Platón a evropská tradice vztahu filosofie a hudby

Abstract

The article focuses on the relationship between philosophy and music in the history of European thinking since the Antiquity until the Early Modern Period. Two types of discussions on music in Plato's dialogues are considered as a starting point. The first type refers to the ability of music to influence human behavior (ethos), which according to Plato could be used for education and statebuilding. The second type relates to a possibility to express mathematically a tone system in terms of numerical proportions. This principle was discovered by the Pythagoreans, who incorporated it into their cosmological concepts. Plato used it as well as a part of his cosmology in his dialogue Timaeus. The work follows the further development of these ideas between the late Antiquity and the Early Modern Period.