Chorology

John Sallis

Description

This excellent work... deserves the serious consideration of all who are interested in contemporary philosophy as well as those who concern themselves with ancient philosophy, especially Plato." —Review of Metaphysics

In Chorology, John Sallis takes up one of the most enigmatic discourses
in the history of philosophy. Plato's discourse on the chora—the chorology—forms the pivotal moment in the Timaeus. The implications of the chorology are momentous and communicate with many of the most decisive issues in contemporary philosophical discussions.

Prologue
1. Remembrance of the City
Reception
The Eidetic City
The Archaic City
2. Production of the Cosmos
Prelude
Animating the cosmic body
The Starry Heaven
Gods and Mortals
3. The Chora
Another Beginning
Images of the Chora
Chorology
4. Traces of the Chora
From Traces to Primary Bodies
Epichorology
The Political Frame
5. Reinscriptions
Forgery
Reductions
Appropriation

Sujets

• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophy of mind
• Good & Evil
• General officer
• General
• Continental
• Classics

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 09 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253046697
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

CHOROLOGY
The Collected Writings of John Sallis, vol. I, 11
CHOROLOGY
On Beginning in Plato s Timaeus
JOHN SALLIS
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2020 by John Sallis All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows
Sallis, John Chorology : on beginning in Plato s Timaeus /John Sallis. p. cm. - (Studies in Continental Thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33568-X (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 0-253-21308-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Plato. Timaeus. 2. Ch ra (The Greek word) 3. Beginning. I. Title II Series. B387.S24 1999 113-dc21 99-24065
ISBN 978-0-253-04666-6
1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21 20
For Anneke Chappelle and Emily Claire
. Timaeus 54a
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
1
Remembrance of the City
RECEPTION
THE EIDETIC CITY
THE ARCHAIC CITY
2
Production of the Cosmos
PRELUDE
ANIMATING THE COSMIC BODY
THE STARRY HEAVEN
GODS AND MORTALS
3
The
ANOTHER BEGINNING
IMAGES OF THE
CHOROLOGY
4
Traces of the
FROM TRACES TO PRIMARY BODIES
EPICHOROLOGY
THE POLITICAL FRAME
5
Reinscriptions
FORGERY
REDUCTION
APPROPRIATION
English Index
Greek Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My work on this project goes back to a series of lectures that I presented at Villanova University in 1989 at the invitation of Walter Brogan. Subsequently I had opportunities to present additional series of lectures in which various issues arising from Plato s Timaeus could be explored: at St. John s College (Annapolis) in 1994, at the University of Helsinki in 1995, at the University of Warwick in 1997, and at DePaul University in 1999. Some results of my research were also presented at Boston University in 1994 in a lecture sponsored by the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy and subsequently published in the Colloquium Proceedings (1995); and at several of the annual meetings on hermeneutics organized at the Universit t Heidelberg by James Risser and Lawrence Schmidt.
I am especially grateful to three friends who in various ways have been decisive for my work on the Timaeus: to Hans-Georg Gadamer for encouragement and unlimited dialogue; to Jacques Derrida for the intense discussion of questions concerning the that we have pursued for more than a decade; and to Walter Brogan for the initial invitation and for continuing encouragement and dialogue.
Thanks also to John Ellis, Robert Metcalf, and Nancy Fedrow.
Boalsburg May 1999
CHOROLOGY
Prologue
Chorology.
One finds it, first of all, in a single text signed by Plato. Even though within an extended narrative for which Plato forged the signature of Timaeus.
Hence, this chorology-and there is perhaps no other-bears two signatures. As does every other discourse in this text and in all those that, at the risk of reduction, one calls Platonic dialogues. For the double signature is irreducible: what is said in these texts, what is said to be said, is always signed by-that is, said to be said by-someone other than Plato. The double signature thus marks the reserve of the writer, the practice of a certain graphic ventriloquy.
In the doubling Plato s signature is yoked to a manifold of others. This manifold, too, is irreducible, primarily (though not solely) because of the irreducibility of the double signature as such: because no one voice in a dialogue can be identified with Plato s own, no one voice can be accorded absolute authority so as then to be essentially separable from the others and assimilable to Plato s own. Not only is nothing said to be said by Plato himself, but also nothing is said to be said in his name, by one who would be his dialogical surrogate. The voices remain multiple, at best echoing one another, generating a play of echoes through which the dialogue, in the end, makes something manifest, yet without producing simple univocity. In their multiplicity the voices are interactive, peculiarly performative, producing speeches that are also deeds on the part of those who (are said to) voice them. This is why, most directly, one must always be attentive to the dramatic character of a dialogue. In its polyphony a dialogue deploys discourses, stories, and deeds , which in their multiplicity release a mirror-play illuminating that which the dialogue as a whole would render manifest. One will always need to read a dialogue in such a way as to let its distinctive manifestation occur, listening as its manifold voices resound, hovering within the space of their resonance. Even if, as in the Timaeus , the dialogue undergoes a transmutation into monologue. Even if, as in the Timaeus , that which a certain discourse would say proves to withdraw from discourse, to retreat by its very nature, as the very nature of nature. Even if, as in the Timaeus , a manifold silence prevails-first of all, that of Socrates himself, who shortly after the opening of the dialogue falls into silence and from that point on listens silently to Timaeus long monologue on the cosmos.
In any case one cannot but approach the Timaeus with a certain reticence. Of all the dialogues it is the one that has been most continuously and directly effective. Ever since the early Academy it has been the subject of commentary and debate. Aristotle s extensive discussions and critiques of the Timaeus are well-known, and through Plutarch some indications remain concerning the debate over it that took place in the early Academy between Xenocrates and his pupil Crantor. Indeed, up through the fifth century A.D. there was a continuous tradition of commentary on the Timaeus , a tradition that included, in addition to Plutarch, also Plotinus, Proclus, and Chalcidius. Through Chalcidius Latin translation, the dialogue was transmitted to the Middle Ages, and as such it served as one of the chief sources of medieval Platonism, indeed as the primary genuinely Platonic source. Its influence showed little decline with the advent of the Renaissance (Ficino wrote a commentary on it) and of modernity (Kepler greatly admired it for its mathematical approach to nature). The dialogue gained enormous significance during the era of German Idealism, especially for Schelling, who wrote a recently discovered commentary on the Timaeus ; indeed it can be shown by reference to this commentary, composed at the very outset of Schelling s career, that the Timaeus was to remain decisive even in Schelling s great work on the essence of human freedom. If it can be said that, following the era of German Idealism, the Timaeus underwent a certain eclipse, attention focusing instead on the more explicitly ontological and dialectical dialogues, it appears that the very strangeness that set this dialogue apart from those others has recently come to provoke a renewed engagement with it.
Yet it is not only because of this history that one is compelled to approach the Timaeus with reticence, not only because of the extent and depth of the commentary it has received from ancients and moderns alike. But also because the dialogue itself calls for reticence, provided one is attentive to the texture of its discourses, noting, for instance, the appropriateness with which the introduction to one of those discourses is marked by repeated occurrences of the word : severe, difficult, troublesome, even dangerous. To say nothing yet about the way in which the dialogue turns upon and withdraws its own discourse. Nor about the utter strangeness of what that discourse would say, the elusiveness with which it would remain foreign even to discourse itself.
It is, then, a dialogue of strangeness; even saying that it is utterly singular does not go far enough, or rather, does not convey a sense of the strange movement of this dialogue, which is anything but mere progression. In its directionality and texture, the dialogue has the form of a story. Yet it is a story that, by almost any standards, seems badly told: for it is a story in which there are interruptions and regressions, discontinuities and abrupt new beginnings. The discontinuity is indeed marked as such at the point where Timaeus breaks off his account of the god s fabrication of the cosmos and then, having interrupted that account, makes a new, second start, producing a second discourse that is not continuous with the discourse interrupted. It is this second discourse that is strangest of all: for what it introduces (that which Timaeus finally names ) not only refuses to be integrated into the fundamental schema governing the discourse up to that point (the very schema of fundament, one could call it) but also proves elusive to discourse as such, most difficult to catch, as Timaeus will say (51a-b). 1
The peculiar texture of this dialogue, its discontinuities, its repetitions, its indecisiveness, has not gone unnoticed in the incomparably vast and complex history of interpretation and appropriation of the dialogue. 2 Yet, more often than not, the reinscriptions produced by interpretation as well as by philosophical appropriatio