to give an account of the meaning of their beautiful poems. They had, he concluded, composed their works not by any rational expertise, but, like prophets and seers, by some natural gift and inspiration. As a result, they could not explain what their own compositions actually meant (), and thus did not know what they claimed to know (22b-c).

Why, then, would Socrates himself be composing poetry in prison? Because, he explains, he wished to (60e2-61b1),

test what certain dreams () mean and, in order to purify myself, see if perhaps they had been ordering me to make this music () For the dreams were like this—in my past life, frequently the same dream came to me, appearing at different times in different visages (), but saying the same thing: "Socrates, make music and practice it." And I, in the past, assumed I was doing the very thing that they were exhorting and ordering me to do. Just like those men who urge on runners, so the dream was ordering me to do the very thing I was doing, namely making music, because philosophy is the greatest music and I was doing it. But now, since the verdict came in and the festival of the god delayed my dying, it seemed necessary, in case the dream was perhaps ordering me to make music in the ordinary sense (), not to disobey it but to make it. For it seemed to be safer not to depart before purifying myself by making poems in obedience to the dream.

In response to his dream, Socrates had composed music in honor of Apollo, and then, since it is incumbent upon a poet to make rather than (61b4), and since Socrates himself says he is no (61b5), no "storyteller," he also put some of Aesop's stories to music. He was concerned lest he had misinterpreted these dreams and the "music" he had been practicing—and please recall the much wider scope of the Greek , which comes closer to meaning "culture" than to our word "music "—ought not to have been philosophy.³ Perhaps he should have been making run-of-the-mill music, poetry in its conventional sense.

With these comments from the Apology and the Phaedo at hand, a workable, even if somewhat crude, distinction begins to emerge. Philosophical rationality, or simply , is the ability to explain what something means in a self-sufficient manner, that is, without relying on any non-rational source such as divine inspiration, and without employing any non-rational devices, such as a narrative. Poetry, or simply , is a broad term meant to encompass all kinds of storytelling, as well as the much more specific sense of verse. As this paper develops, this distinction will be progressively refined.

To return to Socrates' dream: it has several features that distinguish it from a typical prophetic dream or from a dream of, as I will shortly describe it, the "standard...