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Plato often turned to myth in ways that were complementary, rather than antithetical, to the kind of critical reasoning exhibited in the more argumentative parts of his writing. Plato’s myths end up being a distinct form of philosophical discourse in their own right, exploring aspects of our worldviews that are so deeply ingrained that they are difficult to pick apart solely through critical reason. The Myth of Metals [for instance] does not just make sweeping claims about what individuals are and are not naturally suited for. It also prompts a philosophical reimagination of the very concept of nature

In borrowing from the conventions of Greek mythology to create his own philosophical myths, Plato was attesting to the power of myth to reach, and to reshape, the stories we take for granted about our natural and social world. Such stories, in turn, can provide a stable imaginative framework of values and expectations for organising political experiences in meaningful ways, and can be vital to framing the way we think about our environment and our places in it

Plato’s myths, read without the baggage of the Enlightenment narratives told about him, serve as a reminder that myth did not always stand for the opposite of philosophy. Plato was himself well aware of the dangers of myth. But this awareness was part of a broader appreciation of its power and its possibilities, one that recognised the full range of myth’s potential to be both harmful and constructive for philosophy and politics. Above all, Plato’s understanding of myth stemmed from the position that our worldviews are underpinned by deeper, more elusive narratives that may be more easily accessed and shaped by the mechanisms of myth than those of rational argument. This insight was something that Plato applied to philosophers themselves. As Socrates suggests to his interlocutors in the Republic, the long process of educating the philosopher-guardians of their ideal city must be approached ‘as if we were at leisure and telling myths’

Plato’s own philosophical reinvention of myth also suggests that myths can be reworked in creative ways. Myths are not monoliths impervious to change, but dynamic stories open to reinterpretation every time they are retold

Poetic Influence–when it involves two strong, authentic poets–always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main traditions of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature of distortion, of perverse, willful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist

In your view, what is the dialectic between philosophy and kabbalah?

I don’t believe there can be a neat bifurcation between kabbalah and philosophy and the Maimonidean impetus for the development of kabbalistic theology is a critical focal point to demonstrate this. Scholars of Jewish mysticism have already argued for the Maimonidean influence on kabbalah - and not simply as an antagonist but as a positive catalyst for kabbalah’s formation. Maimonides’ influence on the Zohar is still a scholarly desideratum but I deal with one particular example where the Zohar’s mystical/sefirotic exegesis of a key verse in Maimonidean hermeneutics is fueled by Maimonides’ own pragmatic, rationalist reading of it