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Plato on Soul and Agency
Series: - Brill's Plato Studies Series, Volume: 20
Author:
Giving souls strong individuality is one of Plato’s most influential but also most controversial innovations. This book addresses such souls’ agency, which is a prerequisite of their many functions not only in human life but in the universe at large. Its conclusion is that the agency proper to the soul stands apart from other Platonic causes as the only full-blooded agent whose actions and passions organize our short moral and civic life, all the while participating, thanks to the soul’s immortal existence and repeated incarnation, in the maintenance of the cosmos as a home to innumerable living species. Together with treating this multitude of the soul’s tasks, the book pays attention to the unavoidable personification of the soul and to the carefully constructed images that impress on the reader its complexity.
Karel Thein, Charles University in Prague, specializes in ancient philosophy and philosophy of art. His most recent monographs are L’âme comme livre. Étude sur une image platonicienne (2021) and Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World’s Forge (2022).
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
2 Souls in the Phaedo: Preconditions of Agency
1 Souls as Individuals: Beyond Purity
2 Soul as Harmonia, Soul as a Weaver
3 Causal Puzzles
4 Soul’s Agency and Indestructibility
5 The Afterlife
3 Soul and Incorporeality
1 Setting the Problem
2 The Phaedo
3 Republic X
4 The Phaedrus
5 The Timaeus
6 Laws X and the Sophist
7 Concluding Remarks
4 Transmigration and the World’s Balance
1 The Phaedo
2 A Remark on the Republic and the Myth of Er
3 The Phaedrus
4 The Timaeus
5 The Transmigration’s Purpose Summarized
5 Imagining the Soul in Republic IX and X: Reframing the Agency
1 The Need for Images
2 The Republic and the Soul’s (Two or Three) Parts
3 The Monstrous Image in Republic IX
4 The Image of the Soul in Book X
5 The Soul’s Divided Agency and Personification
6 Conclusion
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
2 Souls in the Phaedo: Preconditions of Agency
1 Souls as Individuals: Beyond Purity
2 Soul as Harmonia, Soul as a Weaver
3 Causal Puzzles
4 Soul’s Agency and Indestructibility
5 The Afterlife
3 Soul and Incorporeality
1 Setting the Problem
2 The Phaedo
3 Republic X
4 The Phaedrus
5 The Timaeus
6 Laws X and the Sophist
7 Concluding Remarks
4 Transmigration and the World’s Balance
1 The Phaedo
2 A Remark on the Republic and the Myth of Er
3 The Phaedrus
4 The Timaeus
5 The Transmigration’s Purpose Summarized
5 Imagining the Soul in Republic IX and X: Reframing the Agency
1 The Need for Images
2 The Republic and the Soul’s (Two or Three) Parts
3 The Monstrous Image in Republic IX
4 The Image of the Soul in Book X
5 The Soul’s Divided Agency and Personification
6 Conclusion
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index
The book addresses practitioners and more advanced students of ancient philosophy and those interested in the early history of psychology. The book is relevant to all academic institutions and libraries.