Logos, Pathos and Ethos in Ackroyd's Plato's Papers via an Interdisciplinary Psycho-philosophical Approach

摘要

The present moral crisis of humanity will be closely considered in Ackroyd's Plato's Papers via Riemann's Theorem of Earth Mapping, Kelly's Personal Construct theory and Plato's Idea of the Third Man with a view to showing that only the generally assumed relationship between logos and ethos could rescue the mentality of the entire world and retrieve temporality and morality. For this approach to be successfully turned to good account the Aristotelian concepts of Logos (the thinking part of the intellect) mediating with Pathos (the feeling self) through the actions of his acting self, the personal Ethos, will be employed in relation to Ackroyd's character, Plato, the philosopher-orator. Within Ackroyd's novel, Plato appears as a credible detector of the dark mysterious evolution of mankind, being at the same time, an important narrative device in the author's aesthetic attempt at retrieving the far-off history of London. This is accomplished through the technique of fast rewind, Ackroyd moving backwards from the year 3700 up to 3500 B.C. For the objective of the paper to be properly covered (the present moral crisis and the philosophical solution offered to it, which is also the main argument of the paper), logos will be dealt with in relation to Kelly's alternative perspectives where two concepts are equally significant: determinism and free will. The results and conclusions are related to Ethos based on choice, the choice of reconstructing humanity by recuperating light which equates with rescuing spiritual and cultural values.