Paper short abstract:

In this paper – against the common understanding of Plato’s hostility towards matter – sports and embodied interaction shall be discussed as major paradigms of his thought. The main issue will be, that Plato discusses Mimesis not as representation (as does Aristotle), but along a broader concept of participation (methexis).

Paper long abstract:

Participation figures prominently in current phenomenology of embodied interaction in terms of intercorporality (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), shared motor space (as discussed in neurosciences), or "second person" phenomenology (Shaun Gallagher). Plato has integrated very similar aspects in his concept of mimesis. For him neither things/deeds/actions (pragmata), nor humans have their being or Dasein (ousia) by themselves, but in a partaking relation to their use/work (ergon), which sometimes is also conceived of as a transcendent principle (eidos). This is, what his theory of mimesis is concerned about; and it thereby includes one of the most elaborate theories of understanding as being a fact of both participating/partaking in the understood and understanding as producing knowledge about the understood.

A major point of my paper will be to re-discuss Plato's concept of relating imitation and participation in a less transcendence-focused key. It shall be confronted with more current theories of mimesis by Michel Leiris, Theodor W. Adorno, René Girard and Michael Taussig. The aim is to thereby open up the concept of mimesis for better discussing cultural practises - like sports and ecstatic rites -, in which shared states (like moods) and body knowledge can figure as epistemic.