L’akolasia est en nous (Platon, Tim. 72e). Deux solutions à l’intempérance humaine : Platon et Plutarque

Abstract

Plato’s Timeus raises the question of intemperance in a development concerning the composition and functioning of man, focusing on the human body. Intemperance then appears as a purely physical matter, to which the gods in charge of shaping the human body must find a physical solution too. The body as shaped by the gods contains its inherent intemperance, that is to say that it possesses it and overcomes it at once. On the contrary, precisely because he addresses the body and the needs of the body enslaving man, Plutarch, in his Banquet of the Seven Sages, goes implicitly against the divine solution of the Timeus: according to him, man is able to philosophize and become wise only when he forces himself to live as if he did not have a body.