Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 23 No. 2, 2008.
Original scientific paper
Hermes and Dike. The Understanding and Goal of Platonic Philosophizing
Franci Zore
orcid.org/0000-0001-9016-5172
; University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
The questions of philosophical understanding and justice are essentially interrelated from the very beginnings of the Greek philosophizing. Just as the philosophical hermeneutics or hJrmeneiva has its prephilosophical origin in the Greek god Hermes, the Platonic understanding of justice (dikaiosuvnh) has it in the goddess Dike. In his ambivalency Hermes thus indicates the possibility of understanding as well as the possibility of misleadance or misuse of understanding, which – in the horizon of Socratic and Platonic philosophy – means the same as lack of understanding. In the Platonic philosophy the cognition and ethical attitude are namely closely related. But if the ethical attitude is understood mostly as righteousness, the latter shouldn’t be understood in the somewhat reduced meaninf of accordance of human actions with the state laws; what we have to deal with is the inner accordance and harmony of man and his soul, and this also means the accordance of man with the world he lives in From this point of view the potential hermeneutical an-archism” can once again – this time in another way – be pointed towards the question of ajrchv and transposed from the sphere of mere theory into the very being of human life, which is – in the Platonic philosophy – threated through the question of soul.
Keywords
Greek philosophy; Platonism; justice; understanding; hermeneutics
Hrčak ID:
37218
URI
Publication date:
13.2.2009.
Visits: 3.707 *