Abstract
It will be appropriate to close this study by recapitulating the way which we have chosen to follow through the Platonic dialogues. At the same time two additional questions will be briefly considered. Specifically, Plato’s remarks about immortality in the Timaeus pose a problem, and the final form which the doctrine of the self might take offers another.
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References
E.g. Grube, op. cit., p. 147 ff. Cf. Tim. 41C; 70D; 90B-C; Laws 967D.
In Tim. 72D, the abdomen is described as the receptacle (νποδοχήν) which receives food and prevents it from flowing away, and thus renders temperance attainable.
Crat. 400C; Gor. 493A; Phaed. 81-83; Phaedr. 250C.
The contradictory and confused character of inherited opinion on important matters is clearly conveyed by Socrates’ comments on the current religious opinions, cf. Rep. II 377 ff. Timaeus’ description of the undisciplined and newly-made man’s experience is quite to the same point (43A-44B). Poetry, as Plato sometimes describes it, approximates to the same conglomerate.
It may further be suggested that the divisible being, same, and other, of which the soul was composed, be identified as the metaphysical basis for this psychic receptacle. But care must be taken not to carry this analogy so far as to neglect the differences involved. This “psychic receptacle” is radically different from the cosmic receptacle in that the latter is devoid of form (Tim. 50D-E), whereas the aglomeration of feeling, sensation, and the like, is not without form; it is formless only in relation to a more orderly and disciplined possible state of soul.
This point is made by Archer-Hind, Plato’s Timaeus p. 166, and by Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, p. 250ff and passim.
Cornford adopts this view; ibid., p. 197; 206, n. 1.
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© 1965 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Ballard, E.G. (1965). Conclusion and Criticism. In: Socratic Ignorance. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9432-7_6
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