This thesis explores the relation between two interpretations of chôra, drawn from a
reading of Platos Timaeus. The first I label the elemental chôra. The second, I call the
social chôra. The first chapter addresses the elements in Ionian philosophy, with an eye
toward the political and social backdrop of the important cosmological notion of
isonomia, law of equals. Here social and elemental are continuous. Chapter two looks
at the next phase of Presocratic thought, Elea, specifically Parmenides and his influence
on later thought, then turns to Heideggers reading of Parmenides through the key word
of alêtheia. Finally, I offer a reading of Parmenides through a different key word
trust. The third chapter examines Platos cosmology in the Timaeus, focusing on the
way the beginning of this dialogue inflects the dialogue in a political/social direction,
putting the social chôra in tension with the elemental chôra that the body of the
Timaeus discusses. In the fourth chapter, which examines the Phaedrus, this tension is
inverted, since this dialogue on writing and justice set in what proves to be the
mesmerizing and erotic elemental milieu of the world outside the walls of the polis.
The second half of the dissertation turns to some modern thinkers within the
phenomenological tradition or its wake who write about elementals. Chapter five
examines Gaston Bachelards reveries on imagination which dream the natural world of
fire, air, water, and earth from the standpoint of what he calls material and dynamic
imagination, concepts that imply a strong sense of embodiment. Chapter six treats
Levinas description of the elemental and fixes it in a stark relation to the human. I will
suggest some possible points of contact between the elemental and the social in
Levinas. Chapter seven turns to John Sallis analysis of the imagination as the means of
access proper to the elemental in ways that differ from Bachelard. He position the earth
as a fundamental other. I will suggest that in the end his position inherits Heideggers
lack of emphasis on embodied and needy humanity. Alphonso Lingis offers his own
unique reading of the elemental in a more Levinasian and Merleau-Pontian vein,
speaking of the directives the world, both human and natural, puts to us, and returning
to a philosophy of substance that puts the body in the picture. Chapter eight uses his
thought to focus the issue of the dissertation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221760 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Vicvang@yahoo.com.au, Robert Daniel Victorin-Vangerud |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Robert Daniel Victorin-Vangerud |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds