I fondamenti metafìsici dell’ etica di Plutarco

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give a look of the most important cosmological and metaphysical doctrines that have a function in the ethical, psychological and anthropological views of Plutarch. The analysis of Plutarch’s works (specially De virtute morali and De anim aeprocreatione) can show that the critical attitude against the stoic’s ethics (and psychology) has a metaphysical basis in the theory of the irrational soul (as component of the world soul and of the individual souls). The theory of metriopatheia, which is the Plutarch’s response to stoic’s theory of apatheia, depends on a metaphysical dualism, according to which the soul in itself is a irrational principle..