The Problem of the Image of Corporeal Man in Plato’s Philosophy: Research Context

There were no special studies on the topic of the body in Plato's philosophy, if we leave out those works in which this topic was raised as related to specialized research. The very first approaches to the study of the body image in Plato's philosophy show its complexity, which, among other things, is due to the riskiness of interpreting old texts through new concepts. Applying critical analytical, synthetic and biographical methods, the authors came to the following conclusions: the topic of body image in Plato's philosophy is unexplored, since other, more "signifi cant" topics dominate within the framework of Platonic studies.
The article analyzes three approaches in which the theme of the body in Plato's philosophy is posed as auxiliary in solving other issues: "feminist" (considering the issues of body and physicality within the framework of gender studies), "dualistic" (considering the issues of body and physicality through the problem of the relationship of soul and body) and cosmoanthropological (considering the human body as an element of a perfectly arranged Cosmos).
The results of this analysis demonstrate the importance of the research context, since not only the functional component, but also the narrative representation of the topic of interest depends on it.