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HIPPOCRATES AT PHAEDRUS 270C
Author(s) -
Jelinek Elizabeth,
Pappas Nickolas
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12315
Subject(s) - soul , analogy , rhetorical question , socrates , philosophy , reading (process) , epistemology , literature , linguistics , art
At Plato's Phaedrus 270c, Socrates asks whether one can know souls without knowing ‘the whole.’ Phaedrus answers that ‘according to Hippocrates’ the same demand on knowing the whole applies to bodies. What parallel is intended between soul‐knowledge and body‐knowledge and which medical passages illustrate the analogy have been much debated. Three dominant interpretations read ‘the whole’ as respectively (1) environment, (2) kosmos , and (3) individual soul or body; and adduce supporting Hippocratic passages. But none of these interpretations accounts for the Phaedrus ' rhetorical method. A better reading sees the whole as the genos ‘soul,’ as the Phaedrus ' taxonomies divide that genus.