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Karel Thein

Charles University, Prague, Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Address: Prague, Czech Republic

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Vojtěch Hladký

Charles University, Prague

University of Wroclaw

Ucla

Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy)

Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Stephen Rojcewicz

University of Maryland, College Park

Jean-Claude PICOT

Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)

Stichting Pythagoras

Stratis Kyriakidis

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Alexander Kirichenko

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

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Papers by Karel Thein

The Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle’s Biology (proofs)

“The Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle’s Biology”, in Sophia M. Connell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2021, 30-45

Focusing on the predecessors of Aristotle’s biological inquiries, this chapter sketches a broad p... more Focusing on the predecessors of Aristotle’s biological inquiries, this chapter sketches a broad picture of their ideas about the origin and development of living beings. To this picture it adds a few introductory remarks on the new cosmological and metaphysical framework of Aristotle’s biological enterprise and, by the same token, on the reasons why, for Aristotle, the living creatures around us are worthy of a true philosophical interest. The structure of this chapter is also dictated by the impossibility of covering, in a very limited space, all of Aristotle’s predecessors without reducing them to encyclopedia-like entries. Hence the choice of a perspective that enables us to grasp what truly distinguishes Aristotle from the Presocratics and Plato: his rejection of a shared causal story that would account for both the origin of the universe and the birth of animals and plants. This perspective helps to make intelligible Aristotle’s rejection of hylozoism (including its Anaxagorean variety) and also of the opposite view that life arises (in an ultimately mysterious way) from inanimate material ingredients. Concerning the Presocratics, my necessarily selective treatment will stress the recurrent connection, in their fragments, between biological matters and cosmogony. This connection will then invite us to take a fresh look at how Plato reshapes it and how Aristotle changes it entirely, even in relation to Plato himself. In this way, the chapter enables us to evaluate, in its final section, the changes that Aristotle brings to the study of living beings, including his rejection of the previous ideas of the progressive formation of living species.

Philostratus and Mimēsis at the Heart of Phantasia. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana on Universal Creation

Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs et romains, N. S. 20, pp. 163-181, 2022

Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana includes two much commented upon discussions of visual ... more Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana includes two much commented upon discussions of visual arts whose focus is on two forms of mimēsis (2.22) and on the distinction between mimēsis and phantasia (6.19). The article argues in favor of identifying the higher form of mimēsis from the first passage with phantasia from the second one. More importantly still, it shows that arts have a special place in Philostratus’ text, and that in virtue of their capacity to offer a grasp on the cosmic order, a grasp that reaches beyond abstract generalizing and takes advantage of the humankind’s natural belief in its connection with the divine.

The Projected Heart: Ekphrasis, Material Imagination, and the Shield of Achilles

In: Josef Hrdlička and Mariana Machová (eds.), Things in Poems: From the Shield of Achilles to Hyperobjects, Karolinum Press, Prague, 2022. Distributed by The University of Chicago Press, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo151927609.html, 2022

The paper revisits Homer’s description of the making of the shield of Achilles in light of the re... more The paper revisits Homer’s description of the making of the shield of Achilles in light of the recent discussions on the relation between ekphrasis and materiality. In order to bring out the ecphrastic shield’s animated “thingness” rather than a simply visualized “objecthood”, I focus on Homer’s obvious cardiocentrism and his understanding of imagination as embodied power whose inner working is contiguous with the forging of metals that compose the shield. It is Hephaestus’ “visionary diaphragm” that projects forth the images, and it is this projection that the audience is supposed to emulate with the imagination of their own. At the same time, this emulation cannot erase the subtle yet persistent tension between the vivid evocation of details in particular scenes on the shield, and a striking lack of determination when it comes to the overall arrangement of these scenes and even to the shield’s physical shape. This lack is not due to an omission: reinforcing the performative rather than descriptive nature of the shield, it makes us alert to the fact that the shield, insofar as it originally connects to our imagination, cannot be consistently understood as “the cosmic icon”: this is because we cannot coherently imagine one thing as enclosing all smaller things including ourselves as both its parts and its beholders. The second part of the study develops this focus on the shield’s implied agency by turning to its fate in both the Iliad and later poetry, especially the Hellenistic epigrams. This turn confirms is that, regardless of the poetic genre, the shield of Achilles lives its neither natural nor simply artificial life on the ontologically ambiguous threshold of imaginary object and material thing.

Connecting the End to the Beginning. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 1 2 and Plato, Timaeus, 92c

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina, 2022

The article argues for not only an overall influence of Plato’s Timaeus on the cosmogony in Ovid’... more The article argues for not only an overall influence of Plato’s Timaeus on the cosmogony in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but for the possibility of a more direct textual echo of Timaeus 92c1–2 in Metamorphoses 1.1–2. Regardless of their obvious differences, both texts address the changes of bodies that proceed from the states of minds, and it is these changes that the reader must espouse and re-enact in their imagination.

Entre la science et la légende. La chôra selon Albert Rivaud, lecteur presque oublié du Timée

Chôra. Revue d'Études Anciennes et Médiévales 20, pp. 187‑214, 2022

In his 1906 book The problem of becoming and the notion of matter in Greek philosophy from its or... more In his 1906 book The problem of becoming and the notion of matter in Greek philosophy from its origins till Theophrastus, Albert Rivaud puts forward an entirely original (and nowadays largely forgotten) interpretation of the receptacle or chôra in Plato’s Timaeus. On his reading, Timaeus’ introduction of chôra signals the limits of the possibility to explain the formation of the cosmos by means of the opposition between the intelligible and the sensible. Opposing Aristotle and others in his wake, Rivaud firmly rejects the understanding of chôra as matter, without however identifying it as space in the sense of a system of intra‑cosmic coordinates. Instead, he sees the receptacle as a notion borrowed from a philosophical system otherwise alien to Plato’s thought, namely the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus. Neither the atomistic void nor chôra are like the modern space ; rather, in virtue of evoking “the unchanging theater of all changes”, they are “like the chaos, immense, gaping, populated by the infinite crowd of forms”. Rivaud concludes that, by introducing chôra as a notion irreducible to the concept of becoming, Plato recognizes that the cosmogonic processes cannot be fully explained either on the basis of the relation of the cosmos to its intelligible model or through the logic of opposites that governs all change in the sensible realm. At the same time, the introduction of chôra (described through a variety of mostly biological metaphors) marks the limits of the artisanal model preeminent in the Timaeus, a model that endows the cosmogonic story with a new transparency and ensures the teleological dimension of the fully formed universe. The aim of the article is to re‑evaluate Rivaud’s audacious reading of the Timaeus with an eye to larger issues pertinent to a variety of ancient cosmogonies.

Aristotle on the Nature in the Pneuma and the First Body (proofs)

“Aristotle on the Nature in the Pneuma and the First Body”, in Colin King and Hynek Bartoš (eds.), Heat, Pneuma and Soul in Ancient Philosophy and Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020, 182-201

Aristotle’s analogy between “the phusis in the pneuma” and “the element of the stars” (Generation... more Aristotle’s analogy between “the phusis in the pneuma” and “the element of the stars” (Generation of animals II 3, 736b37–737a1) belongs to the often quoted yet perennially frustrating passages in the corpus. In order to determine the possible meaning of this analogy, I do not attempt another reconstruction of Aristotle’s lost works, but focus first on the role of pneuma in the generation of living beings, and then on De caelo and the celestial “first body” as internally animate. My intention is to demonstrate that the key to the analogy lies in the shared link between motion and animation, not in the sameness or other close affinity of the matter in question.

The Heavenly Sphere. De Mundo Chapter 2, 391b9-392a31 (proofs)

“The Heavenly Sphere (Chapter 2, 391b9-392a31)”, in Pavel Gregorić and George Karamanolis (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle: On the Cosmos. A Commentary, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020, 24-45

This chapter offers a commentary on the Pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo 2, 391b9-392a31, including v... more

Swifts and Hirundines in Aristotle’s Historia animalium (first view; please quote the published version)

“Swifts and Hirundines in Aristotle’s Historia animalium”, The Classical Quarterly 70, Issue 1, May 2020, 434-436

Aristotle’s account of some swifts and hirundines in Historia animalium 1.1 and 9.30 list several... more Aristotle’s account of some swifts and hirundines in Historia animalium 1.1 and 9.30 list several species whose identification has always been taken for difficult, and continues to vary from translation to translation.1 This note clarifies this small issue on the basis of Aristotle’s text alone. I therefore assume that both passages offer sufficient information for recognizing the species in question. The note offers the translation of and some comments on both passages.

Tactility, Detail, and Scale in the Photography of Sculpture

Art/Umění Vol. 66, no. 5, pp. 350-367, 2018

In the wake of the recent surge of interest in the relation between sculpture and photography, th... more In the wake of the recent surge of interest in the relation between sculpture and photography, the article revisits the photography’s capacity to convey the haptic qualities of sculpted matter. Starting from the logic of supplementarity, whereby a photograph reveals something that we do not notice while meeting the sculpture itself, the article focuses on the photographic detail and its inherent tactility as the materiality’s own surprising touch. At the same time, a close attention is paid to the role of scale in the photography of sculpture and to the connection between the impact of the detail and the play of scale, which makes us aware of the uncertain borderline between image and mental image. Different from measurable size, scale enters our perception of the photographed sculpture as something irreducible to the detail understood as the matter’s signature. While being a more abstract agent than the more directly tactile detail, scale has its own mode of addressing the viewer by making her suddenly aware of her own situation. The more personal nature of this address makes it possible to connect the scale, rather than the detail in its more usual iconographic sense, to Roland Barthes’ notion of the punctum as, first and foremost, a mental event. However, as the article makes clear, this event, whereby a detail expands mentally and independently on any measurable size, cannot occur without the underlying relief-like or tactile qualities of the photographs themselves. To support this interpretation of the productive tension between the detail and the scale, the article discusses a series of examples (starting with the early daguerreotypes) and appeals to a broad range of studies, from Herder through Aloïs Riegl and Ronald Barthes to the most recent debates.

Beckett's Murphy Between Spinoza and Occasionalism

Chaos and Form: Echoes of Beckett in Literature and the Arts, edited by Tomáš Koblížek and Petr Koťátko, Prague, Litteraria Pragensia, 2016, 144-167

Beckett’s affinity with the Belgian 17th century occasionalist Arnold Geulincx has been widely ac... more Beckett’s affinity with the Belgian 17th century occasionalist Arnold Geulincx has been widely acknowledged and commented upon in recent years. My contribution takes a closer look at how this philosophical influence translates into Beckett’s writing, which is certainly free of philosophical systematicity yet informed by certain basic insights and also particulars images borrowed from philosophical texts. The first part of my paper therefore explains the “Beckettian” appeal of occasionalism as an answer to Cartesian thought. The second part then demonstrates how the knowledge of Geulincx informs several chapters of Beckett’s Murphy, including the ending of this novel, but also how it competes with motifs and images borrowed from Geulincx’s contemporary – and perhaps acquaintance – Spinoza. In this respect, I wish to show how the (on several occasions explicit) borrowings from Geulincx and Spinoza furnish the novel with two different perspectives on the relation between Murphy’s mind and Murphy’s body.

Reason and Dreaming in Republic IX and the Timaeus

Rhizomata Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-32, 2019

The article discusses two passages, Republic IX 571d6–572b1, and Timaeus 71a3–72b5, where Plato d... more The article discusses two passages, Republic IX 571d6–572b1, and Timaeus 71a3–72b5, where Plato does not use dream as a metaphor for the soul’s deficit in knowledge but, instead, focuses on the actual process of dreaming during sleep, and the origin and nature of the images involved. In both texts, Plato’s account is closely connected to the soul’s tripartition, with the resulting emphasis on reason’s capacity to control, and even to create, the dream images that influence the lower parts of the soul. While taking a closer look at the differ¬ences between the two accounts (and, therefore, at the physiology of dreaming described only in the Timaeus), the article concludes that, despite these differ¬ences, both dialogues agree on the possible alliance between reason and dream¬ing, an alliance that presupposes a virtuous character and further reinforces the reason’s dominance over appetite. Republic IX and the Timaeus thus converge on the idea that dreams, in virtue of their continuity with waking thoughts, can convey and fortify a certain kind of knowledge, and especially self-knowl¬edge, which is of an ethical rather than strictly epistemic relevance. This is also why Plato’s two accounts of rational dreaming anticipate the issue of our moral responsibility for the content of our dreams.

The Sublime, Nature's Eloquent Gift

Eirene. Studia graeca et latina, 53, 2017, pp. 9-75., 2017

Discussing two recent books on the sublime (James I. Porter, The Sublime in Antiquity, and, in pa... more Discussing two recent books on the sublime (James I. Porter, The Sublime in Antiquity, and, in part, Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant), the review essay takes a closer look at the theoretical implications of, especially, Porter’s reading of Longinus. The main virtue of this reading is found to be twofold. First, avoiding the trap of a too narrow conceptualization of sublimity, it brings in an unusually broad range of texts that deal with sublime phaenomena from all the relevant points of view. Second, emphasizing the place of Longinus in the rhetorical tradition, it offers an archeology of the sublime’s fundamental relation to language. Demonstrating that no experience of sublimity is possible without speech that makes it articulate – and therefore shareable and teachable –, Porter enables us to rethink what Longinus has to say about nature, human nature, and art. The sublime emerges here as a unique yet variegated mental habitat where superhuman nature and the art of eloquence can connect and make us “see” what is incomparably greater than our shape and size that usually limit both our experience and the way we analyze it. The sublime reverses this experience and makes the universe bounce back on us by suddenly revealing its most distance vistas, but also its possible internal cracks and ruptures. Longinus himself does not theorize this situation as such: if he quotes and discusses a number of sources (Homer’s sublime mind looms large in his account), he is equally open to a form of Platonism and to those cosmic intervals or voids that originate with Lucretius whose theoretical stance is the most anti-Platonic imaginable. This is no contradiction: at the heart of the expressible sublime, there is a subtle and ongoing negotiation between what Porter labels the material and the immaterial sublime. If the former finds its expression in the poetics of the Presocratic authors and also in Lucretius, whereas the latter reaches its peak in various Platonic images of the soul’s ascent, neither kind of the sublime is a pure form and their difference is a matter of degree and scale. Regardless of theoretical orientation of different authors, the projection of their premises into the material universe leads the reader’s imagination towards the unachievable whole of reality as “sublime reality” (Porter). Compared to Porter’s enterprise, Doran’s book is less concerned with the rhetorical issues and focused on the sublime as a self-transcending psychological state that is more or less independent on the rhetoric of its expression. Instead, Doran’s sublime has a history that is intertwined with the culturally co-determined morality: especially the modern sublime thus shifts towards bourgeois rather than aristocratic values. The question is to know whether we find such a shift anticipated in the last chapter of Longinus’ treatise, which offers various views on the progressive disappearance of truly great and sublime natures. Longinus himself connects this process to the issue of political freedom and the world (imperial) peace, but leaves the matter of the true cause of the decline unresolved. Political progress or decline notwithstanding, to learn the appropriate rhetorical art of the sublime enables us to recover sublimity through the imitation or re-enactment that helps us to literally saturate our soul with the effluences of the great minds of the past.

Socratic Voices in Derrida's Writing

Christopher Moore (ed.), Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2019, pp. 950-974., 2019

Starting with Of Grammatology (1967), Derrida recurs to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogue as a spo... more Starting with Of Grammatology (1967), Derrida recurs to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogue as a spokesman of the living voice, a philosopher who not only criticizes writing for its incapacity to co-operate in revealing its intended sense, but is himself, in his activity, resistant to the rigid protocols of all written record. On the other side, as Derrida points out in Voice and Phenomenon (1967), it is the same Socrates who enacts the original “decision of philosophy in its Platonic form” by insisting on the necessary fixity of true definitions and their objects. Hence the obvious tension arises: how, on Socrates’ own criteria, could definitions not be fully recordable, how could they escape a repeatable fixation independent of whether they are written down or transmitted in a spoken dialogue? In Dissemination with its more developed but also more varied treatment of Socrates (1972), Derrida makes this tension into something stranger and richer: Socrates now takes on his many colors whose mixture cannot be resolved into simple polarities of voice and written word or presence and absence. The chapter revisits this strangeness, which is proper to the most singular man who nevertheless says always the same things about the same matters (Gorgias 490e), in the light of both Derrida’s writings and Plato’s dialogues including the Apology, Phaedrus, Symposium and Philebus. It concludes that, far from using Socrates as a prop for his alleged rejection of logocentrism, Derrida tends to appropriate Socratic motifs for subtler ends.

Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle

Karel Thein, “Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle”, in Filip Karfík, Chad Jorgenson and Štěpán Špinka (eds.), Plato’s Timaeus, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2021, 92-111

In the overall framework of Timaeus’ plausible account of how our universe acquired its present s... more In the overall framework of Timaeus’ plausible account of how our universe acquired its present shape, the issue of planets is revelatory of the twofold nature of Timaeus’ task: Timaeus is invited to speak about the nature of the Whole and about the human nature. The paper suggests that the explanation of the origin and role of the planets is precisely where these two parts of the story meet and intersect as Timaeus passes from the immortal to the mortal living species. In the body of the paper, I limit myself to the role of planets and time within Timaeus’ cosmic story and leave aside a more metaphysical inquiry into time. A taste of such an inquiry is given in the Postscript, which offers some further remarks on how Timaeus speaks about time and what are some possible implications of his story for a more abstract treatment of it.

Review of C. D. C. Reeve, Aristotle: De caelo

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021

Review of C. D. C. Reeve's commented translation of Aristotle's De Caelo (Hackett 2020), accessib... more

Review of Chad Jorgenson, The Embodied Soul in Plato’s Later Thought

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 55, 2019

Review of Chad Jorgenson, The Embodied Soul in Plato’s Later Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge Univer... more

Review of Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 55, 2019

Review of Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, edited by James Miller and transl... more

Soul and Incorporeality in Plato.pdf

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 54, 2018, 53-95, 2018

This article takes a closer look at what Plato’s dialogues tell us about the incorporeality of th... more This article takes a closer look at what Plato’s dialogues tell us about the incorporeality of the soul as one of the well-established Platonic doctrines, on a par with the soul’s immortality and its self-moving nature. What motivates the proposed rereading is Plato’s timidity in describing the soul, human or not, as being entirely without body of any kind. The aim of the article is not to contest the obvious fact that Plato treats souls as essentially distinct from bodies, but to understand why the assumption of incorporeality receives no detailed discussion of its own. One possible answer is that such a theoretically rigorous discussion is always less important to Plato than his emphasis on the variety of actions and experiences ascribed to the soul both here and in the afterlife. While having an essential moral dimension that connects to the soul’s activity of thinking, these actions and experiences contribute to the description of the soul as a fully individual agent, akin to that of a person. To highlight the immortality of this agent, it is more opportune for Plato to start from various facets of the soul’s natural self-motion, while leaving aside possible arguments in favor of the soul’s full ontological bodilessness. In any case, the Platonic soul is introduced as a fundamental part of reality. Its natural agency can therefore be tackled separately from its explicit ontology. By this means, the agency—akin to human agency—that is attributed to the soul can retain its provisional ontological neutrality.

Imagination, Self-Awareness, and Modal Thought at Philebus 39-40

 I would like to thank Jennifer Whiting for her invitation to the workshop 'Time and Consciou... more  I would like to thank Jennifer Whiting for her invitation to the workshop 'Time and Consciousness in Plato's Philebus and Related Texts' (University of Toronto, - March ), where the first draft of this article was presented. I owe special thanks to Brad Inwood for his critical remarks on several versions of the text. Brooks Sommerville offered helpful comments on the first draft. Further questions that made me clarify my position came from Tad Brennan, Emily Fletcher, Dorothea Frede, Verity Harte, and Jennifer Whiting. Finally, I am grateful for the support of the Czech Science Foundation (P//) that helped me revise the article for publication.

Aristotle on Human Nature. Book Summary

Prague, Filosofia, 2017

This is a brief (and much simplified) summary of a book, published in Czech, about Aristotle’s un... more

The Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle’s Biology (proofs)

“The Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle’s Biology”, in Sophia M. Connell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2021, 30-45

Focusing on the predecessors of Aristotle’s biological inquiries, this chapter sketches a broad p... more Focusing on the predecessors of Aristotle’s biological inquiries, this chapter sketches a broad picture of their ideas about the origin and development of living beings. To this picture it adds a few introductory remarks on the new cosmological and metaphysical framework of Aristotle’s biological enterprise and, by the same token, on the reasons why, for Aristotle, the living creatures around us are worthy of a true philosophical interest. The structure of this chapter is also dictated by the impossibility of covering, in a very limited space, all of Aristotle’s predecessors without reducing them to encyclopedia-like entries. Hence the choice of a perspective that enables us to grasp what truly distinguishes Aristotle from the Presocratics and Plato: his rejection of a shared causal story that would account for both the origin of the universe and the birth of animals and plants. This perspective helps to make intelligible Aristotle’s rejection of hylozoism (including its Anaxagorean variety) and also of the opposite view that life arises (in an ultimately mysterious way) from inanimate material ingredients. Concerning the Presocratics, my necessarily selective treatment will stress the recurrent connection, in their fragments, between biological matters and cosmogony. This connection will then invite us to take a fresh look at how Plato reshapes it and how Aristotle changes it entirely, even in relation to Plato himself. In this way, the chapter enables us to evaluate, in its final section, the changes that Aristotle brings to the study of living beings, including his rejection of the previous ideas of the progressive formation of living species.

Philostratus and Mimēsis at the Heart of Phantasia. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana on Universal Creation

Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs et romains, N. S. 20, pp. 163-181, 2022

Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana includes two much commented upon discussions of visual ... more Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana includes two much commented upon discussions of visual arts whose focus is on two forms of mimēsis (2.22) and on the distinction between mimēsis and phantasia (6.19). The article argues in favor of identifying the higher form of mimēsis from the first passage with phantasia from the second one. More importantly still, it shows that arts have a special place in Philostratus’ text, and that in virtue of their capacity to offer a grasp on the cosmic order, a grasp that reaches beyond abstract generalizing and takes advantage of the humankind’s natural belief in its connection with the divine.

The Projected Heart: Ekphrasis, Material Imagination, and the Shield of Achilles

In: Josef Hrdlička and Mariana Machová (eds.), Things in Poems: From the Shield of Achilles to Hyperobjects, Karolinum Press, Prague, 2022. Distributed by The University of Chicago Press, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo151927609.html, 2022

The paper revisits Homer’s description of the making of the shield of Achilles in light of the re... more The paper revisits Homer’s description of the making of the shield of Achilles in light of the recent discussions on the relation between ekphrasis and materiality. In order to bring out the ecphrastic shield’s animated “thingness” rather than a simply visualized “objecthood”, I focus on Homer’s obvious cardiocentrism and his understanding of imagination as embodied power whose inner working is contiguous with the forging of metals that compose the shield. It is Hephaestus’ “visionary diaphragm” that projects forth the images, and it is this projection that the audience is supposed to emulate with the imagination of their own. At the same time, this emulation cannot erase the subtle yet persistent tension between the vivid evocation of details in particular scenes on the shield, and a striking lack of determination when it comes to the overall arrangement of these scenes and even to the shield’s physical shape. This lack is not due to an omission: reinforcing the performative rather than descriptive nature of the shield, it makes us alert to the fact that the shield, insofar as it originally connects to our imagination, cannot be consistently understood as “the cosmic icon”: this is because we cannot coherently imagine one thing as enclosing all smaller things including ourselves as both its parts and its beholders. The second part of the study develops this focus on the shield’s implied agency by turning to its fate in both the Iliad and later poetry, especially the Hellenistic epigrams. This turn confirms is that, regardless of the poetic genre, the shield of Achilles lives its neither natural nor simply artificial life on the ontologically ambiguous threshold of imaginary object and material thing.

Connecting the End to the Beginning. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 1 2 and Plato, Timaeus, 92c

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina, 2022

The article argues for not only an overall influence of Plato’s Timaeus on the cosmogony in Ovid’... more The article argues for not only an overall influence of Plato’s Timaeus on the cosmogony in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but for the possibility of a more direct textual echo of Timaeus 92c1–2 in Metamorphoses 1.1–2. Regardless of their obvious differences, both texts address the changes of bodies that proceed from the states of minds, and it is these changes that the reader must espouse and re-enact in their imagination.

Entre la science et la légende. La chôra selon Albert Rivaud, lecteur presque oublié du Timée

Chôra. Revue d'Études Anciennes et Médiévales 20, pp. 187‑214, 2022

In his 1906 book The problem of becoming and the notion of matter in Greek philosophy from its or... more In his 1906 book The problem of becoming and the notion of matter in Greek philosophy from its origins till Theophrastus, Albert Rivaud puts forward an entirely original (and nowadays largely forgotten) interpretation of the receptacle or chôra in Plato’s Timaeus. On his reading, Timaeus’ introduction of chôra signals the limits of the possibility to explain the formation of the cosmos by means of the opposition between the intelligible and the sensible. Opposing Aristotle and others in his wake, Rivaud firmly rejects the understanding of chôra as matter, without however identifying it as space in the sense of a system of intra‑cosmic coordinates. Instead, he sees the receptacle as a notion borrowed from a philosophical system otherwise alien to Plato’s thought, namely the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus. Neither the atomistic void nor chôra are like the modern space ; rather, in virtue of evoking “the unchanging theater of all changes”, they are “like the chaos, immense, gaping, populated by the infinite crowd of forms”. Rivaud concludes that, by introducing chôra as a notion irreducible to the concept of becoming, Plato recognizes that the cosmogonic processes cannot be fully explained either on the basis of the relation of the cosmos to its intelligible model or through the logic of opposites that governs all change in the sensible realm. At the same time, the introduction of chôra (described through a variety of mostly biological metaphors) marks the limits of the artisanal model preeminent in the Timaeus, a model that endows the cosmogonic story with a new transparency and ensures the teleological dimension of the fully formed universe. The aim of the article is to re‑evaluate Rivaud’s audacious reading of the Timaeus with an eye to larger issues pertinent to a variety of ancient cosmogonies.

Aristotle on the Nature in the Pneuma and the First Body (proofs)

“Aristotle on the Nature in the Pneuma and the First Body”, in Colin King and Hynek Bartoš (eds.), Heat, Pneuma and Soul in Ancient Philosophy and Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020, 182-201

Aristotle’s analogy between “the phusis in the pneuma” and “the element of the stars” (Generation... more Aristotle’s analogy between “the phusis in the pneuma” and “the element of the stars” (Generation of animals II 3, 736b37–737a1) belongs to the often quoted yet perennially frustrating passages in the corpus. In order to determine the possible meaning of this analogy, I do not attempt another reconstruction of Aristotle’s lost works, but focus first on the role of pneuma in the generation of living beings, and then on De caelo and the celestial “first body” as internally animate. My intention is to demonstrate that the key to the analogy lies in the shared link between motion and animation, not in the sameness or other close affinity of the matter in question.

The Heavenly Sphere. De Mundo Chapter 2, 391b9-392a31 (proofs)

“The Heavenly Sphere (Chapter 2, 391b9-392a31)”, in Pavel Gregorić and George Karamanolis (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle: On the Cosmos. A Commentary, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020, 24-45

This chapter offers a commentary on the Pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo 2, 391b9-392a31, including v... more

Swifts and Hirundines in Aristotle’s Historia animalium (first view; please quote the published version)

“Swifts and Hirundines in Aristotle’s Historia animalium”, The Classical Quarterly 70, Issue 1, May 2020, 434-436

Aristotle’s account of some swifts and hirundines in Historia animalium 1.1 and 9.30 list several... more Aristotle’s account of some swifts and hirundines in Historia animalium 1.1 and 9.30 list several species whose identification has always been taken for difficult, and continues to vary from translation to translation.1 This note clarifies this small issue on the basis of Aristotle’s text alone. I therefore assume that both passages offer sufficient information for recognizing the species in question. The note offers the translation of and some comments on both passages.

Tactility, Detail, and Scale in the Photography of Sculpture

Art/Umění Vol. 66, no. 5, pp. 350-367, 2018

In the wake of the recent surge of interest in the relation between sculpture and photography, th... more In the wake of the recent surge of interest in the relation between sculpture and photography, the article revisits the photography’s capacity to convey the haptic qualities of sculpted matter. Starting from the logic of supplementarity, whereby a photograph reveals something that we do not notice while meeting the sculpture itself, the article focuses on the photographic detail and its inherent tactility as the materiality’s own surprising touch. At the same time, a close attention is paid to the role of scale in the photography of sculpture and to the connection between the impact of the detail and the play of scale, which makes us aware of the uncertain borderline between image and mental image. Different from measurable size, scale enters our perception of the photographed sculpture as something irreducible to the detail understood as the matter’s signature. While being a more abstract agent than the more directly tactile detail, scale has its own mode of addressing the viewer by making her suddenly aware of her own situation. The more personal nature of this address makes it possible to connect the scale, rather than the detail in its more usual iconographic sense, to Roland Barthes’ notion of the punctum as, first and foremost, a mental event. However, as the article makes clear, this event, whereby a detail expands mentally and independently on any measurable size, cannot occur without the underlying relief-like or tactile qualities of the photographs themselves. To support this interpretation of the productive tension between the detail and the scale, the article discusses a series of examples (starting with the early daguerreotypes) and appeals to a broad range of studies, from Herder through Aloïs Riegl and Ronald Barthes to the most recent debates.

Beckett's Murphy Between Spinoza and Occasionalism

Chaos and Form: Echoes of Beckett in Literature and the Arts, edited by Tomáš Koblížek and Petr Koťátko, Prague, Litteraria Pragensia, 2016, 144-167

Beckett’s affinity with the Belgian 17th century occasionalist Arnold Geulincx has been widely ac... more Beckett’s affinity with the Belgian 17th century occasionalist Arnold Geulincx has been widely acknowledged and commented upon in recent years. My contribution takes a closer look at how this philosophical influence translates into Beckett’s writing, which is certainly free of philosophical systematicity yet informed by certain basic insights and also particulars images borrowed from philosophical texts. The first part of my paper therefore explains the “Beckettian” appeal of occasionalism as an answer to Cartesian thought. The second part then demonstrates how the knowledge of Geulincx informs several chapters of Beckett’s Murphy, including the ending of this novel, but also how it competes with motifs and images borrowed from Geulincx’s contemporary – and perhaps acquaintance – Spinoza. In this respect, I wish to show how the (on several occasions explicit) borrowings from Geulincx and Spinoza furnish the novel with two different perspectives on the relation between Murphy’s mind and Murphy’s body.

Reason and Dreaming in Republic IX and the Timaeus

Rhizomata Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-32, 2019

The article discusses two passages, Republic IX 571d6–572b1, and Timaeus 71a3–72b5, where Plato d... more The article discusses two passages, Republic IX 571d6–572b1, and Timaeus 71a3–72b5, where Plato does not use dream as a metaphor for the soul’s deficit in knowledge but, instead, focuses on the actual process of dreaming during sleep, and the origin and nature of the images involved. In both texts, Plato’s account is closely connected to the soul’s tripartition, with the resulting emphasis on reason’s capacity to control, and even to create, the dream images that influence the lower parts of the soul. While taking a closer look at the differ¬ences between the two accounts (and, therefore, at the physiology of dreaming described only in the Timaeus), the article concludes that, despite these differ¬ences, both dialogues agree on the possible alliance between reason and dream¬ing, an alliance that presupposes a virtuous character and further reinforces the reason’s dominance over appetite. Republic IX and the Timaeus thus converge on the idea that dreams, in virtue of their continuity with waking thoughts, can convey and fortify a certain kind of knowledge, and especially self-knowl¬edge, which is of an ethical rather than strictly epistemic relevance. This is also why Plato’s two accounts of rational dreaming anticipate the issue of our moral responsibility for the content of our dreams.

The Sublime, Nature's Eloquent Gift

Eirene. Studia graeca et latina, 53, 2017, pp. 9-75., 2017

Discussing two recent books on the sublime (James I. Porter, The Sublime in Antiquity, and, in pa... more Discussing two recent books on the sublime (James I. Porter, The Sublime in Antiquity, and, in part, Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant), the review essay takes a closer look at the theoretical implications of, especially, Porter’s reading of Longinus. The main virtue of this reading is found to be twofold. First, avoiding the trap of a too narrow conceptualization of sublimity, it brings in an unusually broad range of texts that deal with sublime phaenomena from all the relevant points of view. Second, emphasizing the place of Longinus in the rhetorical tradition, it offers an archeology of the sublime’s fundamental relation to language. Demonstrating that no experience of sublimity is possible without speech that makes it articulate – and therefore shareable and teachable –, Porter enables us to rethink what Longinus has to say about nature, human nature, and art. The sublime emerges here as a unique yet variegated mental habitat where superhuman nature and the art of eloquence can connect and make us “see” what is incomparably greater than our shape and size that usually limit both our experience and the way we analyze it. The sublime reverses this experience and makes the universe bounce back on us by suddenly revealing its most distance vistas, but also its possible internal cracks and ruptures. Longinus himself does not theorize this situation as such: if he quotes and discusses a number of sources (Homer’s sublime mind looms large in his account), he is equally open to a form of Platonism and to those cosmic intervals or voids that originate with Lucretius whose theoretical stance is the most anti-Platonic imaginable. This is no contradiction: at the heart of the expressible sublime, there is a subtle and ongoing negotiation between what Porter labels the material and the immaterial sublime. If the former finds its expression in the poetics of the Presocratic authors and also in Lucretius, whereas the latter reaches its peak in various Platonic images of the soul’s ascent, neither kind of the sublime is a pure form and their difference is a matter of degree and scale. Regardless of theoretical orientation of different authors, the projection of their premises into the material universe leads the reader’s imagination towards the unachievable whole of reality as “sublime reality” (Porter). Compared to Porter’s enterprise, Doran’s book is less concerned with the rhetorical issues and focused on the sublime as a self-transcending psychological state that is more or less independent on the rhetoric of its expression. Instead, Doran’s sublime has a history that is intertwined with the culturally co-determined morality: especially the modern sublime thus shifts towards bourgeois rather than aristocratic values. The question is to know whether we find such a shift anticipated in the last chapter of Longinus’ treatise, which offers various views on the progressive disappearance of truly great and sublime natures. Longinus himself connects this process to the issue of political freedom and the world (imperial) peace, but leaves the matter of the true cause of the decline unresolved. Political progress or decline notwithstanding, to learn the appropriate rhetorical art of the sublime enables us to recover sublimity through the imitation or re-enactment that helps us to literally saturate our soul with the effluences of the great minds of the past.

Socratic Voices in Derrida's Writing

Christopher Moore (ed.), Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2019, pp. 950-974., 2019

Starting with Of Grammatology (1967), Derrida recurs to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogue as a spo... more Starting with Of Grammatology (1967), Derrida recurs to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogue as a spokesman of the living voice, a philosopher who not only criticizes writing for its incapacity to co-operate in revealing its intended sense, but is himself, in his activity, resistant to the rigid protocols of all written record. On the other side, as Derrida points out in Voice and Phenomenon (1967), it is the same Socrates who enacts the original “decision of philosophy in its Platonic form” by insisting on the necessary fixity of true definitions and their objects. Hence the obvious tension arises: how, on Socrates’ own criteria, could definitions not be fully recordable, how could they escape a repeatable fixation independent of whether they are written down or transmitted in a spoken dialogue? In Dissemination with its more developed but also more varied treatment of Socrates (1972), Derrida makes this tension into something stranger and richer: Socrates now takes on his many colors whose mixture cannot be resolved into simple polarities of voice and written word or presence and absence. The chapter revisits this strangeness, which is proper to the most singular man who nevertheless says always the same things about the same matters (Gorgias 490e), in the light of both Derrida’s writings and Plato’s dialogues including the Apology, Phaedrus, Symposium and Philebus. It concludes that, far from using Socrates as a prop for his alleged rejection of logocentrism, Derrida tends to appropriate Socratic motifs for subtler ends.

Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle

Karel Thein, “Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle”, in Filip Karfík, Chad Jorgenson and Štěpán Špinka (eds.), Plato’s Timaeus, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2021, 92-111

In the overall framework of Timaeus’ plausible account of how our universe acquired its present s... more In the overall framework of Timaeus’ plausible account of how our universe acquired its present shape, the issue of planets is revelatory of the twofold nature of Timaeus’ task: Timaeus is invited to speak about the nature of the Whole and about the human nature. The paper suggests that the explanation of the origin and role of the planets is precisely where these two parts of the story meet and intersect as Timaeus passes from the immortal to the mortal living species. In the body of the paper, I limit myself to the role of planets and time within Timaeus’ cosmic story and leave aside a more metaphysical inquiry into time. A taste of such an inquiry is given in the Postscript, which offers some further remarks on how Timaeus speaks about time and what are some possible implications of his story for a more abstract treatment of it.

Review of C. D. C. Reeve, Aristotle: De caelo

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021

Review of C. D. C. Reeve's commented translation of Aristotle's De Caelo (Hackett 2020), accessib... more

Review of Chad Jorgenson, The Embodied Soul in Plato’s Later Thought

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 55, 2019

Review of Chad Jorgenson, The Embodied Soul in Plato’s Later Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge Univer... more

Review of Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 55, 2019

Review of Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, edited by James Miller and transl... more

Soul and Incorporeality in Plato.pdf

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 54, 2018, 53-95, 2018

This article takes a closer look at what Plato’s dialogues tell us about the incorporeality of th... more This article takes a closer look at what Plato’s dialogues tell us about the incorporeality of the soul as one of the well-established Platonic doctrines, on a par with the soul’s immortality and its self-moving nature. What motivates the proposed rereading is Plato’s timidity in describing the soul, human or not, as being entirely without body of any kind. The aim of the article is not to contest the obvious fact that Plato treats souls as essentially distinct from bodies, but to understand why the assumption of incorporeality receives no detailed discussion of its own. One possible answer is that such a theoretically rigorous discussion is always less important to Plato than his emphasis on the variety of actions and experiences ascribed to the soul both here and in the afterlife. While having an essential moral dimension that connects to the soul’s activity of thinking, these actions and experiences contribute to the description of the soul as a fully individual agent, akin to that of a person. To highlight the immortality of this agent, it is more opportune for Plato to start from various facets of the soul’s natural self-motion, while leaving aside possible arguments in favor of the soul’s full ontological bodilessness. In any case, the Platonic soul is introduced as a fundamental part of reality. Its natural agency can therefore be tackled separately from its explicit ontology. By this means, the agency—akin to human agency—that is attributed to the soul can retain its provisional ontological neutrality.

Imagination, Self-Awareness, and Modal Thought at Philebus 39-40

 I would like to thank Jennifer Whiting for her invitation to the workshop 'Time and Consciou... more  I would like to thank Jennifer Whiting for her invitation to the workshop 'Time and Consciousness in Plato's Philebus and Related Texts' (University of Toronto, - March ), where the first draft of this article was presented. I owe special thanks to Brad Inwood for his critical remarks on several versions of the text. Brooks Sommerville offered helpful comments on the first draft. Further questions that made me clarify my position came from Tad Brennan, Emily Fletcher, Dorothea Frede, Verity Harte, and Jennifer Whiting. Finally, I am grateful for the support of the Czech Science Foundation (P//) that helped me revise the article for publication.

Aristotle on Human Nature. Book Summary

Prague, Filosofia, 2017

This is a brief (and much simplified) summary of a book, published in Czech, about Aristotle’s un... more

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco Roman Literature. The World's Forge. Contents and Introduction (final proofs)

Karel Thein - Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco Roman Literature. The World's Forge. Contents and Introduction (final proofs), 2022

This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodi... more This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodied imagination and its verbal dimension; it offers the first detailed study of a large family of ancient ecphrastic shields, often studied separately, but never as an ensemble with its own development. The main objective consists of establishing a theoretical and historical framework that is applied to a series of famous ecphrastic shields starting with the Homeric shield of Achilles. The latter is reinterpreted as a paradigmatic "thing" whose echoing down the centuries is reinforced by the fundamental connection between ekphrasis and artefacts as its primary objects. The book demonstrates that although the ancient sources do not limit ekphrasis to artificial creations, the latter are most efficient in bringing out the intimate affinity between artefacts and vivid mental images as two kind of entities that lack a natural scale and are rightly understood as ontologically unstable. Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World's Forge should be read by those interested in ancient culture, art and philosophy, but also by those fascinated by the broader issue of imagination and by the interplay between the natural and the artificial.

The attached file contains the final proofs of the book’s Contents and Introduction. For quotations, please refer to the published text.

Karel Thein - Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco Roman Literature. The World's Forge. Abstract and Contents

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco Roman Literature. The World's Forge, 2022

This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodi... more This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodied imagination and its verbal dimension; it offers the first detailed study of a large family of ancient ecphrastic shields, often studied separately, but never as an ensemble with its own development. The main objective consists of establishing a theoretical and historical framework that is applied to a series of famous ecphrastic shields starting with the Homeric shield of Achilles. The latter is reinterpreted as a paradigmatic "thing" whose echoing down the centuries is reinforced by the fundamental connection between ekphrasis and artefacts as its primary objects. The book demonstrates that although the ancient sources do not limit ekphrasis to artificial creations, the latter are most efficient in bringing out the intimate affinity between artefacts and vivid mental images as two kind of entities that lack a natural scale and are rightly understood as ontologically unstable. Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World's Forge should be read by those interested in ancient culture, art and philosophy, but also by those fascinated by the broader issue of imagination and by the interplay between the natural and the artificial.

Karel Thein L'âme comme livre

by Marie-Laurence Desclos and Karel Thein

L'âme comme livre. Etude sur une image platonicienne, 2021

Dans le Philèbe, Platon élabore une image de notre âme comme livre où un écrivain et un peintre s... more Dans le Philèbe, Platon élabore une image de notre âme comme livre où un écrivain et un peintre sont constamment au travail. Cet ouvrage examine les prémisses implicites de cette image et met en cause une coupure générale entre la phantasia des Anciens et l’imagination des Modernes.
In the Philebus, Plato elaborates an image of our soul as a book where a scribe and a painter are constantly at work. This book examines the implicit premises of this image and aims at overcoming the general polarity of ancient phantasia and modern imagination.

Karel Thein tdm

by Marie-Laurence Desclos and Karel Thein

L'âme comme livre. Etude sur une image platonicienne, 2021