Platón y los sueños

Abstract

Plato and dreams. Dreams seem to indicate that human beings live two parallel lives, both of which without doubt belong to them, but between which there is not perfect concord. In one, the conscious life, they perceive themselves –perhaps illusorily– as their own masters but in the oniric life they feel disabled and frequently ask: am I the one who’s dreaming? Our purpose is to reflect on this type of question which individuals ask regarding their dreams and in order to do so we have chosen a distant moment: ancient philosophy. This time with respect to Plato and dreams. Plato is different from other philosophers of Antiquity because he doesn’t offer a unified doctrine of dreams but rather disperses his opinions in epistemological, psychological, physiological and even metaphysical terrain. The reflections in this article form part of a broader research project on the questions which human beings have asked concerning their dreams, research of which the journal Versión has been kind enough to publish an earlier fragment dedicated to the esoteric philosophers. Once again we invite the reader to walk through the opening into dreams.