Platone e la libertà. Etica, politica, filosofia

The fact that Plato does not devote any of his dialogues to the concept of freedom does not mean that this notion is irrelevant to his philosophy. Actually, freedom plays a relevant role in numerous areas of his thought: ethics, politics and metaphysics. In general, he aims to argue that the individual is responsible for his actions, although he is not completely free (see the myth of Er in the Republic X). In the political sphere, freedom is identified with democracy (Republic VIII); in this field, freedom is absolutized and turns into its opposite, i.e. tyranny. On the ethical and philosophical level, freedom is not identified with doing what one wants, but with rational behaviour, which is the only behaviour oriented towards the good and the interest of the man (see Lysis and Gorgias). Therefore, only the possession of reason guarantees true freedom. This means that in Plato the theme of freedom is not detachable from an examination of the condition in which the soul of the individual makes a choice and makes a decision. Plato also shows that he is very familiar with the constraints (material, social, anthropological) that influence all behavior of the agent, whose freedom must always be conceived within an almost inescapable framework of conditioning.