< Back to previous page

Project

The reception of Platos khôra in the Early Modern Period (1400-1650).

If you strip down the material universe to its basic constituent, what is left? From the very outset, philosophy has faced the difficulty of conceiving this puzzling substrate. Since this substrate should by its very nature be indeterminate, it cannot be properly conceptualized. Hence, the acceptance of this underlying nature confronts philosophy with its own limits: right in the centre of the philosophical system there is something that cannot be grasped by discursive reasoning. This problem underlies a long tradition, initiated by Plato and continued by his pupil Aristotle. Seemingly, this incomprehensible element was only banned in the seventeenth century, due to a different approach to matter. This project wishes to discuss this problem by means of the reception history of an emblematic concept put forward by Plato. The latter refers to the above-mentioned substrate as a receptacle of Ideas. According to Plato, this third kind is invisible, unshaped and only apprehen sible by a kind of bastard reasoning. The project will particularly focus on the Early Modern Period (1400-1650), since this specific period was marked by an intense and renewed contact with Antiquity and witnessed the rise of a different conception of matter.
Date:1 Oct 2012 →  30 Sep 2015
Keywords:Platonic Tradition, Matter, Early Modern Philosophy, Timaeus, Receptacle, khôra
Disciplines:Theory and methodology of philosophy, History, History and foundations, Philosophy, Other philosophy, ethics and religious studies not elsewhere classified