"Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?"
About this Quote
Plato’s question lands like a cold hand on the back of the neck: not a poetic musing, but a strategic squeeze. “Must not” isn’t curiosity so much as courtroom pressure. He’s forcing the listener to grant a premise that feels inarguable at the bodily level - everything living ends - so he can pivot to the real target: what, if anything, survives that final accounting.
The phrasing does two things at once. “All things” expands the dread beyond individual mortality into a metaphysical sweep, the suggestion that projects, empires, achievements, even meaning itself, are threatened with being “swallowed up.” That verb is doing heavy rhetorical work. Death isn’t a clean period; it’s an appetite, an eraser, a cosmic digestion. If you accept that image, the ordinary consolations (fame, pleasure, legacy) start to look like snacks.
In Plato’s context - especially in dialogues like the Phaedo, where Socrates’ death becomes the stage for arguing about the soul - this kind of line is bait. It lures the audience into existential agreement, then turns the fear into leverage for philosophy: if death consumes everything, either our values are built on sand or we need a sturdier ontology than the senses provide. The subtext is almost polemical against a certain complacent materialism. If you live as though the visible world is the whole story, Plato implies, you’re betting your life on a universe that ends in silence. The question isn’t meant to be answered; it’s meant to make you uncomfortable enough to reconsider what you think a human being is.
The phrasing does two things at once. “All things” expands the dread beyond individual mortality into a metaphysical sweep, the suggestion that projects, empires, achievements, even meaning itself, are threatened with being “swallowed up.” That verb is doing heavy rhetorical work. Death isn’t a clean period; it’s an appetite, an eraser, a cosmic digestion. If you accept that image, the ordinary consolations (fame, pleasure, legacy) start to look like snacks.
In Plato’s context - especially in dialogues like the Phaedo, where Socrates’ death becomes the stage for arguing about the soul - this kind of line is bait. It lures the audience into existential agreement, then turns the fear into leverage for philosophy: if death consumes everything, either our values are built on sand or we need a sturdier ontology than the senses provide. The subtext is almost polemical against a certain complacent materialism. If you live as though the visible world is the whole story, Plato implies, you’re betting your life on a universe that ends in silence. The question isn’t meant to be answered; it’s meant to make you uncomfortable enough to reconsider what you think a human being is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
|---|---|
| Source | Plato, Phaedo (dialogue); English translation by Benjamin Jowett (public domain). Line appears in Socratic discussion of death in standard editions (see Jowett's Phaedo). |
More Quotes by Plato
Add to List
