Hesiod’s Cosmos: A Linguistic-Mathematic View

Hesiodo’s Cosmos: A Linguistic-Mathematic View (digital)

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“The main purpose of this book is to prove that the structure of Hesiod’s cosmos is supported by philosophical thought.

This project started in 2002 when I began to prepare my PhD dissertation, in which this book is based. Since there I have developed and improved my own techniques of research using mathematical and linguistic methodology. They have been applied in this book to understand the concepts of chaos and moira in Hesiod. I have applied that methodology to study and understand other texts from the Ancient Near-East, from India and also from Greece.

My mathematical and logical formation is present in most of this book, however I tried to explain in my best way the specific concepts of those disciplines that appear through the book. It is a book intended for philosophers, humanists and in general, people interested in cosmogonies and the origin of the philosophical speculation. I feel the need to apologise to the reader about the use of terminology from logic, set theory and physics, but I cannot explain the world without those disciplines.

The book starts with an analysis of Hesiod’s Theogony and ends with an excursus on some of the pre-Socratics.

The first chapter offers a general vision of Hesiod and his work, following a Hesiodic theme: justice, this leads us to the basis of his moral system. Here, I also analyse etymologies of words relevant to the study of Hesiod’s works and the positions of other scholars with respect to them.

The next chapter deals with Hesiod´s cosmogony, focusing on the concept of chaos, as understood since Antiquity, and my proposal equating chaos with the logical concept of ‘empty set’. Subsequently, I present an analogical model, where Chaos-Gaia-Ouranos are compared to 0-1-2 (considered as the sequence of the three first natural numbers), associating Chaos (‘the number 0’) with the first that came into being, Gaia (‘the number 1’) with internal otherness, so as to separate herself from Ouranos, who, like ‘the number 2’, is associated with multiplicity.

Chapter Three is dedicated to the concept of moira in Hesiod, and its reception in other archaic cosmogonies, allowing me to propose a model for moira linked to ‘the will of Zeus’ and the manifestation of his justice, as the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis that supports the Hesiodic cosmos.

Chapter Four shows how some elements of the Hesiodic cosmogony were understood by some of the pre-Socratic philosophers, showing a way to evaluate the degree of complexity of those concepts, when compared with their Hesiodic counterparts.

Finally we arrive at the general conclusion that chaos is a logical object in the foundation of the Hesiodic cosmogony and that moira and the ‘will of Zeus’, manifesting his justice, constitute the logical structure of Hesiod’s cosmos. The comparison with the pre-Socratics shows that the described Hesiodic thought have a considerable degree of complexity, in no way inferior to the ones developed by the pre-Socratics.”

António José Gonçalves de Freitas

Volume 71 – 2015

ISSN: 0103-3247

OBS. The main purpose of this book is to show that the structure of Hesiod’s Cosmos stands on a philosophical reflection. The author made this analysis from a linguistic and mathematic point of view, offering models that explain concepts like Chaos or Moira and proposing a new reading for specific verbal forms. The author uses a set theoretical approach, logical and linguistic analysis of texts in a comparative way, ending with a brief comparison between Hesiod and some of the pre-Socratics.