Pherekydes Of Syros (presocratic, Philosophy, Theo-cosmogony).

This dissertation is an attempt to reconstruct systematically the theo-cosmology of Pherekydes of Syros. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of tradition and innovation in Pherekydes' description of the cosmos and its gods. My research is based upon the fragments that survive from Pherekydes' book itself and upon the testimonia of other authors from antiquity. In Chapter One I collect and evaluate the biographical data on Pherekydes. Chapter Two examines the first creation undertaken by Chronos, one of Pherekydes' three pre-existing deities (next to Zas and Chthonie). It is at once a theogony and a cosmogony as the birth of the gods from the mixtures of Chronos' seed invest their birthplaces, called mychoi (nooks), with reality as cosmic regions. In its mythopoeic presuppositions, Pherekydes' creation account recalls the theogonies of Hesiod and the Orphics; in its rudimentary concepts of time and space, it allows comparison with the cosmologies of the Presocratic philosophers, notably Anaximander. The chapter concludes with a list of Pherekydes' seven cosmic divisions. The marriage of Zas and Chthonie, the subject of Chapter Three, represents the second creation and involves a discussion of the following: the act of investiture by which the earth-principle becomes the actual earth; the idea of god as cosmic craftsman; the role of cosmogonical Eros (with parallels from Orphic cosmogony); the divine wedding as prototype for human institutions and the emergence of Zas as the founder of the present world-order; finally, the image of the cosmic tree. The order instituted by the three original gods is challenged by Ophioneus, a snake-god similar to Hesiod's Typhoeus. Chapter Four consequently compares and contrasts the battle of the gods in Pherekydes with the traditional theomachies of Greek as well as certain Near-Eastern myths. Chapter Five scrutinizes the sources that attest Pherekydes was the first to proclaim the immortality of the soul and to teach transmigration. This study shows Pherekydes as a transitional figure between myth and philosophy. While his thought and language are still shaped by earlier mythological constructs, certain elements of his theo-cosmology foreshadow ideas found in Presocratic and later Greek philosophy, and continue to be of consequence for modern philosophy.Ph.D.Classical literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127677/2/8425204.pd