Abstract

The prisoner presented as the object of the meditation of this book is Socrates. His behavior and its explanation on his last day in prison, as portrayed in Plato’s Phaedo, serve as the basis for the development of a modernized view of Socrates’ understanding of action and mind, that is to withstand attacks from present day versions of the rejected materialistic philosophy of man. The category of causality understood both as the "real cause" of human activity, which Socrates identifies with his morally responsible intention and decision, and as the physical conditions of our behavior is to be replaced by, and interpreted in terms of, the more fundamental concept of originative action.