Plato loved to focus on the Form of the Good, order, and rationality in his works. But even if philosopher-kings came to power and were able to implement the city-in-speech… well, wouldn’t it be boring? I’m reminded of the Pythagorean tendencies to favor “perfection” to the point where they’d lack the ability to create tension, release, texture, and other satisfying elements of music. Does Plato ever buck these trends in his philosophy, or is he always pushing for some kind of perfectly crystallized world?
The Forms aren't crystallised and static. Besides, late Plato criticises most of his early thought.
> The Forms aren't crystallised and static.
How so?
Plato believed the ideal state would have to continue to be improved. In the Laws, he uses the analogy of a painter who is creating his masterpiece but needs to find the proper students to overtake his work after he dies because he cannot complete it in his lifetime. Of course, this may itself have been an analogy for the completion of his own philosophy and not the state, and at the same time Plato couldn't have believed in a state that would evolve eternally or in "eternal progress" because he believed that history was cyclical as natural disasters eventually destroy all great civilizations and the mountain people only survive and have to wait for the water to recede to go back to low ground and restart civilization each time.
Of course, the soul is also always descending and ascending on the chain of being, so existence is never static except in pure intellect, but your soul can never ascend to pure intellect. As for music, the musician is only a lower form of the philosopher.
Wrong. Dialectic exists only in soul. In Intellect, everything has Being and this is the source of identity and sameness.
One of the fundamentals of Platonism is the belief in the inherent imperfection of our sensible reality
Plato has a hidden penchant for flair, drama, etc., running through his works. Hell, even the word "participate", as in participating in the form of the Good, is translated from the Greek word "methexis", which is theater terminology for when the audience is called on to improvise as parto f the show. All the world's a stage, and so on and so on.
Where does the theatric use appear? I see Wikipedia asserts it via a dictionary of philosphical vocab, but I'm looking at the Lindell-Scott lexicon and nothing there about a theatric use. Maybe a later technical description after Plato and Aristotle?
I've actually been puzzled about that too, tbh. One thing I've noticed is that the articles in some other languages seem to be much more fleshed out. I'll be checking them out.
Just checked the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy cited and all it says for methexis is "(Gr. Partaking, participation) the relation between a particular and a form (in Plato's sense), e.g. a beautiful object is said to partake of the form of beauty." (Page 352).
Weird, and a little disappointing, since that's the kind of playful use of words from broader Greek culture Plato habitually deals in. Someone must've gotten confused.
Same definition exists on Wiktionary, but without attribution. Seems like a repetitive copy. None of the non-English Wiki articles mention anything beyond "it's a term in everyday speech." I'll keep digging though.
What a weird little rabbit hole.
I see it being paired with mimesis (which was certainly used at least by Plato and Aristotle to describe theatre), but I'm suspecting it must be a borrowed Greek term used by moderns (I saw something about mimesis and methexis related to Walter Benjamin's thought, so maybe he started this use?), but most references are in regard to modern black theatre.
So I'm guessing it was introduced in modern theory to describe art you can participate with, somewhere down the line it was assumed to share the same use among the ancient Greeks, and someone repeated what they were familiar with on Wikipedia and Wikitionary. Interesting.
>somewhere down the line it was assumed to share the same use among the ancient Greeks, and someone repeated what they were familiar with on Wikipedia and Wikitionary. Interesting.
Not only that, but the theatrical definition was introduced long before the philosophical definition, if you check the edit history.
That's so odd! Plato's use seems like the primary special use of the word in the ancient world, funny to see it treated like an afterthought.
I'm reading through an interesting article here:
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3508&context=gc_etds
another interesting article:
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/324986/1/Aldridge%20-%20Thesis%20-%20The%20Arrival%20of%20Mimesis%20and%20Methexis%20in%20the%20Enquiries%20of%20Jean-Luc%20Nancy.pdf
This seems better, though it seems like Nancy is doing his own work inferring this use of methexis, kind of like Derrida's use of pharmakon or something.
From the dissertation:
>The common usage of the word μέθεξις (methexis) and its derivatives is recorded in the plays of Euripides, an immediate predecessor of Plato, and also of Aristophanes, Plato’s contemporary. In Euripides’ Helen, the Dioskouroi, Kastor and Polydeukes, declare to Theoklymenos that Helen, their sister, his runaway fiancée, will be taken by fate and made a goddess and ‘shall partake [μεθέξεις] with us the rich oblations, and receive the gifts of men: for thus hath Jove decreed’.15 Likewise in his Ion, the word again refers to a shared reception, when an attendant of Creusa, the raped mother of Ion, warns her fellow attendants that they will all ‘share [μεθέξεις] the punishment’16 of stoning, for conspiring with Creusa to poison Ion, ignorant that he is in fact her son. In the Ecclesiazusae, written after Plato’s death, Aristophanes satirises a sexually socialist Athens in which all men can claim their ‘share [μεθέξει] of the common property’, the women, but only on the proviso that they first take a share of the ‘ugliest and the most flat-nosed’.1
Unfortunately, it seems to be a regular word implying "group sharing." Unless there's some missing context, e.g. in the typical stage directions and performance of these plays, that I'm missing, then I think I'm going to have to shelve that theory that I expressed earlier.
That whole essay is filled with wonderful insights, by the way. Just keep on reading from where I quoted. There are so many rich connections between Greek theater and Greek philosophy that it isn't even funny. Aristophanes probably lived rent-free in Plato's head, given how The Republic seemed to model Ecclesiazusae, only for Socrates to debunk everything (perhaps to atone for the charges levied against him by Aristophanes in The Clouds).
Great find anon. Thanks for sharing the essay.
>Aristophanes probably lived rent-free in Plato's head, given how The Republic seemed to model Ecclesiazusae, only for Socrates to debunk everything (perhaps to atone for the charges levied against him by Aristophanes in The Clouds).
Absolutely, Republic at least has Clouds, Assemblywomen, Birds, and Frogs in mind, and it's a little disconcerting just how often references to the Clouds appear (Cleitophon compares Socrates to a deus ex machina, which reminds of Socrates appearing in the floating basket, and the entire Theages seems to be Plato refuting the Clouds with his own situation of a nasty father-son combo begging Socrates to help them learn how to take advantage of others, like they're Strepsiades or Pheidippides).
Also found a secondary source which offers theories about theater-adjacent methexis from the early 20th century and even comments on Voegelin's interpretation of Plato.
forgot to post it:
>https://moam.info/page-1-playing-betwixt-and-between-the-idea-dialogues-2001-_5a56a2f71723dd02413bce36.html
>pg 81-82
That may be where methexis in theater derives from. But again, I don't know if that's Murray reaching back in time and foisting an unwarranted connotation on the Greek word (e.g. sharing --> communion) or if it's a genuine use.
Looked into Murray's book, which was thankfully hosted on archive.org. Looks like it's it's the former, sadly:
>... ated, the god or hero of whom he sang, or it might be the centaurs or satyrs or the wild beasts of the moun¬ tain. There was something outside himself which he longed and strove to be, or at least to be like. In moments of ecstasy he actually felt that he had become it. He forgot himself. He partook of the divine or magic life which he celebrated, so that the hierophant in the mysteries regularly became identified with the god, the leader of the Bacchic dance became Bacchos.
>The word “imitation” is too unpretending to suit our modern style. Our critics pour contempt upon it, and speak of “creation” or “self-expression,” or the like. But the Greeks knew what they meant. Mimesis was the striving to be like something which you longed to be: an attempt, as Shelley, with his usual acuteness of divination, puts it, to be one with “that ideal perfec¬ tion and energy which everyone feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become.” Perhaps we can understand the word better when we notice that it is treated as practically equivalent to Methexis (Mefc^is), which means participation or com¬ munion, and is especially used of those who, through inspiration or possession or sacramental communion, partake of the being of their God. “The Pythagoreans say that existing things exist by imitation of Number; Plato says, by participation in Number.” So Aristotle tells us. 1 The exact meaning of the two words these philosophers have left undefined. But clearly both imply some transcending of the bounds of self, some “ecstasy” or “standing outside” of the prison of the bard’s ordinary identity and experience.
>Voegelin
found some more resources on Voegelin
>https://watershade.net/ev/ev-dictionary.html#methexis
>"Voegelin's discovery of the retention in Aristotle's ontology of the mythic experience of substantive participation of man in the divine--and of the divine in man--is of great importance. It enables one to see more clearly the relation of philosophical experience and symbolization to the matrix out of which they differentiated: it exhibits the dependence of philosophy upon the more compact experience of the divinity of the cosmos in decisive respects. Aristotle's participation (metalepsis) is neither merely a metaphor nor merely a means of designating parallel attributes in man and the divine. Rather, it is the noetic expansion of the mythic insight that man's participation in the divine is constitutive of man's being in its specific essence, i.e., in the rational dimension. The philosophical anthropology developed in the Ethics can then be read in a new light. Aristotle's famous analysis that the highest part of man is his active reason--and that man's most perfect happiness is the contemplative life because the noetic activity called 'philosophic wisdom' is the highest virtue of man's highest part and, therefore, most proper to him--climaxes in the description of such a life as more than merely human. 'For it is not insofar as he is man that he will live so, but insofar as something divine is present in him.' Then, paradoxically, Aristotle specifically identifies the very nature of man with reason: Nous is each man himself, the noetic life is the life of man's true self, and hence also the happiest. The paradox dissolves only if proper weight is accorded Aristotelian participation in its full experiential dimension. Man is not as he appears. The core and constitutive factor of the human essence is his 'immortalizing (athanatizein)' participation through reason in the divine Nous or Ground of being. Apart from this man falls short of his own humanity.
Interesting tension between methexis and mimesis w/ Plato and Aristotle.
Interesting.
>Methexis, as previously mentioned, is the Greek word for participation or sharing. It was first used in philosophy by Plato, and continued to be developed throughout history by some of the most important figures of the Western tradition. In English, the preferred word to refer to this tradition has been participation. Aside from Philosophy, participation has been explored extensively as a concept in the fields of Anthropology, Education, Sociology, Political Science, Theology and Religious Studies. Anthropological perspectives could be said to constitute the earliest to study this subject, given that scholars consider participation as already present in primitive societies, mainly in cultural practices regarding the relation between humans and the world around them, like animism and mysticism (Thomas et al. 598). For the purposes of this thesis, however, the focus is on the philosophical concept of participation that begins with Plato’s methexis, because it is centered on the human creative experience and whose century-old tradition eventually culminates in the phenomenological approaches that are linked to enactivism and embodiment.
That doesn't quite seem like Plato's use, but worth a look to see how it's being derived.
from Benston's essay on methexis, which I also found in a collection of essays about modern black theater
>My specific thesis is that the path of modern Black drama's aesthetic describes a curve which moves dialectically from quasi-naturalism and overt rage against Euro-American institutions toward the shaping of uniquely Afro-American mythologies and symbolisms, flexibility of dramatic form, and participatory theatre within the Black community. Spiritually and technically, this movement is one from mimesis, or representation of an action, to methexis, or communal "helping-out" of the action by all assembled. It is a process that could be described alternatively as a shift from drama—the spectacle observed—to ritual—the event which dissolves traditional divisions between actor and spectator, between self and other. Through this process, the Black beholder is theoretically transformed from a detached individual whose private consciousness the playwright sought to reform, to a participatory member of tribal or, in this case, national ceremony which affirms a shared vision.
No indication of where he borrowed those terms from, either. I get the whole idea behind trying to "dramatize" or even "ritualize" participation in the forms, and I'm truly sympathetic to the idea, but it doesn't seem to be supported by the philology.
update: no dice on searching for the cultural context, but I thought that the German and Portuguese articles were well-put together
>… well, wouldn’t it be boring?
This is Glaucon's critique in book 2 of the Republic, when Socrates' first city is criticized for being a "city of pigs" since there's no couches or tables or meat or relishes in that city. The result is the "fevered city".
One thing you'll have to grapple with on your own is why the Good seems less preferable to you than the Interesting.
>One thing you'll have to grapple with on your own is why the Good seems less preferable to you than the Interesting.
high iq
>why the Good seems less preferable to you than the Interesting
a cyclical order could both be good and interesting. interesting doesn't have to imply "seductive", dangerous, etc.
>a cyclical order could both be good and interesting. interesting doesn't have to imply "seductive", dangerous, etc.
Maybe; if what's "interesting" is what's attention grabbing, then the Beautiful can come in as a manifestation of the Interesting, but it's hard to see what the compromise would have to be.
The lowest class in the city (the moneymakers) are the least discussed in the Republic, and presumably they're the class that would most feasibly be allowed to enjoy novelities; but they might only be able to do so because no one's going to let them rule. So this points to the issue of whether the rulers could enjoy interesting things within the bounds of their rulership (can't have money, no private property, communism of families, etc.).
For the rulers, it would seem that their access to what's interesting has to be located in their prescribed education; "creative music" or "experimental literature" are off the table, since poetry in the city is regulated to form their characters as proper rulers (can't be too fascinated with individualist attitudes or they'll either neglect the city's affairs or decide to pursue their own good at the expense of the city).
I'm not sure what you would have in mind by "cyclical order"; could you say more?
It might be that the philosopher in the Republic enjoys the most "interesting" things up until they're forced to rule; part of their hesitancy is not wanting to give up their inquiries.
>One thing you'll have to grapple with on your own is why the Good seems less preferable to you than the Interesting
Because I must coom?
I'm too wired to methodically read the entire exchange ITT but are you guys puzzling over the etymology/philosophical use of methexis?
Klein has an ok discussion of it in connection with Pythagoreanism in Greek Mathematical Thought, in the second part/section that starts around page 80 or so
I'm back with some new etymological clues:
>methexis
>meth-, may be derived from meta-, meaning
>exis, meaning "state or condition"
etymological links below respectively
>https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B1-#Ancient_Greek
>https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%95%CE%BE%CE%B9%CF%82
Put these two together, especially with their more fleshed out definitions, and you get some interesting implications by what Plato means by "participation in the forms."
met-
hexis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexis
>Proclus
Read Marcus Aurelius, he tried to follow Plato and ended up living a miserable life. There's a very tragic element to his meditations.
You have to learn to separate Plato's bullshit from what he gives you, just like any other philosopher.
>You have to learn to separate Plato's bullshit from what he gives you, just like any other philosopher.
You do realize that Plato warns the would-be philosopher-king about the fact that ruling isn't a great job, right? Plato doesn't bullshit anybody.
Not purposely, he just has his biases. The homosexual narcissism was too much for him to overcome.
Found yet another dissertation that makes use of the term methexis:
>https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/19464/Kelber_umd_0117E_17973.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
who borrowed the term from Huizinga's homosexual Ludens, who borrowed the term from Jane Harrison's Themis: a study of the social origins of Greek religion (1912)
>Totemism and totemistic ceremonies and ways of thinking are based, we have seen, on group emotion, on a sense of solidarity, of oneness. No distinction is felt between the human and non-human members of the totem-group, or rather, to be more exact, the beginning of a distinction is just dawning. The magical ceremonies, the shedding of the human blood, the counterfeiting of the animal, have for their object to bridge the gulf that is just opening, to restore by communion that complete unity which is just becoming conscious of possible division. The ceremonies are however still intensely sympathetic and cooperative ; they are, as the Greeks would say, rather methektic than mimetic, the expres-sion, the utterance, of a common nature participated in, rather than the imitation of alien characteristics. The Emu man still feels he is an Emu ; the feathers he puts on, the gait he emulates, are his own, not another's.
Yet another case of just making shit up. This is starting to annoy the frick out of me. Nothing but a wild goose chase.
boomp
From an interview with Jean-Luc Nancy
>JLN: Participation, methexis, is indeed intrinsic to the mimetic relationship, to the relation of imitation. If I want to imitate Hercules or Dionysus, I cannot just reproduce their external form; I must also embrace internally the movement and passion that are at play. It is precisely this participation which, for Plato, seemed to be susceptible of unleashing uncontrolled passions. For this reason, there is an instance in Plato, a character even, who is truly the character of participation: Eros. Eros is a strange god. He is, one could say, both unreasonable and reasonable, or that who must be brought to reason. Eros–the erotic impulse [élan], the impulse of desire–is thus the energy of participation. But participation with what? There is a very remarkable passage in the Phaedrus. In this dialogue, Plato says that beauty is the only suprasensible reality that can be manifested in the sensible. And that it is precisely by manifesting itself in the sensible that it provokes in us impulses of desire, which is at first a desire for beautiful bodies, and then leads from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, etc. This is already in Diotima’s speech at the end of the Symposium. But in the Phaedrus, there is a short, very remarkable little passage where Plato (in the voice of Socrates) says that if phronesis manifested itself in the sensible, it would unleash even stronger erotic impulses. And what is phronesis in Plato? Phronesis is discernment. It is not nous, it is not the mind as the acquisition of knowledge, but rather discernment: living, active intelligence. And this is very interesting because the word phronesis belongs in the family of phren, which is in fact an organ, the kidney. In phronesis there is something extremely organic, living, vital. But for Plato, phronesis is at bottom the superior exercise of the mind, of thought, which often consists in distinguishing correctly between the true and the false. And he said that phronesis would unleash even stronger erotic impulses. Thus, there is in Plato something very complex: on the one hand, one must keep a distance from the impulse, from participation and imitation; at the same time, on the other hand, one must realise that there must be an impulse of the same kind but of a superior quality which is not limited by beautiful appearances. So even in Plato himself there is a sort of interior tension that he did not really resolve.
>https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/count.2022.0255
>Does Plato ever...
Nice a thread on Plato by someone who didn't read Plato
He does, which is why you should read Hagel because his whole thing is this basically
Guys, how long does it take to read the complete works of plato if you only have 1 hour a day to spare?
Thank you anon. And thank you for questioning it. I learned a ton yesterday and today.
new use of methexis, with sources: