Reminiscence and Reminiscent Soul on Plato’s Phaedo

Abstract

I intend in this article to analyze the epistemological and ontological statute of cognitive soul on Plato’s Phaedo in order to clarify its innate ability concerning memory and reminiscence for the constitution of platonic theory of Forms. My purpose here is to demonstrate that Plato’s written activity points out the coexistence between figurative discourse and rational discourse, by which he conceives the dialectic between sensible and intelligible genders. Hence, in the first section the research scrutinizes the expression mathésis anámnesis, learning is recollection, observed preliminarily on Meno and Phaedo, as the main epistemological condition to achieve the knowledge of ideas. In the next section I aim to explain how the possession of a numinous wisdom by a reminiscent soul stipulates an original kind of knowing, that cannot be restricted in human boundaries, requiring, for its understanding, a new hermeneutic aproach, which I called cultual hermeneutic. At least, in the last section I will demonstrate that the phenomenological scope of myth foresees a semantic of visibility, by which Plato describes the genuine nature of philosophical logos, represented properly in the socratic compliment of meléte thanátou.