JILL GORDONfi nite, mutable objects of our experience. And beyond our sense experi-
ence, Plato relies on the fancy of our imagination to create other worlds
and images. Plato’s use of images and his implicit belief in their poten-
tial for good effect, as evidenced by his pervasive and artful use of them,
compel us to ask why Plato chose to use images as he does and why they
are such an effective tool for his project. I will argue that the dialogues
are, therefore, paradigms of image-making as an avenue for philosophi-
cal insight.
The Evidence of the Phaedo
The Phaedo happens to be a major source for passages that seem to deni-
grate the senses in comparison to reason, and is therefore an appro-
priate locus for reopening the investigation of the traditional under-
standing of Plato’s metaphysical commitments, his methods, and just
what role vision and images might actually play in philosophy. While
the Phaedo, on the surface, appears to support the traditional under-
standing of “Platonic metaphysics” and philosophy as a purely rational
enterprise, it actually provides clear evidence that this understanding
needs re-vision.
Set in Socrates’ jail cell only hours before he drinks the hemlock,
Phaedo focuses appropriately on the immortality of the soul. Near the
beginning of the dialogue, Socrates claims that the philosopher tries as
far as is possible to live a life in which body and soul are separate. The
philosopher shuns the so-called pleasures of the body such as eating,
drinking, and sex. Moreover, he thinks little of personal adornment in
clothes, shoes, and the like. In this way, the philosopher lives toward and
desires death insofar as death is the separation of body and soul. “The
philosopher more than other men, separates the soul from communion
with the body” (65a). Socrates then reasons that anyone who shuns the
body would have to shun the senses, since the sense organs are bodily
organs:
Would not that man do this [i.e., separate soul from body] most per-
fectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible, with the reason
alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor dragging in any
of the other senses along with his thinking, but who employs pure,
absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure, absolute essence
of things, and who removes himself, so far as possible, from eyes and
ears, and, in a word, from his whole body, because he feels that its