Abstract

This essay suggests a reconstruction of the passage from an idea of immortality connected to religious and initiatic practices to a philosophical one. In Plato (especially in the Charmides and in the Timaeus) this move is particularly evident: the «new immortality» is not a prerogative of priests and some exceptional individuals (such as Pythagoras and Empedocles), but becomes the condition through which man assimilates himself to the divine. This condition is represented by thought, that is, by the activity of the intellect. In Aristotle this process reaches its climax.