Year: 2004
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: SEVERAL Platonic dialogues indicate that humans should strive to become like god. Until recent work by Julia Annas and David Sedley, this had gone largely unnoticed in contemporary Plato scholarship. 1 In this article I explore the idea further by arguing that Plato’s later conception of god made a difference to how he conceived of becoming like god. In particular, I argue that Plato’s identification of god with vovsor intelligence in the Timaeus, Philebus, and Laws influences his conception of assimilation to god. Rather than fleeing from the sensible world, becoming like this god commits one to improving it. In the Laws especially fo1lowing god requires an effort to unify the city under intelligent 1aw and to educate the citizens
Author: John M Armstrong
Institution: Southern Virginia University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1484081636