Healed to Die: Death as a Paradigm for Refutation in Plato’s Phaedo

Considering Socrates’s claims that the philosopher practices for death and that there are different kinds of death, this essay proposes that the account of death (and of death’s relation to the human person) offered in the Phaedo might be read as analogy for the relationship between refutation and the human mind. Through Socrates’s words and actions in the face of death, Plato explores what it means to be refuted. This exploration offers evidence of Plato’s interest in the experience of refutation and in refutation’s place in the epistemological and ethical life of the soul. Through the paradigm of death, one comes to understand better what it means to hold and to give up beliefs that one takes or once took to be true.