Plato
Plato
Bio Sketch
Plato (c. 428-348 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. Plato's theory of Forms posited eternal, unchanging ideals behind the world of appearances. His dialogue Timaeus introduced the concept of chora (space/receptacle), which Derrida deconstructed.
Key Works
- Republic
- Timaeus
- Phaedrus
- Symposium
Key Concepts
Relevance to Geoffrey's Research
Plato's chora is the target of Derrida's deconstruction in the Chora L Works project with Eisenman. His metaphysics is what Derrida critiques as the "last fortress" architecture must deconstruct.
Source Support
- source-notes/coyne-derrida-for-architects
- source-notes/kidder-gadamer-for-architects
- Ornament and Order (Soulillou 2002/2006) — the Gorgias as the decorative arts' founding prosecution: in Socrates's flattery-theory (kolakeia), the four sophistry/legislation, dress/gymnastics, rhetoric/justice, cooking/medicine pairs "coincide with other oppositions that assume not only moral but social significance" — dress (kommô) as "a pernicious substitute for gymnastics" contrasting "the natural with the artificial" — "the opposition between a free man (eleutheros) and he who is not" (p. 317); the passage that makes dress and rhetoric the excluded arts ("the decorative is situated on the side of that which is an object of exclusion: dress and rhetoric in the Gorgias," p. 320) and begins the genealogy by which the applied/decorative arts inherit the servile pole (see free-and-not-free, the-decorative).
