Beyond dialectic: between logos and the sacred

Abstract

My purpose here is to analyze how dialectic, expressed by Plato on his Dialogues, emerged from an inherent link between mythical and rational levels. In the first section, I’ll aim to expose the rise of the conception of theoría, as a religious and a political practice, observed mainly in the birth of tragedy as a civic and ritual phenomenon, pre-condition to philosophy’s awakening. In the second section, I’ll discuss that the platonic reproach of tragedy and epic poetry isn’t based on an aesthetic critic, but on a phenomenology of passions, by which he defends his ontological and ethical approach against poets and tragic mentality. Hence, platonic dialectic arises from an attempt to elaborate a new form of worldview of mythical and rational structures, attested at in the Athenian polis. In the last section, I’ll intend to demonstrate that dialectic has on Plato’s Dialogues an ambiguous meaning, because it can also indicate science of truth and the right side of rhetoric. According to these assumptions (above) mentioned, I’ll expect to confirm the polysemic sense of dialectic, conceived as a project at the same time rhetorical and epistemic, political and cultural.