Logos and Forms in Phaedo 96a–102a

Socrates’ autobiography in Phaedo signifies an attempt to incorporate earlier philosophical thinking in a progressive evolution culminating in the Platonic theory of Forms. In the “second sailing”, the “hypothesis of Forms” is not a hypothetical assumption, an arbitrary claim or conjecture, but something to be “sup-posed” prior to any further knowledge or statement. The careful reading and reconstruction of the famous simile of the “sun in eclipse” leads to crucial consequences concerning the attempt to “take refuge in the logoi”. The Forms “sup-posed” in the logoi do not indicate a new “transcendent” object, but aim at the same target as that of the senses: at the truth of beings of our world. The “second sailing” follows a different route, but has the same direction as the “first sailing” of the physiologoi.