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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
J. Burnet claimed that Socrates gave a new meaning to ψνχή which is seen in the υεράπεια φυχής advocated in the Apology. Plato at first seems so involved in this conception of the soul as a moral agent that he tries to bend to its service both the conception of the soul as a life-principle with which all earlier speculation in physics and medicine had concerned itself and the Pythagorean or ‘Orphic’ story of the soul as a fallen δαίμων condemned to transmigration but able eventually to return to divine or demonic life. Naturally the three elements, physical, ‘Orphic’ and Socratic, will not lie down comfortably together; but Plato refuses to be daunted by this, and in his later dialogues, beginning from Phaedrus 245c and continuing through Timaeus, Philebus and Laws 10, he produces a doctrine of ψυχή as the source of change in nature and in human action-patterns alike: he sees the universe as an ensouled creature, and indeed, in the closing words of the Timaeus, as υεòς αϊσυητός, a divinity apprehended by the senses—though to become like this divinity ourselves we must make the moral decision to take intelligence into our lives and to reject mindlessness and destructive evil.
1. On this see McGibbon, D. D. in CQ N.S. 14 (1964), 58–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2. On Plato’s ethical use of the doctrines of transmigration, see Einmark, E., ‘Transmigration in Plato’, Harvard Theology Review 1 (1957), 1—20 Google Scholar.
3. Rankin’s book provides a wider and deeper treatment of the implications for the various kinds of ‘human predicament’ of what Plato teaches: Hail offers a careful analysis of human άρβτή based on a systematic examination of the dialogues.
4. Two of the Fondation Hardt symposia provide material of importance: a study of Plato’s teaching on Οιεψυχή by Guthrie (vol. 3, 1957) and that on the idea of God (vol. 1, 1954) where W. J. Verdenius’s article on Piatons Gottesbegriff contains much relevant to his psychology (though in German of course). Guthrie’s paper is reprinted in Vlastos’s second volume, pp. 230—43.
5. Keyt’s, D. article in Phronesis 8 (1963), 167 Google Scholar—72, covers logical rather than psychological matters.
6. There is a useful small book, collecting lectures given in an extra-mural course, by Armstrong, A. H. and Markus, R. A., called Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy (London, 1960)Google Scholar. The lectures by Markus are relevant to this question.
7. The seventh chapter (on Plato) is reprinted in Vlastos’s collection, vol. 2, 206-29Google Scholar.
8. Wilford, F. A. discusses ‘The Status of Reason in Plato’s Psychology’ in Phronesis 14 (1959), 54—58 Google Scholar. This at one time would have seemed certain and beyond need of discussion. Stannard, J., in Phronesis 4 (1959), 120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar—34, writes on ‘Socratic Eros and Platonic Dialectic’.
9. See Schuhl, P. M., Platon et l’Art de son Temps (2nd ed. with enlarged introduction, Paris, 1952)Google Scholar.
10. The first chapter is reprinted in Vlastos’s collection, volume 2, 259—73.
11. In this section I have benefited from valuable criticisms of my first draft by Dr. C. J. Rowe of the University of Bristol, and I am grateful for his help in the revised form here presented.
12. Compare and contrast Vlastos on ‘Socratic Knowledge and Platonic “Pessimism”’ in PhR 66(1957), 226-38Google Scholar.
13. Adkins, A. W. H. in Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar has much to say on Plato’s ethical thought. We now have the valuable collection of passages from contemporary ‘lay’ authors made by Dover, K.J. in Greek Popular Morality in the time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar.
14. But they are not synonyms, and it remains necessary to distinguish the special sense of sophrosyne in the Republic as the consent of the governors to govern and the governed to be governed. This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the harmony which is justice. On sophrosyne itself, see North, Helen, Sophrosyne (Ithaca, New York, 1966)Google Scholar, a chapter of which is devoted to Plato.