Essays on Phaedo

In much of western civilization, throughout history, suicide has been considered to be morally reprehensible and considered to be no different than murder. This essay examines how suicide was perceived by some of the greatest thinkers in western civilization: Socrates of Athens during Greece’s classical…

Reading these texts: The Aeneid and Phaedo, consecutively, one comes across a surprising amount of similarities; though the texts are vastly different in tone and ideology, both authors have some sense that the concept of “rebirth” is a present force in the universe. The theme…

Plato’s dramatic dialogue Phaedo captures the final hours Socrates spends with his companions, as well as the process of his self-execution. Because Plato was said not be present in the jail cell that day, the events are explicitly narrated by a man who was present,…