Temperance and Epistemic Purity in Plato’s Phaedo
Abstract
In this paper I examine the moral psychology of the Phaedo and argue that the philosophical life in this dialogue is a temperate life, and that temperance consists in exercising epistemic discernment by actively withdrawing assent from incorrect evaluations the body inclines us to make. Philosophers deal with bodily affections by taking a correct epistemic stance. Exercising temperance thus understood is a necessary condition both for developing and strengthening rational capacities, and for fixing accurate beliefs about value. The purification philosophers strive for, and the purifying role of philosophy, should then be understood as a clarificatory act consisting in making one’s thoughts clear and withdrawing assent from erroneous evaluative content in our desires and pleasures. Along the way, I argue that philosophers must neither avoid situations and activities that cause bodily affections as much as possible, nor ignore or care little about them.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Temperance and Epistemic Purity in Plato’s Phaedo
- Categories in Topics I 9: A New Plea For a Traditional Interpretation
- Aristotle’s First Moves Regarding Perception: A Reading of (most of) De Anima 2.5
- Kant on Civil Self-Sufficiency
- Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic Revisited
- Life, Lawfulness, and Contingency: Kant and Schelling on Organic Nature
- Book Reviews
- Muratori, Cecilia. Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence. Cambridge: Legenda 2020, xiv + 276 pp.
- Abazari, Arash. Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, xvii + 218 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Temperance and Epistemic Purity in Plato’s Phaedo
- Categories in Topics I 9: A New Plea For a Traditional Interpretation
- Aristotle’s First Moves Regarding Perception: A Reading of (most of) De Anima 2.5
- Kant on Civil Self-Sufficiency
- Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic Revisited
- Life, Lawfulness, and Contingency: Kant and Schelling on Organic Nature
- Book Reviews
- Muratori, Cecilia. Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence. Cambridge: Legenda 2020, xiv + 276 pp.
- Abazari, Arash. Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, xvii + 218 pp.