Loren Kerns - Soul and Passions in Philo of Alexandria

As an important witness to the theoretical milieu of Hellenistic Judaism out of which early Christianity arose, as well as a significant foundational and background figure in his own right, Philo of Alexandria’s contributions in the area of moral psychology deserve special attention. When reading Philo, one is confronted with what initially appears to be a philosophically incoherent use of Stoic and Platonic accounts. On the one hand, Philo utilized the Stoic monistic metaphor of the soul, centered on the ‘hegemon’, on the other, Plato’s tripartite account, with its division between ‘rational’, ‘spirited’, and ‘appetitive’ parts, together with its corresponding charioteer myth drawn from the Phaedrus 245c-256e. The paper will show how Philo dealt with both accounts and resolved the tension between them, but also can deviate from both concepts when his Jewish and religious commitments demanded. Prime example will be his treatment of 'the passions', ‘erotic love’, and 'pity'.