Xenocrates' Daemons and the Irrational Soul

Abstract

In the second century of our era the Athenian Platonist, Atticus, claimed that it was clear not only to philosophers but perhaps even to ordinary people that the heritage left by Plato was the immortality of the soul. Plato had expounded the doctrine in various and manifold ways (ποικίλως καì παντοίως) and this was about (σχεδόν) the only thing holding together the Platonic school. Atticus is but one witness to the prominence accorded the soul in discussions and debates among later Platonists. But while questions concerning the origin, constitution, and destiny of the human soul are relatively well attested for Middle Platonism, not to mention Neoplatonism, we know much less about these topics among Plato's immediate successors in the Academy, Speusippus of Athens (c. 408–339) and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (396–314). Both wrote treatises on the soul (περì ψυχ⋯ς), but these have been lost along with their other, numerous writings. Because the least that can be said is that Speusippus and Xenocrates upheld the immortality of the soul (as would be expected), any snippet of information that might tell us more deserves close consideration.