Research

The aim of Georgia Mouroutsou’s previous two-year post doctoral project has been to demythologise chora in the Timaeus as the Platonic concept of space. This view is opposed to the influential Aristotelian criticism according to which Plato wrongfully mingles space and matter in the case of chora. Additionally, it is contrary to attempts to understand chora merely in a metaphorical way as space, which are supposed to come to the aid of Plato in view of the Aristotelian accusations. In the first part of this project, Georgia Mouroutsou investigated the nature of chora against the background of the dualism of being (i.e. Idea) and becoming (i.e. the perceptible): She integrated chora as the third Kind, which Plato introduces later in the dialogue, into the Platonic ontology of the perceptible that is not depicted as a thing but as a bundle of attributes. In the second part, she focused on the mind-body dualism with reference to chora: In answering the question of what the space of chora is filled with, we encounter both the mental, which cannot be reduced to the physical and the physical, which in turn cannot be reduced to the mental. This approach proves two types of ancient and modern reductionism (material and mental) to be erroneous. Georgia Mouroutsou shall complete the monograph she has been working on in the summer of 2011. Afterwards, she shall have the opportunity to present and discuss my results at the colloquium on the Platonic chora, which is organized together with professor Jonathan Beere (autumn 2011, Humboldt Berlin).

In the second current project, Georgia Mouroutsou is delving into the reception of the Platonic chora in the Middle Platonism of the two first centuries CE and focusing on why the Middle Platonists understood chora as matter rather than as space. The project also involves Aristotle, whose arguments against the existence of space independent of matter decisively influenced Middle Platonism. The ultimate aim is to show how the reception of chora by the Middle Platonists illuminates their own distinctive philosophical agenda and self-conception.