Anthropology of Plato Revisited

Today history of philosophy is undergoing critical rethinking. For the first generations of analytic philosophers, a true «historiophobia» was generally characteristic. However, as it often happens, the critical attitude did not abolish the interest to the thinkers of the past and did not lead to the denial of the significance of the history of philosophy as one of the forms of philosophical work. Moreover, it gave rise to new methodological approaches, which are now being actively assimilated by historians of thought. An increasing number of works have titles that include the words «Revisited» or «Rethinking». There arises an opportunity to abandon the power of classical assessments and classical hierarchies of the significant in the texts of thinkers of the past (which were formulated by authors of the 19th-20th centuries). This paper deals with Plato’s ideas about man as an example. Familiarization with a wider range of Plato’s texts destroys the traditional concept of the dominance of reason in the composition of the human being. Plato describes the human soul in such a way that it is not clear where its periphery is and where its center is. The significance of reason is unconditional, it confirms the eternity of the spiritual nature, but its use by us in earthly life is quite ambivalent. And, most importantly, participation in philosophical work is not a guarantee that we, as people-puppets from the Laws, have already «pulled out» and «overcome» ourselves, having grasped the «golden thread». Plato’s doctrine of man is not a hymn to the human mind, but a story about the fundamental incompleteness and certainly in being as fundamental features of human existence.