Plato: Myths

In his recently published posthumous works "Prefiguration" and "The Rigorism of Truth" Hans Blumenberg surprisingly steps into the area of political history that he had left widely unconsidered in "Work on Myth". While "Prefiguration" tackles the “demonic” aspects of Napoleon and Hitler that Blumenberg tries to dismantle and bring into derision, in "Rigorism of Truth" he attacks Hannah Arendt's phrase of the Banality of Evil in relation to the Jerusalem trial against Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In this latter issue Blumenberg (...) defends the demonic he sees culminated in the form of Eichmann to assert what he calls the “mythical dimension“ in the Israeli process of nation-building. To him, Eichmann represents a prototypical demon incarnate that must be slaughtered by the heroic character seen in young state Israel. This obviously turns Blumenberg's criticism of Napoleon and Hitler into an affirmation of political myths that, on the face of it, appears to be a contradiction in terms. The essay focuses on this theoretical tension and tries to point out that significance (“Bedeutsamkeit”) is not only a necessity for individual self-assertion (“Selbstbehauptung”) but also a category of communality that must be handled with care. (shrink)

Platonische Mythen sind ein seltsames Thema, über das der Leser vielleicht hie und da schon einmal gestolpert sein mag. Seltsam deshalb, weil Platon eigentlich als Begründer des rationalen, philosophischen Denkens gilt. Warum gibt es dann Mythen bei Platon? Seltsam auch deshalb, weil das Thema immer nur am Rande auftaucht und offenbar gemieden wird. Was verbirgt sich hier? Und seltsam auch deshalb, weil diese Platonischen Mythen irgendwie anders sind als die bekannten Mythen der griechischen Mythologie. - Was also sind Platonische Mythen (...) und welchem Zweck dienen sie? Diese Frage soll in diesem Buch ausführlich untersucht und verständlich erklärt werden. Platonische Mythen sind integraler Bestandteil der Philosophie Platons. Sie dürfen keinesfalls nachlässig beiseite geschoben werden. Platonische Mythen sind aber auch kein Hokuspokus. Sie verwischen die Grenze zwischen Rationalität und Mythos nicht. Zahlreiche Irrtümer, die auch in wissenschaftlichen Kreisen im Umlauf sind, werden widerlegt. Ein konsistentes und klares Konzept entwirrt die oft verwirrenden Erklärungen zu Platonische Mythen. - Eine umfangreiche und systematische Übersicht der Platonischen Mythen, jeweils mit einer ausführlichen Analyse, wird im Anhang gegeben. Außerdem im Anhang zahlreiche Besprechungen der Meinungen maßgeblicher wissenschaftlicher Autoren zum Phänomen der Platonischen Mythen. (shrink)

The cosmological myth in Plato’s Statesman has generated several longstanding scholarly disputes, among them a controversy concerning the number and nature of the cosmic rotation cycles that it depicts. According to the standard interpretation, there are two cycles of rotation: west-to-east rotation occurs during the age of Cronus, and east-to-west rotation occurs during the age of Zeus, which is also our present era. Recent readings have challenged this two-cycle interpretation, arguing that the period of rotation opposed to our own is (...) governed neither by Cronus nor by Zeus, but is instead a separate rotational cycle during which chaos reigns before a divine ruler reestablishes control. We introduce a new constraint on any plausible interpretation of the myth. According to the Correspondence Principle, changes in fundamental cyclical processes that shape the way of life on earth (mode of generation, growth, aging, and mode of death) occur if and only if there is a change in the direction of cosmic rotation. We use the Correspondence Principle to defend a version of the standard two-cycle interpretation. (shrink)

Why did Plato conclude the Republic, arguably his most celebrated work of political theory, with the Myth of Er, an obscure story of indeterminate political-theoretical significance? This paper advances a novel reading of the Myth of Er that attends to the common plot that it shares with two earlier narrative interludes in the Republic. It suggests that Plato constructed the myth as an account of a search, akin to the sorting of potential philosopher-kings that underwrites the kallipolis’ educational curriculum, for (...) natures that have successfully absorbed the cumulative effects of their philosophical upbringing. The model of nature presented in the myth, in turn, helps us approach the category of nature as a working concept: we can recognize contexts in which it is useful to assume in otherwise complex and fluid individuals a fixed, indelible nature, while granting that our sense of what that consists in is subject to revision. (shrink)

In Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer project, he gives an archaeology of Western political power from ancient Rome up through Carl Schmitt's model of "exceptional sovereignty," where the sovereign is "he who decides on the exception."1 Agamben takes Schmitt's thesis further, arguing that, in modern biopolitics, the "sovereign is he who decides on the value or the nonvalue of life as such," and therefore, on life and death in the state.2 Although this model also appears in Foucault's work, Penelope Deutscher argues (...) that Agamben's use of it includes "the particularly lethal variant seen in the capacity to cancel the status of what is put to death."3 "Homo sacer" is the name that Agamben gives to the form of political... (shrink)

Plato’s references to Empedocles in the myth of the Statesman perform a crucial role in the overarching political argument of the dialogue. Empedocles conceives of the cosmos as structured like a democracy, where the constituent powers ‘rule in turn’, sharing the offices of rulership equally via a cyclical exchange of power. In a complex act of philosophical appropriation, Plato takes up Empedocles’ cosmic cycles of rule in order to ‘correct’ them: instead of a democracy in which rule is shared cyclically (...) amongst equal constituents, Plato’s cosmos undergoes cycles of the presence and absence of a single cosmic monarch who possesses ‘kingly epistēmē’. By means of a revision of Empedocles’ democratic cosmology, Plato’s richly woven myth is designed precisely to reject the appropriateness of democracy as a form of human political association and legitimate monarchy in its stead. (shrink)

Both current and past analyses and critiques of transhumanist and posthumanist theories have had a propensity to cite the Greek myth of Prometheus as a paradigmatic figure. Although stark differences exist amongst the token forms of posthumanist theories and transhumanism, both theoretical domains claim promethean theory as their own. There are numerous definitions of those two concepts: therefore, this article focuses on posthumanism thought. By first analyzing the appropriation of the myth in posthumanism, we show how the myth fails to (...) be foundational and how we need to rethink the posthumanist mythological framework. We then introduce Haldane’s Daedalus figure as a fruitful analogy to understand the demiurgic posture that critics mean to unveil by first using Prometheus. Daedalus embodies the artisan role, whose status as an inventor for the mighty preserves from the gods' direct opprobrium. Thereafter, we introduce the Camusian Myth of Sisyphus as a competing analogy that ultimately serves as a myth better suited to address the posthumanist position on an existential standpoint. we ultimately show that Sisyphus, as the ‘absurd man’ that Camus claims him to be, is himself the posthuman, thus serving as a more ideal foundational myth for posthumanism and preserving the importance of narrative in posthuman discourses. To conclude, we specifically show that the concept of Sisyphus as a posthuman icon has significance that reaches beyond narrative value to current ecological debates in posthumanism. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Plato, as a poet, employs muthos extensively to express his philosophical dialectical development, so the majority of his dialogues are comprised of muthoi. We cannot separate his muthos from his philosophical thought, since the former has great influence in the latter. So the methodology of this paper is first to discuss the dialogue "Theaetetus" to find out why he compares Socrates to the Greek goddess Artemis; then his concept of Maieutikē will be investigated. At the beginning of Plato’s "Theaetetus", Socrates (...) first likens himself to the goddess Artemis, who, though unmarried, has a duty to assist women in labour. Socrates’ role, as Plato portrays, is the same as that of Artemis; and the technē he possesses is Maieutikē, which is to assist his students in giving birth to their mental offspring. This paper will focus on discussion on the Socratic mythological role in Platonic interpretation and dialectics so as to reveal the philosophical meaning of Socratic ignorance. (shrink)

Dr. Zaslavsky’s Platonic Myth and Platonic Writing: A Philosophico-Literary Exploration addresses the thorny issue of precisely what is meant by mythos (myth) in the Platonic corpus of dialogues. Dr. Zaslavsky rejects the common notion that what makes a myth in Plato a myth (as opposed to a speech or logos) is its truth value. Therefore, after an analysis of why Plato wrote as he did and a cataloguing and examination of every occurence of mythos and its derivatives in the Platonic (...) corpus, he articulates the new linguistic and philosophical principle that a myth is a genetic or causal synagogic/synoptic account, in contradistinction to logos as a descriptive or calssificatory diairetic account. He tests this definition successfully through an examination of all those accounts in Plato that are explicitly designated as myths. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 4 Seiten: 403-430.

A Dialogue Exploring the Philosophical Roles of Myths The following is a dialogue in the Platonic style set in Pune, India 2012. The participants are Raam Gokhale (Ram) who is an MPhil in philosophy, Sushama Karve who is a professor of philosophy at Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapith, a university in Pune and Kedar Joshi who is an MA in philosophy.

A Symbol doesn't explain, says Jung. In fact it is beyond the dichotomy of the binary logic, that wants the limiting and restrictive diktat of the tertium non datur to be perpetuated so as to be obliged to choose between two possibilities being anyway on the same nomological axis.

A DISCUSSION OF: CATHERINE COLLOBERT, PIERRE DESTRÉE, FRANCISCO J. GONZALEZ , PLATO AND MYTH: STUDIES ON THE USE AND STATUS OF PLATONIC MYTHS. MNEMOSYNE. SUPPLEMENTS, 337. LEIDEN/BOSTON: BRILL, 2012. PP. VIII + 476. ISBN 9789004218666. $222.00.

Through the contributions of specialists in the field, this volume addresses the still open question of the role and status of myth in Plato’s dialogues and thereby speaks to the broader problem of the relation between philosophy and ...

The beginning of Greek rational thought is usually rendered as „transition from myth to logos”. This immediate conclusion was popularized by W. Nestle’s work although its sources can be tracked down to Aristotle’s Metaphysics I, and may be understood in two ways: 1. As a breakdown by rational thought a thinking through „images”, natural in the first stories of „carriers of primitive mentality”, which in Plato’s metaphor of a cave equals leaving by a philosopher the world of images-shadows. 2. As (...) development of a sensu stricto rational thought already present in the myth, which can be rendered as its objectification in a “technical” language, natural for philosophy. Myth can be treated then as thinking via images and logos as discourse, or argument. Both can be rendered as oppositions or, remembering of a presence, function and role of myth in philosophical texts – following W. Jaeger – it can be argued that “myth contains in principle the whole Greek philosophy”. In the vast literature we can a variety of arguments advocating one or the other position. The major problem of relation- ship: myth-logos cannot be unanimously and finally resolved also because of the state of the extant texts of the first philosophers. However, this problem may be also analyzed from a different perspective, posing an important question about the genesis of myth. Myth “tells images”, transferring perceptions of which the subject is the reality surrounding human beings in its order and cause-effect consequences plus conclusions from these observations into a language of a story, which — in turn — will be translated into logos language by philosophy. It is then possible to formulate a thesis that thinking rationally sensu stricto is prior to thinking through images: in the order of being, general concepts, rules, axioms precede images. This thesis is substantiated explicitly for the first time by Plato the concept of anamnesis . If we reject the metaphorical aspect of Plato’s argument, we will be left with the notion that human being is born with a priori qualities which Descartes will later call innate ideas and Kant will develop into a priori qualities of human sensuality, reason and intellect. If we accept, following certain philosophical currents, the existence of such pre-cognitive models, enabling orderly and synoptic perception of first that, what appears to human being in the aspect of reality, which is accessible through sensual observation, and then transfer to the unknown sphere and unravel it, verified by logical-dialectical procedures, we would have to conclude that logos is prior in order of being to myth. Thanks to these models, human being — we will never know where and when he/she lived — in the first acts of perception of reality sees both its order, its rules and its structures, regardless of the fact whether he/she perceived them in qualitative or quantitative aspect. These models shape character and forms of sensual perception, and also determine, articulated in various ways, questions about the beginning, questions: why?, i.e. questions about the cause, but also enable him/her to see necessary cause-effect relationships. One can risk a statement that these models take forms of axioms, which — as most general statements, not required proofs — constitute unquestionable basis of every philosophical discourse. It can also be stated that, beginning with the questions of the first philosophers, the beginning and cause-effect relationships determines every philosophical system. These pre-cognitive models are then prior to “storytelling” in a diachronic aspect. However, even if logos precedes myth, first objectifications of logos take form of a myth — a story. Regardless declared the above equality of judgments about diachronic relationship myth-logos, I accept that certain philosophical concepts may confirm that myth comes from logos. Such a confirmation may be found in a few extant fragments and doxographic testimonies inherited after Xenocrates from Chalcedon, who both ontological spheres and rules consciously names after gods of myth. Also the Stoic allegoric and allegorical method may serve as a confirmation of the above interpretation of the treatise About Gods by Xenocrates from Chalcedon and the general thesis that myth-“story” comes from logos: from pre-cognitive models characteristic to reason, objectified in myth, which in turn rationalizes philosophical discourse. Later tracts of Iamblichus advocating numbers of hypostases of the Absolute, and theology of one of the latest Neo-platonic philosophers — Proclus confirm this truth. Key words LOGOS, MYTH, BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of art to recreate violent mythological landscapes in Roman domestic ensembles. Focusing on the Niobids found in two imperial horti it argues that the combination of sculpture and landscape exerted a powerful imaginative effect over ancient viewers, drawing them into the recreated mythological world. Mythological landscape paintings also offered a view out onto a mythological realm, fostering the illusion of direct access to the spaces of myth. However, these fantasy landscapes need to be seen in (...) the light of the associations which natural landscapes held in the Roman imagination. Recreations of mythological landscapes in domestic art express the desire to incorporate the natural world into the domestic sphere but through the presence of violent events they also highlight the inherent powers of those landscapes and the gods who frequent them. They speak to a yearning to immerse oneself in myth and the natural realm, yet also warn of the perils of such a desire. (shrink)

The author sketches the history of the concept of myth and recalls main objections against the poetic mythmaking from Xenophanes to Pericles. He subsequently discusses the genesis of Plato’s approach to myth and art, and explains sources of the debate concerning the role of hermeneutics of poetry between Socrates and Protagoras. In discussing arguments in Symposium he indicates reasons for which the main topic of the dialogue, which is the art of drama, is represented only implicitly by reference to the (...) theatrical arrangement of the Symposium itself. In his account of the main myths in Phaedrus and Gorgias he stresses essential elements of the Plato’s didactic programme, pointing out to Parmenides in which his dialectics has been most fully developed. In conclusion he elaborates on the meaning of the myths Timaeus. Finally, referring to Nicolai Hartmann, he argues that foundation of rational thought clears the ground for the aesthetics to emerge. Key words PLATO’S DIALECTIC, MYTH, ART. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits of (...) knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

Showcases methods of visualization to support text comprehension and engagement with texts. Includes examples from teaching Plato's Phaedo.

En este libro tratamos de evaluar la veracidad y de determinar el peso real de los contenidos de la doctrina órfica en Platón, a través del examen exhaustivo de los textos antiguos de que disponemos sobre este movimiento religioso, textos que son, además, presentados y traudcidos en un apéndice final. La indagación pone de manifiesto que hay numerosos puntos del orfismo que inspiraron el pensamiento de Platón, pero que los sometió a una profunda modificación para acoplarlos a sus propias ideas.

Pieper distinguishes between Platonic stones in which Plato crystallizes mythical fragments from the mere stories which contain them, and Platonic myths, in which he purifies the proper mythical elements, freeing them of the non-mythical elements which tend to obscure them.