A Note On Greek Terms In The
Philosophy Of Pathei-Mathos
As I mentioned in the A Philosophical Compendiary chapter of
my book The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos, my philosophy of
pathei-mathos has connexions to the culture of ancient Greece,
exemplified by the many Greek terms and phrases I use in an attempt
to express certain philosophical concepts. Such use of such terms
also serves to intimate that my philosophy has some connexion to the
Graeco-Roman mystical, and paganus, traditions, one of which
traditions is outlined in the Ιερός Λόγος tractate of the Corpus
Hermeticum where it is written that
"...every psyche - embodied in flesh - can
By the mirificence of the circumferent deities coursing the
heavens
Apprehend the heavens, and honour, and physis presenced, and the
works of theos;
Can understand divine influence as wyrdful change
And thus, regarding what is good and what is bad, discover all
the arts of honour." [1]
Furthermore, I also - and perhaps (as you mention) somewhat
confusingly - use certain Greek and Latin terms in a specific way,
such that the meaning I assign to them is not necessarily identical
to how they were understood in classical times or the same as the
meaning ascribed to them in modern Greek and Latin lexicons. A few
examples being συμπάθεια, δίκη, φύσις, ἁρμονίη, perfectus, ἅγιος,
and σωφρονεῖν.
Thus I understand ἅγιος - qv. my translation of and commentary on
the Pœmandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum - not as the
conventional 'holy'/sacred but rather as implying the
numinous/numinosity, for I incline toward the view that the English
words holy and sacred have too many modern connotations, Christian
and otherwise, whereas numinous/numinosity still have the advantage
of being religiously neutral and thus can intimate what an ancient
paganus tradition may well have intimated. Hence also why and for
example I in that tractate chose to translate ἀρχέτυπον εἶδος as
'quidditas of semblance' [2] rather than use (as
some other translators have) an expression that included the word
'archetype' since that word has modern connotations that detract
from (that can falsify) the meaning of the original Greek.
Another example, from the many, is φύσις which I use contextually to
refer to not only its Homeric and later Aristotelian sense - of
personal character, Nature, and the unfolding/change of being,
respectively [3] - but also to what I have
philosophically described as the unity (the being/Being) beyond the
division of our φύσις, as individual mortals, into masculous and
muliebral and a division we have made via abstractions (including
'forms'; the ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος of Plato) and denotatum.
Yet another example is σωφρονεῖν which I use - in preference to
σωφρονέω/σωφροσύνη - as a synonym for "a fair and balanced personal,
individual, judgement" (that is, thoughtful reasoning, or wisdom)
whereas in classical and Hellenic terms the expression should be τὸ
σωφρονεῖν/εἰς τὸ σωφρονεῖν which imply 'to be discreet (Ag. 1425),
being moderate, having good judgement', and so on. Here, as with
Δίκα (in preference to δίκη) I have used a form or variant of a
specific Greek word in order to suggest a modern philosophical
meaning (or principle) and differentiate it from the conventional
lexicographic meaning. But it would perhaps, with the hindsight of
some years, have been better to avoid confusion and instead given
and then used transliterations - sophronein, Dika - as I did
(following the example of Jung) with ἐναντιοδρομίας/enantiodromia.
That is, using the transliterations as Anglicized terms, as I do
with my usage of πάθει μάθος - especially when the transliteration
is employed - for such Anglicized terms do not follow the correct
Greek grammatical (inflective) usage, with my writings thus
employing expressions such as "a pathei-mathos", "that
pathei-mathos", "which pathei-mathos", "our accumulated
pathei-mathos", "my pathei-mathos", and of course "the philosophy of
pathei-mathos".
In other words, my usage of
some Greek terms - and the meaning I assign to some others - is
somewhat idiosyncratic, often philosophical; and although I have
endeavoured to explain my usage and meaning in essays and
commentaries, obviously this has not always been successful or as
pedantic as it perhaps should have been.
Thus when I, some years ago now, first published my translation of
fragment 1 of Heraclitus - without commentary - it led to a Greek
scholar, then in Oxford, to ask about my seeming neglect of ἀεὶ. In
correspondence I explained my usage, later incorporating part of
that correspondence into a brief commentary which I appended to the
translation, writing in the commentary that "in my view, tend to
captures the poetic sense of ἀεὶ here. That is, the literal - the
bland, strident - 'always' is discarded in favour of a more
Heraclitean expression of human beings having an apparently rather
irreconcilable tendency - both now and as in the past - to ignore
(or forget or not understand) certain things, even after matters
have been explained to them (they have heard the explanation) and
even after they have discovered certain truths for themselves." [4]
Therefore, and as I mentioned in the introduction to my Poemandres,
some may well consider the words of Diogenes Laertius about Plato -
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 3.1 (64) - apposite in relation
to my idiosyncratic use of some Greek terms:
χρῆται δὲ ὁ Πλάτων ἐνίοτε αὐτῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ κακοῦ: ἔστι δ
̓ ὅτε καὶ
ἐπὶ τοῦ μικροῦ. πολλάκις δὲ καὶ διαφέρουσιν ὀνόμασιν ἐπὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ
σημαινομένου χρῆται.
David Myatt
2015
Extract from a letter to an academic correspondent, with
footnotes added post scriptum.
[1] My translation, from Ιερός Λόγος: An Esoteric Mythos. A
Translation Of And A Commentary On The Third Tractate Of The
Corpus Hermeticum. 2015.
[2] Quidditas being 11th/12th century post-classical Latin, from
whence derived the scholastic term 'quiddity'.
[3] Towards Understanding Physis. The essay in included in Sarigthersa:
Some Recent Essays. 2015.
[4] "Although this naming and expression [which I explain]
exists, human beings tend to ignore it, both before and after they
have become aware of it. Yet even though, regarding such naming and
expression, I have revealed details of how Physis has been cleaved
asunder, some human beings are inexperienced concerning it, fumbling
about with words and deeds, just as other human beings, be they
interested or just forgetful, are unaware of what they have done."
The translation - together with the Greek text and a brief
commentary - is included as an appendix to Towards Understanding
Physis.