γνῶθι σαυτόν: A Reassessment of Plato’s Medical Metaphors, The ‘Self’ as a Scientific Subject of Ethics

Posted on by Discentes
Relief of Asclepius and Hygieia, Roman Imperial Age, 100-200 AD. National Museum of Antiquities, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Leiden)

γνῶθι σαυτόν: A Reassessment of Plato’s Medical Metaphors, The ‘Self’ as a Scientific Subject of Ethics

By Sheena McKeever

 

“Socrates’ doctrine of ethical knowledge…would be unthinkable without the medical model” (Werner Jaegar, 1943).

 

Cohered with empirical knowledge, Plato’s medical metaphors illuminate the physical and ethical constituents of the human being. His interrogative dialogues set out to identify personhood, to know thyself (γνῶθι σαυτόν).1 Plato places the person, as opposed to physical elements of the universe, at the center of his philosophy. As a scientific subject, the person provides access to understanding human nature.2 Plato imbues his dialogues with medical analogies that delineate the person systematically as a subject of ethics.3 His medical metaphors, highlighting a range of phenomena, have been subject to dichotomous debates which evaluate them as either evidence of legitimate science or rhetorical instruments.4 These debates illuminate the prioritization of modern objectivity, suggesting that ‘metaphorical’ and ‘serious’ matters are mutually exclusive.5 This essay investigates the authentic presence and functionality of Plato’s medical analogies, which delineate the soul as a scientific subject of ethics. His investigation of the internal ‘self’ establishes the discipline of ‘soul health’ (i.e., virtue ethics), which is consequently able to dismantle and render untenable the doctrines of his contemporary materialists and relativists.6

The Soul as a Scientific Subject: Alcibiades, Theaetetus 

Prior to Plato’s investigation, mind and body were both accounted for by the same model of human nature (φύσις).7 Neither natural philosophers nor physicians had systematically delineated the soul from the body.8 In Alcibiades (129a2-b3), Plato outlines the soul as a scientific subject. Socrates asserts that Alcibiades must fashion a virtuous model of himself in order to fulfill his political ambitions.9 Together, they determine that cultivating the ‘self’ requires the skill of knowing what we are (γνόντες μὲν αὐτὸ τάχ’ ἂν γνοῖμεν τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν ἡμῶν αὐτῶν).10 The ability to determine ‘self’ cultivation (τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν) is contingent on knowing oneself (γνοῖμεν… ἡμῶν αὐτῶν).11 Plato establishes his investigation as a means of identifying the “‘self’ in itself” (αὐτὸ ταὐτό), independent of the body.12 He determines that man is nothing other than his soul.13 The soul exists independently of the body, encompassing the capacity of intellect. The body is a mere instrument to its reigning power.14 Deciphering the ‘self’ subsequently becomes a matter of dissecting the interior of the person. The Delphic maxim, to know thyself, and Plato’s investigation of man share a principal concern with internal identity (viz. soul). Knowing oneself is synonymous with knowing the soul.15 The soul is thus established as his scientific subject of inquiry.16

Plato’s scientific investigation of the self veers away from contemporary philosophical debates about existence. He centers his discourse on the tangible human experience, far from the sacred clouds.17 His illumination of the soul aligns with Socrates’ discontent with materialist investigations of the universe, including that of Anaxagoras, who “made no use of Mind, nor gave it any responsibility for the management of things.”18 Plato’s illumination of the soul contrasts with materialist science, which reduces the person to their physical constituents. He accuses Pindar of “never condescending to what lies near at hand” and Thales of “failing to see what was in front of him and under his feet.”19 Plato’s distinction of soul as a scientific subject allows him to deflate the materialists’ proposals.20 Upon delineating the self, Plato characterizes knowledge as the contingent factor, the antidote (ἀλεξιφάρμακα), for the soul’s cultivation.21 He parallels the pursuit of knowledge for the soul to the benefits of medical knowledge for the body: “if he’s sick and has the power to do whatever he likes–without any medical insight…isn’t it likely his health will be ruined?”22 Analogically, he demonstrates that a man without objective knowledge of how to care for his soul will likewise suffer in politics. Plato systematically distinguishes the authentic person as their soul. 

 

Characterizing the Soul with Medical Analogies: Gorgias, Protagoras, Phaedo, Timaeus

Plato adopts medical analogies to delineate the new objective standards for, and scientific study of, the soul. Socrates, skeptical of the sophist Gorgias’ rhetorical practice, establishes an objective standard for the treatment of the soul through a medical framework (Grg. 464c3-5).23 Just as the body has an objective standard of ‘health,’ so too does the soul: “in the case of both the body and the soul, a thing that makes the body and the soul seem fit when in fact they aren’t any the more so.”24 Socrates contrasts the disciplines that care for the body (i.e., medicine and gymnastics) and the soul (i.e., justice and legislation).25 While doctors and gym trainers restore and maintain bodily εὐεξίᾳ (‘good condition’), judges and lawgivers restore and maintain psychological εὐεξίᾳ: “These, then, are the four parts, and they always provide care, in the one case for the body, in the other for the soul, with a view to what’s best.”26 The framework of εὐεξία is a means of cultivating the best condition (τὸ βέλτιστον, ἐπιμέλεια), from which individuals can recognize the inappropriate expressions of their soul just as they do diseased symptoms of their body. 27 The knowledgeable person can then seek treatment (θεραπεία) for their ‘diseased’ soul. 

Illuminated by an objective standard of εὐεξία, Plato further characterizes the soul in terms of its ‘health’ conditions in Protagoras, Phaedo, and Timaeus. In Protagoras, Socrates warns Hippocrates against the sophist Protagoras, who “is a kind of merchant who peddles provisions upon which the soul is nourished.”28 Medical metaphors provide clarity to the soul as a new subject of science with an objective standard of health. Plato, through versatile medical language, also illuminates the soul as a subject of disease. In Phaedo, he equates the soul’s journey into the body to a disease (νόσος), “the beginning of its destruction,” and in Timaeus, the body to the catalyst that “made his soul diseased and witless.”29 His metaphors distinguish body from soul and the standard of εὐεξίᾳ that frames their ideal conditions. 

Plato’s medical analogies establish a criterion of the scientific soul: knowledge. He references medicine as a discipline that requires a knowledge of its scientific subjects and standards (Resp. 438e1-8).30 The understanding of health and disease (γενέσθαι) transforms medical knowledge (ἐπιστήμην…ἰατρικήν) into a qualified discipline (μηκέτι… ἁπλῶς, lit. ‘no longer unqualified’).31 To establish knowledge of the soul (αὐτοῦ…ἐπιστήμη), he analogically correlates medicine’s objective standards of the body (νοσωδῶν ἡ ἐπιστήμη; healthy and diseased) with ethical standards of the soul (τῶν κακῶν καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν; good and bad).32 Plato initiates his psychological discourse in objective terms of knowledge; good and bad become non-relativist subjects of inquiry. 

Medical knowledge allows Plato to reference the discipline’s capacity to recognize present symptoms and anticipate future outcomes (τῶν μελλόντων). These capacities depend on the ability to decipher between health and illness, an objective framework that Plato establishes for the soul. In Theaetetus, medical metaphors refute Protagoras’ contradictory claims about truth and falsity.33 Plato suggests that a doctor’s medical knowledge permits him the ability to anticipate future events to a degree of accuracy.34 Knowledge legitimates techne as a system of theoretical or practical knowledge, such that a person can reject the opinion of the non-doctor as opposed to the doctor, in a matter of bodily health.35 Plato adopts the qualifying feature of knowledge to parallel the objectification of care between the body and soul. His medical metaphors are a means of clinically investigating the soul.

 

Soul Health: Respublica 

Plato’s delineation of soul-parts clinically highlights the soul as a unified scientific subject and complex organism. He demonstrates how psychological health can be understood in terms of the relationship between its ‘parts’ (εἰδή), just like that of the body.36 Plato’s analogy between justice in the soul and health in the body indicates his belief that the soul contains a natural division of parts and psychic labors.37 His conception of the soul in a three-way division is reminiscent of scientific dissection, such that spirit is characterized as “the very sinews” of the soul.38 Each part of the soul performs a unique function: rational guidance, thumotic stability, and appetitive sustenance.39 

Plato’s medical metaphors establish the soul as an anatomized subject that aspires to ethical unity. He asserts that the self-aware person, who knows his soul and recognizes its objective standards, will “always cultivate the harmony of his body for the sake of the consonance in his soul.”40 He relates the framework of physical health to the soul to establish an ethical standard (i.e., ‘soul health’). Consonance is the achievement of the soul’s unity, which is the consolidation of soul functions under a shared psychic regime.41 Plato delineates the type of justice the soul strives towards: “just and unjust actions are no different for the soul than healthy and unhealthy things are for the body” (Resp. 444b6-c6).42 By means of a medical analogy, Plato equates the quality of virtue (δίκαια) to health (ὑγιεινῶν) and vice (ἄδικα) to disease (νοσωδῶν) to establish the soul as a scientific subject of ethics.43 Justice is assessed in terms of the relationship between parts of the soul, just as health is assessed in terms of the relationship between parts of the body. Health is a product of natural (κατά φύσιν) relation between elements, while disease is one of unnatural (παρά φύσιν) relation.44 If the soul does not abide by its model of health, it manifests a state of bewilderment (ταραχὴν καὶ πλάνην) and pursues a state of corruption (συλλήβδην πᾶσαν κακίαν). 

Plato then adopts a medical model of εὐεξίᾳ to establish the soul as an ethical subject (Resp. 444c8-d12). The cultivation of the soul is equated with the framework of achieving cultivation of the body. Healthy actions produce a good condition in the body and unhealthy ones, a poor condition (Τὰ μέν που ὑγιεινὰ ὑγίειαν ἐμποιεῖ, τὰ δὲ νοσώδη νόσον).45 Just actions produce justice in the soul, and unjust ones injustice (τὸ μὲν δίκαια πράττειν δικαιοσύνην ἐμποιεῖ, τὸ δ’ ἄδικα ἀδικίαν).46 Plato reinforces that consonance is a product of correct relationships between parts: “to produce justice is to establish the parts of the soul in a natural relation of control, one by another, while to produce injustice is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled contrary to nature.”47 Consonance is an internal condition of proper functioning that requires self-awareness, a condition that is dependent on harmonious coordination between its parts.48 

Plato confirms the assistance that medical metaphors provide in defining the soul as an ethical subject (Resp. 444d13-e6). He explicitly equates justice to health (Ἀρετὴ μὲν ἄρα, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὑγίειά) and vice to disease (κακία δὲ νόσος); thus, the cultivation of the soul becomes a matter of pursuing virtue (τὰ μὲν καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα εἰς ἀρετῆς κτῆσιν φέρει).49 The analogy between health and justice renders it obvious for the person to pursue justice over injustice. By asserting the values that constitute a harmonious soul state (i.e., moderation, justice, and reason), it becomes apparent that the person naturally desires what is best and resists what is bad.50 The knowledgeable person pursues justice and condemns vice.51 Plato deliberately engages with medicine as a model in order to illuminate moral virtue, which, like bodily health, is a standard that does not limit a person’s agency, but rather permits awareness of proper functioning for the performance of higher activities.52 

Plato establishes moral condition (as he relates virtue to health) as an internal condition, and he establishes the cultivation of harmony in the soul (as in the body) as an intuitive decision. Morality no longer concerns the external realm, but rather the internal; Plato’s ethics focus on how we relate to ourselves.53 He reinforces the prioritization of soul over body, since the former constitutes our identity.54 The person who remains ignorant to their soul and its ethical framework perpetually resides in a state of misery since they neglect their true self.55 Cultivating the best nature of the soul becomes even more valuable than the state of a healthy body.56

 

Plato’s ‘Soul Health’ in Response to Relativism

Plato’s ‘soul health’ facilitates his investigation against the ‘crisis of relativism,’ which is characterized by the omittance of an objective standard for opinions and actions.57 In the ‘Apology of Protagoras’ (Tht. 166a-168c), Socrates sets up a fictional dialogue with Protagoras to abolish the idea of truth and replace it with the criterion of what is useful.58 For Protagoras, the judgments of sick and healthy men are equally valid; neither is ignorant or wise on account of their conditions.59 He endorses the formulation of judgements based on external perception and persuasion as a means of living “well.”60 Upon understanding that virtue is a kind of health, it would be absurd not to judge the sick man as ignorant (ὁ μὲν κάμνων ἀμαθὴς) and the healthy man as wise (ὁ δὲ ὑγιαίνων σοφὸς), insofar as these conditions result from a person’s cultivation of their body and soul.61

Plato’s investigation of the self divorces the persona from the real person to discover the soul’s cultivation. He prioritizes the person’s primary moral imperative. The language of health is reapplied to the soul in an ethical realm to illuminate the soul’s objective standard. Having established the care of the soul (i.e., justice) in parallel to the care of the body (i.e., health), Plato uses medical imagery and his new ethical framework to dismantle the opinion of relativists at large (Resp. 445b2-5). In his discussion with Socrates, Glaucon argues that since injustice is a disruption of the soul’s φύσις, it is even more undesirable than the disruption of the body’s φύσις.62 Living well becomes a matter of ethical imperative, and it becomes counterintuitive to avoid the soul’s best nature.63 To pursue justice is as self-explanatory as pursuing bodily health. Plato represents ignorance as a type of illness, since a virtuous life is contingent on making good decisions. Without a knowledge of the soul and its potential consonance, a person is unable to care for themselves properly.64 The person who identifies with their body subscribes to a justice that is informed by a subjective model of external gratification. Plato reinforces that as seriously as we consider the risk of manipulating people’s physical health, we should take more seriously the risk that subjective opinions pose to our soul. Plato establishes the necessity to care for the condition of the soul, our ethical selves.65 

Assisted by his medical metaphors, Plato demonstrates that ignorance of one’s true self poses the most risk to society. Ignorance hinders the understanding of the self and achievement of its best nature. Plato’s analogies allow him to delineate the soul as a scientific subject, equip it with an objective framework, and establish it as a subject of ethics. He collaborates with the medical discipline to promote the transparency of guiding life principles. Medical imagery establishes Plato’s moral objectivity as a matter of striving towards wellbeing. His investigation emphasizes the autonomy and responsibility of the individual in pursuing justice and achieving their best nature.66 The analogical delineation of the self creates serious consequences within the philosophical discipline (i.e., the foundation of ethics) and offers the reader an intimate experience of self-discovery. Rather than elements of medical pragmatism or rhetorical manipulation, Plato’s medical metaphors are serious ingredients of learning, teaching, and understanding the self.67

 

Sheena McKeever is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, specializing in Art History and Classics. Her research centers upon how intellectual systems are encoded in visual culture and textual materials. In her forthcoming graduate studies, she will continue to pursue her interests in the treatment of the body and its correspondence to natural philosophy. 

 

Endnotes

  1. Ap. 21a-d. Socrates received an oracle at Delphi that deemed no man wiser than he. 
  2. Cicero, Tusc. 5.11. For medicine as a recurrent theme throughout the Platonic corpus with Hippocratic references, see Timaeus 82a, 91e-92c (Airs, Waters, and Places), Timaeus 91c-d (hysteria), Leges 916a5, 916b2 (‘sacred’ disease).
  3. Cf. Beate Gundert, “Soma and Psyche in Hippocratic Medicine,” in Psyche and Soma, ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 13-4, Iliad 1.115. Homeric νοῦς (essence of life), divorced from ψυχή and associated with the chest (φρένες, θυμός, κῆρ); Presocratic ψυχή (faculties of material constituents). 
  4. Tullio Maranhao, Therapeutic Discourse and Socratic Dialogue (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 186. Anthony Kenny, “Mental Health in Plato’s Republic,” in The Anatomy of the Soul (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973), 2-6; 23. Werner Jaeger, “Aristotle’s Use of Medicine as a Model of Method in His Ethics,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957): 54-61. Irwin (1995) and Weinstein (2018) refute the notion that the ‘anatomy’ of the soul is merely metaphorical, while Moes (2000) discusses medical analogies in terms of rhetoric. Shields (2001, 2010) also conceptualizes the ‘anatomy’ of the soul in purely metaphorical terms. See also Joel Warren Lidz, “Medicine as Metaphor in Plato,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20, no. 5 (1995): 528.
  5. Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 222. Jennifer Whiting, “Psychic Contingency in the Republic.” in Plato and the Divided Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 189. Whiting suggests that the scholarly concern with metaphorical consistency has led to deflationist arguments. See also Jill Gordon, “Dialectic, Dialogue, and the Transformation of the Self,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 29, no 3 (1996): 271. 
  6. Original Platonic Greek has been sourced from Plato, Platonis Opera, ed. by John Burnet, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1900-1903). The following list indicates the volumes and their respective publishing dates (original, reprint) and the texts sourced from each. Volume 1 (1900, 1967): Theaetetus, Phaedo; Volume 2 (1901, 1967): Alcibiades; Volume 3 (1903, 1968): Gorgias, Protagoras; Volume 4 (1902, 1968): Respublica, Timaeus. Unless noted otherwise, all translations of Platonic text have been sourced from Plato, Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Cambridge: Hackett Press, 1997). 
  7. Φύσις embraced the totality of bodily structures, physiological processes, and psychic events.
  8. Within the Hippocratic corpus, the physician is wholly concerned with treatment of a person’s physical being and does not conceive of the ψυχή as an autonomous entity. The Hippocratic model of the mind can be derived from On the Sacred Disease. See also Maranhao, Therapeutic Discourse and Socratic Dialogue, 185, and Gundert, “Soma and Psyche in Hippocratic Medicine,” 22. 
  9. For further discussion on Plato’s thematic use of the “individual,” see Rankin, Plato and the Individual (2013). 
  10. Alc. 129a2-b3 “…if we know ourselves, then we might be able to know how to cultivate ourselves.” See also Alc. 128b-e.
  11. Alc. 129a2-b3 draws reference to Socrates’ original Delphic maxim: “Was it some simpleton who inscribed those words on the temple wall at Delphi?”
  12. Alc. 129e5-e10. Plato defines the person and soul as ‘users’ (χρώμενον; ἅνθρωπός; ψυχή) and the body as the ‘being used’ (χρῆται; σώματος). At Phd. 66b, to declare the soul is separate from the body, Plato asserts that bodily pollution is the origin of evil (i.e., ignorance). At Resp. 611, Plato reinforces the necessity of studying the soul independent of the body, an entity that merely maims the soul.
  13. Alc. 129e11-130c4 “What else uses it [the body] but the soul? … And doesn’t the soul rule the body?” See Plato, Alcibiades, ed. Denyer, 216. 
  14. Phd. 76c. T. M. Robinson, “The Defining of Features of Mind-Body Dualism in the Writings of Plato,” in Psyche and Soma, ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 38-43. Orphic doctrine is the basis for the notion that the body is a prison for the soul (82e2ff.).
  15. Alc. 130e8-9, 131a2-3. The knowledge of a person’s physical constituents (viz. their body) becomes a matter of belonging, not identity. See Plato, Alcibiades, ed. Denyer, 211-2 for a discussion of Plato’s linguistic use of autos.
  16. Alc. 129e5-e10 “Then what is a man?” echoes the confounded ignorance of the self at Tht. 173e “What is man? … [He] knows not even that he knows not.”
  17. Nub. 231-2, 252.
  18. Phd. 98b-c. See Edward Hussey, The Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1974), 138-41; Carter (2019). The Presocratic doctrine of Mind was conceived of to satisfy both metaphysical and cosmological requirements. The Milesians substituted νόος (‘Mind’) for ψυχή, defining ‘Mind’ as an omniscient entity that orders the κόσμος.
  19. Tht. 174a. See also Tht. 173e-174a. See also Hussey, The Presocratics, 16, 123, 141-148; Gundert, 14. 
  20. Phd. 72c. 
  21. Alc. 132b2.
  22. Alc. 134e10-135a4. 
  23. Grg. 464a1-b1.
  24. Grg. 464a1-b1. See also Alc. 135a.
  25. Grg. 464b7-8. 
  26. Grg. 464c3-5. See also Moes, Plato’s Dialogue Form and the Care of the Soul, 33. 
  27. Cf. Jaegar (1957), Moes (2001), and Stalley (1981). 
  28. Prt. 313c. See also Robinson, “The Defining of Features of Mind-Body Dualism in the Writings of Plato,” 40.
  29. Phd. 95d and Ti. 86c-d.
  30. Resp. 438e1-8. 
  31. Resp. 438e1-8. See also Weinstein, 76.
  32. Resp. 438e.
  33. DK 80 BI. See also Mauro Bonazzi, The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 21 and Hussey, 109.
  34. Tht. 178b8-c8. 
  35. See Hussey, 113.
  36. Moes, Plato’s Dialogue Form and the Care of the Soul, 28.
  37. Gerasimos Santas, “Just City and Just Soul in Plato’s Republic,” in Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. Georgios Anagnostopoulos and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013), 173. 
  38. Resp. 411b3; 436a8-b2. For further analyses of the anatomized soul, see C. D. C. Reeve, “Soul, Soul-Parts, and Persons in Plato,” in Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. Georgios Anagnostopoulos and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013), 158.; Antony Flew, Crime or Disease? (London: Macmillan, 1973), 19, 35-42; Kenny, “Mental Health in Plato’s Republic.”
  39. Resp. 437c-439d, 441a-b. See Weinstein, 259. Cf. Shields (2001) conceptualizes Plato’s soul-parts in purely metaphorical terms; Irwin (1995) declares the “seriousness” of Plato’s dissection of the soul; and Weinstein (2018) analyzes medical metaphors’ abilities to illuminate scientific subjects and their functions. 
  40. Resp. 591a-c.
  41. Weinstein, 263.
  42. Resp. 444b6-c6.
  43. Resp. 444b. See also Resp. 609e, 610c-d. Cf. Robinson, 41. 
  44. Stalley, “Mental Health and Individual Responsibility in Plato’s Republic,” 111. 
  45. Resp. 444c8, “Healthy things produce health, unhealthy ones disease.”
  46. Resp. 444c10.
  47. Resp. 444d.
  48. Lidz, “Medicine as Metaphor in Plato,” 532-4, 539.
  49. Resp. 444d13-e6.
  50. Resp. 591a-c.  
  51. Resp. 485d10-e1. For ethical assessments of the metaphor, see Kenny, 23-4; Flew (1973); Moes (2001); Szasz (1973); and Howard S. Ruttenberg, “Plato’s Use of the Analogy Between Justice and Health,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 20, no. 2 (June 1986): 145, 156. 
  52. Moes, “Plato’s Conception of the Relations Between Moral Philosophy and Medicine,” 358. 
  53. Lidz, 531.
  54. Robinson, 42. 
  55. Resp. 591a. 
  56. Resp. 591a.
  57. Bonazzi, The Sophists, 21-2. See also 80A19 D.-K; Ap. 29e.
  58. Bonazzi, 24. Plato, Plato: Complete Works, 157, Theaetetus introduction. 
  59. Tht. 166e-167a. 
  60. Paul Woodruff, “Rhetoric and Relativism: Protagoras and Gorgias,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, ed. A.A. Long (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 203, and Bonazzi, 24. 
  61. Resp. 583d-e. Plato observes that sick people (τῶν καμνόντων) only realize that health is most desirous upon their falling ill. 
  62. Resp. 445b “…life is thought to be not worth living when the body’s nature is ruined.” See also Stalley, 113-4.
  63. Resp. 445b2. 
  64. Resp. 405b1-b4. 
  65. Prt. 313a-b. Plato discusses the inexcusable discrepancy between caring for the body rather than the soul.
  66. See also Moes (2001) and Stalley (1981) for further discussion on Plato’s emphasis on free-will. 
  67. To what extent can metaphors branch beyond their metaphorical realm? Has Plato established the philosophers as pragmatic physicians of the soul (ψυχές ἰατροί, Prt. 313d-e)? The philosophical inquiry of the soul (i.e., psychology) as a new science? The philosopher as a new type of physician (Alc. 124b-126a)? If Plato does establish the study of the soul as a science, the philosopher may be contrived as the pragmatic ψυχὴν ἰατρικὸς (Chrm. 155-157). 

 

Bibliography

Primary Literature

Aristophanes. Aristophanes: Clouds. Edited by K.J. Dover. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Reprinted 1970. 

Aristophanes. The Comedies of Aristophanes: Clouds. Translated by William James Hickie. London: Bohn, 1853. 

Cicero. Tusculan Disputations. Translated by J. E. King. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927. 

Plato. Alcibiades, edited by Nicholas Denyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Plato. Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett Press, 1997. 

Plato. Platonis Opera. Edited by John Burnet. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901. Reprinted 1967. 

Plato. Plato: Republic, edited and translated by G.M.A. Grube and C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1992. 

 

Secondary Literature

Barnes, Jonathan. The Presocratic Philosophers. Boston: Routledge, 1982.

Bonazzi, Mauro. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 

Boys-Stones, George, Dimitri El Murr, and Christopher Gill. The Platonic Art of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Brisson, Luc. “Soul and State in Plato’s Laws.” In Plato and the Divided Self, edited by Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain, 281-308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 

Brown. Eric. “The Unity of the Soul in Plato’s Republic.” In Plato and the Divided Self, edited by Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain, 53-74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 

Brown, T. M. “Mental Diseases.” In Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine 1, edited by W. F. Bynum R. and Roy Porter, 438-63. London: Routledge, 1993. 

Burnet, John. “The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul.” Proceedings of the British Academy 7 (1916): 3-27. 

Campbell, Douglas. “The Soul’s Tomb: Plato on the Body as the Cause of Psychic Disorders.” Apeiron 55 (2022): 119-39.

Carpenter, Amber. “What is Peculiar to Plato’s and Aristotle’s Psychologies? What is Common to Them Both?” in Aristotle and the Stoics Reading Plato, edited by V. Harte, M. M. McCabe, R. W. Sharples, and A. Sheppard, 21-44. London: University of London, 2010. 

Carter, Jason Wade. Aristotle on Earlier Greek Psychology: The Science of Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 

Claus, David B. Toward the Soul. An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche Before Plato. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. 

Collier, Carol. “Body and Soul at War: Plato.” In Recovering the Body, edited by Carol Collier, 17-45. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2013. 

Cornelli, Gabriele. “Separation of Body and Soul in Plato’s Phaedo: An Unprecedented Ontological Operation in the Affinity Argument.” In Psychology and Ontology in Plato, edited by Luca Pitteloud and Evan Keeling, 23-31. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. 

Crane, Tim and Sarah Patterson. History of the Mind-Body Problem. London: Routledge, 2000. 

Crotty, Kevin M. The City-State of the Soul: Constituting the Self in Plato’s Republic. New York: Lexington Books, 2016. 

Edelstein, L. “The Relation of Ancient Philosophy to Medicine.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 26 (1952): 299-316.

Flew, Antony. Crime or Disease? London: Macmillan, 1973.

Gill, Christopher. “The Body’s Fault? Plato’s Timaeus on Psychic Illness.” In Reason and Necessity. Essays on Plato’s Timaeus, edited by M. R. Wright, 59-84. London: Duckworth, 2000.

Goetz, Stewart and Charles Taliaferro. “The Soul in Greek Thought.” In A Brief History of the Soul, edited by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, 6-29. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Gordon, Jill. “Dialectic, Dialogue, and the Transformation of the Self.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 29, no 3 (1996): 259-278.

Görler, W. “Storing Up Past Pleasures. The Soul Vessel Metaphor in Lucretius and His Greek Models.” In Lucretius and His Intellectual Background, edited by K. A. Algra, M. H. Koenen, and P. H. Schrijvers, 193-207. Amsterdam, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1997.

Gregory, Andrew. Plato’s Philosophy of Science. London: Duckworth, 2000. 

Gundert, Beate. “Soma and Psyche in Hippocratic Medicine.” In Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, edited by John P. Wright and Paul Potter. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

Harris, W. V., ed. Mental Disorders in the Classical World. Brill. 2013.

Harte, Verity. “Desire, Memory, and the Authority of Soul: Plato, Philebus 35c-d.” In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Brad Inwood, 34-71. Vol. 46. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 

Hussey, Edward. The Presocratics. London: Duckworth, 1974. 

Hutchinson, D. S. “Doctrines of the Mean and the Debate Concerning Skills in Fourth-Century Medicine, Rhetoric and Ethics.” Apeiron 21 (1988): 17-52. 

Irwin, Terence. Plato’s Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 

Jaeger, Werner. “Aristotle’s Use of Medicine as a Model of Method in His Ethics.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957): 54-61. 

Jaeger, Werner. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Translated by Gilbert Highet. Vol. 3. New York: Oxford University Press, 1943. 

Johnstone, Mark A. “Tyrannized Souls: Plato’s Depiction of the Tyrannical Man.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (2015): 423-437. 

Kagan, Shelly. “Arguments for the Existence of the Soul.” In Death, edited by Shelly Kagan, 24-57. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 

—————–. “Dualism versus Physicalism.” In Death, edited by Shelly Kagan, 6-23. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 

—————–. “Plato on the Immortality of the Soul.” In Death, edited by Shelly Kagan, 69-97. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 

Kamtekar, Rachana. “Speaking with the Same Voice as Reason: Personification in Plato’s Psychology.” In Plato and the Divided Self, edited by Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain, 77-101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 

Kenny, Anthony. “Mental Health in Plato’s Republic.” In The Anatomy of the Soul: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Mind, edited by Anthony Kenny, 1-23. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973.

Koziak, Barbara. Retrieving Political Emotion: Thumos, Aristotle, and Gender. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

Larsen, Jens Kristian. “By What Is the Soul Nourished? On the Art of the Physician of Souls in Plato’s Protagoras.” In Plato’s Protagoras, edited by Olof Pettersson and Vigdis Songe-Møller, 79-97. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. 

Lidz, Joel Warren. “Medicine as Metaphor in Plato.” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20, no. 5 (1995): 527-541. 

Longrigg, James. Greek Rational Medicine: Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians. London: Routledge, 1993. 

Lorenz, Hendrik. “Plato on the Soul.” In The Oxford Handbook of Plato, edited by Gail Fine, 508-528. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 

Mann, Wolfgang-Rainer. “Pleasure, Pain, and the Unity of the Soul in Plato’s Protagoras.” In Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times 44, edited by William V. Harris, 111-138. Leiden: Brill, 2018. 

Maranhao, Tullio. Therapeutic Discourse and Socratic Dialogue. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.

McCoy, Marina. “Why is Knowledge of Ignorance Good?” In Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy, edited by James M. Ambury and Andy German, 169-185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 

Moes, Mark. Plato’s Dialogue Form and the Care of the Soul. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

Moes, Mark. “Plato’s Conception of the Relations Between Moral Philosophy and Medicine.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 353-367. 

Newell, Waller R. Ruling Passion: The Erotics of Statecraft in Platonic Political Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Litterfield, 2000.

Nicol, Nathan. “Plato’s city-soul analogy: The Slow Train to Ordinary Virtue.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City, edited by Sharon M. Meagher, Samantha Noll, and Joseph S. Biehl, 21-31. Oxon: Routledge, 2019. 

Pahucki, John. “Plato on the Soul.” In Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, edited by David A. Leeming, 1771-2. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. 

Pitteloud, Luca and Evan Keeling. Psychology and Ontology in Plato. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. 

Price, A.W. “Are Plato’s Soul-Parts Psychological Subjects?” Ancient Philosophy 29, no.1 (2009): 1-15.

Rankin, H. D. Plato and the Individual. New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 1965. Reprinted 2013.

Reeve, C. D. C. “Soul, Soul-Parts, and Persons in Plato.” In Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy, edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos and Fred D. Miller, Jr., 147-170. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013. 

Robinson, T. M. “The Defining of Features of Mind-Body Dualism in the Writings of Plato.” In Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, edited by John P. Wright and Paul Potter, 37-56. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

Ruttenberg, Howard S. “Plato’s Use of the Analogy Between Justice and Health.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 20, no. 2 (June 1986): 145-156. 

Santas, Gerasimos. “Just City and Just Soul in Plato’s Republic.” In Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy, edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos and Fred D. Miller, Jr., 171-196. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013. 

Sassi, Maria Michela. The Science of Man in Ancient Greece. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Reprinted 2001.

Shields, Christopher. “Simple Souls.” In Essays on Plato’s Psychology, edited by E. Wagner, 137-56. Lanham: Lexington, 2001. 

Shields, Christopher. “Plato’s Divided Soul.” In Plato’s Republic: A Critical Guide, edited by M. McPherran, 147-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 

Shuchat, Raphael. “The Human Soul and Personality: Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Al-Farabi and Maimonides.” In Jewish Faith in a Changing World, edited by Raphael Shuchat, 56-64. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012.

Stalley, R. F. “Mental Health and Individual Responsibility in Plato’s Republic.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 15, no. 2 (1981): 109-124. 

Sullivan, Shirley Darcus. Psychological and Ethical Ideas: What Early Greeks Say. Leiden: Brill, 1995. 

Szasz, Thomas. The Myth of Mental Illness. St. Albans: Paladin, 1973.

Vasiliou, Iakovos. “From the Phaedo to the Republic: Plato’s Tripartite Soul and the Possibility of Non-Philosophical Virtue.” In Plato and the Divided Self, edited by Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain, 9-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Weinstein, Joshua I. Plato’s Threefold City and Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Westphal, Jonathan. The Mind-Body Problem. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2016. 

Whiting, Jennifer. “Psychic Contingency in the Republic.” In Plato and the Divided Self, edited by Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain, 174-208. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 

Wilburn, Joshua. “Moral Education and the Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato’s Laws.” In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Brad Inwood, 64-100. Vol. 45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 

Williamson, Thad. “The Good Society and the Good Soul: Plato’s Republic on Leadership.” The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008): 397-408.

Woodruff, Paul. “Rhetoric and Relativism: Protagoras and Gorgias.” In The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by A.A. Long, 290-310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 

 

Medicine Plato research Sheena McKeever