Death and Madness in the Phaedo and Phaedrus
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چکیده
READERS OF PLATO’S dialogues would recognize a constantly renewed desire to define philosophy and to distinguish it from sophistry, rhetoric, poetry, etc. One suspects that this attempt to delimit philosophy as a discourse is itself what philosophizing is. In Plato, reflexivity is already inscribed into the nature of philosophical activity. The Phaedo and the Phaedrus are two of Plato’s dialogues where philosophical activity is presented as a questioning of what philosophy is. In the Phaedo, Plato claims that philosophy is a practice for dying and death, whereas in the Phaedrus philosophy is described as a kind of madness. Through these two characterizations of philosophy, Plato determines the subsequent attempts to think philosophy, as well as to think philosophically about the themes of madness and death. After Plato, madness and death become deeply connected to the way in which philosophy interprets itself. Therefore, to the extent that philosophy is considered to be, among other things, the activity of asking what philosophy is, madness and death emerge as two themes that can help us understand this activity. To say that philosophy is an activity of asking what philosophy itself is does not suggest
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