The conception of man in Platonic thought

Since ancient times, man has questioned his presence in the world, so Plato presents his anthropological project, which introduces the theme of the immortality of the soul, and which underpins a large part of Platonic anthropology, and book IV of the Republic, highlighting the tripartition that Plato operates in the organisation of his Ideal State. After a historical approach to anthropological thought, we move on to the archaic period of Greek society, the pre-Socratics, the Sophists and finally to Plato’s studies, a unique figure in philosophy in terms of the task of defining man. His anthropology inaugurated a new phase in anthropological thought, based on his ontological approach. For Plato, the essence of man is his soul. Finally, the perspective of a non-dualist stance for Platonic anthropology in the ’Timaeus’ will be presented, with the possibility of a triadic dimension of interpretation of his thought, both written and unwritten. It is in this way that Platonic anthropology marks the entire history of Western thought about man.