Socrates and Emerson

After reading “The Trial and Death of Socrates” and “Phaedo” by Plato, I kept juxtaposing these writings to the American writer and transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both Emerson’s writing and the philosophical ideas touched upon by Socrates have a variety of corollaries. More specifically, Emerson’s essay entitled “The Poet” touches upon the heart of who is a poet and also the essence of a soul.
In “Phaedo”, Socrates says, “…the poets forever telling us that we do not see or hear anything accurately, and surely if those two physical senses are not clear or precise, our other senses can hardly be accurate, as they are all inferior to these.” I do not agree with Socrates’ assertion. A poet does not say we do not see anything accurately, rather they provide the means to be a lens or “transparent eyeball” as Emerson likes to put it. In addition, it is the role of the poet to show the world in new light, to grasp a new perspective, and strive to new truths. As Emerson says, “The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance of which he describes.”
Throughout beginning segment of “Phaedo”, Socrates’ debates with his friends the relationship between the body and the soul, and whether the soul lives on through death. This universal theme of trying to comprehend the “after-death” aspect of consciousness has been THE QUESTION of human history. After making the connection between Plato and Emerson by means of the poet, I searched for what Emerson had to say on the human soul. In eloquence I found a great similarity in the poem by Edmund Spencer that Emerson uses to explain the spirit.

So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight,
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For, of the soul, the body form doth take,
For soul is form, ad doth the body make…

In essence, Emerson concludes that soul creates and sustains the body. Socrates states that the soul is limited by the physical body and cannot fully seek the truth with these limitations. I believe that both theorists would believe that through death, a greater Truth is reached.