The Last Argument

In the hours before his death, Socrates continues to do what he has always done: argue carefully about difficult questions with people who are willing to think. He offers his friends a reason to hope, though he holds his conclusions with characteristic honesty about what he does and does not know.

“I want to offer you something,” Socrates said. “Not proof. I do not have proof. What I have is a reason to be hopeful rather than despairing. Will you hear it?”

“Please,” his friends said.

“Think about opposites,” Socrates said. “Everything that exists seems to come from its opposite. Sleeping comes from waking, and waking comes from sleep. Hot things become cold. Cold things become hot. Things that are large were once small.”

“Yes.”

“Now: living things eventually die. That is the movement from life to death. If the movement only runs one direction, if everything alive eventually dies and nothing dead ever comes back to life, then at some point everything would be dead. No new living things. The world would become still and silent.”

“The world is not silent and still,” Simmias said.

“No. Life keeps renewing itself. New things are always coming into existence. Which suggests that whatever death is, it is not the simple end of the cycle. Something continues. Something comes back.”

“You are saying something of us continues.”

“I am saying it is the most reasonable thing to believe. I am not claiming certainty. When I weigh the two possibilities, something continuing seems far more likely than simple extinction.”

His friend Cebes leaned forward. “Even if you are wrong, what have you lost by believing this?”

“Nothing,” Socrates said. “If there is nothing after death, I will not be around to be disappointed. So the risk is entirely on one side. It costs nothing to hope. It costs everything to despair without reason.”