The theater of relations in Vernant’s the origins of greek thought

Abstract

In this study, dedicated specifically to The Origins of Greek Thought, we would like to show how Vernant’s analysis method of the different moments that defined the human’s history proceeds above all through the systematic examination of the constitutive relations that differentiated them as such or such. However, as its development is unfolded, we also believe that we can demonstrate the existence of a thought implicating a series of concepts that, from the perspective of a philosophical reflection, have inseparably bounded to them an understanding on the problem of the nature of action, as well as the relation between action and the sense or animation that it expresses in its performance. When defining the different elements and roles of a historical context, not as isolated terms in and by themselves, but through the complex state of interactions which they found themselves in, Vernant demonstrates to conceive a character as that which distinguishes itself for the actions he performs, but these actions, on the other hand, as an activity that solely differentiates as such or such together with what it’s interacting with. Furthermore, this condition has shown us to be accompanied by the capacity of action to express the constitutive relations that it entertains with its surroundings. Far from suggesting a timeless Form that could subsist indifferent to the changes happening at the level of the interactions between the elements of a network of relations, the animations expressed by its characters are autochtonous and varies at the same speed in which their activity transforms.