Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Myth of Er (/ ɜːr /; Ancient Greek: Ἤρ, romanized: ér, gen.: Ἠρός ) is a legend that concludes Plato 's Republic (10.614–10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries.
In Plato's dialogues, we find the soul playing many disparate roles. Among other things, Plato believes that the soul is what gives life to the body (which was articulated most of all in the Laws and Phaedrus) in terms of self-motion: to be alive is to be capable of moving yourself; the soul is a self-mover. He also thinks that the soul is the ...
The dictum is recorded in Plato's Apology (38a5–6) as ho dè anexétastos bíos ou biōtòs anthrṓpōi (but the unexamined life is not lived by man) (ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ).
The Charmides (/ ˈ k ɑːr m ɪ d iː z /; Ancient Greek: Χαρμίδης) is a dialogue of Plato, in which Socrates engages a handsome and popular boy named Charmides in a conversation about the meaning of sophrosyne, a Greek word usually translated into English as "temperance," "self-control," or "restraint." When the boy is unable to ...
Plato uses this observation to illustrate his famous doctrine that the soul is a self-mover: life is self-motion, and the soul brings life to a body by moving it. Meanwhile, in the recollection and affinity arguments, the connection with life is not explicated or used at all.
Plato relies, further, on the view that the soul is a mind in order to explain how its motions are possible: Plato combines the view that the soul is a self-mover with the view that the soul is a mind in order to explain how the soul can move things in the first place (e.g., how it can move the body to which it is attached in life). [10]
Neoplatonism is a branch of classical philosophy that uses the works of Plato as a guide to understanding religion and the world. In the Myth of Er, particularly, Plato rendered an account of the afterlife which involved a journey through seven planetary spheres and then eventual reincarnation.
In the 4th century BC, however, the maxim was drastically re-interpreted by Plato, who understood it to mean, broadly speaking, "know your soul". In later writings on the subject, one common theme was that one could acquire knowledge of the self by studying the universe, or knowledge of the universe by studying the self.