Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Classical Studies
  4. Ancient philosophy
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

11517 results in Ancient philosophy

Page 276 of 576

  • 7 - How to see an unencrusted soul

  • from Part II - Moral psychology in the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 150-173

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the force of the analogy and Socrates' prescription for recognizing the soul. It discusses the condition of the embodied soul compared with that of Glaucus. To look at the god in his sea-bound condition, encrusted with all sorts of marine detritus is, says Socrates, to be prevented from glimpsing him as he really is. Soul's independence from body is given by its distinct ontological status: indestructible as opposed to destructible. This independence is built into the metaphysical framework that the immortality argument has purported to establish. So those elements are essentially add-ons to the soul that will come and go with the body. Socrates lays great emphasis, on the objective of viewing the soul in its pure form. If the soul's ideal state is incompatible with embodiment, one can still speak intelligibly, where the soul is embodied, of one component being the natural ruler.

  • 2 - Enkrateia and the partition of the soul in the Gorgias

  • from Part I - Transitions to tripartition
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 33-52

  • Summary

    This chapter forms part of a wider research project on Xenophon's and Plato's use of the concept of enkrateia. It explores the links between enkrateia and the partition of the soul in the Republic. In the Republic and the Gorgias, the rehabilitation of enkrateia coincides not only with the partition of the soul, but also, apparently, with the recognition of the possibility of akrasia. The correlation in the Republic between partition of the soul and the possibility of akrasia is generally acknowledged, but the existence of this correlation in the Gorgias is far from a matter of consensus. Partition of the soul would explain, paradoxically, both the rehabilitation of the vocabulary of enkrateia, and the impossibility of recognizing enkrateia as a distinct force, the role of which is to control the desires.

  • 11 - Pictures and passions in the Timaeus and Philebus

  • from Part III - After the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 259-280

  • Summary

    The chapter argues that Plato's psychology represents our motivations as themselves person-like with the aim of showing us the lineaments of philosophic virtue and of the self-transformation required for its development. It examines the way one ordinarily uses personification to think about our own motivations. The chapter highlights that Plato uses personification in a similar way with respect to the development of philosophic virtue. Parallels between Plato's psychology and the theology of the Republic suggest that one ought to regard personification as a likely story told for its effects on our self-conceptions and behavior. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that personification is a feature not only of Plato's middle-period but also of his late psychology, where it appears to conflict with two significant theoretical developments in the psychology: the denial of belief to appetite, and the recognition of the requirements for unity of the experiencing subject.

  • 8 - Psychic contingency in the Republic

  • from Part II - Moral psychology in the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 174-208

  • Summary

    The most notorious difference between the Phaedo and Republic is the detailed presentation of the tripartite soul in the latter in contrast with the one-part psychology of the former. This chapter examines what difference this makes for our understanding of the three "types" of virtue namely slavish virtue, political or civic, habituated virtue and genuine or philosophical virtue. In the Phaedo's conception of a philosopher, the chapter argues that Plato opens up conceptual space for a type of virtue that falls short of genuine, complete virtue, but is nevertheless not slavish. In both the Phaedo and Republic what most significantly distinguishes philosophers from non-philosophers is their recognition of and concern with Forms. Philosophers' lack of fear of death and indifference to (or disdain of) the pleasures and pains of the body make Phaedo (a "Phd-philosopher") fit very well the ordinary descriptions of courageous and temperate characters.

  • 5 - The nature of the spirited part of the soul and its object

  • from Part II - Moral psychology in the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 102-127

  • Summary

    The spirited part of the soul is best understood as a response to the introduction of appetitive souls into the world. All of its functions involve responding to and relating to appetitive souls. One must understand that spirit's roles divide sharply in two, corresponding to the fact that the rational soul is forced to confront appetitive souls in two venues: the appetitive souls in the bodies of other people that surround it, and the appetitive soul inside its own body. Since there are many souls in many bodies, and appetitive goods are finitely available, there is competition for them. Spirit is needed to help negotiate the distribution of appetitive goods among multiple agents. It is worth saying, that spirit's sensitivity to the oikeion is not in competition with its sensitivity to honor, but rather one of the preconditions of it.

  • Bibliography

  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 368-382

  • Summary

    This chapter compares the accounts of the nature, aims, and activity of erôs in the Symposium and the Phaedrus and assesses the evidence for the impact of tripartition. Unlike the Phaedrus, the Symposium contains very little about the nature of the soul. Socrates argues that the desire for good things and happiness manifests itself in creative activity in the presence of beauty because this is the distinctively mortal way in which one can achieve a share of happiness. Desiring agents are distinguished in the Symposium not by being dominated by a distinctive part of the soul, but by different specifications of the good central to the happy life, and in the different ways in which they try to secure that good. The Symposium is concerned to explore the role of erôs in the good life, and each speaker is to praise erôs.

  • 9 - Erôs before and after tripartition

  • from Part III - After the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 211-237

  • Summary

    In Book Four of Plato's Republic, Socrates divides the soul. This chapter shows that according to Book Four's division of the soul, the soul's unearned unity must and can be complex. It identifies a Platonic account of complex unity that explains why the whole soul is a locus of moral responsibility and at least enables explaining the unity of consciousness. Although Socrates has left room for the soul to be a complex whole comprising multiple parts, he has also made it clear that the parts are separate sources of psychological activity. The unearned unity of the soul is, like earned unity, a function of agreement among its parts, but unearned unity does not require each part of the soul to recognize the aims that it shares with the other parts. So the moral responsibility of the whole soul is akin to the collective responsibility of a corporate agent.

  • 10 - The cognition of appetite in Plato's Timaeus

  • from Part III - After the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 238-258

  • Summary

    This chapter describes some of the cognitive accomplishments with which appetite in the Timaeus is credited. It addresses the question how the Timaeus can account for those accomplishments in terms of the cognitive resources that it ascribes to the mortal soul-parts. There is good reason to think that the Timaeus' version of tripartition allows and indeed requires communication between reason and the non-rational parts: reason can share information with spirit, and it can issue directives to both of the non-rational parts, which they may or may not obey. Plato can have the Philebus' images in the soul and the Timaeus' images on the liver's surface. The psychological theory that emerges takes reason and appetite to be closely integrated with one another. The thought processes of reason, the theory holds, tend to be accompanied by exercises of the sensory imagination which illustrate reason's accounts, assertions, and denials in a sensory mode.

  • 6 - Curbing one's appetites in Plato's Republic

  • from Part II - Moral psychology in the Republic
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 128-149

  • Summary

    This chapter presents a brief account about what it means for the appetitive part of soul to have an opinion or belief. It distinguishes between two varieties of cognition: conceptualization and reasoning. In light of Plato's repeated characterizations of the appetitive part as alogiston, it seems difficult to maintain that it has the capacity to reason. Plato's Republic makes clear that there are two aspects that correspond to the two components of the appetitive part's beliefs, namely intensity and object. Prima facie Proclus' account of the effects of moral education on the tripartite soul flies in the face of Plato's own statements on the matter. It is best to understand the rational part of the soul as the philosophical part of soul in adults who have become rational, whereas the philosophical part of soul in children is pre-rational.

Page 276 of 576