The Nature and Faculties of the Soul

The first of a series entitled "Three Lectures on the Soul in the Platonic Tradition"

These three linked lectures explore the insights of the philosophers of the Platonic tradition concerning the human soul. The nature and destiny of the soul was the prime concern of the mythic and initiatory roots of philosophy, the early Greek philosophers, the classical philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as well as those of late antiquity – Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius to name just a few. Does the soul exist, and if so, what is its nature? Is it immortal? What are it’s powers? What is its relation to the body? And to the eternal? How can we realise its potential? These and other questions will be considered in the three lectures and the question and answer sessions which will follow them. Although the lectures are interconnected, each will be reasonably self-contained so that if you are only able to attend one or two you should have no problems in picking up the concepts which underlie the series. The first lecture will take general look at the nature of the soul as the self; its three faculties and their energies as symbolised by the classes of citizens in the Republic and in the image of the chariot in the Phaedrus. We will consider the concept of the soul as a “compendium of the universe” or microcosm, and the soul’s relation to the divinity, to intellect and to body.

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