Death Comes as the End

Abstract

This chapter examines how Plato deals with the literary challenge of getting close to the moment of Socrates’ death as an outsider and how this ecphrastic problem contributes to the dialogue’s explicit philosophical enquiry into death. It begins by considering how Plato employs his mediated literary medium to reflect upon the difficulty of encountering someone else’s death. Then, turning to the internal viewpoints of those that attended Socrates’ final moments, it shows how Plato harnesses narrative to reflect upon death as a significant but asymptotic moment, a climax anticipated by the forward-facing viewpoints of the living. Finally, it explores one passage in which Plato takes an imaginative vault into the mind of the dying Socrates as he, in turn, struggles to grasp the unfathomable abyss of death.