Platonism II: Khora

Entelekya Logico-Metaphysical Review, 2020

Muharrem Hafız, Platon Felsefesinde Khora [Khôra in Plato's Philosophy] (İstanbul: Dört Mevsim Kitap, 2019), 304 pp.

Phenomenology and the History of Platonism, 2020

Summary and Abstracts

The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, 2013

This book is a considerable achievement, being the first truly comprehensive synthesis of the Platonist concept of the daimon from Plato himself through to Late Antiquity-that is to say, at least to Proclus (Damascius is largely ignored, it must be said). It is a considerable work, consisting of an introduction, six chapters, covering in turn every aspect of the theory of daemons, and a conclusion. There is a most useful bibliography, and indices of passages quoted, topics covered, and key words employed. In his introduction, Timotin (hereafter T.) notes first the rather 'fuzzy' nature of the term daimon, until Plato took it up and gave it the more precise connotation of an intermediate and mediating divine being, especially in the famous passage of the Symposium (202e). He states his intention to approach the subject from both an historical and a thematic perspective, specifying the following topics: 1. The relation between daemonology and cosmology; 2. The role of daemonology in the interpretation of religious practice; and 3. The theory of the personal daemon, its nature and functions. He then goes on to give an historiographic survey of previous authorities in the field-such figures as Detienne, Robin, Soury, Heinze, Wilamowitz, and more recently Brenk, Donini, Moreschini, Rodriguez Moreno, and myself. It is interesting, though, that the last general synthesis on the theory of daemons there appears to have been is that of Joseph-Antoine Hild in 1881.1 In the second chapter, 'La notion de daimon dans la littérature grecque jusqu'à Platon', he surveys the various senses in which the term is used in pre-Platonic sources, beginning with its etymology from the root dai-, signifying 'distribute', 'apportion', presumably in the sense of 'apportioner of destinies'. As he notes, daimon can often signify an impersonal divine force, or a divinized destiny, and sometimes even a vengeful spirit. For Hesiod, certain souls, such as those of the Golden Race, can become daimones, and Empedocles and the Pythagoreans envisaged daimones that were powerful spirits inferior to gods, benign or otherwise. Making good use of such authorities as Gernet and Detienne, he sees the term as always signifying the apportionment of destiny, even in the case of minor or personal daemons. Hesiod may have made the former Golden Race, as daimones, 'guardians of mortal men', but T. wishes to identify Plato (particularly in Symp. 203c-e) as the

International Journal of Prenatal and Life Sciences

Two formerly unrelated academic fields, prenatal science and mythological studies, are quietly merging under the heading of a new theory: mythobiogenesis. One need not be a philologist to tease out the meaning of the word: Myth has a biological genesis. According to this conceptual model, much of what we call mythology, fairy tales, and sacred scripture derives from a fundamental impulse to retell in culturally specific ways the universal intrauterine experience of life before birth. Plato himself has provided an example of such a narrative. His written record of his intrauterine experience is contained in one of his later dialogues, the Critias (1), a text which includes the famous story of Atlantis. The Atlantis myth, I shall argue, is pure embryology, recounting in symbolic language Plato’s development from ovulation through fertilization, implantation, differentiation, organogenesis, and gestation. The idea that consciousness could be present at the level of a single cell is a s...

This is an original book which provides a comprehensive and penetrating inquiry into Plato's natural philosophy. Not only intellectually brilliant, Broadie writes with flair, 1 imbuing compelling analyses with zest. The primary issue she wishes to engage is whether Plato in the Timaeus offers us cosmology or ontology. Though Plato and Plato research wish to have it both ways, Broadie gives a radical answer: the Timaeus is cosmological through and through.