Platon ve Kur’an’da Mimesisin Mimarisi

Year 2025, Issue: 9, 29 - 45, 23.10.2025

Victoria Rowe Holbrook

https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1802850

Abstract

Mimesisi anlama biçimimiz, epistemoloji, fizik ve siyasi yaşamda olduğu kadar sanatta da temsil için temel öneme sahiptir. Hakikat/gerçek kopyalanabilir mi? Hakikatin ve gerçekliğin ne olduğu konusundaki en etkili anlayış, ilahi olanın yanlış temsili olarak şiiri eleştiren Platon’dan gelmiştir. Nadiren tanımlanan Yeni Platonculuk, Arapça yazan dokuz ve onuncu yüzyıl filozoflarına rutin olarak atfedilse de ben ve diğerleri, Kur’an-ı Kerim’in dilsel ortamından başlayarak, İslam edebiyatı ve kültürünün tamamında Platon’un ne kadar çok yer aldığını gözden kaçırmışızdır. Ancak Platon’un tarihî İslam toplumlarında saygı gördüğü iyi bilinmektedir. İbn Sina (ö. 1037) ve diğerleri onu “ilahi Platon” olarak adlandırmış ve tek tanrılı gelenekte bir peygamber olarak görmüşlerdir. Mimesis ve İslam üzerine şu anda az sayıda çalışma bulunmaktadır ve ben bu çalışmada özellikle Kur’an-ı Kerim’de mimesis ve şiirle ilgili Platonik konulara ve bunları anlamak için gerekli olan yönteme odaklanacağım.

Keywords

Platon , Kur’an , mimesis , geç antik , şiir , post-hakikat

The Architecture of Mimesis in Plato and in the Quran

Abstract

The way we understand mimesis is fundamental to epistemology, physics, and representation in political life as well as in the arts. Can truth/reality be copied? The most enduring understanding of what truth and reality are has come to us from Plato, who launched an attack on poetry as false representation of the divine. Although a rarely defined Neoplatonism is routinely attributed to the ninth and tenth-century philosophers who wrote in Arabic, I and others have overlooked how much of Plato there is in the whole of Islamicate literature and culture, beginning with the linguistic environment of the Quran. But it is well known that Plato was revered in historical Islamicate societies; Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037) and many others referred to him as “the divine Plato,” and considered him a prophet in the monotheistic tradition. There is now a small body of work on mimesis and Islam, but here I will look specifically at Platonic topics found in the Quran with regard to mimesis and poetry, and the kind of methodology needed to appreciate them.

Keywords

Plato , Quran , mimesis , Late Antique , poetry , post-truth

Supporting Institution

The author declares that no specific funding was received for this research.

Thanks

This work did not involve the use of any AI-assisted tools. The entire content was produced by the author, and its accuracy has been confirmed.

References

• Alon, Ilai. Socrates in Mediaeval Arabic Literature. E. J. Brill, The Magnes Press, 1991. al-Azmeh, Aziz. The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and his People. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
• al-Sharkawi, Muhammed. History and Development of the Arabic Language. Routledge, 2016.
• Arnzen, Rudiger. “Plato, Arabic.” In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, edited by Henrik Lagerlund. Springer, 2020.
• Arzhanov, Yuri. “Plato in Syriac Literature.” Le Muséon 132, no. 1–2 (2019): 1–36.
• Asmis, Elizabeth, ed. “Beauty, Harmony, and the Good.” Special issue of Classical Philology 105, no. 4 (2010).
• Badawi, El-Said M. and M. A. Abdel Haleem. Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur’anic Usage. Brill, 2008.
• Barney, Rachael. “Notes on Plato on the Kalon and the Good.” Classical Philology 105, no. 4 (2010): 363–77.
• Belhaj, Abdessamad. “The Dialectics of the Quran Through 2:258.” Islamic Studies 51, no. 3 (2012): 263-273.
• Chittick, William C. The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology. State University of New York Press, 1998.
• ———. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination. State University of New York Press, 1989.
• Cooper, John M. and D. S. Hutchinson. eds. Plato: Complete Works. Hackett, 1997.
• Fudge, Bruce. “Mimesis and the Representation of Reality in the Qurʾan.” In Non Sola Scriptura, Essays on the Qur’an and Islam in Honour of Bill Graham, edited by Bruce Fudge, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Christian Lange, and Sarah Bowen Savan. Routledge, 2022.
• Gibson, Twyla. “Epilogue to Plato: The Bias of Literacy.” Proceedings of the Media Ecology Association 6, (2005): 47-67.
• Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum. Accessed July 29, 2025. https://glossga.bbaw.de/index.html
• Griswold, Charles L. “Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Spring 2024. Accessed October 8, 2025. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/plato-rhetoric/
• Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). Routledge, 1998.
• Holbrook, Victoria Rowe. “Divided Line and Degrees of Being,” In Long Platonism. The Routes of Plato’s Reception to the Italian Renaissance, edited by Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides and Georgios Steiris. Forthcoming.
• Kirwan, Michael and Ahmed Achtar, eds. Mimetic Theory and Islam. “The Wound Where Light Enters.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
• Lane, Edward William. An Arabic-English Lexicon. Librarie du Liban, 1968.
• Moseley, Geoffrey James. Plato Arabus: On the Arabic Transmission of Plato’s Dialogues. Texts and Studies. PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2017.
• Most, Glenn W. Most. “What Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry?” In Plato and the Poets, edited by Pierre Destrée and Fritz-Gregor Herrmann. Brill, 2011.
• Murata, Sachiko and William C. Chittick. The Vision of Islam. Paragon House, 1994.
• Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard, and Mohammed Rustom. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. Harper One, 2015.
• Pappas, Nickolas. “Plato’s Aesthetics.”The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited byEdward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Summer 2025. Accessed October 8, 2025. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/plato-aesthetics/
• ———. “Mimêsis in Aristophanes and Plato.” Philosophical Inquiry 21, (1999): 61-78.
• Patel, Youshaa. The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line Between Believers from Early Islam to the Present. Yale University Press, 2022.
• Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Revision C.D.C. Reeve. In Cooper, 1997.
• ———. Philebus. Translated by Dorathea Frede. In Cooper, 1997.
• ———. Symposium. Translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. In Cooper 1997.
• Shaw, Wendy M. K. What is Islamic Art?: Between Religion and Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
• Sherman, William. “Finding the Quran in Imitation, Critical Mimesis from Musaylima to Finnegan’s Wake.” Reorient 9, no. 1 (2024): 50-69.
• Tamer, George. “Hellenistic Ideas of Time in the Koran.” In Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Course of History: Exchange and Conflicts, edited by Lothar Gall and Dietmar Willoweit. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2011.
• ———. Zeit und Gott. Hellenistische Zeitvorstellungen in der altarabischen Dichtung und im Koran (Studien Zur Geschichteund Kültür des islamischen Orients N.F. 20). De Gruyter, 2008.
• Taşan, Nazım. “Klasik Şiirin Kaynağı: Mimesis Karşısında İlhamın İmkânı.” Pamukkale Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 10, no. 2 (2023): 551-568.
• Wehr, Hans. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J. Milton Cowan. Spoken Language Services, by permission of Otto Harrassowitz 1994.
• Zekavat, Massih. “A Comparative Study of the Poetics of Plato and Qur’an.” Primerjalna književnost 38, no. 3 (2015): 39-58.