Art's primary social function is to define the communal self, which includes redefining it when the community is changing.

To Plato the desire for excessive and special foods ... is a hindrance to the soul's attainment of intelligence.

Plato feels that ethical abstinences and austerities are essential preconditions for the cleansing and opening of the eye of the soul.

Art's primary social function is to define the communal self, which includes redefining it when the community is changing.

It is ... possible to read Plato as if he were only discussing reason and not mystical intuition in his writings but ... in that case he seems naively over-impressed by rather ordinary thought processes.

Many modern scholars have found the asceticism expressed in Plato unacceptable; it does not sound like the advice of a reasonable man in the Cartesian tradition.

Plato rarely if ever states anything about himself clearly.