The interpretation offered here focuses on Plato's thesis, which at first sight appears strange and unrealistic, that those experiences that advance human life to its true fullness are bestowed on us only during a "god-given" state of "being-beside-oneself". This thesis is then resolutely confronted with our contemporary and above all psychoanalytical knowledge of man's nature, as well as with the Christian conception of man's existence, thus revealing its amazing, unexpected relevance.

"It is quite evident that the present time especially cries out for a keener awareness of the Socratic-Platonic wisdom as discussed in this essay. It cries out for resistance to the attempt and the temptation to establish the autocratic rule of man, who deludes himself that he possesses sovereign powers over the world and over himself and thus squanders his real existential patrimony."

"Such patrimony is achieved and preserved only through a willingly accepted openness: openness for divine revelation, for the salutary pain of catharsis, for the recollecting power of the fine arts, for the emotional shock brought about by eros and caritas - in short, through the attitude rooted in the mysterious experience that Plato called theia mania."
-Josef Pieper