L’anima e lo spettro: fisio-patologia complessa dell’anima in Platone

(The Soul and the Spectrum: A Complex Physio-pathology of the Soul in Plato)

Abstract

Assuming that, according to Plato, the true self consists in the soul and that the rational part of the soul has the leading role as far as human affairs are concerned, it seems easy to conclude that the perfect condition of the human soul must coincide with the annihilation of irrational psychic components. The present essay intends to show that such an interpretation is reductive and philosophically ineffective. Mainly (but not only) on the ground of a consideration of the Timaeus, the essay argues that for Plato, the physiological condition of the soul consists in its multi-dimensional balance, that is, in the correct development – and not annihilation – of both the rational and irrational components, not simply the rational one. This has important repercussions from the standpoint of the philosophical economy of Plato’s psychology: pathology and physiology of the soul are on a line of continuity within a spectrum that is regulated by the plasticity and interaction of the specific conditions of the individual parts.