Plato: Natural Science

In this paper I examine the role of optimality reasoning in Aristotle’s natural science. By “optimality reasoning” I mean reasoning that appeals to some conception of “what is best” in order to explain why things are the way they are. We are first introduced to this pattern of reasoning in the famous passage at Phaedo 97b8-98a2, where (Plato’s) Socrates invokes “what is best” as a cause (aitia) of things in nature. This passage can be seen as the intellectual ancestor of (...) Aristotle’s own principle, expressed by the famous dictum “nature does nothing in vain but always what is best for the substance from among the possibilities concerning each kind of animal” (Progression of Animals II, 704b12-18). The paper is focused around exploring three questions that arise in connection with Aristotle’s use of this optimality principle: (1) How do we understand the concept of “the best” at work in the principle? (2) How does Aristotle conceive of “the range of possibilities”? And, finally, (3) what role does optimality reasoning play in Aristotle’s natural science? Is it a special form of demonstration in which the optimality principle functions as one of its premises, or is it a heuristic device that helps uncover those causally relevant features of a natural substances that ultimately serve as middle terms in demonstrations? In the final section I return to the comparison between Plato and Aristotle and argue that, while both see the natural world as the product of an optimizing agent and while both see this assumption as licensing a pattern of reasoning that appeals to a certain conception of “the best”, they disagree fundamentally over what the optimization agent is and how it operates. Thus, despite their general agreement, it would be a mistake to think that Aristotle simply took over Plato’s use of optimality reasoning without significant modifications. (shrink)

This is an essay on perfection and its objects in the Timaeus. Two features of this work are noteworthy. First, the emphasis throughout is on Timaeus' views and not Plato's. Second, I show how broader aspects of Timaeus' cosmology are directly relevant to his philosophy of perception.

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 (...) features as the atomists describe. The notion of attraction is replaced with this notion of mere coalescence. I begin by outlining how blood is made from food. I then argue that an understanding of health and disease compels us to read Plato as if he were an atomist and to abandon the popular scholarly interpretations according to which the elements attract each other. (shrink)

L'étude entend montrer que, si le temps est finalement unique, l'espace, lui, est originellement (et non du fait de la constitution de l'être-au-monde) multiple. Une analyse d'un passage du Timée où la Chôra est dite tithênê (nourrice) permet d'asseoir une interprétation de la différence foncière entre espace et lieu. Le lieu a progressivement disparu pour s'absorber dans l'espace neutre qui traduit homologiquement l'infinité divine ou pour s'atténuer dans le site. Il est difficile de trouver une analyse adéquate du lieu depuis (...) la mort de Leibniz (1916) jusqu'à la thèse de Bergson en latin sur la notion aristotélicienne de lieu. This study aims at making clear that, if, on the one hand, time is finally unique, while, on the other hand, we can say that space is in itself, and not for transcendantal reasons (the constitution of human subjectivity), a many-fold entity. By considering with great accuracy Plato's Timæus, where topos as chôra appears as tithênê (a nurse), we are able to interpret the very real distinction between space and place. Place has progressively disappeared, being absorbed in this homology of God's infinite, which is indeed Newton's neutral space, or at least being weakened in « site » (Ort). We will hardly find, between Leibniz' death and Bergson's latin thesis on aristotelician conception of topos, one correct study about place. (shrink)

The intellectual history of evolutionary theory really does not begin in earnest until the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. Prior to that, the idea that species might have evolved over time was not a serious possibility for most naturalists and philosophers. There is certainly no substantive debate in antiquity about evolution in the modern sense. There were really only two competing explanations for how living things came to have the parts they do: design or blind chance. Ancient Greek Atomism, for example, (...) taught that all composite bodies, including living things, are generated through the random collision of atoms as they rebel and move in the void. Plato and Aristotle both dismissed this possibility on the grounds that living things are too complex and too well-adapted to be products of chance. This eventually became the central premise in Galen’s own Argument from Design. That species forms might have gradually evolved over time by a process of natural selection was not seen as a plausible alternative. Of course, such a theory had been proposed by Empedocles in the fifth century BCE. But because his theory still relied heavily on chance, it was not taken seriously by any of the later ancient Greek or Roman thinkers. My aim in this paper is to investigate the reasons why evolutionary thinking failed to gain momentum in antiquity after its introduction by Empedocles. (shrink)

The relationship between mind and necessity is one of the major points of difficulty for the interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. 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. (shrink)

In one of the most famous but equally obscure passages in the Timaeus, Plato describes the generation of time and the heavens. The “moving image of eternity” (37d5) is commonly read as Plato’s most general characterisation of time. Rémi Brague famously challenged the traditional interpretation on linguistic grounds by claiming that Plato actually did not conceive of time as an image (εἰκών) but rather as a number (ἀριθμός). In this paper, I shall claim that this controversy is by no means (...) a modern one. The traditional interpretation is mostly owed to Plato’s most prominent reader, Plotinus, who famously conceives of time in relation to eternity (Enn. III.7.13.24-25). Brague’s alternative reading, however, is anticipated by Simplicius’ attempt to refute the Plotinian interpretation, as I shall show. According to my reconstruction, Simplicius’ reading of the Timaeus not only shows why the traditional interpretation falls short, but it also offers a systematic argument that bolsters Brague’s alternative reading. Finally, I shall show that this is consistent with Plato’s text. It shall become clear that current interpretative problems are essentially prefigured in the late ancient debate. (shrink)

This book sheds new light on Plato's cosmology in relation to Greek religion by examining the contested distinction between the traditional and cosmic gods. A close reading of the later dialogues shows that the two families of gods are routinely deployed to organise and structure Plato's accounts of the origins of the universe and of humanity and its social institutions, and to illuminate the moral and political ideals of philosophical utopias. Vilius Bartninkas argues that the presence of the two kinds (...) of gods creates a dynamic, yet productive, tension in Plato's thinking which is unmistakable and which is not resolved until the works of his students. Thus the book closes by exploring how the cosmological and religious ideas of Plato's later dialogues resurfaced in the Early Academy and how the debates initiated there ultimately led to the collapse of this theological distinction. (shrink)

The principles governing elemental composition, variation, and change in Plato’s Timaeus appear to be incompatible, which has led commentators to prioritize some of the principles to the exclusion of others. Call this seeming incompatibility the problem of isomorphic variants. In this paper, I develop the theory of proportionate atomism as a solution to this problem. Proportionate atomism retains the advantages of rival interpretations but allows the principles of material composition, variation, and change to combine into an internally coherent and explanatorily (...) powerful atomic physics. (shrink)

In Plato’s eponymous dialogue, Timaeus, the main character presents the universe as an (almost) perfect sphere filled by tiny, invisible particles having the form of four regular polyhedrons. At first glance, such a construction may seem close to an atomistic theory. However, one does not find any text in Antiquity that links Timaeus’ cosmology to the atomists, while Aristotle opposes clearly Plato to the latter. Nevertheless, Plato is commonly presented in contemporary literature as some sort of atomist, sometimes as supporting (...) a form of so-called ‘mathematical atomism’. However, the term ‘atomism’ is rarely defined when applied to Plato. Since it covers many different theories, it seems that this term has almost as different meanings as different authors. The purpose of this article is to consider whether it is correct to connect Timaeus’ cosmology to some kind of ‘atomism’, however this term may be understood. Its purpose is double: to obtain a better understanding of the cosmology of the Timaeus, and to consider the different modern ‘atomistic’ interpretations of this cosmology. In short, we would like to show that such a claim, in any form whatsoever, is misleading, an impediment to the understanding of the dialogue, and more generally of Plato’s philosophy. (shrink)

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 (...) 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. (shrink)

This paper concerns Plato’s characterization of the body as the soul’s tool. I take perception as an example of the body’s usefulness. I explore the Timaeus’ view that perception provides us with models of orderliness. Then, I argue that perception of confusing sensible objects is necessary for our cognitive development too. Lastly, I consider the instrumentality relationship more generally and its place in Plato’s teleological worldview.

I argue that Plato thinks that the soul has location, surface, depth, and extension, and that the Timaeus’ composition of the soul out of eight circles is intended literally. A novel contribution is the development of an account of corporeality that denies the entailment that the soul is corporeal. I conclude by examining Aristotle’s objection to the Timaeus’ psychology and then the intellectual history of this reading of Plato.

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 (...) the gods have to ensure that virtue is victorious over vice throughout the whole cosmos. (shrink)

Analogies between the human and the cosmos run throughout Plato’s Timaeus. Timaeus claims that the cosmos came to be as mind’s “persuasion of necessity.” This paper argues that an anthropological equivalent to this “persuasion” can be found in Timaeus’ suggestive account of the human liver. Mediating between intellect and desire, the organ shows the problem of mind and necessity reflected in the human soul.

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 (...) the analogy between man and demiurge, the literal reading provides a moral component that its non-literal counterpart lacks. (shrink)

Two of Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides and the Timaeus, deal explicitly with the relationship between being and time. The former builds on the assumption that whatever is must be temporal, while the latter makes being and time mutually exclusive. This paper begins by examining how the argument develops in the Parmenides, specifically in the corresponding sections 140e1-142a1 and 151e3-155e3 of the first and the second deductions of the dialectical exercise, as well as in the corollary to the second deduction at (...) 155e4-157b5. It then compares this argument with the account of time given in Timaeus 37e6-39e2, which alludes to the account given in the Parmenides. In stressing the incompatibility of these two accounts, it highlights a remarkable feature they both share. Parmenides’ argument starts from the assumption that whatever is in time must be present, past or future, whether a process or a state resulting from a process. As he advances further in the game of Zenonian antilogies, however, he reduces the dimension of the present to a mere ‘now’, conceived of as a ‘stop’ in the process of becoming. In the corollary, he eventually removes the present from time the ‘instant’ in which a change between two mutually exclusive processes or states occurs. Timaeus, for his part, immediately rules out that the present is a temporal dimension, by restricting temporality to the past and the future. Thus, in both accounts, the present vanishes from time and temporal processes are made dependent on extratemporal conditions. However, Parmenides’ argument points to an extratemporal principle of indeterminacy allowing for change, while, for Timaeus, there are two extratemporal conditions for temporal processes, namely the being of the intelligible Forms, on the one hand, and a pre-cosmic, disorderly becoming in space, on the other. (shrink)

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 (...) of events and the relations derived from it (before, after, simultaneous with) imply no time, given the narrow definition of the term used in the dialogue. For Timaeus, I explain, time is measurable, regular, and dependent on the motion of the celestial bodies. A mere succession of events like the one needed to understand the creation story and the pre-cosmos requires none of these elements. Readers of Plato erroneously assume that a succession of events implies time, but that is to impose a conception of time absent in the text. The chapter offers a detailed reconstruction of the pre-cosmic stage under a literalist interpretation and argues how it is compatible with the immutable relationship between the Demiurge and the cosmos. -/- This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. chapter 4. (shrink)

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...) (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

Scholarship on Plato's Timaeus has paid relatively little attention to Tim. 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 nassa. 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 qua 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. (shrink)

This paper provides a rational reconstruction of a Platonic trope bundle theory that is a live alternative to contemporary bundle theories. According to the theory, Platonic particulars are composed of what Plato calls images of Forms; contemporary metaphysicians call these tropes. Tropes are dependent on Forms and the Receptacle, while trope bundles are structured by natural kinds using the Phaedo's principles of inclusion and exclusion and the Timaeus’ geometrised elements, as well as by co-location in the Receptacle. Key elements of (...) discussion include persistence and abundance of Plato's tropes. The resulting theory is compared with contemporary trope bundle theories. (shrink)

This paper is about the history of a question in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine: what holds the parts of a whole together? The idea that there is a single cause responsible for cohesion is usually associated with the Stoics. They refer to it as the synectic cause (αἴτιον συνεκτικόν), a term variously translated as ‘cohesive cause,’ ‘containing cause’ or ‘sustaining cause.’ The Stoics, however, are neither the first nor the only thinkers to raise this question or to propose a (...) single answer. Many earlier thinkers offer their own candidates for what actively binds parts together, with differing implications not only for why we are wholes rather than heaps, but also why our bodies inevitably become diseased and fall apart. This paper assembles, up to the time of the Stoics, one part of the history of such a cause: what is called ‘the synechon’ (τὸ συνέχον) – that which holds things together. Starting with our earliest evidence from Anaximenes (sixth century BCE), the paper looks at different candidates and especially the models and metaphors for thinking about causes of cohesion which were proposed by different philosophers and doctors including Empedocles, early Greek doctors, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato and Aristotle. My goal is to explore why these candidates and models were proposed and how later philosophical objections to them led to changes in how causes of cohesion were understood. (shrink)

Readers of Plato since antiquity have generally taken Socrates’ intellectual autobiography in the Phaedo as a signal of his turn away from the study of natural philosophy. They have turned instead to characters such as Timaeus for evidence of Plato’s pursuit of physics. This article argues that Plato’s Socrates himself developed a philosophy of nature in his criticism of Anaxagoras and his subsequent philosophic pursuits. Socrates’ autobiography places the study of nature in a foundational position within the development of his (...) philosophic method. In the Apology, Socrates further elaborated his investigation into nature through his understanding of theology. Finally, in the Phaedrus, Socrates connects the study of nature with the study of rhetoric as tools for virtue. Therefore, Plato’s Socrates does not reject or abandon physics, as has often been suggested, but rather, he incorporates it into his own philosophic project and challenges its practitioners to connect their own inquiries with human affairs. (shrink)

In paragraphs 5 and 86 of the De sensibus Theophrastus gives a brief report of Plato’s views on the sense of vision and its object, i. e. colour, based on the Timaeus. Interestingly enough, he presents the Platonic doctrine as a third alternative to the extramission and intromission theories put forward by other ancient philosophers. In this article I examine whether or not Theophrastus’ account is impartial. I argue that at least some of his distortive departures from the Platonic dialogue (...) are due to his Aristotelian inheritance, even though they do not always represent Aristotle’s expressed views. (shrink)

At Plato’s Phaedrus 270c, Socrates asks whether one can know souls without knowing ‘the whole.’ Phaedrus answers that ‘according to Hippocrates’ the same demand on knowing the whole applies to bodies. What parallel is intended between soul-knowledge and body-knowledge and which medical passages illustrate the analogy have been much debated. Three dominant interpretations read ‘the whole’ as respectively (1) environment, (2) kosmos, and (3) individual soul or body; and adduce supporting Hippocratic passages. But none of these interpretations accounts for the (...) Phaedrus’ rhetorical method. A better reading sees the whole as the genos ‘soul,’ as the Phaedrus’ taxonomies divide that genus. (shrink)

This book examines the birth of the scientific understanding of motion. It investigates which logical tools and methodological principles had to be in place to give a consistent account of motion, and which mathematical notions were introduced to gain control over conceptual problems of motion. It shows how the idea of motion raised two fundamental problems in the 5th and 4th century BCE: bringing together being and non-being, and bringing together time and space. The first problem leads to the exclusion (...) of motion from the realm of rational investigation in Parmenides, the second to Zeno's paradoxes of motion. Methodological and logical developments reacting to these puzzles are shown to be present implicitly in the atomists, and explicitly in Plato who also employs mathematical structures to make motion intelligible. With Aristotle we finally see the first outline of the fundamental framework with which we conceptualise motion today. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new reading of Phaedo 99b6-d2. My main thesis is that in 99c6-9, Socrates does not refer to the teleological αἰτία but to the αἰτία that will be provided by a stronger ‘Atlas’ (99c4-5). This means that the passage offers no evidence that Socrates abandons teleology or modifies his views about it. He acknowledges, instead, that he could not find or learn any αἰτία stronger than the teleological one. This, I suggest, allows an interpretation of (...) the Phaedo in which Socrates offers a consistent account of the αἰτία of generation and destruction. (shrink)

Whatever our metaphysics of time, today we usually work with the assumption that we have one unified temporal framework, which allows for situating all events, processes, and happenings in the sense that we can put them all in a temporal relation to each other; they are all either before, after, or simultaneous with each other. In this paper, I show that for the early Greeks, by contrast, the very idea of such a unified notion of time would be foreign; instead, (...) they assume different temporal (and not necessarily comparable) struc-tures belonging to different events. And I show what effect this lack has on the quality of temporal experiences – it means that different temporal experiences are thus seen as expe-riences of genuinely different kinds. (shrink)

The paper focus is on the main methodological sets of Plato which substantially influenced his philosophic and scientific thinking, expressed in the dialogue ‘Timaeus’, as well as defined the specific of his doctrine in relation to the cosmos and human being: the principle of substantial perfection, deterministic approach, a tendency to analyze the empiric material with the means of mathematical objects. Plato’s understanding of the cosmos and human body as lively, holistic constructions enabled their fruitful systematic studies. Shaping his teaching (...) on the soul and the body of human being, Plato endeavored to solve one of the most complicated tasks: to establish the first theoretical, mathematised system, and under such conditions to fill the pure language of observations with ideal constructs. The author shows that one of the most important scientific achievements of the Athenian philosopher was the use of the thinking constructions of geometrical triangles, which made possible creating of the theoretical models of living organisms, with explaining their nature and functioning that was one among the first in the history of science. Moreover Plato was the first in the history of science who filled with the theoretical contents not the first elements only, but all the examined material objects. (shrink)

It is a puzzling fact that the Greek term for Nature ‘physis’ could be used to refer to i) reality as a whole, ii) the nature of something, iii) to individual material beings or materiality and iv) all things that are self-generating. In order to understand and tie together this wide array of possible meanings, I will consider the thesis that ‘physis’ was in fact used as a concept of being, a term naming the fundamental property of all of reality (...) in the early pre-Socratics, poets and scientists before 500 BCE. Investigating ‘physis’ in this way can give us a way of thinking about Nature as a dynamic and creative but material process that goes far beyond the classical understanding of Nature as the sum of things that self-generate or the modern mathematical understanding of Nature born with Galileo, dominant to this day. (shrink)

By comparing the role of harmony in Eryximachus’ discourse with other Platonic passages, especially from the Timaeus, this article aims to provide textual evidence concerning Plato’s conception of cosmological medicine as “harmonic techne”. The comparison with other dialogues will enable us to demonstrate how Eryximachus’ thesis is consistent with Plato’s cosmology — a cosmology which cannot be reduced to a physical conception of reality but represents the expression of a dialectical, and erotic cosmos, characterized by the agreement of parts. Arguably, (...) Eryximachus’ discourse is expression of the Platonic tendency to translate onto the philosophical plane the implications of a model peri physeos. Harmonic techne is thus always linked to the theme of moral responsibility: the philosopher is also doctor, musician and demiurges in his harmonizing activity. The speech of Eryximachus can be approached as a Platonic step which is fundamental for establishing the need for a “medicine” to cure disorder, with a view to obtaining a cosmos ordered according to the harmonic principle. (shrink)

Plutarch is committed to geometric atomism, the Platonic theory that derives the material elements from regular polyhedric shapes. An essential feature of this theory is that qualitative properties are not primitive, but supervene on more fundamental, quantitatively describable properties, such as the size, shape, mass or weight of the atoms, their solidity, position, arrangement and kinetic interactions. Plutarch recognises that the geometric account provides the causal explanation for phenomenal and other qualitative properties. He praises Plato and Democritus for their theoretical (...) accomplishment in this domain. Yet in his reply to Colotes, he criticises Epicurus and Democritus because of their atomism, and claims that it is not possible to derive qualities from qualityless atoms. Plato’s theory is different, he claims, as it does not make the primordial corpuscles qualityless and unchanging. I examine three possible explanations for this discrepancy: Plutarch’s argument against Democritus serves purely polemical purposes; Plutarch is not fully aware of the theoretical force and import of geometric atomism; he disposes of a more sophisticated account of geometric atomism, containing assumptions unknown to us that save the model from the objections directed at Democritus. (shrink)

Reading the Timaeus as an early attempt at mathematizing natural science runs into serious difficulties. The so-called Platonic Solids are five in number, more by one than the traditional 'elements'. Plato provides a proportional ratio for these elements but this ratio fails to tie in with their geometrical features. Appealing to the authority of mathematics appears to be a rhetorical move with no further consequences.

In the tripartite psychology of the Republic, Plato characterizes the “spirited” part of the soul as the “ally of reason”: like the auxiliaries of the just city, whose distinctive job is to support the policies and judgments passed down by the rulers, spirit’s distinctive “job” in the soul is to support and defend the practical decisions and commands of the reasoning part. This is to include not only defense against external enemies who might interfere with those commands, but also, and (...) most importantly, defense against unruly appetites within the individual’s own soul.1 Spirit, according to this picture, is by nature reason’s faithful auxiliary in the soul, while appetite is always a potential enemy to be watched .. (shrink)

Reading the Timaeus as an early attempt at mathematizing natural science runs into serious difficulties. The so-called Platonic Solids are five in number, one more than the traditional 'elements'. Plato provides a proportional ratio for these elements but this ratio fails to tie in with their geometrical features. Appealing to the authority of mathematics appears to be a rhetorical move with no further consequences.

Unitarianism was the norm amongst ancient interpreters of Plato. One strategy they used to maintain the unity of his thinking was to argue that different works were saying the same things but in different modes. So, for example, the Republic was saying ethically what the Timaeus was saying in the manner of natural philosophy. In this paper, I want to offer an interpretation of the Cave image in Republic 7 which lends support to this division of labour, and so indirectly, (...) at least, to a unitarian understanding of Plato’s thinking across these two works. (shrink)

In the Timaeus, Plato makes a distinction between reason and necessity. This distinction is often accounted for as a distinction between two types of causation: purpose oriented causation and mechanistic causation. While reason is associated with the soul and taken to bring about its effects with the good and the beautiful as the end, necessity is understood in terms of a set of natural laws pertaining to material things. In this paper I shall suggest that there are reasons to reconsider (...) the latter part of this account and argue for a non-mechanistic understanding of necessity. I will first outline how the notion of necessity is introduced in the dialogue. I will then show how a mechanistic account of necessity fails to capture Plato’s purpose of treating it as a causal factor; and, finally, argue that this purpose is better understood as an attempt, on Plato’s part, to account for the causal origin of disorder and irrationality, an origin articulated in terms of a pre-cosmic situation and the notoriously difficult notion of the third kind. (shrink)

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 (...) that physical things depend on the forms for their causal powers, and show how the view I propose solves each. I then add further arguments for my view, based on (a) statements by Timaeus that seem to favor my view directly, (b) implications of Timaeus’ positions that favor the view, and (c) Timaeus’ explanatory practice in the second half of his speech. (shrink)

The article aims at demonstrating that in attributing the creatio ex nihilo to both Plato and Aristotle as their unanimous philosophical conviction the Treatise on the Harmony between the Two Sages deeply depends upon the Neoplatonic reading of those two philosophers. The main obstacles for such a view in the works of the two sages are Plato's assumption of a precosmic chaos in the Timaeus and Aristotle's denial of any efficient causality to the unmoved mover in the Metaphysics. Both of (...) these points had been, however, done away with by the Neoplatonist commentators already, especially by Ammonius in his lost treatise on efficient and final causality in Aristotle the use of which in the Harmony is shown by a comparison with Simplicius. Christian and Muslim readers just had to transfer those arguments and hermeneutical techniques into an anti-eternalist context in order to make the two philosophers agree with one of the basic tenents of their face, a hermeneutical technique considerably different from the one employed by al-Fārābī in his exposition of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy which is compared to the Harmony in a briefly sketched concluding section.L'article vise à montrer que le Traité sur l'harmonie des deux sages, en attribuant la creatio ex nihilo à Platon et Aristote comme conviction philosophique commune, dépend profondément de la lecture néoplatonicienne de ces deux philosophes. Les obstacles principaux à une telle attribution dans les œuvres des deux sages sont, dans le Timée de Platon, l'affirmation d'un chaos précosmique et, dans la Métaphysique d'Aristote, la négation d'une causalité efficiente du premier moteur immobile. L'interprétation néoplatonicienne avait toutefois éliminé chacune de ces affirmations de la doctrine des deux maîtres, comme le montre en particulier le traité d'Ammonius sur la causalité finale et efficiente chez Aristote. Or, on peut montrer, par une comparaison avec Simplicius, que l’Harmonie faisait usage de ce traité. Les philosophes chrétiens et musulmans avaient ainsi la possibilité d'employer les mêmes arguments et méthodes herméneutiques pour établir une concordance entre les deux principales autorités philosophiques d'une part et une de leurs plus importantes convictions religieuses d'autre part – une herméneutique qui diffère considérablement de la méthode appliquée par al-Fārābī dans sa propre exposition des philosophies de Platon et d'Aristote, comme le montre, dans la conclusion de l'article, la brève comparaison avec l’Harmonie.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.CREATIO EX NIHILO – A GENUINELY PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHT DERIVED FROM PLATO AND ARISTOTLE? SOME NOTES ON THE TREATISE ON THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE TWO SAGESVolume 22, Issue 1Benjamin Gleede DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000117Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. CREATIO EX NIHILO – A GENUINELY PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHT DERIVED FROM PLATO AND ARISTOTLE? SOME NOTES ON THE TREATISE ON THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE TWO SAGESVolume 22, Issue 1Benjamin Gleede DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000117Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. 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I offer a comparison between Plato’s discussion of χώρα in the Timaeus at 48A–53C and Aristotle’s discussion of τόπος in Physics Book IV, arguing that the two accounts have more in common than has been suggested by Continental scholars. Τόπος and χώρα both signal what I call the impasse of place as the question of that which cannot be reduced to either the sensible or the intelligible, and which (un)grounds such categories. Identifying this impasse reveals Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of (...) “place” as strikingly dissimilar from the Newtonian category of Absolute Space; and it also suggests new ways of thinking the relationships between bodies, motion, place and nature. (shrink)

The author emphasizes the fact that the largest part of Plato’s Timaeus deals with human nature and offers a detailed account of the constitution of the human body. He then lists the parallels and the differences between the constitution of the world body and the human body. The central part of the paper deals with Plato’s explanation of the persistence of the human body within a bodily environment which causes its dissolution. The author pays a special attention to Plato’s theory (...) of the apparatus which keeps running the processes of respiration, digestion and blood circulation. In the concluding section, the author raises thequestion of the relationship between human body and human soul. He shows that, in Plato’s Timaeus, the human body functions to a large extent independently from human soul. One possible reason for this theory is Plato’s conception of the immortal soul. While the human body exists in order to harbour the immortal soul, the latter does not produce and preserve it nor does it cause its dissolution. It only exercises cognitive and ruling functions in it as long as the body is able to hold together and to detain the soul. (shrink)

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 (...) to exist as sensible things by being that in which the elements appear, change and move–in virtue of being pure continuity. All further qualifications required for a full notion of space are derived solely from the content of the receptacle. (shrink)

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 (...) on the work. Her book is for everyone interested in Ancient Greek philosophy, cosmology and mythology, whether classicists, philosophers, historians of ideas or historians of science. It offers new findings to scholars familiar with the material, but it is also a clear and reliable resource for anyone coming to it for the first time. (shrink)

One aim of this paper is to bring to the surface the problems with the traditional, non-literal interpretation of the pre-cosmos in the Timaeus. Contrary to this traditional interpretation, I show that Necessity is an ateleological cause capable of bringing about the events in the pre-cosmos, and that Intelligence is a teleological cause that produces effects only for the sake of maximizing the good. I conclude that there are no grounds for supposing that Intelligence is a causal force operating in (...) the pre-cosmos, and that the account of the pre-cosmos should be taken literally: it is an account of the works of Necessity alone. (shrink)

Plato’s Timaeus is usually taken to be a sequel to the Republic which shows the cosmological basis of Plato’s politics. In this article I challenge the traditional understanding by arguing that neither Critias’s nor Timaeus’s speech performs the assigned function. The contrast between Timaeus’s monologue and the silently listening Socrates dramatizes the philosophical differences between investigations of “the human things,” like those conducted by Socrates, and attempts to demonstrate the intelligible, mathematically calculable order of the sensible natural world, like that (...) of Timaeus. (shrink)