플라톤 - 파이돈 [Plato - Phaedo]

#Phaedo[파이돈], Hugh Tredennick, tr., Penguin

<정리>

이 글은 소크라테스의 최후, 즉 그가 독약을 받은 당일 날 친우 및 제자들과의 토론과, 독약을 마시고 죽어가는 모습을 이 때 그 자리에 있었던 파이돈(Phaedo)이 에케크라테스(Echecrates)에게 들려주는 형태를 취하고 있다. 이 글은 ‘영혼의 불멸성’을 증명하는 데 주안점을 두면서, 등장 인물들이 비유를 들어서 영혼의 불멸에 회의를 표하면, 소크라테스가 회의의 모순점을 밝혀나가고 있다(세부적인 사항들은 글을 읽어나가는 중에 직접 컴퓨터에 옮겨 적고 동의를 하거나 반박을 해보았다). 그리고, 이 글 곳곳에서는 플라톤의 ‘이데아 사상’이 드러나고 있다. 마지막 부분, 지구의 모습에 대한 소크라테스의 신념은 다소 터무니없어 보이며, 영혼의 불멸이 영혼의 심판과 이어지는 부분에서는 철학이 무리하게 윤리학으로 걸음을 옮기고 있는 것을 알 수 있다.

[별다른 표시가 없는 말들은 소크라테스의 말]

*I believe that this much is true: that the gods are our keepers, and we men are one of their possessions. Don't you think so?'

'Yes, I do,' said Cebes.

'Then take your own case; if one of your possessions were to destroy itself without intimation from you that you wanted it to die, wouldn't you be angry with it and punish it, if you had any means of doing so?'

'Certainly.' (105) [자살 금지의 이유로 소크라테스가 내세우는 주장]

<반박>고대 그리스 사회가 신의 존재를 의심할 수 없는(개인적으로 의심한다고 하더라도 그것을 발설할 수 없는) 그런 사회라는 점을 감안해서, 신의 존재 여부를 왈가왈부할 수는 없다 하더라도, 즉 신의 존재를 인정한다고 하더라도, ‘인간은 신의 소유물이기 때문에, 주인인 신의 뜻에 상관없이 자기를 파괴하는 것은, 주인, 즉 신을 화나게 하는 행위이므로 벌을 줄 것’이라는 소크라테스의 논리는 상황에 대한 지나친 단순화로 보여진다.

일단 인간이 신의 종속물이라는 것을 긍정하자. 그리고 인간과 신의 관계를 종속물과 인간의 관계에 빗대는 것도 받아들이도록 하자. 그렇다면 인간의 종속물이 견딜 수 없는 고통에 처했고, 그것을 견딜 수가 없어서, 스스로 목숨을 끊었다고 할 때, 인간은 자신의 종속물이 ‘자신의 허락 없이 목숨을 끊었다는 사실’만을 놓고, 화를 내고 벌하는 것이 무조건 올바른 일일까? 이 경우에 있어서 주인의 입장만을 내세우는 것이 그렇게 타당해 보이지는 않는다.

상대방을 서로 배려하는 입장이라면, 종속물은 여하의 경우에라도 주인에게 손실을 입히는 행위를 하지 말아야 할 것이며, 주인은 종속물이 당하는 고통을 살펴 그것이 견딜 수 없는, 혹은 지극히 견디기 힘들 때에는 그 고통에서 벗어날 수 있도록 도움을 주어야 할 것이다. 그러므로 종속물에게 어느 정도의 자유 재량권을 주지 않는다는 것은 주인의 입장만을 중요시하는 그런 태도이다.

물론 소크라테스는 종속물이 특수한 사정에 처해 있는 경우가 아니라, 보통의 상황에서 자신을 파괴하는 것을 가리킨다고 볼 수 있다. 그 경우라면, 소크라테스의 전제를 받아들이는 시점에서는, 타당하다고 하지 않을 수도 없다.

(이 문제는 좀더 나아가보면 역시, 신의 유무, 자유 의지 등과 맞물리지 않을 수가 없다.)

*Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would be of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward. (107)

 

*Is it<death-quoter> simply the release of the soul from the body? Is death nothing more or less than this, the separate condition of the body by itself when it is released from the soul, and the separate condition by itself of the soul when released from the body? Is death anything else than this? (108)

<죽음을 영혼(soul)과 육체(body)의 분리로 보는 이원론적인 사고는 여러 모로 검토되어야 할 것이다. 그 전에 영혼이라는 개념이 무엇인지부터 차분히 생각해야 할 것이다. 영혼은 정신을 가리키는 것인가? >

*Surely the soul can best reflect when it is free of all distractions such as hearing or sight or pain or pleasure of any kind--that is, when it ignores the body and becomes as far as possible independent, avoiding all physical contacts and associations as much as it can, in its search for reality. (110)

*We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. (111)

*If they<true philosophers-quoter> are thoroughly dissatisfied with the body, and long to have their souls independent of it, when this happens would it not be entirely unreasonable to be frightened and distressed? (113)

*what you said about the soul leaves the average person with grave misgivings that when it is released from the body it may no longer exist anywhere but may be dispersed and destroyed on the very day that the man himself dies, as soon as it is freed from the body; that as it emerges it may be dissipated like breath or smoke, and vanish away, so that nothing is left of it anywhere. (116) [‘사람이 죽을 때 영혼도 소멸하는 것이 아닌가’하는 케베스(Cebes)의 주장]

*Let us see whether in general everything that admits of generation is generated in this way and no other--opposites from opposites, wherever there is an opposite; as for instance beauty is opposite to ugliness and right to wrong, and there are countless other examples. Let us consider whether it is a necessary law that everything which has an opposite is generated from that opposite and from no other source. For example, when a thing becomes bigger, it must, I suppose, have been smaller first before it became bigger? (117) [‘반대의 것에서 그 반대의 것이 나온다(opposites from opposites)'는 소크라테스의 이야기--이것은 파르메니데스를 괴롭힌 것이기도 한데--에 대해서는 아리스토텔레스가 그 논리적인 오류를 명료하게 지적하고 있다.)

<아리스토텔레스>Since perceptible things change, and change was conceived of by the ancients as taking place between two opposites or extremes--from black to white, hot to cold, small to large and so on--Aristotle made use of the term which had been employed by the earliest Greek philosophers and called the forms also the 'opposites'. The reason why his predecessors had found the problem of change so difficult of logical explanation, he said, was that they had argued as if it demanded assent to the proposition that these opposite qualities could change into one another. They confused the statement 'this cold thing has become hot' with the statement 'heat has become coldness'. The latter statement is a violation of the law of contradiction and is impossible, as Parmenides had been acute enough to perceive. Hence the need to postulate the substratum, which is in itself (though of course it never exists naked and alone) quite qualitiless. Given this substratum--given, that is, what seems to us the elementary distinction between substance and attribute--one can explain a process of change--e. g. cooling, fading, or death--by saying, not that heat, darkness in colour, or life have changed into their opposites, cold, lightness, death, but that the heat, darkness or life have left the concrete object and been replaced in it by something else. (129-30) (Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers)

*‘Did we not begin to see and hear and possess our other senses from the moment of birth?'

'Certainly.'

'But we admitted that we must have obtained our knowledge of equality before we obtained them.'

'Yes.'

'So we must have obtained it before birth.'

'So it seems.'

'Then if we obtained it before our birth, and possessed it when we were born, we had knowledge, both before and at the moment of birth, not only of equality and relative magnitudes, but of all absolute standards. Our present argument applies no more to equality than it does to absolute beauty, goodness, uprightness, holiness, and, as I maintain, all those characteristics which we designate in our discussions by the term "absolute". So we must have obtained knowledge of all these characteristics before our birth.' (125)

<상기설(recollection)은 현대에 와서는 받아들여지지 않는 이론이다. 내가 아는 바에 의하면, 그리고 나의 판단에 따르면, 학습과, 능력 두 가지 요소이다. 능력이라는 부분은 상기설과 어느 정도 연관을 지어볼 수 있지만, 그것도 상기설 자체는 아니다.>

*Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes it over his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars, and wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy can see that the imprisonment is ingeniously effected by the prisoner's own active desire, which makes him first accessory to his own confinement. Well, philosophy takes over the soul in this condition and by gentle persuasion tries to set it free. She points out that observation by means of the eyes and ears and all the other senses is entirely deceptive, and she urges the soul to refrain from using them unless it is necessary to do so, and encourages it to collect and concentrate itself by itself, trusting nothing but its own independent judgement upon objects considered in themselves, and attributing no truth to anything which it views indirectly as being subject to variation, because such objects are sensible and visible but what the soul itself sees is intelligent and invisible. Now the soul of the true philosopher feels that it must not reject this opportunity for release, and so it abstains as far as possible from pleasures and desires and griefs, because it reflects that the result of giving way to pleasure or fear or desire is not as might be suppose the trivial misfortune of becoming ill or wasting money through self-indulgence, but the last and worst calamity of all, which the sufferer does not recognize. (136)

*You might say the same thing about tuning the strings of a musical instrument: that the attunement is something invisible and incorporeal and splendid and divine, and located in the tuned instrument, while the instrument itself and its strings are material and corporeal and composite and earthly and closely related to what is mortal. Now suppose that the instrument is broken, or its strings cut or snapped. According to your theory the attunement must still exist--it cannot have been destroyed; because it would be inconceivable that when the strings are broken the instrument and the strings themselves, which have a mortal nature, should still exist, and the attunement, which shares the nature and characteristics of the divine and immortal, should exist no longer, having predeceased its mortal counterpart. You would say that the attunement must still exist somewhere just as it was; and that the wood and strings will rot away before anything happens to it. I say this, Socrates, because, as I think you yourself are aware, we Pythagoreans have a theory of the soul which is roughly like this; the body is held together at a certain tension between the extremes of hot and cold, and dry and wet, and so on, and our soul is a temperament or adjustment of these same extremes, when they are combined in just the right proposition. Well, if the soul is really an adjustment, obviously as soon as the tension of our body is lowered or increased beyond the proper point, the soul must be destroyed, divine though it is; just like any other adjustment, either in music or in any product of the arts and crafts, although in each case the physical remains last considerably longer until they are burnt up or rot away. Find us an answer to this argument, if someone insists that the soul, being a temperament of physical constituents, is the first thing to be destroyed by what we call death. (139-40) [영혼의 불멸에 대한 Simmias의 의문. 육체와 영혼을 악기와 그 소리(화음; attunement)에 비유]

<우선 이 비유가 적절한지를 생각해 보아야 할 것이다. 일단 눈에 띄는 차이점은, 누군가가 악기를 연주하기 때문에 악기는 화음을 만들어 내는 데 반해, 육체와 영혼은 그렇지가 않다. 그리고, 우리가 화음을 듣듯이, 영혼을 듣거나 볼 수 있는 것인가?>

*Suppose that an elderly tailor has just died. Your<Socrates-quoter> theory would be just like saying that the man is not dead, but still exists somewhere safe and sound; and offering as proof the fact that the coat which he had made for himself and was wearing has not perished but is still intact. If anyone was sceptical, I suppose you would ask him which is likely to last longer, a man or a coat which is being regularly used and worn; and when he replied that the former was far more likely, you would imagine that you had proved conclusively that the man is safe and sound, since the less enduring object has not perished. But surely this is not so, Simmias--because I want your opinion too--; anyone would dismiss such a view as absurd. The tailor makes and wears out any number of coats, but although he outlives all the others, presumably he perishes before the last one; and this does not mean that a man is inferior to a coat, or has a weaker hold upon life. I believe that this analogy might apply to the relation of soul to body; and I think that it would be reasonable to say of them in the same way that soul is a long-lived thing, whereas body is relatively feeble and short-lived. But while we may admit that each soul wears out a number of bodies, especially if it lives a great many years--because although the body is continually changing and disintegrating all through life, the soul never stops replacing what is worn away--still we must suppose that when the soul dies it is still in possession of its latest covering, and perishes before it in this case only; although when the soul has perished the body at last reveals its natural frailty and quickly rots away. If you accept this view there is no justification yet for any confidence that after death our souls still exist somewhere. Suppose that one conceded to the exponent of immortality even more than you claim, granting not only that our souls existed before our birth, but also that some of them may continue to exist or come into existence after death, and be born and die again several times (soul having such natural vitality that it persists through successive incarnations); unless in granting this he made the further concession that the soul suffers no ill effects in its various rebirths, and so does not, at one of its "deaths", perish altogether; if he had to admit that nobody knows which of these "death" or separations from the body may prove fatal to the soul (because such insight is impossible for any of us)--on these terms, Socrates, no one but a fool is entitled to face death with confidence, unless he can prove that the soul is absolutely immortal and indestructible. Otherwise everyone must always feel apprehension at the approach of death, for fear that in this particular separation from the body his soul may be finally and utterly destroyed. (141-2)

<케베스(Cebes)는 육체와 영혼을 옷과 그 옷을 만드는 재단사에 비유하고 있다. 재단사가 옷보다는 더 오래 지속되지만, 마지막 옷이 낡아서 없어지기 전에 재단사는 죽을 것이라는 논리인데, 이 비유는 다음과 같은 점을 의심해 볼 수 있다. 재단사는 옷을 만들지만, 영혼이 육체를 만든다고 할 수 있는가? 재단사가 노쇠해 가는 것을 볼 수 있듯이, 영혼이 노쇠해 가는 것을 볼 수 있는가?

*‘First remind me of what you said, If you find my memory inaccurate. Simmias, I believe, is troubled with doubts; he is afraid that, even if the soul is more divine and a higher thing than the body, it may nevertheless be destroyed first, as being a kind of attunement. Cebes on the other hand appeared to agree with me that soul is more enduring than body, but to maintain that no one can be sure that, after repeatedly wearing out a great many bodies, it does not at last perish itself, leaving the last body behind; and he thinks that death may be precisely this, the destruction of the soul, because the body never stops perishing all the time. Am I right, Simmias and Cebes, in thinking that these are the objections which we have to investigate? (146-7) [소크라테스와 심미아스와 케베스의 논박을 정리]

*if the conception stands that an attunement is a composite thing, and the soul is an attunement composed of our physical elements at a given tension. I imagine that you would not accept even from yourself the assertion that a composite attunement existed before the elements of which it was to be composed. . . . Don't you see that that is just what it amounts to when you say that the soul exists before it enters the human form or body, and also that it is composed of elements which do not yet exist? Surely an attunement is not at all like the object of your comparison. The instrument and the strings and their untuned notes come first; the attunement is the last of all to be constituted and the first to be destroyed. (147-8) [상기설을 바탕으로 소크라테스가 심미아스의 논리를 반박. 이 반박은 논리상으로는 정곡을 찌른 반박이다. 다만 상기설 자체가 의문의 대상이 된다.]

*It<Soul-quoter> directs all the elements of which it is said to consist, opposing them in almost everything all through life, and exercising every form of control; sometimes by severe and unpleasant methods like those of physical training and medicine, and sometimes by milder ones; sometimes scolding, sometimes encouraging; and conversing with the desires and passions and fears as though it were quite separate and distinct from them. (151) [소크라테스가 육체와 영혼의 관계를 악기와 화음의 관계에 비유했을 때의 모순의 또 다른 제시. 화음은 악기의 연주 상태와 일치하지만, 영혼은 육체의 상태와 일치하는 것이 전혀 아니다.]

*I cannot even convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become two by the addition of the one to the other. I find it hard to believe that, although when they were separate each of them was one and they were not two, now that they have come together the cause of their becoming two is simply the union caused by their juxtaposition. Nor can I believe now, when you divide one, that this time the cause of its becoming two is the division; because this cause of its becoming two is the opposite of the former one: then it was because they were brought close together and added one to the other, but now it is because they are taken apart and separated one from the other. Nor can I now persuade myself that I understand how it is that things become one; nor, in short, why anything else comes or ceases or continues to be, according to this method of inquiry. So I reject it altogether, and muddle out a haphazard method of my own.

However, I once heard someone reading from a book (as he said) by Anaxagoras, and asserting that it is Mind that produces order and is the cause of everything. This explanation pleased me.+ Somehow it seemed right that Mind should be the cause of everything; and I reflected that if this is so, Mind in producing order sets everything in order and arranges each individual thing in the way that is best for it. Therefore if anyone wished to discover the reason why any given thing came or ceased or continued to be, he must find out how it was best for that thing to be, or to act or be acted upon in any other way. on this view there was only one thing for a man to consider, with regard both to himself and anything else, namely the best and highest good; although this would necessarily imply knowing what is less good, since both were covered by the same knowledge. (154-5)

+Socrates speaks as if Anaxagoras first put the idea into his head. It seems more likely that his rational and moral outlook (which was probably congenital) always made him seek for a teleological explanation; and that it was this that made him dissatisfied with materialistic theories.

*Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a cause! It is this latter, as it seems to me, that most people, groping in the dark, call a cause--attaching to it a name to which it has no right. (157) [소크라테스의 원인론(causation)에 대한 관심]

*But however that may be, I started off in this way; and in every case I first lay down the theory which I judge to be soundest; and then whatever seems to agree with it--with regard either to causes or to anything else--I assume to be true, and whatever does not I assume not to be true. . . . what I mean is this, and there is nothing new about it; I have always said it, in fact I have never stopped saying it, especially in the earlier part of this discussion. As I am going to try to explain to you the theory of causation which I have worked out myself, I propose to make a fresh start from those principles of mine which you know so well; that is, I am assuming the existence of absolute Beauty and Goodness and Magnitude and all the rest of them. . . . Well, now, that is as far as my mind goes; I cannot understand these other ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that the reason why a given object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous colour or shape or any other such attribute, I disregard all these other explanations--I find them all confusing--and I cling simply and straightforwardly and no doubt foolishly to the explanation that the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it or association with it (in whatever way the relation comes about) of absolute Beauty. I do not go so far as to insist upon the precise details; only upon the fact that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful. This, I feel, is the safest answer for me or for anyone else to give, and I believe that while I hold fast to this I cannot fall; it is safe for me or for anyone else to answer that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful. (158--9)

*Suppose next that we add one to one; you would surely avoid saying that the cause of our getting two is the addition, or in the case of a divided unit, the division. You would loudly proclaim that you know of no other way in which any given object can come into being except by participation in the reality peculiar to its appropriate universal; and that in the cases which I have mentioned you recognize no other cause for the coming into being of two than participation in duality; and that whatever it to become two must participate in this, and whatever is to become one must participation in unity. You would dismiss these divisions and additions and other such niceties, leaving them for persons wiser than yourself to use in their explanations, while you, being nervous of your own shadow, as the saying is, and of your inexperience, would hold fast to the security of your hypothesis and make your answers accordingly. If anyone should fasten upon the hypothesis itself, you would disregard him and refuse to answer until you could consider whether its consequences were mutually consistent or not. (160) [

<번역> 또 자네는 하나에 하나를 보태는 것이, 혹은 하나를 쪼개는 것이 둘의 원인이라고 주장하는 데 있어 조심하지 않을까? 그리고 자네는 어떤 것이든지 존재하게 되는 것은 그것의 본질에 참여함으로써요, 이 밖의 다른 까닭을 전혀 알지 못하며, 또 둘의 원인은 둘 자체요, 이것이 둘을 둘 되게 하는 것이요, 또 하나 자체에 참여함으로써 어떤 하나가 생기게 되는 것이라고 소리 높여 단언하는 것이 좋을 것일세. 자네는 그저 이렇게 말하는 것이 좋을 거야--가법(加法)이나 분할 같은 까다로운 것은 나보다 머리가 좋은 사람이 풀도록 내버려 두겠어. 나는 속담에 있는 말과 같이 나 자신의 그림자, 즉 내 무지에 겁을 집어먹고 있기 때문에 저 원리의 확고한 기초를 포기할 수가 없네 라고 말이야. 만일 누가 그 원리를 공격해 오면, 자네는 그 사람을 그냥 내버려 두거나 그렇지 않으면 거기서 나오는 여러 가지 귀결이 서로 일치하는지 모순하는지를 본 후에 대답하면 되네. [최명관]

[이 부분은 이해하기가 특히 어렵다. ‘you know of no other way in which any given object can come into being except by participation in the reality peculiar to its appropriate universal.’ 이 부분을 중심으로 생각해 볼 때는 이데아론(participation in reality)을 다시금 주장하고 있는 것으로 비쳐진다.)

 

<이데아(Idea)론에 대하여>

1. 우리가 이데아의 불완전한 복사인 현실의 물상을 보고 그것을 인식할 수 있는 것은 우리 속에 현실의 물상에 대한 이데아가 있기 때문이다. 우리는 그것을 다만 환기(recollection)해 낼 따름이다. (소크라테스)

<나의 반론>사물의 이데아가 따로 있다는 생각에 동의하기 힘들다. 책상을 우리가 책상으로 인식하게 되는 것은 실제의 책상들을 보고 그것에서 공통되는 관념을 추출해 내었기 때문이라고 봐야하는 것이지, 우리의 사고가 그 반대로 작용하는 것은 아니라고 본다. 침대를 한 번도 본 적도 들은 적도 없는 사람에게 침대라는 이야기를 해준다고 했을 때 침대의 이데아를 떠올릴 수 있을까 하는 점을 한 번 생각해 보라. 정말 그가 침대라는 것을 한 번도 본 적도 들은 적도 없다고 한다면, 그는 그가 처음 보게 되는 현실의 침대를 침대의 상으로 머리 속에 간직하고 있을 것이다.

더 나아가서 ‘배(먹는)’의 경우를 한 번 생각해 보자. 카투사로 근무할 때 나는 서양배를 처음보고 그것이 무엇인지 몰라 의아해 했다. 먹어보고 나서야 나는 그것이 배라는 것을 알 수 있었다. 서양배는 동양배와는 달리 구형이 아니라 조롱박에 가깝게 생겼던 것이다. 만약에 소크라테스의 말처럼 모든 대상에 이데아가 있다면 배의 이데아가 과연 어떤 것인지 혼란스럽다. 서양 사람이 갖고 있는 배의 상과 동양 사람이 갖고 있는 배의 상은 일치하기가 힘든다고 본다.

*Up till this time most of us had been fairly successful in keeping back our tears; but when we saw that he was drinking, that he had actually drunk it, we could do so no longer; in spite of myself the tears came pouring out so that I covered my face and wept broken-heartedly-not for him, but for my own calamity in losing such a friend. Crito had given up even before me, and had gone out when he could not restrain his tears. But Apollodorus, who had never stopped crying even before, now broke out into such a storm of passionate weeping that he made everyone in the room break down, except Socrates himself, who said:

'Really, my friends, what a way to behave! Why, that was my main reason for sending away the women, to prevent this sort of disturbance; because I am told that one should make one's end in a tranquil frame of mind. Calm yourselves and try to be brave.'