Sulla complessità dell'essere umano. L'articolazione dell'uomo in Platone e in Ficino

Plato’s conception of the human soul is three dimensional: reason (loghistikón), spirit (thymoeidés) and appetite (epithymetikón). Our text seeks to reconstruct the reasons, elements and modalities of this conception, with particular attention to his Republic, Phaedrus, Philebus and Timaeus; and looks to question the stereotypical reading of Plato that presents him as an anthropological dualist and an ethical intellectualist. In addition, we give specific consideration to the myth of the "winged chariot", which expresses the Platonic theory in allegorical terms. Furthermore, consideration is given to the persistent references made to the mathematical language of the Academy, which - according to Plato - can express in an encoded manner the relations interior to the human soul and the dialectic between the good and pleasure that typifies moral experience. Marsilio Ficino, a perceptive modern commentator on the Platonic dialogues (in particular, of the Phaedrus and the Philebus), offers us an original reading of the myth of the "winged chariot", inserting it within the framework of a metaphysics of creation, in which there is both a positive understanding of the infinite and the possibility of an otherworldly reconstitution of human body.