Plato’s Underworlds

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 examines Plato’s resistance to democratizing trends in afterlife depictions. This chapter argues that Plato uses Underworld scenes’ inherent hypertextual poetics to redefine heroism, arete, kleos, and blessedness. By evoking and reframing familiar Underworld scenes from Homer, Hesiod, and others, Plato establishes a new hierarchy of heroic blessedness based on an individual’s practice of philosophy rather than religious initiation or deeds in war. Plato, like authors before him, treats Underworld scenes as a site to engage in commentary on his society, using them as a special register of communication to illustrate and amplify his dialectic arguments in the Apology, Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic. Plato creates a variety of Underworld scenes that contradict each other in their theological grounding but share the common purpose of promoting a philosophical lifestyle as the surest path toward afterlife blessedness.