Identity and Infallibility in Plato's Epistemology

Plato's Republic in the Recent Debate

“…32 However the dif-29 G. R. F. Ferrari 2003, 89. 30 a detailed presentation of the functions, or parts, of the soul, in parallel with the corresponding social groups of the city, can be found in Vegetti 1998d, calabi 1998b, Gastaldi 1998c, and campese 1998b this more or less accentuated divergence is noted, for example, by Lisi 2006 andFronterotta 2006b, who tend to relate the doctrine of the tripartition of the soul to the more fundamental one of its bipartition, conceived, however, as deriving from the relation between a single psychic, rational, and immortal principle and the mortal body, with its emotional and irrational sphere. to have recourse in a tripartite psychological model, better adapted to illustrating the analogy with the city, which is replaced in Book X by a more appropriate conception of the soul, once the "political" need has been satisfied.…”

“…But it is disputed if this censorship has to be considered as a sort of selection of the "good" stories to tell (so that, in a way, "some poetry is always allowed in Kallipolis," as Blondell 2002, 243, remarks) or if it is aimed, in Plato's view, to establish a helpful connection between philosophy and poetry, once the latter has been purified from its false and sometimes immoral contents (see naddaf 2002, xi, 23, 67). on this point, see also Gastaldi 1998b, calabi 1998a, schofield 2007, and Gastaldi 2007. the problem of censorship is clearly and strictly related to the main question of the status of poetry and, still more generally, of myth in the Republic and in the other dialogues: what and where is the narrative and stylistic distinction or separation between the philosophical discourse and argument and the evocative imagery of the literary and mythological speech?…”