Irwin, Terence. 1999. "The Theory of Forms". [In] Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, 143–170. Edited by Gail Fine. Oxford Readings in Philosophy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Aristotle began as a pupil of Plato. Plotinus and his successors at Alexandria in the 3rd century developed Neoplatonism, a philosophical system, based on Platonism with elements of mysticism and some Judaic and Christian concepts. Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinascombined Neoplatonism with the doctrines of Aristotle within a context of Christian thought.

Meanwhile, in the recollection and affinity arguments, the connection with life is not explicated or used at all. These two arguments present the soul as a knower (i.e., a mind). This is most clear in the affinity argument, where the soul is said to be immortal in virtue of its affinity with the Forms that we observe in acts of cognition. Again, we see here the dogmatist who feels upright and superior to all the hypocrites around him – a typical academic attitude, which can be seen in many academics in our own time as well. The feeling of superior knowledge and the position that entitles someone to exclaim truths – never mind all the fallacies involved here. Trabattoni, Franco (2023). From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato's Phaedo. Brill. ISBN 9789004538221.Long, Anthony A. 2005. “Platonic Souls as Persons.” In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, edited by R. Salles, 173–91.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Both are translated in two volumes by L.G. Westerink (1976–7), The Greek Commentaries on Plato's Phaedo, vols. I & II, Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co. I was a bit wary going in but I was pleasantly surprised that this book wasn't as difficult to understand as I'd expected it to be. Solmsen, Friedrich. 1955. “Antecedents of Aristotle’s Psychology and the Scale of Beings.” American Journal of Philology 76: 148–64.

It's strange to reread a text that I first read when I was young, idealistic, optimistic, and believed that the expunging of those who questioned conventional thinking was the exception, not the rule. The Phaedo has come to be considered a seminal formulation, from which "a whole range of dualities, which have become deeply ingrained in Western philosophy, theology, and psychology over two millennia, received their classic formulation: soul and body, mind and matter, intellect and sense, reason and emotion, reality and appearance, unity and plurality, perfection and imperfection, immortal and mortal, permanence and change, eternal and temporal, divine and human, heaven and earth." [31] Texts and translations [ edit ] Original texts [ edit ] Plato: Meno and Phaedo. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. By David Sedley (Editor) and Alex Long (Translator). Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0521676779

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Campbell, Douglas (2021). "Self‐Motion and Cognition: Plato's Theory of the Soul." Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (4): 523-544. I found this fitting in a world where so many people appear to be comparing themselves to one another and constantly trying to be, perhaps, something they are not. So I underlined that last bit of the sentence twice: ''it was best for me to be as I was.'' For example. "Everyone, even the actual god Apollo, says I'm the smartest person in the world. .. But really guys I'm not." Yeah that sounds 100% sincere, man. Dorothea Frede argued that “as to the exact nature of the soul we are left somehow in the dark by Plato in the Phaedo and also in Republic X." [27] Most of the people will succumb to the bodily seduction and lead a life of debauchery and ignorance. The gods will punish these souls by reincarnating them as stupid, lowly animals, such as donkeys and flies. People who do better will be reincarnated as social animals, bees and ants, for example. The most purest of souls, those who devote their entire life to loving wisdom (i.e. literally, the philosophers), will be best off – they will be rewarded in the afterlife and meet the gods and other great men.