Abstract

The Republic is the most studied of Plato’s dialogues, yet it is rarely approach as a work that elaborates on the implications of erôs. This thesis attempts to show that the Republic is also a dialogue about erôs, such as the Symposium and the Phaedrus, for it also aims at providing a direction to man’s striving. The Republic deals specifically with the morphology of the soul and its erotic nature. The soul is depicted by Plato as a manifold of erotic forces that, if properly ordered, show man his kinship with the Good, the source of all being. The Good is theorized as the eternal and unchanging, placing it outside the world of phenomena. Therefore, the psychological picture provided in the Republic is one of the first theorizations of the soul and its transcendental constitution. To this effect, this theoretical approach aims to overcome Kantian interpretations, since they tend to overlook the genuine concern Plato had for metaphysics. The theoretical approach assumes that Plato is concerned with existence and the order of being.