/lit/ - Literature

In the Phaedrus, blessed Plato introduces the doctrine of an organism as self-moving as the notion that living things, possessing souls, are to be defined by their self-motion:

"since that which is moved by itself has been seen to be immortal, one who says that this self-motion is the essence and the very idea of the soul, will not be disgraced. For every body which derives motion from without is soulless, but that which has its motion within itself has a soul, since that is the nature of the soul." (Phaedrus, 245e)

In the Sophist, Plato further defines motion as the succession of presence and absence of being and non-being, in which non-being is ontologically derivative from being:

"Then we must admit that motion is the same and is not the same, and we must not be disturbed thereby; for when we say it is the same and not the same, we do not use the words in the same sense. When we call it the same, we do so because it partakes of the same in relation to itself, and when we call it not the same, we do so on account of its participation in the other, by which it is separated from the same and becomes not that but other, so that it is correctly spoken of in turn as not the same." (Sophist, 256a-b)

Yo /lit/, I have a book coming out next year, ask me questions about getting published.