Reconstructing the Philosophy of daimones in Plato and the Presocratics

重建柏拉图和前苏格拉底哲学中的戴莫涅斯哲学

• 批准号: 2438811
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2438811
• 关键词: Reconstructing; Philosophy; daimones; Plato; Presocratics

The word daimon has occupied a central position in Greek philosophical and religious thought from the earliest times. For example, Hesiod made the golden race of men guardian daimones (Op. 121-6), Empedocles declared himself a daimon (B 115) and Parmenides opens his poem by saying that his philosophical journey takes him along the hodos daimonos (B 1.2-3) and wrote that a daimon in the middle of the spherical cosmos steers all (B 12). This tradition culminates in the dialogues of Plato where both the rational part of soul and Eros are called by the name of daimon (Ti. 90a-d; Symp. 202d-203a). Having worked in my MPhil on the connection between the daimon in Plato and the early Greek thinkers, my contention at this point is that Hesiod established a model of how to use the concept daimon in philosophy that the subsequent philosophical tradition used as a basis from which to expound their individual views of the relationship between mortal and divine.At present, there is no study that traces the full history of the concept daimon in philosophy, which might provide a framework within which to explore this concept in a coherent way. Yet the rich evidence that the word daimon was used over centuries by philosophers for some of their most important ideas, such as in the passages referred to above, naturally suggests that such a study is urgently needed. Nevertheless, the only book I have been able to find that attempts a comparative analysis between Platonic and Presocratic demonology is Jensen's Dualism and Demonology from 1966, which considers only the Symposium and Pythagoreanism. Thus, there remains a large gap in our understanding of the philosophical application of the words daimon and daimonios that I aim to fill with my PhD. Due to the topic being so understudied I envisage that my comparative approach will yield groundbreaking results that will reintroduce daimon as one of the essential themes of Greek philosophy.At this stage I anticipate the following structure to my PhD: First I will show that the Presocratics and Plato operate with four different strands of thought on the daimon, viz. (1) as a post mortem guardian, (2) as an intermediate (metaxu) between mortal and divine, (3) as a physical substance and (4) as the philosopher's guide. Second, I want to use the testimony of the later Platonists, Plutarch, Apuleius and Plotinus, to shed light on Plato's views on daimones. Third, I want finally to use my findings to reconstruct a philosophy of daimones in Plato and the Presocratics. Amongst the philosophical benefits of this study is an understanding of the way that the Greek philosophers regarded the correlation between religion and philosophy and mortal and divine.Because of the expertise in Plato, the Presocratics and the intersection between philosophy and religion at Cambridge, I believe that my project is particularly pertinent to the research interests of the Faculty, and I would be delighted to explore these ideas with Dr Sheffield, Professor Warren and Professor Betegh.

Daimon这个词从最早的时候起就在希腊哲学和宗教思想中占据了中心地位。例如，赫西俄德让人类的黄金种族成为守护者（作品121-6），恩培多克勒宣称自己是一个守护者（B 115），巴门尼德在他的诗的开头说，他的哲学之旅带他沿着霍多斯daimonos（作品B 1.2-3），并写道，一个守护者在球形宇宙的中央驾驭一切（作品B 12）。这一传统在柏拉图的对话中达到高潮，其中灵魂和爱神的理性部分都被称为daimon（钛）的名称。90a-d; Symp. 202 d-203 a）。在我的哲学硕士学位上，我研究了柏拉图和早期希腊思想家之间的联系，我在这一点上的论点是，赫西奥德建立了一个如何在哲学中使用daimon概念的模型，随后的哲学传统以此为基础，阐述了他们对凡人与神之间关系的个人观点。没有任何研究可以追溯“daimon”这一概念在哲学中的全部历史，从而提供一个框架，在此框架内以连贯的方式探讨这一概念。然而，有丰富的证据表明，daimon这个词被哲学家使用了几个世纪，用于他们的一些最重要的想法，例如在上面提到的段落中，自然表明这样的研究是迫切需要的。尽管如此，我能找到的唯一一本试图比较分析柏拉图和前苏格拉底恶魔学的书是詹森1966年的《二元论和恶魔学》，它只考虑了会饮论和毕达哥拉斯主义。因此，我们对daimon和daimonios这两个词的哲学应用的理解仍然存在很大的差距，我的目标是填补我的博士学位。由于这个主题被如此深入地研究，我设想我的比较方法将产生开创性的结果，将重新引入daimon作为希腊哲学的基本主题之一。在这个阶段，我预计我的博士学位的结构如下：首先，我将展示前苏格拉底学派和柏拉图对守护神的四种不同的思考，即（1）作为死后的监护人，（2）作为一个中间人（metaxu）之间的凡人和神圣的，（3）作为一个物理物质和（4）作为哲学家的指南。第二，我想用后来的柏拉图主义者普鲁塔克、阿普列乌斯和普罗提诺的证词，来阐明柏拉图对daimones的看法。第三，我最后想用我的发现来重建柏拉图和前苏格拉底学派中的一种戴蒙斯哲学。本研究的哲学益处之一是了解希腊哲学家如何看待宗教与哲学以及凡人与神灵之间的相关性。由于在柏拉图，前苏格拉底学派以及剑桥哲学与宗教之间的交叉方面的专业知识，我相信我的项目与学院的研究兴趣特别相关，我很乐意与谢菲尔德博士、沃伦教授和贝特教授探讨这些想法。