Sunday, October 29, 2017

Person-Soul and Polis-Soul

Even though Plato likens the structure of the personal Soul to that of the Polis, he does not attribute a Soul to the latter.  Now, in the Timaeus, he attributes a Soul to the World, so he is not commited to restricting a Soul to a person.  Accordingly, that a Polis, too, has a Soul is implicit.  But, if so, then a Person-Soul can only be part of the Polis-Soul, which, at minimum, complicates the exposition of the Republic.  For, the Part-Whole relation undermines the Writ Small-Writ Large analogy, and there must be some component of the Person-Soul that evinces a fundamental connection to the Polis-Soul.  Accordingly, the concepts of Happy Person and Just Person, i. e. that are the central issues of the dialogue, need to be revised, even if the essence of the rebuttals to Glaucon and Thrasymachus remain intact.

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