Abstract

The essay is an explanation of the original meaning of Plato's definition of wonder as the beginning of philosophy through critical rejection of its redefinitions by Aristotle, Stoics and finally by Spinoza and Hegel. By doing so we remember the early Greek experience of wonder as thaumazein, where it first and foremost means the basic disposition of the presence of the divine, as well as the human participation in it. It corresponds to the role of "pathetic" in wonder, which is highly stressed in Plato, but is suppressed and forgotten in centuries to come. For Plato, wonder stems from the situation of insurmountable "pathlessness", which already in Aristotle acquires a much narrower meaning of the starting point for methodical certain advancement of philosophical science, which must be categorically abandoned. By explaining Diotima's teaching in Symposium, the essay determines "pathlessness" quite differently as the only suitable "place" of true philosophizing, which should be preserved at any price and kept open as the "midst" for the worldly game of immortals and mortals