Wonderful 🌿 — then let’s continue
the long journey with two great peaks today:
- Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar, where Brutus explains to the Roman people why Caesar
had to die (a meditation on power, love of country, and uneasy
conscience).
- Plato’s
Phaedo, where Socrates gives his first great argument for the
immortality of the soul: that the soul, unlike the body, partakes in the
eternal.
Day 4 – Shakespeare & Plato
Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2
Brutus speaks to the people
Context:
Caesar has just been assassinated. Brutus, one of the conspirators, must
persuade the crowd that the act was not treason but necessity. His speech is
measured, rational, appealing to reason and civic duty — soon to be answered
(and undone) by Antony’s fiery oration.
Extract (~40 lines):
Be patient till the last.
Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause,
and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour,
and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe:
censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses,
that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly,
any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar
was no less than his. If then that friend demand
why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—
Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.
Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves,
than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men?
As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate,
I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him:
but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.
There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour;
and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman?
If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude
that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended.
Who is here so vile that will not love his country?
If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.
All: None, Brutus, none.
Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Caesar
than you shall do to Brutus.
The question of his death is enroll’d in the Capitol;
his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy;
nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death.
Here comes his body, mourn’d by Mark Antony: who, though he had no hand in his
death,
shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth;
as which of you shall not? With this I depart,—that, as I slew my best lover
for the good of Rome,
I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my
death.
Reflection prompts:
- Copy
the line “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”
- How
does Brutus frame killing as duty, not desire?
- Place
this beside Lear’s “More sinn’d against than sinning.” Where Lear
sees himself as victim, Brutus presents himself as patriot. Which rings
truer, which feels more self-serving?
Plato: Phaedo
The first argument for immortality of the soul: the
doctrine of opposites
Context:
Socrates tells his friends that all things come to be from their opposites: the
greater from the lesser, waking from sleeping, life from death. If the cycle
holds, then the living come from the dead, and death must be a passage, not an
end.
Extract (~3–4 paragraphs, Jowett translation):
“Let us consider the matter thus. Do we not say that there
is an opposite of every process? For example, of becoming greater there is the
opposite of becoming smaller, and of weaker, stronger. And between all
opposites there are two processes, from one to the other and again back. Do you
agree?”
They all assented.
“And is there not an opposite of living, as sleeping is the
opposite of waking?”
“Certainly,” they replied.
“And what is the opposite of living?”
“Being dead,” they said.
“And do not things which have opposites come from their
opposites? Just as the weaker comes from the stronger, and the greater from the
smaller, and all things that have an opposite come from their opposite? In like
manner the living come from the dead, and the dead from the living. So our
souls exist in the world below, and are brought back again to life.”
“This, then, if true, would be a sufficient proof of the
immortality of the soul. For if the living come only from the dead, then surely
the souls of the dead must be somewhere out of which they come again. Thus
there is strong proof that the souls of the dead exist in the other world.”
Reflection prompts:
- Copy
the phrase “The living come from the dead, and the dead from the
living.”
- Compare
with Hamlet’s dread of the “undiscovered country.” Hamlet feared it;
Socrates reasons it must exist as part of a natural cycle.
- Does
this “opposites” argument convince you, or does it feel like wordplay?
✨ Today’s resonance:
Brutus defends an act of death for the sake of the Republic; Socrates explains
death itself as part of nature’s republic of opposites. Both speeches stand at
a threshold: one in the Forum of Rome, one in the prison of Athens.
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