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(2019) Psychology and ontology in Plato, Dordrecht, Springer.
Vice is often compared with bodily diseases in Plato's dialogues, as if bodily diseases were an insightful scheme to understand how a psychic structure can be infected, contaminated, and then completely corrupted. But what is a strict analogy in the Republic seems to refer clearly to a causal interaction between body and soul in the Timaeus: vice can emerge from a malign disposition of the body, and, conversely, vice can cause or feed new bodily diseases in a disharmonious and neglected body. This paper argues that there is a consistent use of the analogy between vice and disease in the Republic and the Timaeus; the claim that psychic diseases are involuntary in the Timaeus is actually compatible with the agent's responsibility regarding his ethical and physical good condition, within a strong normative approach to diseases, both of the body and the soul.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-04654-5_6
Full citation:
Renaut, O. (2019)., The analogy between vice and disease from the republic to the Timaeus, in L. Pitteloud & E. Keeling (eds.), Psychology and ontology in Plato, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 67-83.
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