In evaluating Plutarch's contacts with other cultures of his era, scholars have not reached consensus so far regarding the relationship between the Chaironean and Early Christian writers. A good example of this lacks...In evaluating Plutarch's contacts with other cultures of his era, scholars have not reached consensus so far regarding the relationship between the Chaironean and Early Christian writers. A good example of this lacks of consensus rises when we come to the views of the creation of human soul. As a matter of fact, following the first approaches on this issue by Brenk in his "The Origin and the Return of the Soul in Plutarch", it is possible to understand that "Plutarch desecularizes and repersonalizes the master (i.e., Plato) (...) suggesting that the soul enters our miserable world without having had a previous vision of the forms to assure its reborn". Even if the researcher plausibly demonstrates this assert, we must accept from his conclusions that we should also move some steps forward by placing Plutarch's conceptions regarding the origin of human soul in his proper historical, philosophical, and religious context. Therefore, the aim of the following paper is to deal with those contacts in order to highlight their similitudes and/or differences about the motif of the soul's birth.展开更多
文摘In evaluating Plutarch's contacts with other cultures of his era, scholars have not reached consensus so far regarding the relationship between the Chaironean and Early Christian writers. A good example of this lacks of consensus rises when we come to the views of the creation of human soul. As a matter of fact, following the first approaches on this issue by Brenk in his "The Origin and the Return of the Soul in Plutarch", it is possible to understand that "Plutarch desecularizes and repersonalizes the master (i.e., Plato) (...) suggesting that the soul enters our miserable world without having had a previous vision of the forms to assure its reborn". Even if the researcher plausibly demonstrates this assert, we must accept from his conclusions that we should also move some steps forward by placing Plutarch's conceptions regarding the origin of human soul in his proper historical, philosophical, and religious context. Therefore, the aim of the following paper is to deal with those contacts in order to highlight their similitudes and/or differences about the motif of the soul's birth.