The Secularization of Revelation from Plato to Freud Angus

This paper will attempt to sketch a historical outline of ideas relating to revelation by tracing the development of a concept or topos which has preoccupied Western thinkers since antiquity and which became crucial during the Romantic period — the concept of the Daemon, and the general mode or sensibility referred to as the “Daemonic.” In Classical thought, the term “Daemonic” is associated with revelation in that it refers to a kind of conduit or nexus between the secular and the divine. Etymologically, the term comes from the Ancient Greek word daíomai — meaning to distribute and divide.1 In this context, the Daemonic refers to the processes by which the Gods allot divine ‘revelations’ or ‘moments of inspiration’ to humans. Related to this notion of the Daemonic is the term Daemon (daijjmwn), which can refer specifically to the fate of an individual, or more generally to a kind of hidden or numinous “force” which shapes a person’s life. It is also in this sense that one speaks of an individual being “possessed” by his or her Daemon as by an alter ego or “other self.”2 I wish to suggest that the notion of the Daemonic and the idea of revelation are connected, and that this connection is most visible when we investigate the way in which both terms have undergone a historical process of secularization, or immanentization: that is to say, a historical development in which the source of revelation, and the location of the Daemon, have both moved from the divine and