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Chaos and Eros. On the Order of Human Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Tilo Schabert

Extract

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Thinking is a festival and thus human beings experience, through cogitation, the sociable structure of their thinking. As they think, speak and listen they listen and speak and they are in the company of others. It was Plato, the sociable one, who thus spoke and was listened to: “And thinking, is it the same thing to you as to me?” This is the question that Plato puts in Socrates's mouth, when faced with Theaetetus in a dialogue named after him. Theaetetus in turn asks a question: “How do you describe it?” And Socrates replies: “As a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering. …, but I have a notion that, when the mind is thinking, it is simply talking to itself, asking questions and answering them, and saying yes or no.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 42 , Issue 165 , March 1994 , pp. 111 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Notes

1. Theaetetus, 189e-190a. The following quotations from Plato are taken from E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, eds., The Collected Works of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI (Princeton, N.J., 7th printing, 1973).

2. Gorgias, 506a.

3. Phaedrus, 235c.

4. Symposium, 177b.

5. Ibid., Phaedrus, 242d-e, also calls Eros "a god". See also Symposium, 178a.

6. Symposium, 197d.

7. Ibid., 197c-d.

8. See, e.g., Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching, XXV, XLII; Koran, 13th and 35th Sura; Bible, 1st Book of Moses (Genesis), 1; Hesiodotus, Theogonie, 30-35,105-125 in: idem, Sämtliche Gedichte, transl. by W. Marg (Darmstadt, 1984); Bhagavadghita, IX, 17-19; Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete, transl. and ed. by J. Assmann (Zürich-Munich, 1975).

9. Tao Te Ching, XXV, XLLII. I would like to thank Wolfgang Lippert, Erlangen University, for offering a more precise rendering of lines 1 and 6 in Ch. XXV and for his suggested translation of Ch. XLII.

10. Hesiodotus, Theogonie, 104-14 (note 8 above).

11. Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete, 293-97.

12. The Holy Bible (King James Version), First Book of Moses called Genesis, Chapter 1, 1-11.

13. Parmenides, 135d.

14. For the following see ibid., 142b-148a.

15. Ibid., 144a.

16. Ibid., 144b-c.

17. See also ibid., 158a.

18. Hesiodotus, Theogonie, 115-30 (note 8 above).

19. See also Marsilio Ficino, Commentarium in Convivium Platonis de amore (1484), 1st Speech, Ch. 3: "De origine amoris."

20. Theaetetus, 152e.

21. See also M. Ficino (note 19 above), 139.

22. Empedokles, Fragment, 17, in: H. Diels, ed., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Hamburg, 1957), 60.

23. Ibid., 61 (Fragment 20).

24. Symposium, 189c.

25. Ibid., 189e-190a.

26. Ibid., 190c.

27. Ibid., 190d-e.

28. Ibid., 191b-d.

29. Theaetetus, 191c-e.

30. Ibid., 194b.

31. Ibid., 194c-195a.

32. Laws, 644d ff.

33. Ibid., 644c.

34. Ibid., 644d-645b.

35. Symposium, 181a.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., 183c.

38. Ibid., 180c-e, 185b ff.; Republic, 403a; Phaedrus, 243d.

39. Symposium, 188d.

40. Ibid. 186a-b. See also L. Klages, Vom kosmogonischen Eros (Bonn, 1963), 55.

41. Symposium, 180c-e, 185b-188b.

42. Theaetetus, 176a. See also Republic, 379c: "… one must look for other causes of the evil, not in God."

43. Philebus, 45c-e.

44. See also Lysis, 214d.

45. Philebus, 46c-d.

46. Ibid., 47a-b. See also Republic, 610c-e and Gorgias, 509b.

47. Philebus, 66a.

48. See Republic, 571a-580c.

49. Ibid., 573b. See also ibid., 577d-580a and 587a.

50. On the lust for power see also F. Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, III, 2.

51. Republic, 588c-589b.

52. Gorgias, 500c. See also Republic, 578c.

53. See Gorgias, 500c, 506b; Republic, 441e.

54. Gorgias, 507a.

55. See Republic, 443d-e; Symposium, 196d; Laws, 631c-d.

56. See also Symposium, 204b, and Lysis, 210d.

57. Gorgias, 508a.

58. Symposium, 206b-e. See also Timaeus, 90a-d; Republic, 500d.

59. Phaedrus, 265d-266b.