Virtud, posesión y placer en los diálogos de Platónuna propuesta interpretativa

Resumen

The interchangeable use of epistēmē, sophia and technē with which Socrates characterizes moral knowledge and virtue in Socratic Dialogues implies that, since the knowledge of virtue is said in various ways, the sense of epistēmē and the intellectualism that is derived can hardly be univocal or acquire a single meaning. Socratic epistēmē and intellectualism, per se, are thus hardly reducible to a single mode of knowledge, not being hermetic, but inclusive. In this sense, I propose in this dissertation an approach to the Socratic epistēmē, little explored, that enables to show the insufficiencies that arise if the epistēmē is explained from just one cognitive point of view. It also shows how Socratic epistēmē provides for further explanations, moving beyond traditional ones. I suggest a picture of virtues as powers in action that generate possessed states. Moreover, this development of the virtues goes beyond Platonic ethics. My argumentation follows giving some evidences to show that this open-minded intellectualism is also held in the Republic, not being in contradiction with the well-known psychology based on the tripartition of the soul. The consideration of virtues as powers in action that generate certain states is maintained in this dialogue as well, showing that in the constitution of these given states there are emotional factors too. In this sense, the treatment of pleasure –as it is known, a question to which Plato devoted a good deal of attention– exhibits some capacity to grant perfection to moral actions. This leads to a new reading of the nature of pleasure as it is proposed in the Philebus, enabling it not being considered a process or a genesis, at least over certain of its kinds. In this sense, I argue that according to the Platonic distinction between the acquisition of virtue and knowledge and the virtue and knowledge acquired, a discrimination among the pleasure of acquisition of virtue and knowledge and the pleasure of virtue and knowledge acquired works too. In this later case, this pleasure, since it is the proper pleasure of a finished or accomplished state, cannot be a genesis or a process.