и его метаморфозы: φύσις, λόγος, ἐπιθυµία. (in Russian) (original) (raw)

2018, Platonic Investigations / Платоновские иссследования

Platonic Investigations 8.1 (2018): 57–72. The article considers the meaning of the so-called 'long way' in Plato's Republic and the methodological significance of the transformation of the 'same' subjects in different parts of the text. The instances of such a transformation are φύσις, λόγος, and ἐπιθυµία. The text of the dialogue seems to be constructed in such a way that the interlocutors should first 'pass through' the world of what is doxic in order to approach stepwise the world of the noetic — this is exactly the meaning of the 'long way': it is impossible, without preparing and clearing your understanding at the level of the doxic, to forthwith jump into the intelligible. The preparation for the transition from one sphere to another begins, however, gradually. Passing in small steps the different spheres described in the Line (R. 509–511) — assimilation, opinion, reason, — moving gradually towards the intelligible, the reader continually stumbles upon a contradiction: what has already been encountered before, may abruptly turn into its opposite. Three sections of the article show the preparation, in earlier books, of the resulting redefinition of the values of φύσις, λόγος, and ἐπιθυµία occurring in later books, distinguished by the turn from opinion to the intelligible. The last section explains the transformation of the guardians into philosophers, and gives a brief overview of the whole 'long way' of the Republic, where the transition from one sphere of existence to another is not a crossing of a certain 'natural' border, but a change of viewpoint, a change in the method, which has been in preparation from the very first book.