On Medicine and Philosophy on The Plato’s Symposium: The question of epistême

Abstract

This article analyzes Plato’s Symposium in order to understand the presence, in the dialogue, of the symposiasts doctor, Eryximachus. It will be argued that medicine, as the practice of a specialized and methodical knowledge, is interested in the Platonic idea of epistême. This new medical knowledge is considered also a epistême. We judge by the way medicine is presented through personages and passages in the Hippocratic corpus, we obtain a specification of the Platonic investigation and a new angle on the notion of physis as being, primarily, psychê. Plato’s particularizing of epistême, which moves it beyond the level of knowledge of a téchnê, illuminate the question of health and disease, as regard both the body and the soul, on the basis of Plato’s new reflection on physis –psychê.