Spirit’s Eye

The role of noûs s in the conception of the soul from tradition to Plato

Abstract

Abstract

In this article we intend to demonstrate that philosophy is, for Plato, a “therapy of the soul”, by providing ordering of its movements, as in an ascending spiral. We have considered the terminology movement (kínesis), on its Greek meaning, not only the displacement in space, but also the changing in qualitative states and the actions of the soul. For that ordering to be achieved it is necessary to activate in the soul an ability of joined vision, as a “spirit’s eye”, the noûs. Dialectics is the methodology proposed by Plato in order to make possible the execution of that goal, in a way that the upper potencies of the soul are able to be activated, especially memory and its immortal and divide origin. To accomplish that goal, we will at first take a brief tour of pre-Socratic cosmology and of folk wisdom in order to highlight the universality of the knowledge of the soul, and afterwards to characterize the proposition of Plato’s dialectics, highlighting the role of the nous

Keywords: Soul, Dialectics, Immortality, Noûs.