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This chaper explores the question of monstrosity through the conflictual nature of the archaic and ancient mythology. Already in the early cosmogonies, monstrosity fights for alternative orders of being. Against them, normality is established through a long, painful, and challenging process in which, curiously, monstrosity is not only the principal enemy, but also one of the tools that paradoxically helps the mainstream forces to establish themselves. The material analysed in this chapter constitutes the ground to present the passage from myth to logos and to better understand the genealogy of two alternative visions of nature, i.e. materialism and idealism which, long before the great Attic systematisations, divide the field of pre-Platonic philosophy.

Love of beauty has long been recognised as a major theme in Sufi literature. Among numerous Sufis who spoke on beauty, Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 1209) stands out for the sheer amount and sophistication of his discussion on beauty, expressed in prose and verse, in Arabic and Persian. His analysis of beauty may appear reminiscent of Plotinus’s thought, though it is virtually impossible to prove the latter’s influence on Rūzbihān. Instead of attempting to prove or disprove ‘influence’, the present study compares Plotinus and Rūzbihān — with occasional reference to the Arabic Plotinus corpus — on key questions on beauty, including its origin, its role in cosmogony, why human beings find beauty to be attractive and pleasurable, proper attitude to bodily beauty, difference between beauty and goodness, and why beauty mattered to Rūzbihān and Plotinus. A three-directional comparison of Plotinus, Rūzbihān, and the Arabic Plotinus on questions on beauty reveals unexpected affinities and divergences of thought among them.

The chapter proposes that practicing a consistent style, distinct from the varied stylistic practices of the Levant, helped to bolster Assyrian state consolidation as a community of culturally conversant courtiers. It first articulates the traits that have defined an Assyrian state style, considering aspects of homogeneity across media, technique, scale, and context. Then a case study of images of booty and tribute highlights the oppositional nature of the Assyrian style that defines itself chiefly in contrast to others. The strong, coherent, and consistent style produced by the Assyrian state was part of an active strategy for maintaining a memory of conquest over the vanquished Other, at the same time neutralizing the Other so it could no longer threaten Assyria. Thus the rendering of otherness acted to establish norms of “being Assyrian” through a process of stylistic Assyrianization that emptied the Other of its own stylistic identity. The controlled and orderly nature of the Assyrian style further suggest an underlying allusion to cosmogonic myths of creation, in particular that of Enuma Elish, such that the creation of an Assyrian world through a pervasive style coextends with the divine world and cosmic order.

This chapter returns to Plato’s Timaeus as the cosmological precursor of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. It focuses on the central part of the dialogue, where a “third kind” or “errant cause” is added to Being and Becoming as a proto-material context or space which provides the basis for Being’s embodiment as the world of Becoming in the cosmogony. Variously called receptacle, chôra (space), necessity, gold, a nurse, a mother, a wax tablet, the substrate of an ointment, the receptacle/chôra is a restless figure, and also the source of cosmic motion. The relationship among being, becoming, and persuasion is examined, and the feminine valence of the receptacle/chôra is explored in relation to its uptake by Kristeva, Irigaray, Derrida, and Sallis. The errancy and femininity of the receptacle/chôra means that it offers a certain potential for aleatory feminism that is reduced, pacified, and systematized in Aristotelian matter.