La "fisica del tutto"

Sul chiasmo platonico di natura e teoria

Abstract

“The Physics of the All”. Some Notes about Plato’s Chiasm of Nature and Theory. After outlining the radical depth of Parmenides’ thesis and the Eleatic legacy unavoidability, the paper aims at reviving a precise speculative
attitude, which is rooted in a monistic lecture of Plato’s Timaeus. This Dialogue actually shows as questioning about nature parallelly raises a research on the philosopher’s theoretical behaviour. In accordance with this implication, promoting a theory of nature founded on a cosmological unitary principle, that both includes being and thought, also reveals the nature of the theory. «Φύσις το υ παντὸς» is indeed an emblematic expression adopted in the Timaeus that points out that theoretical attitude focused on nature, which at the same is the theory assumed as attitude, that is as nature. Philosophical theory is then natural no more than nature is theoretical. In order to prove this chiasm, the paper deals with some crucial issues of the platonic heritage, such as the relation between being and seeming, the dialectics articulation of monad and dyad within the so called principles’ doctrine, the epistemic status of Physics and the myth’s role. The results achieved by this investigation allow to assume platonism as a dynamic and genetic philosophy, instead of a dualistic and essentialistic system: the platonic ideas do not designate disembodied and theorematic entities, but they closely look like organisms, powers informing the world.