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  1. Irrigating Blood: Plato on the Circulatory System, the Cosmos, and Elemental Motion.Douglas Campbell - forthcoming - Journal of the History of Philosophy.
    This article concerns the so-called irrigation system in the Timaeus’ biology (77a-81e), which replenishes our body’s tissues with resources from food delivered as blood. I argue that this system functions mainly by the natural like-to-like motion of the elements and that the circulation of blood is an important case study of Plato’s physics. We are forced to revise the view that the elements attract their like. Instead, similar elements merely tend to coalesce with each other in virtue of their tactile (...)
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  2. The Soul’s Tomb: Plato on the Body as the Cause of Psychic Disorders.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (1):119-139.
    I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 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 (...)
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  3. Plato's Theory of Reincarnation: Eschatology and Natural Philosophy.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Review of Metaphysics 75 (4):643-665.
    This paper concerns the place of Plato’s eschatology in his philosophy. I argue that the theory of reincarnation appeals to Plato due to its power to explain how non-human animals came to be. Further, the outlines of this theory are entailed by other commitments, such as that embodiment disrupts psychic functioning, that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, and that the soul is immortal. I conclude by arguing that Plato develops a view of reincarnation as the chief tool that (...)
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  4. Evil, Demiurgy, and the Taming of Necessity in Plato’s Timaeus.Elizabeth Jelinek & Casey Hall - 2022 - International Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1):5-21.
    Plato’s Timaeus reveals a cosmos governed by Necessity and Intellect; commentators have debated the relationship between them. Non-literalists hold that the demiurge, having carte blanche in taming Necessity, is omnipotent. But this omnipotence, alongside the attributes of benevolence and omniscience, creates problems when non-literalists address the problem of evil. We take the demiurge rather as limited by Necessity. This position is supported by episodes within the text, and by its larger consonance with Plato’s philosophy of evil and responsibility. By recognizing (...)
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  5. Before the Creation of Time in Plato’s Timaeus.Daniel Vázquez - 2022 - In Daniel Vázquez & Alberto Ross (eds.), Time and Cosmology in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. pp. 111–133.
    I defend, against its more recent critics, a literal, factual, and consistent interpretation of Timaeus’ creation of the cosmos and time. My main purpose is to clarify the assumptions under which a literal interpretation of Timaeus’ cosmology becomes philosophically attractive. I propose five exegetical principles that guide my interpretation. Unlike previous literalists, I argue that assuming a “pre-cosmic time” is a mistake. Instead, I challenge the exegetical assumptions scholars impose on the text and argue that for Timaeus, a mere succession (...)
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  6. Os Princípios Explicativos no Timeu de Platão.Luciana Valesca Fabião Chachá - 2018 - Dissertation, Ufrj, Brazil
  7. Making the World Body Whole and Complete: Plato's Timaeus, 32c5-33b1.Brad Berman - 2016 - International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 10 (2):168-192.
    Plato’s demiurge makes a series of questionable decisions in creating the world. Most notoriously, he endeavors to replicate, to the extent possible, some of the features that his model possesses just insofar as it is a Form. This has provoked the colorful complaint that the demiurge is as raving mad as a general contractor who constructs a house of vellum to better realize the architect’s vellum plans (Keyt 1971). The present paper considers the sanity of the demiurge’s reasoning in light (...)
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  8. O'Brien The Demiurge in Ancient Thought: Secondary Gods and Divine Mediators. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 333. £65./$99. 9781107075368. [REVIEW]Alex Long - 2016 - Journal of Hellenic Studies 136:280-281.
  9. Physical Change in Plato's Timaeus.Brian D. Prince - 2013 - Apeiron:1-19.
    In this paper I ask how Timaeus explains change within the trianglebased part of his cosmos. Two common views are that change among physical items is somehow caused or enabled by either the forms or the demiurge. I argue for a competing view, on which the physical items are capable of bringing about change by themselves, prior to the intervention of the demiurge, and prior to their being turned into imitations of the forms. I outline three problems for the view (...)
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  10. One Book, the Whole Universe: Plato’s Timaeus Today, Eds. Richard D. Mohr and Barbara M. Sattler. [REVIEW]Jason W. Carter - 2012 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86 (1):170-173.
  11. A Likely Account of Necessity: Plato’s Receptacle as a Physical and Metaphysical Foundation for Space.Barbara Sattler - 2012 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2):159-195.
    This paper aims to show that—and how—Plato’s notion of the receptacle in the Timaeus provides the conditions for developing a mathematical as well as a physical space without itself being space. In response to the debate whether Plato’s receptacle is a conception of space or of matter, I suggest employing criteria from topology and the theory of metric spaces as the most basic ones available. I show that the receptacle fulfils its main task–allowing the elements qua images of the Forms (...)
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  12. Nature and Divinity in Plato's Timaeus.Sarah Broadie - 2011 - Cambridge University Press.
    Plato's Timaeus is one of the most influential and challenging works of ancient philosophy to have come down to us. Sarah Broadie's rich and compelling study proposes new interpretations of major elements of the Timaeus, including the separate Demiurge, the cosmic 'beginning', the 'second mixing', the Receptacle and the Atlantis story. Broadie shows how Plato deploys the mythic themes of the Timaeus to convey fundamental philosophical insights and examines the profoundly differing methods of interpretation which have been brought to bear (...)
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  13. Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity.David Sedley - 2007 - University of California Press.
    In this book, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of Western ...
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  14. Review: Demiurge and Providence: Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato's Timaeus. [REVIEW]A. Bos - 2000 - The Studia Philonica Annual 12:226-229.
  15. Demiurge and Providence: Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato's Timaeus.Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils - 1999 - Brepols Publishers.
    Of the rich legacy of the Timaeus, this study deals with the cross-pollination between Stoic and Platonist readings of Timaeus, spanning the period from Plato's writings to that of the so-called Middle Platonist authors. Plato's Timaeus and Stoic doctrine had their fates intertwined from very early on, both in polemical and reconciliatory contexts. The blend of Platonic and Stoic elements ultimately constituted one of the main conceptual bridges between the pagan tradition on the one hand and the Judeo-Christian, in its (...)
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  16. The Demiurge and the Forms: A Return to the Ancient Interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus.Eric D. Perl - 1998 - Ancient Philosophy 18 (1):81-92.
  17. The Good or The Demiurge: Causation and the Unity of Good in Plato.Eugenio E. Benitez - 1995 - Apeiron 28 (2):113 - 140.
    In Republic VI 508e-9b Plato has Socrates claim that the Good is the cause (αίτίαν) of truth and knowledge as well as the very being of the Forms. Consequently, as causes must be distinct from and superior to their effects, the Good is neither truth nor knowledge nor even being, but exceeds them all in beauty (509a), as well as in honour and power (509b). No other passage in Plato has had a more intoxicating effect on its readers. To take (...)
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  18. Plato's Theology Reconsidered: What the Demiurge Does.Richard D. Mohr - 1985 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (2):131 - 144.
  19. Plato's Vision of Chaos.Jerry S. Clegg - 1976 - Classical Quarterly 26 (01):52-.
    In the creation myth of the Timaeus Plato describes God as wishing that all things should be good so far as is possible. Wherefore, finding the whole visible sphere of the world not at rest, but moving in an irregular fashion, out of disorder He brought order, thinking that this was in every way an improvement. To achieve His end He placed intelligence in soul and soul in body, reflecting that nothing unintelligent could ever be better than something intelligent . (...)
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  20. The Demiurge and the Good in Plato.Kevin F. Doherty - 1961 - New Scholasticism 35 (4):510-524.
  21. Notes on Some Passages of Plato'S Timaeus.R. Hackforth - 1944 - Classical Quarterly 38 (1-2):33-.
    This famous sentence, which opens the address of the Demiurge to the created gods, has puzzled commentators both ancient and modern. We must, I think, agree with Taylor and Cornford, who both discuss it at length, that no sense can be got out of θεọ θεν taken together, i.e. with a comma after θεν: I need notreproduce their arguments on this point. Accordingly they punctuate after θεọ. Taylor, however, thinks that even so the sentence cannot be translated, and accepts Badham's (...)
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  22. Plato’s Conception of the Cosmos.Hartley B. Alexander - 1918 - The Monist 28 (1):1-24.
  23. Principal Doctrines of Epicurus.Irfan Ajvazi - manuscript
    Epicurean philosophy, as Epicurus's teachings became known, was used as the basis for how the community lived and worked. At the time, founding a school and teaching a community of students was the main way philosophical ideas were developed and transmitted. Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE), for instance, founded a school in Athens called the Lyceum. Epicurus and his disciples believed either there were no gods or, if there were, the gods were so remote from humans that they were not (...)
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