Introduction: A Phenomenological Approach

Abstract

A richly woven connection between the contemplation of appearances and the act of judgment lies dormant in the Western philosophical tradition. Hannah Arendt has brought to our attention the pre-platonic sense of theōria as the viewing of an appearing action or imitation of action such as tragic drama by perspectivally situated spectators. The dramatic ritual would provide a forum for the practice of the spectators’ judgment, a practice echoed in the function of the chorus within the drama. As is well known, Plato gave quite a different sense to the word theōria,retaining the semantic component of visibility as the vehicle for a philosophical metaphor connected with other metaphors of vision such as idea and eidos. Two faces emerge from the meaning of theōria in Plato’s own use: a mystical and a dialectical aspect.¹ The mystical aspect exerted a far more profound influence on Neoplatonism, which could be said to begin already in Aristotle’s conception of nous as thought thinking itself and which secures a firm place in Plotinus’s mystical fusion of Platonic ascent and Aristotelian teleology.² In Plotinus the dialectical aspect of theōria disappears and has no further significant influence upon the Neoplatonist tradition before Leibniz.³ Plato himself had objected to the judgmental nature of theōria in the pre-platonic sense because that earlier meaning had made theōria the source of doxa,meaning both fame and opinion. The development of Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Leibniz had left this pre-platonic meaning dormant. Typically in the Neoplatonism which had ignored the dialectical aspect of Plato’s thought, and particularly in the monastic tradition, contemplation requires solitude.⁴