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11366 results in Ancient philosophy

Page 147 of 569

  • Chapter 1 - Thymos

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 6-38

  • Summary

    Thumos, often translated “spirit” or “spirited part”, acts as an intermediary between reason and appetite, imposing the dictates of reason on our irrational desires and pleasures. Yet the precise nature and function of the thumos is poorly understood and it has often been the object of criticism. Those who have defended it have portrayed it as essentially honour-seeking, reflecting the social dimension of our existence. Beginning from an analysis of the Homeric thumos, this chapter argues that those who see the essence of thumos as lying in honour or self-esteem are mistaken, and that thumos represents a primitive drive for excellence or pre-eminence, with the desire for honour and recognition being merely derivative. Its sensitivity to reason is the result of the fact that it depends on a certain rational conception of goodness for orientation. Rather than being an accidental property, its sensitivity to reason is built into its very constitution.

  • Chapter 7 - Eschatology

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 164-200

  • Summary

    The eschatological myths are our only source for Plato’s views on the condition of the soul outside of the body. Rather than interpret them as literal accounts of the afterlife, this chapter argues that they result from the appropriation of traditional religious themes in an attempt to portray symbolically the condition of the disembodied soul, which cannot be the object of discursive knowledge. Each myth takes up the themes of the dialogue in which it is found, creating a myth that reflects in the form of images, the philosophical theories presented in the body of the dialogue, acting as a symbolic mirror for the condition of the soul as portrayed in the dialogue. The last dialogues see an eclipse of eschatological imagery, due in part to their highly technical nature, in part to Plato’s desire to merge the two sources of his eschatology: the cosmological account of reincarnation, which provides the “scientific” foundations for the immortality of the soul, and the accounts of post-mortem punishments, which serve an ethical-political function. Thus, in the Timaeus we find a wholly naturalized eschatology, deprived of supernatural trappings, in which the condition of the soul is perfectly mirrored in the condition of the body-soul complex as a whole.

  • Introduction

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 1-5

  • Summary

    The Phaedo gives an otherworldly presentation of Platonic ethics in which the aim is to purify the soul, on quasi-religious lines, from its contamination from the body through the practice of philosophy. This vision forms the basis of Plotinus’ interpretation of Plato, which has been echoed by contemporary commentators, who have identified similar positions in Plato’s late dialogues. This approach requires a selective reading of passages from the Philebus, Timaeus, and Laws, however, which contain clear indications that central tenets of this position have been revised and which are dominated by language of harmonization and mixture, rather than separation and purification.

  • Chapter 4 - Measuring Pleasure

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 88-117

  • Summary

    In the Republic, the Philosopher Kings are presented as first ascending towards intelligible reality before descending back into the realm of human affairs in order to govern. What form does this descent take in the analogous case of the rational soul? The main task of reason is to govern the body and the appetitive soul. However, because appetitive impulses are not directly responsive to the calculating power of reason, they are susceptible to the same sorts of perspectival illusions that we find in perception, with pleasures or pains that are nearer in time taking on disproportionate magnitude, thus leading us to indulge compulsively in short-term pleasure at the cost of long-term pain or to avoid short-term pain to maximize our long-term pleasure. This perspectival error cannot be corrected so long as we remain on the level of pleasure and pain themselves. Medicine, however, is able to look beyond sensations to the states of the body in which they are rooted, providing the rational soul with norms against which to measure the fittingness of desires. In this way, medicine serves as an intermediary art through which the rational soul imposes its rule on the body and appetitive soul.

  • Chapter 3 - Rational Soul

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 60-87

  • Summary

    The logistikon or “rational soul” is the soul in the most proper sense, corresponding its condition in abstraction from the body. This does not, however, mean that that we are entitled to see in the rational soul a self or subject that would constitute the centre of personal identity. Plato consistently distinguishes between the intrinsic immortality of the rational soul and the imperfect immortality that can be attained by the individual through the practice of philosophy. In the Timaeus, the individual is compared to a celestial plant and the rational soul to its “roots” that helps it achieve an imperfect immortality. It is thus the concrete individual, as an embodied soul, who is the locus of ethical subjectivity and not the rational soul per se. The rational soul has as its proper object knowledge, but in the late dialogues this knowledge is not merely knowledge of intelligible Forms, as in the Phaedo. It also includes certain empirical sciences, in particular cosmology. Its excellence thus consists in the possession of knowledge of intelligible reality and true opinion about sensible reality.

  • Chapter 5 - Eudaimonia

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 118-140

  • Summary

    The Philebus contains the most detailed analysis of eudaimonia or “happiness” in the Platonic corpus. Many commentators have been surprised by the inclusion of certain pleasure as an essential ingredient in the good life and have attempted to show that these pleasures are the pleasures of philosophy or that they are included as a concession to our mortal limits. This chapter shows that the pleasures in question cannot be those of philosophy and that their inclusion is not a mere concession. Rather, they must be identified as the pleasures deriving from lower, empirical sciences and pure sense perception, and they are presented as essential, not accidental, ingredients in the best human life.

  • Conclusion

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 201-203

  • Summary

    The interpretation of the late dialogues has been heavily influenced by readings of the Phaedo and certain passages of the Republic in which there is a strong opposition between the body and the soul. The good human life thus consists in the separation and purification of the rational soul, so far as possible, and the elimination of all affects originating in or tied up with the body. When we examine carefully the arguments of the late dialogues, we see that Plato is promoting another vision of dualism, in which the emphasis is on the existence of mediating terms enabling the imposition of rational order and harmony on the body-soul complex as a whole.

  • Chapter 6 - The Political Sphere

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 141-163

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the question of the role of politics in the philosophical life, rather than that of the role of philosophy in politics. Against both those who claim the Platonic philosopher will actively participate in politics and those who claim he will withdraw into a life of solitary contemplation, it argues that Plato adopted an intermediary position. While he was sceptical of the possibilities of genuinely political change and saw political office as a burden that the philosopher would not assume in the absence of external constraint, he consistently speaks of an intrinsic desire to make others good. Since he defines politics in the first instance as “care of the soul” rather than administering the state, there is room for the philosopher to be politically active through philosophical education designed to make others better without compromising his own happiness. This sort of compromise position is only possible under a democratic regime, which makes Plato lend qualified support to democracy for the freedom it provides, while condemning it for its deep flaws as a form of government.

  • Chapter 2 - Appetitive Soul

  • Chad Jorgenson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book:
    The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    05 April 2018, pp 39-59

  • Summary

    The epithumetikon or “appetitive soul” is the third and lowest form of soul in Plato’s tripartite schema. It is characterized as fundamentally irrational, with an innate tendency towards excess. This chapter shows that the irrationality of the soul is rooted in its ontological structure. In opposition to thumos, which takes the form of a bodily reaction triggered and directed by reason, the epithumetikon represents the penetration of the flux of the body into the soul. Appetitive desires, pleasures, and pains are directed towards physical objects and arise from changes in bodily states. Moreover, because pain and pleasure are defined respectively as a deviation from and restoration to the body’s natural state, pain has ontological priority over pleasure. Hedonists, who claim to pursue the greatest pleasures in order to lead the happiest lives, are confronted with a dilemma. Either they must choose a life of great pleasure, which necessarily entails great suffering, or they must acknowledge that the life of moderation, not of excess, is the most purely pleasurable.

  • Appendix D - Modern Theories of Philosophic Silence

  • from Appendices
  • Nicholas Banner, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Philosophic Silence and the ‘One' in Plotinus
    Published online:
    16 March 2018
    Print publication:
    29 March 2018, pp 266-273

  • Summary

    The Tübingenschule and the (Anti-)Esotericist Debate

    The name ‘Tübingen School’ mainly refers to a scholarly approach to Plato, rather than to later Platonists, but it is in some senses a revival of Late Platonist hermeneutics of Plato in a thoroughly modern guise, and significant for this reason to the study of Platonist philosophic silence more generally. The Tübingen reading of Plato is further significant in the context of ancient philosophic silence because it is an esotericist reading of Plato – that is to say, these scholars read Plato as though he did indeed write more Platonico, hiding at least some of his true doctines – and is thus embroiled in the problematics of the self-hiding secret, one of the major interpretative difficulties when dealing with Platonist philosophic silence.

    As mentioned above, the idea that Plato wrote in this way, hiding his true doctrine in some fashion, has been an assumption of many, or even most readers since late antiquity until the eighteenth century, and it has only been with the advent of the modern analytical approach that this reading has been widely called into question. Harold Cherniss took an influential reductionist stance on which sources of evidence are admissible in attempting to discern what Plato meant to say: Cherniss maintains, essentially, that only the dialogues themselves should be considered as evidence of Plato's views. The ‘Esoterics’, on the other hand, argue that the strong testimony of Aristotle and others that the lecture ‘On the Good’ presented an oral component of Plato's teaching cannot be ignored. Insofar as regards the history of Platonist interpretation, this is certainly true; as Chapter 2 of the present work emphasises, the Platonic ‘oral teaching’ had a long interpretative life in later Platonist metaphysics, and served as a thematic locus for Platonist silence.

    It is impossible to say with precision when the reputation of Plato as an author with a secret teaching arose. Tigerstedt has correctly pointed out that there is no direct evidence for the idea of a secret Platonic doctrine before the imperial period, a fact which he adduces to a thoroughgoing argument against a secret Platonic doctrine.

Page 147 of 569