Mimesis e ripresentazione. Dal platonismo all'ermeneutica

This paper aims at reconstructing the critical debate about mimesis which occurs in the platonic literature of the twentieth century to show how much it influenced the thesis of contemporary Hermeneutics. Interpretations of the so-called “contradictory” use of mimesis in Plato were offered at the beginning of the twentieth century by scholars like Verdenius, Tate, Flashar, Koller et. al. These constitued, in their asking for a new reading of the conflict that this notion generates in the main features of platonic thought, the basis for a new theoretical expansion of the mimesis in the most recent years. The first thesis of this paper is that such positions as Gadamer's, Ricoeur's or even Derrida's about the role of the mimesis in the context of the new hermeneutical experienced were probably, even if not always expressly, influenced by this historical debate. The second, and conclusive, is that only from a dialectical composition between the two critical tendencies in platonic literature (the preserving one and the critical one) is possible to render that central role of mimesis in every experience of signification which illustrates, in many cases better than notions like methexis or parousia, that hierarchical and dialectical constitution of Being in which the core of Plato's Philosophy lies.