Hermes as Eros in Plato’s Lysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12220587 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Von Heyking (University of Lethbridge, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 132-154 |
| Publication date | 2013-09-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of the Human Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-6951 • E-ISSN: 1461-720X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952695113500799 |
| OpenAlex | W2017789117 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This article examines how Plato uses mythological symbolisms in the Lysis, specifically those of Hermes, to show how our experience of the good makes possible our capacity to love our friend as an individual, and in so doing overturns the static dualities usually associated with Plato’s ‘metaphysics’. Instead of appealing to allegedly impersonal ideas, Plato refigures Greek mythological understandings of Hermes to signal, first, that friendship is a movement of divine love in which human beings participate and to which they are reoriented so that they may behold their friend as an individual, as a person, and second, that this reorientation is needed to place the dialectical inquiry into friendship upon proper starting points. Instead of eclipsing the individual in the shadow of impersonal ideas, Plato appeals to Hermes, the most human, most creative and thus most political, of Olympians, whose name means windfall [ hermaion], to show how we must open ourselves up to the divine in order fully to love our friend as an individual person
Art · Behold · Dialectic · Epistemology · Friendship · Literature · Metaphysics · Mythology · Order (exchange · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical and Literary Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
The Stones of Athens
The Origins of European Thought
Democracy in America
Plato. The Dialogues
Plato's Introduction of Forms
Aristotle’s School
Plato’s Lysis
Socrates, an Unreliable Narrator? The Dramatic Setting of the "Lysis"
Plato's Philosophers
How to Read a Platonic Prologue
Democracy in America
Plato Through Homer
Some Traces of the Pre-Olympian World in Greek Literature and Myth
A Commentary on Thucydides, Vol. 3
The Gravestone of Socrates' Friend, Lysis
Myth, Festival, and Poet
Plato's Political Philosophy
Chaos and Eros. On the Order of Human Existence
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |