The relationship between mind and necessity is one of the major points of difficulty for the interpretation of Plato’s
. At times Timaeus seems to say the demiurge is omnipotent in his creation, and ...at other times seems to say he is limited by pre-existing matter. Most interpretations take one of the two sides, but this paper proposes a novel approach to interpreting this issue which resolves the difficulty. This paper suggests that in his speech Timaeus presents two hypothetical models of creation, one with an omnipotent demiurge and one where he is limited by matter, so as to investigate their theoretical and empirical validity. Further, he shows that each model is ultimately an inadequate explanation of the first principles of the cosmos. Timaeus’ speech is therefore properly understood to be aporetic: it leaves its listeners aware of the difficulties inherent in the two models of creation, but without a more viable alternative.
Les maladies de l’âme Saudelli, Lucia
Mnemosyne,
09/2020, Volume:
74, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Abstract
One of Plato’s principal innovations is the notion of psychic illness. He discusses this topic in different dialogues: in the
Timaeus
the discussion is based on a physiological theory and is ...set in a cosmological framework. The article focuses on this account of the diseases of the soul and explains the ‘diagnostic’ part of it, as well as the ‘therapeutic’ one. It raises three main problems: first, the natural determinism of psychic illness, which is the outcome of bodily defectiveness; second, the interactionist dualism between body and soul, their mutual influence that determines both insanity and health; third, the intellectual moralism, because we should not be held responsible for our mental disabilities.
Plato used mathematics extensively in his account of the cosmos in the Timaeus, but as he did not use equations, but did use geometry, harmony and according to some, numerology, it has not been clear ...how or to what effect he used mathematics. This paper argues that the relationship between mathematics and cosmology is not atemporally evident and that Plato’s use of mathematics was an open and rational possibility in his context, though that sort of use of mathematics has subsequently been superseded as science has progressed. I argue that there is a philosophically and historically meaningful space between ‘primitive’ or unreflective uses of mathematics and the modern conception of how mathematics relates to cosmology. Plato’s use of mathematics in the Timaeus enabled the cosmos to be as good as it could be, allowed the demiurge a rational choice (of which planetary orbits and which atomic shapes to instantiate) and allowed Timaeus to give an account of the cosmos (where if the demiurge did not have such a rational choice he would not have been able to do so). I also argue that within this space it is both meaningful and important to differentiate between Pythagorean and Platonic uses of number and that we need to reject the idea of ‘Pythagorean/Platonic number mysticism’. Plato’s use of number in the Timaeus was not mystical even though it does not match modern usage.
Platone e il vegetarianismo nel Timeo Casella, Federico
Plato : the Internet journal of the International Plato Society,
01/2021, Volume:
21
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
L’articolo analizza la descrizione della natura delle piante e la tacita giustificazione del vegetarianismo fornite da Platone nel Timeo. Tale pratica alimentare sembra assumere un’utilità ...esclusivamente fisiologica: potrebbe darsi che Platone si fosse opposto a quanti professavano il vegetarianismo in qualità di mezzo necessario per purificare l’anima e per raggiungere la felicità, come gli orfici, i pitagorici, Empedocle ma anche il suo discepolo Senocrate. Attraverso il particolare valore attribuito a una dieta vegetariana, Platone priva di validità la pretesa degli altri filosofi: solo lo studio delle idee permette di ottenere la felicità.
Abstract. The aim of this paper is to analyse Plato’s description of plants and his tacit justification of vegetarianism in the Timaeus. This practice seems to possess exclusively a physiological relevance: I argue that Plato is opposing the idea of vegetarianism as a superior way to purify one’s soul and achieve happiness, how it was being professed by the Orphics, the Pythagoreans, Empedocles, and even by his disciple Xenocrates. In the Timaeus, with the justification of vegetarianism only for physiological purposes, Plato is discrediting other philosophers’ conception of vegetarianism and perfect life: only the study of the noetic world grants ultimate happiness.
Recent scholarship has recognized some thematic connections related to onto-cosmological issues between two late Platonic dialogues, such as Philebus and Timaeus, and has tried to explain them in ...different ways. The aim of this paper is to contribute to such a debate by analysing an ancient exegesis of Timaeus 35a1-b4, that of Plutarch of Chaeronea, which made use of the ontological sections of the Philebus (16c-17a and 23c-27c) in his treatise on the cosmogony of the Timaeus. More specifically, this analysis will show that the notions of ‘limit’ and ‘unlimitedness’ played a decisive role in the shaping of the “essence” of the world-soul according to Plutarch.
To this day, Plato's 'Timaeus' grounds the form of ethical and political thinking called 'Natural Law' - the view that there are norms in nature that provide the patterns for our actions and ground ...the objectivity of human values. This book presents a scholarship on Plato's 'Timeaus' by some of the greatest minds alive today.
I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at
86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and ...commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to the body’s influences. In the second section, I argue that every psychic disorder is a disruption of the motions of the inner psychic circles by the body; moreover, I defend my translation of 86b. In the final section, I argue that the goal of education is to restore the circles to their original orbits, and I disarm a possible objection that bad education is also a cause of psychic disorder.
The aim of this paper is to examine the implications of Plato’s use of the term stoicheion, since his awareness of stoicheion’s polysemy reveals his view of the origin, the complexity and, at the ...same time, the order of reality. Moreover, his use of stoicheion allowed him both to inherit and to detach himself from his predecessors. I begin by presenting the history of the notion of stoicheion; then, since one of the meanings of stoicheion is ‘letter of the alphabet’, I focus on the Cratylus, which contains the first of several passages where Plato employs the alphabet as a paradigm for the structure of a complex system. Finally, I turn to the Theaetetus, where Plato, for the first time, uses stoicheion in the sense of ‘element’ and where, through the relation letters/syllables, Plato clarifies that enumeration and juxtaposition are not sufficient to attain the real knowledge. I will argue that only thanks to these steps can we understand the occurrences of stoicheion in the Timaeus, where Plato first states that air, earth, fire and water are not stoicheia tou pantos, and then reveals that, instead, the basic triangles are ‘the elements of the universe’.
This essay explores the way in which early Christian writers held an eschatological understanding of what it is to be human, something that is to be attained, through the transformation of death and ...resurrection, and something that requires our assent. In this context, the article offers a new reading of the late fourth‐century work entitled On the Human Image of God (otherwise known in English as On the Making of Man) by Gregory of Nyssa. It argues that Gregory structured his text in parallel to the three parts of Timaeus’ speech in Plato's dialogue. The resulting picture sees creation as a dynamic ascent from the lower forms of life to the higher, a growth which is recapitulated in the life‐span of each human being, and also the growth of the human race into the totality of human beings that together constitute the human being in the image of God, the body of Christ.
PDF
