I’m reading a book By Bart: Heaven and Hell(A history of the afterlife) and What got me interested in socrate’s view point of the world. Thank you for your answers in advance. <3
Bart says:
"As I already suggested, and as we will see in a later chapter, it is not clear that Plato or even Socrates himself was completely convinced, although his listeners allegedly were. Recall, he also considered another completely plausible option: that at death the soul was annihilated with the body, leading to a kind of interminable dreamless sleep. Moreover, whenever he talks about what comes after death to the immortal soul(after life), he hedges his bets by saying that such things “are said” by others."
Question 1:
This, to me, means that we can’t be sure whether Socrates believed in the after life at all. It seems 50%-50% chance if we agree with Bart. But what really strikes me is his last talk with his pupils on his last day where he goes into much detail that souls exist, they are more important than the body and they can escape the body. If Socrates talks about the soul in such manner, how is it possible that he wouldn’t believe in the souls + after life ? Is it the case that he could have believed in souls, but not after life ?
Question 2:
Some people say that he believed multiple gods as all other greeks at the time, but since he always said: "god" in a singular form, this brings some doubts whether he believed in multiple or not. But one way or another, I am curious of the following: Is it possible that socrates believed in gods, but not in after life ? from my question 1 and bart’s suggestion, it’s more probable that he didn’t believe in after life, but if so, how could he have believed in gods then ?
It’s useful to remember that we are getting Socrates’ views second-hand through the reports of his disciples. Many scholars have long suspected that Plato is placing words in Socrates’ mouth.
Belief in an afterlife was by no means universal among polytheistic pagans. And even in the Hebrew Bible the word Sheol often seems little more than a poetic euphemism for the grave.
As a playwright, I adapted Gorgias.
Socrates speaks of Apollo as god.
In some way, Socrates thought he would meet and answer to Apollo in the afterlife.
Instead of getting into the details of that, I was impressed at the piety of Socrates and life review in his life after earthly life.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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