Plato, Phaedo, in Plato I: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, trans.
H. N. Fowler, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1971), 99d.
Phaedo, 85c.
Phaedo, 85c.
Phaedo, 85d.
Sarah Kofman, “Beyond Aporia?” in Post-Structuralist Classics, ed. An-
d rew B enja m i n ( New York : Rout led ge, 19 8 8), 10. O r ig i n a l l y publ i shed i n French
as Comment s’en sortir? (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1983).
Plato, Phaedo, in Plato’s Phaedo, trans. Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and
Eric Salem (Newburyport: Focus Classical Library, 1998), 100a.
Much has been written about this “autobiography.” Reale identifi es it in
his magnifi cent Toward a New Interpretation of Plato as “one of the most famous
and magnifi cent passages that Plato has left us” (Giovanni Reale, Toward a New
Interpretation of Plato, trans. John R. Catan and Richard Davies [Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997], 95). Even though what is at
stake here in the dialogue are causes of generation and destruction, I do not
want to focus here on causality, as discussed, for example, by Sallis (Being and
Logos, 38– 44) and Gonzalez (Dialectic and Dialogue, 188 – 208). Instead, I want to
emphasize the change in method that is symbolized by the “second sailing.”
Plato’s Phaedo, 97b.
Phaedo 58b.
Much more can be said about the myth, but since it is not certain which
version(s) of the myth was/were known to Plato, I have tried to summarize the
basic elements of the story.
Phaedo, 58c.
Phaedo, 58a– b.
In fact, there are more people present in the prison, but only fourteen
people are named here by Phaedo. Interestingly, the fourteen names are, when
Phaedo enumerates the names, grouped in a set of seven Athenians, two addi-
tional Athenians, and fi ve foreigners. This could be seen as another reference
to the “twice seven.”
Plato, Symposium, in Plato III: Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias, trans. W. R. M.
Lamb, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996),
177d.
Socrates is not the slave doctor, but rather the “free-born doctor” of
the Laws. He is the free-born doctor who tries to fi nd the real cause of such
illnesses, the origin from which nature unfolds (a;rch`~ kai; kata; fuvsin [Laws,
720d]).
In the whole Platonic corpus the word “labyrinth” is used only once, at
least explicitly: “At this point we were involved in a labyrinth: when we supposed
we had arrived at the end, we twisted about again and found ourselves practi-
cally at the beginning of our search, and just as sorely in want as when we fi rst
started on it” (Euthydemus 291b– c). The image of the labyrinth here suggests
