All modern critics have read verses 128–36 of Pseudo-Scymnus’ iambic Periodos to Nicomedes (c.133–110/109 b.c.e.) as a description of the personal autopsies of the author. However, close analysis of ...both the literary dynamics of the poem and the syntax of the lacunose text that precedes this passage shows that this cannot be the case. This article proposes that Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.350–260 b.c.e.) is a superior candidate for the referent of these lines, and offers a coherent approach to emending the manifestly corrupt text. This reinterpretation makes better sense of the extant text of the Periodos, and allows these verses to be read as a second-century witness to Timaeus’ autoptic prowess.
Plato’s
contains an argument that vice is involuntary. Here I present an interpretation of that argument and, upon doing so, relate the underlying conception of voluntariness to that found in ...Aristotle’s
. I argue that in the
, for something to be voluntary it must be caused by the agent’s intellect (
) in a certain way. This idea, in turn, relies on an identification of the agent with her intellect: the reason that what is voluntary must be caused by the agent’s intellect is that what is voluntary is what the agent herself is responsible for. The conception of the voluntary in the
differs less radically than one might think. There too Aristotle wishes to respect the idea that there is an important connection between what is voluntary and what is caused by our rational capacities, but he differs in how he fills out the relevant rational capacities.
Plato's dialogue the Timaeus-Critias presents two connected accounts, that of the story of Atlantis and its defeat by ancient Athens and that of the creation of the cosmos by a divine craftsman. This ...book offers a unified reading of the dialogue. It tackles a wide range of interpretative and philosophical issues. Topics discussed include the function of the famous Atlantis story, the notion of cosmology as 'myth' and as 'likely', and the role of God in Platonic cosmology. Other areas commented upon are Plato's concepts of 'necessity' and 'teleology', the nature of the 'receptacle', the relationship between the soul and the body, the use of perception in cosmology, and the work's peculiar monologue form. The unifying theme is teleology: Plato's attempt to show the cosmos to be organised for the good. A central lesson which emerges is that the Timaeus is closer to Aristotle's physics than previously thought.
In the
, human bodies are treated as homeostatic systems, striving to maintain their natural state. This striving constitutes Plato’s explanatory framework for perception: perceptions come about ...when the equilibrium is shaken, and when it is restored. The article makes two main suggestions: first, that experienced pleasure and pain are grounded in non-experiential departures from and restorations of the natural state. Second, that the striving to maintain the natural state grounds perceptual interests, especially through conscious algesic and hedonic affection. Explanation of what humans find desirable and avoidable in their environment – what they attend to – is a complicated story that in the context of the
must include the role of human rational abilities. This article, however, only sheds light on its other, very basic aspect: the teleology involved in bodies and how it affects perceptual interests.
Scholarship on Plato's
has paid relatively little attention to
. 77a–81, a seemingly disjointed passage on topics including plants, respiration, blood circulation, and musical sounds. Despite this ...comparative neglect, commentators both ancient and modern have levelled a number of serious charges against Timaeus' remarks in the passage, questioning the coherence and explanatory power of what they take to be a theory of respiration. In this paper, I argue that the project of 77a–81e is not to sketch theories of respiration, circulation, and digestion (
), but to explain how the human body is maintained in light of and despite constant environmental depletion. Further, I argue that in order to understand this account of “the replenishing system,” we need to understand Timaeus' striking analogy of the fish trap or
. Commentators have generally focused directly on the workings of the bodily construction that Timaeus likens to a fish trap, but without considering how we should understand the analogy
analogy. I develop a functional reading of the analogy that yields a coherent account of the replenishing system on which previous criticisms of Timaeus' remarks on respiration do not arise. Aside from lending greater unity to the passage, both internally and within its immediate context in the dialogue, this account of the replenishing system contributes to our understanding of Timaeus' reason-and-necessity explanatory framework as applied to the human body and has noteworthy implications for specific explanatory principles, in particular like-to-like motion and circular thrust.
The Intellect and the cosmos Brisson, Luc
Methodos (Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France),
03/2016, Volume:
16
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The complex, and even contradictory character of the demiurge in Plato’s Timaeus has given rise to multiple interpretations from Antiquity to our time, even if the demiurge is usually considered as ...an intellect: intellect of the world soul, productive aspect of the Forms, Prime Mover, divinity carrying out a plan like the God of Genesis, instrument of the Good. The debate remains open, but it is important to note the originality of the Timaeus: it is the only cosmogony of Antiquity that involves a divinity that works, and that imposes mathematics as a privileged instrument of order.
This paper defends the unity of Plato’s conception of nature and shows the doctrinaire continuity between the Timaeus and the theory exposed in Book X of the Laws. In addition, it argues for the ...identification of the evil soul in the Laws with the chora in the Timaeus and the somatoeides in the Statesman. In this way the Sophistic opposition between material nature and the soul that depends on it is overcome through the differentiation between a strong meaning of physis (mind and its derivatives) and a weakened meaning of it (the chora and its derivatives, where the derivatives of the chora are the result of the action of the mind over it).
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