The Phaedo is the dialogue of Socrates' last afternoon, and it has a reputation for being heavy: most of it is taken up by four technical arguments for the immortality of the soul, dense even for someone who has already read other texts by Plato. If what you want is to understand where the Theory of Forms comes from, you do not need to go in through there. Three passages are enough as an entry point, because they are exactly the ones behind the Nous class on the world of ideas, and because, read in this order, they form a whole argument: what exists, how one gets there, and what is still left open.
The edition used here is Maria Teresa Schiappa de Azevedo's, published by Livraria Minerva, in Coimbra, with an introduction, a translation from the Greek, and notes. The three passages below, translated here, come from that edition.
1. The Equal itself (74a-75b)
This is where Plato argues that there is something called Equality, distinct from any pair of stones or sticks that someone calls equal. He speaks of "a reality distinct from all of these, standing beyond them [...] the Equal itself," and adds that the equal things of this world tend to identify themselves with that Equal, but "fall well short of it." It is the argument that opens the discussion of what actually deserves the name real: not what is touched, but what does not change while everything else around it changes.
2. The second sailing (99c-d)
Before any thesis, Plato explains the method, and it is easy to skip straight to the conclusion without noticing this step. He recounts that he feared going blind, "like someone who watches and observes the Sun during an eclipse," and that is why he started to examine the truth of what exists through ideas, rather than looking directly at things. He calls this shift "a second way," the deúteros ploûs, a nautical expression for resorting to the oars when the wind fails and the sail no longer serves. It is the passage that explains how Plato gets where he gets, not just where he gets to, which is why it tends to be left out of the quicker summaries of the book.
3. Participation, and what he leaves unresolved (100c-d)
If there is a Beauty itself and there are concrete beautiful things, what connects one to the other? In this passage, Socrates proposes that "what makes an object beautiful is nothing other than the Beautiful itself, whether by a presence, or by a participation, or by whatever other process makes that relation possible," and adds: "That, in fact, is not properly what I insist on, but rather that it is thanks to the Beautiful that all beautiful things are beautiful." He did not know how to explain the how of participation, and he said so, in the middle of proposing the boldest thesis he was putting forward. It is worth reading this passage slowly, in the original, before expecting any summary to settle that account for you.
Before opening the book
None of these three passages replaces the whole Phaedo, and this piece is not a summary of the book or of the four arguments about the soul, which need another space and another reading. What they give is an organized way in: first, what exists (the Equal itself), then how one gets there (the second sailing), and finally the exact point where Socrates drops the explanation, in no hurry to close what he has not closed.
If your entry point is the Theory of Forms, these three pages are the shortest path to the original text, in the same edition used here. After them, the rest of the dialogue, including the scene of Socrates' death that gives the book its name, becomes easier to follow, because you already know what Plato is trying to prove before you even get there.
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See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What is Plato's Phaedo about?
It is the dialogue in which Plato narrates Socrates' last afternoon, sentenced to death in Athens. Much of the text discusses four technical arguments about the soul, but it also holds the passages where Plato presents, for the first time with this level of care, the existence of permanent realities such as the Equal itself.
Where should you start reading the Phaedo?
Not at the beginning. If your interest is the Theory of Forms, three passages are enough as an entry point: 74a-75b, on the Equal itself; 99c-d, on the method Plato calls the second sailing; and 100c-d, on how things take part in the Forms.
What is the argument of the Equal itself, in the Phaedo?
It is in 74a-75b. Plato argues that there is a reality, the Equal itself, distinct from any pair of stones or sticks you call equal, and that these concrete things tend to identify themselves with it, but always fall short.
What is a good edition of the Phaedo?
This article uses Maria Teresa Schiappa de Azevedo's Portuguese translation, published by Livraria Minerva, in Coimbra, with an introduction and notes. In English, Plato: Complete Works (Hackett, edited by John M. Cooper) includes a widely used translation of the Phaedo by G.M.A. Grube.
Continue: Plato's Theory of Forms: the measure no one gave you · Plato's second sailing: the method of the Forms · Do I have the right to understand philosophy without a degree? · Why is Macbeth "the Scottish play"?
Source class: F&T 2.4 - Platão I: o Mundo das Ideias e a busca pela transcendência