chapter 10 the monism of darkness and the dualism of limit and ...

80 CHAPTER 10
Hesiodic derivation of Aether and Day from the couple of Night and
Erebos (with the difference that no World-creation ensues from these
complex ramifications but moves separately, in Hesiod, following
another line of development) leads to the Cosmogony that Carneades
used in order to refute mythology. Cicero, De Natura Deorum III, 44:
from the primary couple of Erebos and Night arise the following
deities: the couple of Aether and Day, Eros and the divine company of
Deception, Sickness, Old Age, Death, Eris, Toil and Pain, Sleep and
Dreams, Fates, Hesperidae and Nemesis, the whole company that
according to Hesiod proceeds from Night alone. (Maybe the company
of these divinities is “the great number of other gods” that according to
Eudemus were born from Night and Erebos in Acousilaus’ system).
Sky is born from Aether and Day 35 , and the usual, commonly
recurring succession follows. A similar syncretism with typical
duplications of first principles is expressed in the schematic theogony
at the beginning of Hyginus, Fabulae p. 9-10 Schmidt. From
primordial Darkness or Mist (ùÚÊÓË, caligo) Chaos is born; from
Chaos and Darkness Night, Day, Erebos and Aether spring forth.
From Erebos and Night the dark Hesiodic deities are born, and from
Aether and Day the elementary parts of the World (Earth, Sky, Sea).
This model comes closer to the Hesiodic segregation and isolation of
Night’s issue from the constitutive arrangement of the Cosmic Nexus
of Order. In Acousilaus the Orphic principle of the Monism of
Darkness remains essentially intact since the whole processionary
constitution of reality passes through Night (and Erebos).
Nevertheless, the installation of Chaos instead of Darkness (Night) on
the very top of the pyramid together with the approximation of the
Hesiodic groupings indicated above reveal a startling underestimation
of the dark principle. Chaos evolves into either spatial receptacle or
homogeneous mixture of everything, losing thus its dynamic, cuttingedge
quality 36 . Unlimitedness (\AappleÂÈÚ›·) becomes compliant
Passivity, ballast at the most and impediment of activity and active
agency at the worse. Cosmic Darkness retains, by reason of the fear
attached to it, the experience of inexhaustible dynamism and
unsurpassable potency but when it progressively becomes
mathematicized as a result of the positions and movements of
heavenly bodies, that experience becomes weaker and obtuser.