The Asceticism of the Phaedo: Pleasure, Purification, and the Soul’s Proper Activity

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99 (1):1-30 (2017)
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Abstract

I argue that according to Socrates in the Phaedo we should not merely evaluate bodily pleasures and desires as worthless or bad, but actively avoid them. We need to avoid them because they change our values and make us believe falsehoods. This change in values and acceptance of falsehoods undermines the soul’s proper activity, making virtue and happiness impossible for us. I situate this account of why we should avoid bodily pleasures within Plato’s project in the Phaedo of providing Pythagorean and Orphic ideas with clearer meanings and better justifications.

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David Ebrey
Universitat de Barcelona

References found in this work

Kant's Theory of Freedom.Henry E. Allison - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Alief in Action (and Reaction).Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2008 - Mind and Language 23 (5):552--585.
The retrieval of ethics.Talbot Brewer - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Lore and science in ancient Pythagoreanism.Walter Burkert - 1972 - Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press.
Plato's Phaedo.David Bostock - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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