Devoir de Philosophie

Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Alcmaeon

Publié le 11/01/2010

Extrait du document

 One testimony suggests in addition that Alcmaeon derived the continual motion of the soul from the capacity of living things for self-movement (A12). Another assures us that according to Alcmaeon humans die because they cannot join the beginning to the end (fr. 2). This obscure saying perhaps indicates the way the irreversible process of ageing makes human beings - as opposed to their souls - unlike the heavenly bodies, which continue in motion by everlasting repetition of their revolution in the heavens. This group of texts furnishes evidence of the first attempt we know of to argue the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul's immortality. Alcmaeon's argument for the immortality of the soul is clearly what supplied the inspiration for Plato's proof in the Phaedrus (245c).

Liens utiles