Reconstructing the Philosophy of daimones in Plato and the Presocratics

从最早的时候起，daimon这个词就在希腊哲学和宗教思想中占据了中心地位。例如，赫西奥德创造了男性守护者戴蒙斯的黄金赛跑(作品121-6)，恩佩多克勒斯宣布自己是戴蒙人(B115)，巴门尼德斯在他的诗的开头说，他的哲学旅程带他沿着Hodos daimonos(B1.2-3)，并写道，一个在球形宇宙中间的戴蒙斯掌舵一切(B12)。这一传统在柏拉图的对话中达到顶峰，其中灵魂的理性部分和性爱都被称为戴蒙(钛)的名字。90a-d；symp.202d-203a)。在我的MPhil中，我研究了柏拉图中的戴蒙和早期希腊思想家之间的联系，在这一点上，我的论点是，赫西奥德建立了一个如何在哲学中使用戴蒙概念的模型，随后的哲学传统以此为基础来阐述他们对人与神之间关系的个人观点。目前，还没有研究追溯哲学中戴蒙概念的全部历史，这可能提供一个框架，在这个框架内以连贯的方式探索这个概念。然而，丰富的证据表明，几个世纪以来，哲学家们在他们的一些最重要的思想中使用了戴蒙这个词，比如在上面提到的段落中，这自然表明，这样的研究是迫切需要的。然而，我所能找到的唯一一本试图在柏拉图式和前卫派妖魔学之间进行比较分析的书是詹森1966年的《二元论与魔鬼学》，这本书只考虑了研讨会和毕达哥拉斯主义。因此，在我们对daimon和daimonios这两个词的哲学应用的理解上仍然有很大的差距，我的目标是用我的博士学位来填补这两个词。由于这个主题研究得太少，我设想我的比较方法将产生开创性的结果，将重新引入戴蒙作为希腊哲学的基本主题之一。在这个阶段，我对我的博士学位预期如下结构：首先，我将展示前派和柏拉图对戴蒙的四种不同的思维方式，即。(1)作为死后的守护者，(2)作为凡人和神之间的中间人(Metaxu)，(3)作为物质和(4)作为哲学家的指南。其次，我想用后来的柏拉图主义者普鲁塔克、阿普莱厄斯和普罗提诺斯的证词来阐明柏拉图对戴蒙斯的看法。第三，最后，我想用我的发现来重建柏拉图和前封建主义中戴蒙尼的哲学。这项研究的哲学好处之一是理解了希腊哲学家看待宗教与哲学、人与神之间的关系的方式。由于在柏拉图、前天文学以及剑桥大学哲学与宗教的交集方面的专业知识，我相信我的项目特别适合学院的研究兴趣，我将很高兴与谢菲尔德博士、沃伦教授和贝特教授一起探索这些想法。

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.