Socrates on Pleasure and Pain: "Each nails the soul to the body."

[Matt23]

Sum:

• We usually have great feelings (emotional or physical, positive or negative) towards visible things in the world (e.g. great fear at a tiger, great love for another person, great pain after being stabbed, etc.).  What gives those visible things airs of realness is the degree of feelings we have towards them.  So, the greater the feeling we feel towards a thing the more likely we are to believe the thing is real and true. 
• Degree of feeling towards a thing = Degree we perceive/believe the thing to be true or real

 

Dialogue: Phaedo (Phaidon)

"... but the greatest and worst of all evils, which he suffers and never counts."

"What is that, Socrates?" Asked Cebes.

"That the soul of every man suffers this double compulsion: At the same time as it is compelled to feel great pleasure or pain about anything, it is compelled also to believe that the thing for which is specially feels this is most clearly real and true, when it is not.  These are generally the visible things, aren't they?"

"Certainly."

"Then in this state especially the soul is imprisoned by the body."

"Pray how?"

"Because each pleasure and pain seems to have a nail, and nails the soul to the body and pins it on and makes it bodily, and so it thinks the same things are true which the body says are true.  For by having the same opinion as the body, and liking the same things, it is compelled, I believe, to adopt the same ways and the same nourishment... would always go forth infected by the body... have neither part nor lot in communion with the divine and pure and simple."

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Matt23