Plato's dialogue the Timaeus describes not only the making of the cosmos (order), but also the condition of what is not order, neither for the human body nor for the universe. What is disorder in cosmogonic terms it is disease for the human body. Timaeus applies to the concept chôra in discussing the origins of disease as a state of imbalance and shaking, because the cosmogonic chôra is replicated in the human body, more exactly, in the liver. But the liver is also the organ of divination, the gift given to man to have access to some hidden truth. This article attempts to sketch out the relation between the chôra and illness, looking for an answer to the question of what light might shed the relationship between chôra and illness on human creativity. A specific human typology, subject to disturbances taking place in the chôra, is examined: the poet, the diviner and the melancholy artist, manifested as channels of some exceptional inspiration. They are "mantic subjects" because they acquire vision of divination not with reason, but in a state of inspiration, through divine madness (manía) and possession, as in a dream. These subjects turn illness into creativity by facing the drives of chôra. Socrates. One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers to-day? Timaeus. He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not willingly have been absent from this gathering. (Tim. 17a) That many of Plato's texts, in particular the Timaeus, were treated by the later generations as important medical texts should be of no surprise. Timaeus includes a
This paper explores the issue of performative spaces in the medieval Latin Church, examining the mindsets of the time and the ways practitioners adopted the Platonic notion of world harmony. We then look at the Palatine Chapel of Aachen (Latin Aquisgranum) in the light of the Plato’s doctrine. At the heart of this analysis will be the cosmological drama at the creation of the world, described by Ambrose as a chorus of the constitutive elements. It is from this image that the proto-model of the Christian Church as ‘moving waters’ was derived, a vision shared by both the Eastern and the Western world. To this day, the Palatine chapel of Aquisgranum conveys the appearance of the Ambrosian vision of the primordial waters, with its renewed marble revetments imitating the cosmic waters. The church is designed according to propria dispositione, i. e. modularity. Augustine’s concept of modularity and his psychology of sound, space, movement, and time will be explored in the hypothetical inquiry into the dramatization of space at Aachen. Here, we find that the Chapel has two choreographies (one physical, one incorporeal) which unfold in the space like-stage set up as a synthesis of the arts shaped according to numbers. Relevant concepts to our topic will emerge in the analysis, such as concord, consonance and agreement, measure and movement – metaphors of the idea of a ‘dance’ that exceeds the character of a mere performance.
Plato's dialogue the Timaeus describes not only the making of the cosmos (order), but also the condition of what is not order, neither for the human body nor for the universe.What is disorder in cosmogonic terms it is disease for the human body. Timaeus applies to the concept chôra in discussing the origins of disease as a state of imbalance and shaking, because the cosmogonic chôra is replicated in the human body, more exactly, in the liver. But the liver is also the organ of divination, the gift given to man to have access to some hidden truth. This article attempts to sketch out the relation between the chôra and illness, looking for an answer to the question of what light might shed the relationship between chôra and illness on human creativity. A specific human typology, subject to disturbances taking place in the chôra, is examined: the poet, the diviner and the melancholy artist, manifested as channels of some exceptional inspiration. They are "mantic subjects" because they acquire vision of divination not with reason, but in a state of inspiration, through divine madness (manía) and possession, as in a dream.These subjects turn illness into creativity by facing the drives of chôra.Socrates. One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers to-day? Timaeus. He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not willingly have been absent from this gathering. (Tim. 17a) That many of Plato's texts, in particular the Timaeus, were treated by the later generations as important medical texts should be of no surprise. Timaeus includes a
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