Гректік мифологиясындағы даймон ұғымы

Lesser divinity or personified abstract concept in classical Greek mythology

The Ancient Greek: δαίμων, pronounced daimon or daemon (meaning "god", "godlike", "power", "fate"), originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word is derived from Proto Indo European daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from the root *da "to divide". Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age acting as tutelary deities, according to entry δαίμων at Liddell & Scott. See also daimonic: a religious, philosophical, literary and psychological concept.

Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium). According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon " but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres, not daimones. The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects. The use of daimōn in the New Testament's original Greek text caused the Greek word to be applied to the Judeo Christian concept of an evil spirit by the early second century AD.

Homer's use of the words theoí (θεοί, "gods") and daímones (δαίμονες) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in Cratylus speculates that the word daimōn (δαίμων, "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn (δαήμων, "knowing or wise"); however, it is more probably daiō (δαίω, "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot").

In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above " (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimōnion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul, his newfound self consciousness. Paul Shorey sees the daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests." Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings " Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual, a daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon. Burkert states that in the Symposium, Plato has "laid the foundation" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the daimon in any other way with Eros, who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and his metaphysical doctrine of an incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia  identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed. In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end point. That even this is a self projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher, was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous. He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon. In the Archaic or early Classical period, the daimon had been democratized and internalized for each person, whom it served to guide, motivate, and inspire, as one possessed of such good spirits. Similarly, the first century Roman imperial cult began by venerating the genius or numen of Augustus, a distinction that blurred in time.