Plato's Account of the Diseases of the Soul in Timaeus 86B1–87B9

Abstract

The paper aims to show that ἄνοια is the general term for the diseases of the soul, and that μανία and ἀμαϑία are not necessarily two distinct species but two levels of the same disease: ignorance signifies the cognitive state, whereas madness indicates both a cognitive state and a specific phenomenal character. Plato's other remarks on psychic ailments can be incorporated into this account. The result can also be accommodated to the general theory of the soul-body relationship in the dialogue. Incarnated souls cannot work without the corresponding activity of the body, even if this does not rule out the possibility for the soul to exist in a discarnate state.

Soul as Principle in Plato’s Charmides: A Reading of Plato’s Anthropological Ontology Based on Hermias Alexandrinus on Plato’s Phaedrus

“…For this view, see [6] (pp. 59-60); [7] (p. 23); [8] (p. 418); [9] (p. 253 and n. 49); [10] (p. 260). 6 Edelstein [11] (p. 360) stresses that "writers of all philosophical creeds gave a prominent place to the analogy of body and soul, to the similarity between the training of the body and the discipline of the soul, to the consideration of medicine as a counterpart of ethics".…”

“…According to the body-soul analogy which dominates this section of the dialogue (226-230), of the two kinds of badness that affect the soul, one is like bodily sickness, and the other is like ugliness, namely bodily disproportion. In the Timaeus 86b-87b, there is also a distinction between diseases that affect the body and those that affect the soul, but the latter, according to the prevailing reading of this passage, all derive from the body 5 [6][7][8][9][10]. At the end of this passage, the recommended remedy for both psychic and bodily disease is to restore harmony and proportion between the body and the soul themselves.…”