Sul ruolo della somiglianza e dell'immagine nella cura dell'anima

The analogical comparison is a characteristic tool of the Socratic epistemology according to both Plato and Xenophon. This tool finds its theoretical foundation in Pl. Men. 81c-d, where a worldview based on the kinship between all entities is sketched. In this short essay for Linda Napolitano, a refined scholar of Plato’s ethics and iconology, I focus on the role that the images of the analogical comparison play in Socrates’ speeches aiming to heal the soul. For the sake of brevity, I will limit myself here to considering just one example. In the context of the dialogue between Socrates and Polo, which takes place in the Gorgia, we encounter a rightly famous and particularly articulated analogical comparison concerning not only the relationship between body care techniques and soul care techniques, but also between images of body care techniques and soul care techniques. The idea that there is a kinship between the body and the soul, and between each of the two and the corresponding image, allows the Socrates of the Gorgias to construct, starting from a whole semantic field linked to the body, a whole semantic field linked to the soul, thereby configuring the body as a metaphor of the soul, as its visible and understandable side. An entire section of the experience – all that concerns the σώμα – is then supposed to make up, through its visibility, for the invisibility of what concerns the ψυχή.