Symploke and Metaxy. A reading of the image in Plato and Aristotle in order to analyse digital appearance

Abstract

This article examines two conceptions around the image of classical philosophy, in order to rehearse a re-reading of the digital appearance or “image-pixel”. From Plato, we consider the idea of the image as symploke of being and not being: the image, as a translucent skin that accompanies all things, comes off, like a fine film, from those same things, and can be inscribed on a surface (this is the role of the painter). From Aristotle, the concept of the diaphanous is examined, a common potency to everything, which operates as an intermediary instance (metaxy) for the emergence of the visible things. Both concepts help to understand the radical nature of the digital image, understood as an immanent modality of the „appearance‟ that is not inscribed on any surface or support, leading us to think of the figure of a hyper-medial new diaphaneity (the pixel).