Gabriela Roxana Carone
Mind and Body in Late Plato
In this paper I re-examine the status of the mind-body
relation in several of Plato’s late dialogues. A range of views has been
attributed to Plato here. For example, it has been thought that Plato is a
substance dualist, for whom the mind can exist independently of the body; or an
attribute dualist, who has left behind the strong dualistic commitments of the
Phaedo by allowing that the mind may be the subject of spatial
movements. But even in cases where a classification of Plato as a holder of a
particular ontology of the mind has been left undefined, it has been a shared
assumption that in the late dialogues the mind itself must be immaterial. I take
issue with these various views and show that none of them is necessitated by the
text. In the first place, I argue there is strong evidence against the view that
Plato should, in his late period, be committed not only to substance dualism,
but also to attribute dualism. Furthermore, it is possible that Plato may have
allowed that the mind itself be a three-dimensional corporeal entity (in a way
that sets up a precedent for later Stoic developments). But even if this is not
the only possible reading of the text, it is shown how at any rate the mind must
be seen in late Plato as the principle of organization of a body and
ontologically inseparable from it. Despite prima facie affinities with Aristotle
here, we shall see a Plato emerge for whom the mind (without exception) and the
body cannot exist without one another – a thesis more radical than that of
Aristotle’s. To bring out the provocative nature of this suggestion, I start, in
section I, by laying out the state of the question and compare what I shall
argue is the late Platonic view with standard interpretations of his previous
work, stressing the historical force that I expect this thesis to have.
Afterwards, in three respective sections, I proceed to pay heed to relevant
passages in the Timaeus, Philebus and Laws in order
to establish the main point of this paper. Finally, in section V, I consider the
challenge apparently introduced against my thesis by Plato’s occasional talk of
immortality and eschatology in those dialogues, and argue instead that many of
those passages add further strength to the view defended in this
essay.
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0003-9101
Volume: 87, 10/2005
Pages: 227 - 269
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