Mourning Socrates: Plato's Phaedo and Tragic Philosophy.

Plato's Phaedo has long captivated readers with its moving portrayal of the death of Socrates. But the philosophic significance of the dialogue's emotional power is rarely considered. In this article, I approach the dialogue as a work of tragic philosophy that reveals legitimate grounds for grief in the moral universe of Socrates' circle. I propose that the dialogue is a deliberately failed attempt to depict a non-tragic hero and a non-tragic death, and in depicting philosophy's failure to eliminate tragedy from the contemplative life, the dialogue itself becomes a form of tragic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]