Plato's Erotic World: From Cosmic Origins to Human Death

Voorkant
Cambridge University Press, 13 aug 2012 - 243 pagina's
Plato's entire fictive world is permeated with philosophical concern for eros, well beyond the so-called erotic dialogues. Several metaphysical, epistemological, and cosmological conversations - Timaeus, Cratylus, Parmenides, Theaetetus, and Phaedo - demonstrate that eros lies at the root of the human condition and that properly guided eros is the essence of a life well lived. This book presents a holistic vision of eros, beginning with the presence of eros at the origin of the cosmos and the human soul, surveying four types of human self-cultivation aimed at good guidance of eros, and concluding with human death as a return to our origins. The book challenges conventional wisdom regarding the "erotic dialogues" and demonstrates that Plato's world is erotic from beginning to end: the human soul is primordially erotic and the well cultivated erotic soul can best remember and return to its origins, its lifelong erotic desire.
 

Inhoudsopgave

Cosmos 1
14
Questioning
53
Courage
86

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Over de auteur (2012)

Jill Gordon is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy at Colby College, Maine. She is the author of Turning Toward Philosophy: Literary Device and Dramatic Structure in Plato's Dialogues (1999).

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