Vloga konja v antični filozofiji

The horse is a frequent figure of comparison or metaphor in ancient philosophy. As early as the philosophical poem by Parmenides, the philosopher is described as travelling to the cognition of Truth in a chariot drawn by swift mares, while Plato’s dialogues repeatedly compare the training of horses to the human education. Plato’s most famous horse image is his allegory of the winged horses, used in the dialogue Phaedrus (246a−254e) to illustrate the soul’s oscillation between instinct and reason.This common use of the horse image in ancient philosophy is easily attributed to the ancient awareness of the horse as the most useful means of transport and working tool. But this view serves to spark the playful dilemma proposed in the treati- se: if such was the case, contemporary philosophical discourse might well follow the technological progress simply by replacing the image of the horse in the process of truth cognition with, say, a Mercedes.The paper points out the differences between Parmenides’ and Plato’s allegories of the yoked horses. Parmenides’ image of mares is perfectly harmonised with Truth, Aletheia, even at a linguistic level, since the Greek word for ’truth’ is feminine as well. His mares, who are wise themselves, all pull in the same direction, toward a true cognition of what exists. Rather than direct them himself, the philosopher surrenders himself to the wise guides chosen by the goddess Dike. This use of metaphor annihilates any difference between the mortality of the seeker and the divine nature of Truth even at the level of assertion, which corresponds with Parmenides’ philosophical insight that one can think and utter only what really is. In this holistic picture of philosophical search for truth, the horse as a living being of nature embodies ϕύσις, nature, which exists independently of human creative power (ποίησις). Thus it is only with the help of nature that man can ascend to truth.In Plato, by contrast, there is a clear-cut difference between what is recognised as Truth and what is asserted by the philosopher. The horse as an allegory of the human soul now appears in a twofold image: as the good, noble horse headed in the right direction, and as his opposite. Therefore Plato’s horses need a driver (the human reason) to rein the chariot towards perceiving »the plain of Truth« (Phaedrus 248b). According to Plato, then, the difference in the cognitive process does not correspond to the ϕύσις/ποίησις divide but occurs entirely in the field of ποίησις, understood in the broadest sense of human activity. Hence Plato‘s rejection of the ποίησις which is rooted in intuition, imagination and an irrational creative power, and his logical (not paradoxical) establishment of his own philosophy as μεγίστη μουσική. What unites the two philosophers, on the other hand, is a fundamental recognition of the divine nature of truth: truth can only be known to, and practised by, the mortal who realises and admits his own limits of existence, turning away from faith in his own intuition and in the power of his creative imagination.If the image of the horse is silent today, this is due not only to the progress of technology and science, which has invented machines exceeding the strength and capacities of the horse. With the detheologisation and multiplication of truths, played with by the contemporary individual in the name of the Ego’s freedom, man has forgotten the fundamental existential necessity still perceived by the ancient Greeks: it is only by listening to ϕύσις (nature) that man comes near to recognising and prac- tising the truth about the world as a harmony between what he learns, thinks, talks, and does