Analogy, dialectics, myth and catastrophe in Plato

Plato defines dialectics as a transition from many to one and from one to many, as well as an ascent from limited premises to a non-presupposed beginning. The problem is posed by the fact that the transition that Plato talks about is essentially a transition from the corporeal to the incorporeal and from the human to the divine. This means that we cannot have a simple method of this transition and we have to look for help in other approaches that Plato also uses. In the article, we take as the subject of analysis Plato's way of using analogy and myth. In a number of Plato's dialogues ( Republic , Phaedrus ), one can see an appeal to the analogy of cognition with the transition from a flat to a three-dimensional space. Mythological narratives about the catastrophe that happened to the cosmos in the past ( Politician , Timaeus ) allow us to assume the interaction of the cosmos with the divine space, which has a different dimension than a three-dimensional body. The image of a three-dimensional body on a plane inevitably carries a lot of contradictions that are removed in three-dimensional space, and also exactly the contradictions of the corporeal cosmos can be removed in the surrounding body of the hyperourania region, which can only be seen by the disembodied gaze of the mind. Thus, analogy and myth are not separated from dialectics, but, on the contrary, are invoked by it as a necessary complement that gives support to the mind for the transition from human knowledge to pure knowledge of things in themselves. This knowledge changes the thinker himself; the article shows how the figures of thinkers in Plato's dialogues change depending on whether he acts as a researcher or someone who has already acquired higher knowledge.