Platon'un Felsefesinde Mitolojinin İşlevi

Abstract

The Ionian philosophy of 7th century B.C., which according to traditional compherension has characterised the whole philosophy of ancient Greece, has found its point of departure in archaic Greek poetry, i.e. the mythic narrations. As these narrations had generally provided the philosophers with their matter of investigation, they also had frequently interpenetrated the research methods of them and thus become the background of their own texts in many ways. It has not been for philosophy historians to indigenise this fact and so the traditional comprehension, especially among the continental philosophical communities, continued its decisiveness untill recently decades. However, as a very fruitful outcome of the dramatical improvement in both philology and all social sciences, in many philosophical papers which have been written since second half of 20th century in Europe, the decisive existence of myth and mythology in Ionian philosophy and its consecutives has been widely approved. After all, in the whole history of ancient Greece philosophy, it is that of Plato in which the constituent and grounding functions of myth and mythology have risen in the most distinctly way. In this respect, firstly the description of myth and mythology is made and their effects on philosophycal thought are generally presented; secondly the effects of myth and mythology in the thoughts of pre-Platonic philosophers are examined under favour of particular examples; and finally the certain mythical items which arise in Plato’s philosophy relatedly to both predecessors’ and his own doctrines, also by taking the advantages of ancient Greek language, are put under the scope within this study. As a result of this research process, the main conclusion is stated like following: The function of mythology in Plato’s philosophy is a constituent and characterising one rather than being an auxilary argument or ordinary expression method, just as seen in the simplest example the “metempsychosis” doctrine.