WHERE ARE PLATO'S AFTERLIVES? THE TOPOGRAPHY OF EVIL AND BLESSEDNESS IN THE ESCHATOLOGICAL MYTHS

The mechanism of metempsychosis, in Plato's eschatological myths, represents the concrete instantiation of the imperfection of our present nature, in comparison with the initial blessed state in the Hyperouranion. My paper is meant as a contribution to the understanding of this mechanisms of reincarnations, rewards and punishments for good and bad deeds, and tries to answer this question: which kind of places are the places that are described in the eschatological myths of the Phaedon or Phaedrus? Are they geographic ones? Are they allegories whose details are not meant to match anything concrete? What else they could be? In a few words: how should we conceive the topography that, in Plato's intentions, is a concrete representation of the evil we are imprisoned in? My answer is that Plato's eschatological myths can be put consistently together; once put together, they show a unitary landscape; this landscape is not earthly: it should be identified with the Heavens.