{"id":13781,"date":"2025-12-02T10:07:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13781"},"modified":"2025-12-02T10:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:10:13","slug":"the-mark-of-a-weakling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/12\/02\/the-mark-of-a-weakling\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mark of a Weakling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Plato puts the following words into the mouth of Simmias in <em>The Phaedo<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13783\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Death-of-Socrates-MMA-Jacques-Louis-David.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"799\" srcset=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Death-of-Socrates-MMA-Jacques-Louis-David.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Death-of-Socrates-MMA-Jacques-Louis-David-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Death-of-Socrates-MMA-Jacques-Louis-David-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Death-of-Socrates-MMA-Jacques-Louis-David-768x511.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">It seems to me, Socrates . . . that to know anything certain about such things [as the immortality of the soul]\u00a0 in this life is either impossible or exceedingly difficult, but to give up without completely testing the views on the subject and before you&#8217;re totally exhausted from examining them on every side is the mark of a weakling. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">For we must accomplish one of the following: either learn the truth about this from someone else or find it out for ourselves, or if that&#8217;s impossible, at least catch the best most irrefutable human argument we can find and ride on it like a raft, sailing through life taking our chances on it, unless we can get safer, less dangerous passage on a securer vessel in the form of some divine explanation. (85c-85e, tr. Raymond Larson)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plato puts the following words into the mouth of Simmias in The Phaedo: It seems to me, Socrates . . . that to know anything certain about such things [as the immortality of the soul]\u00a0 in this life is either impossible or exceedingly difficult, but to give up without completely testing the views on the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/12\/02\/the-mark-of-a-weakling\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Mark of a Weakling&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death-and-immortality","category-plato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13785,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13781\/revisions\/13785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}