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The Analogy Between Vice and Disease from the Republic to the Timaeus

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Book cover Psychology and Ontology in Plato

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 139))

Abstract

Vice is often compared with bodily diseases in Plato’s dialogues, as if bodily diseases were an insightful scheme to understand how a psychic structure can be infected, contaminated, and then completely corrupted. But what is a strict analogy in the Republic seems to refer clearly to a causal interaction between body and soul in the Timaeus: vice can emerge from a malign disposition of the body, and, conversely, vice can cause or feed new bodily diseases in a disharmonious and neglected body. This paper argues that there is a consistent use of the analogy between vice and disease in the Republic and the Timaeus; the claim that psychic diseases are involuntary in the Timaeus is actually compatible with the agent’s responsibility regarding his ethical and physical good condition, within a strong normative approach to diseases, both of the body and the soul.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See especially Lloyd (2003) for a clear overview of the use of these analogies in ancient Greek literature.

  2. 2.

    On this comparison, and especially about civil strife, where the disease and the vice are connected by the fact that the one feeds the other: the dissolution of social bonds worsening the contamination, which, in return, dissolves these very bonds, until the city is scattered, see Macé (2010).

  3. 3.

    See Lloyd (2003) and also Stalley (1981, 1995b, 1995a, 1996) whose work on the notion of punishment and responsibility from the Protagoras to the Laws, through the Republic and the Timaeus, shows the importance of the connection between disease and vice in the Platonic corpus.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, 391c4 where greed and servility are called νόσημα or 439d2 where psychic affections are named νοσήματα. The following sections give other examples.

  5. 5.

    Rep. 4, 444d13 e2. All translations are taken from the Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C. Reeve, in Cooper & Hutchinson (1997), unless specified.

  6. 6.

    Rep. 4, 444c5-d11.

  7. 7.

    This point is underlined by Stalley (1981, p. 112).

  8. 8.

    This idea is clearly stated by Protagoras: Prot. 323c8-d6.

  9. 9.

    Rep. 3, 405c8-d4.

  10. 10.

    Miller (1962).

  11. 11.

    Again, this point is rightly stated by Stalley (1981, p. 111), when he remarks that the analogy is limited, for it does not state any precise correspondence between parts of the soul and bodily parts and about the kind of “control” that should prevail in health and justice.

  12. 12.

    On the presence of this analogy between bodily disease and political corruption in the ancient corpus, see Brock (2000) and Kosak (2000).

  13. 13.

    Rep. 8, 563e9-564a1, trans. Grube slightly modified.

  14. 14.

    See Phdr. 270c and on this passage Mansfeld (1980). On the homogenous ontology that prevails to account for a “nature” in the Platonic corpus through action and passion, and even the moral and political structures, see Macé (2006), esp. 178ff.

  15. 15.

    See Rep. 8, 564a10-c4, where stinged and stingless drones in the hive are compared with phlegm and bile in the body. It is then up, respectively, to the lawgiver and the doctor to set up the balance again.

  16. 16.

    Rep. 8, 556e3-9.

  17. 17.

    On this point, see Blössner (2007) and Renaut (2017). On the metaphor of the sick city in Plato, see Lloyd (2003, pp. 156–157).

  18. 18.

    Even if the general principle that affects every structure works, political instability does indeed come from the parts of the city as its vehicles (see Rep. 4, 435e1-436a3).

  19. 19.

    See the first association in 389c1-6.

  20. 20.

    Rep. 3, 404e3-5 (trans. Grube & Reeve slightly modified).

  21. 21.

    Rep. 3, 407c7-e2.

  22. 22.

    On this passage, and the reconstruction of an idealized history of medicine, see the very insightful remarks of Demont (2013). See also Jorgenson (2018, pp. 111–117) and finally Betegh in a paper entitled “Plato on illness in the Phaedo, the Republic, and the Timaeus” (forthcoming).

  23. 23.

    On the structure and validity of the argument, see Brown (2011).

  24. 24.

    Rep. 10, 608e6-609a4 (trans. Grube slightly modified).

  25. 25.

    Rep. 10, 609c5-d7.

  26. 26.

    See Adam (1969, p. 423) ad. 609d and 425 ad. 610d. Adam is right to distinguish three possible meanings of “death” (a) of the body, (b) of the soul, and (c) of the sunolon. This ambiguity between an ordinary meaning of “death” and the more strict Platonic version of it, i.e., separation between body and soul, may explain the difficulty of the argument.

  27. 27.

    Rep. 10, 609e1-610a3.

  28. 28.

    Rep. 10, 610a5-8.

  29. 29.

    Rep. 10, 610b6-c2.

  30. 30.

    See, for example, Rep. 10, 613a4-7: “Then we must suppose that the same is true of a just person who falls into poverty or disease (ἐν νόσοις) or some other apparent evil, namely, that this will end well for him, either during his lifetime or afterwards, for the gods never neglect anyone who eagerly wishes to become just and who makes himself as much like a god as a human can by adopting a virtuous way of life.”

  31. 31.

    Rep. 10, 610d5-e4: “By god, if injustice were actually fatal to those who contracted it, it wouldn’t seem so terrible, for it would be an escape from their troubles. But I rather think that it’s clearly the opposite, something that kills other people if it can, while, on top of making the unjust themselves lively (μάλα ζωτικὸν παρέχουσαν), it even brings them out at night. Hence it’s very far from being deadly to its possessors.”

  32. 32.

    For a useful presentation of the theory of “vice” from the Republic to the Timaeus, see Hackforth (1946) and O’Brien (1967, p. 13).

  33. 33.

    See Brisson (1994), Cornford (1937), Joubaud (1991), and Taylor (1928).

  34. 34.

    See Grams (2009) and Prince (2014). Grams presents very precise arguments so as to prove that illnesses in the body follow the same principles that rule the cosmos as a whole: diseases are caused either “by movement into the body, out of the body, or among the elements already present within the body” (162). Prince makes the so-called first “kind” of disease the general principle whose subsequent two kinds are some “subspecies” of the former (915).

  35. 35.

    Miller (1962) explicitly follow this line of interpretation. See also Lautner (2011).

  36. 36.

    See Hackforth (1946, p. 119) who notes that the term νόσος appears to be the generic term for all these disruptions and not κακία as in the Sophist.

  37. 37.

    It is not the place here to recall the very ancient and tight debates on this passage. I rely mostly here on Stalley (1996), Gill (2000), and Steel (2001).

  38. 38.

    Tim. 86d7-e2.

  39. 39.

    Tim. 42a3-b2.

  40. 40.

    Tim. 85a5-b2.

  41. 41.

    See Sacred Disease, sec. V (=2 Littré): “But this disease is in my opinion no more divine than any other; it has the same nature as other diseases, and the cause that gives rise to individual diseases. (…) Another strong proof that this disease is no more divine than any other is that it affects the naturally phlegmatic, but does not attack the bilious. Yet, if it were more divine than others, this disease ought to have attacked all equally, without making any difference between bilious and phlegmatic” (trans. W.H.S. Jones in Hippocrates (1923)).

  42. 42.

    Tim. 86e3-87a7.

  43. 43.

    Tim. 82a2-4, “unnatural pleonexia” (ἡ παρὰ φύσιν πλεονεξία) prevails among the elements; 83a3-5, tissues and by-products of blood are feuding among themselves and make war against whatever stays at its post (ἐχθρὰ μὲν αὐτὰ αὑτοῖς διὰ τὸ μηδεμίαν ἀπόλαυσιν ἑαυτῶν ἔχειν, τῷ συνεστῶτι δὲ τοῦ σώματος καὶ μένοντι κατὰ χώραν πολέμια); 85e10-a1, the body is said to master (κρατηθεῖσα) the dissolution of the bile, and then by-products are expelled just like they are “banished from a city in stasis” (οἷον φυγὰς ἐκ πόλεως στασιασάσης ἐκ τοῦ σώματος ἐκπίπτουσα).

  44. 44.

    Lloyd (2003, p. 156).

  45. 45.

    I agree with the claim that medicine offers us a normative account of diseases, as Jorgenson (2018, p. 113) shows.

  46. 46.

    Canguilhem (1966/2009).

  47. 47.

    Rep. 3, 408d10-409b1.

  48. 48.

    Strong arguments are given by Betegh (forthcoming) to account for a relative autonomy of the body in the late dialogues.

  49. 49.

    See Tim. 88a3-7 for an example of a bad diagnosis because of the inability of the doctor to recognize the right cause of the disease: “(…) in teaching and controversy, public or private, she inflames and racks its fabric through the rivalries and contentions that arise, and bringing on rheums deludes most so-called physicians making misguided diagnoses (τἀναίτια αἰτιᾶσθαι ποιεῖ)” (trans. Cornford with a modification from Zeyl for the three last words).

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  1. EA 373 Institut de Recherches Philosophiques, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre Cedex, France

    Olivier Renaut

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  1. Center for Natural and Human Sciences (CCNH), Universidade Federal do ABC, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Luca Pitteloud

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Sao Paulo, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Evan Keeling

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Renaut, O. (2019). The Analogy Between Vice and Disease from the Republic to the Timaeus. In: Pitteloud, L., Keeling, E. (eds) Psychology and Ontology in Plato. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 139. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04654-5_6

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