“Politics, diet and health in the Seventh Letter’s medical análogon”

Abstract

This article pretends to provide a reading of the Seventh Letter focused on the role that medical terminology plays in it. Leaving aside the unsolvable enigma of Plato’s authorship, the letter shows evident connections with fundamental topics from the “last” Plato, particularly in its political aspects. In many passages of the Seventh Letter, the figure of the philosopher as an educator appears covered with medical aspects, and the political situation is defined as a pathology that we must treat according to a therapeutic methodology.