Timaeus

By Plato

Book Overview

Timaeus is one of Plato's dialogues and a philosophy classic, mostly in the form of long monologues given by Critias and Timaeus, written c. 360 BC. The work puts forward reasoning on the possible nature of the physical world and human beings and is followed by the dialogue Critias.

Participants in the dialogue include Socrates, Timaeus, Hermocrates, and Critias. Some scholars believe that it is not the Critias of the Thirty Tyrants who appears in this dialogue, but his grandfather, who is also named Critias. It has been suggested from some traditions (Diogenes Laertius (VIII 85) from Hermippus of Smyrna (3rd century BC) and Timon of Phlius (c. 320 - c. 235 BC) that Timaeus was influenced by a book about Pythagoras, written by Philolaus, although this assertion is generally considered false.

The dialogue takes place the day after Socrates described his ideal state. In Plato's works, such a discussion occurs in the Republic. Socrates feels that his description of the ideal state wasn't sufficient for the purposes of entertainment and that "I would be glad to hear some account of it engaging in transactions with other states" (19b).

Hermocrates wishes to oblige Socrates and mentions that Critias knows just the account (20b) to do so. Critias proceeds to tell the story of Solon's journey to Egypt where he hears the story of Atlantis, and how Athens used to be an ideal state that subsequently waged war against Atlantis (25a). Critias believes that he is getting ahead of himself, and mentions that Timaeus will tell part of the account from the origin of the universe to man.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1774419890
• ISBN13: 9781774419892
• Release Date: July 2023
• Publisher: Westland, Brian
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The design of the universe

"This world of ours is beautiful and its craftsman good" (29a). I shall summarise some highlights. Why there are four elements. "Nothing could ever become visible apart from fire, nor tangible without something solid, nor solid without earth. That is why ... the god came to make [the universe] out of fire and earth. But it isn't possible to combine two things well all by themselves ... Now the best bond is one that really and truly makes a unity of itself together with the things bonded by it, and this is in the nature if things is best accomplished by proportion" (31b-31c), namely a mean proportional. "So if the body of the universe were to have come to be as a two-dimensional plane, a single middle term would have sufficed" (32a-b), i.e., the mean proportional of p^2 and q^2 is pq, while a three dimensional universe requires two mean proportionals, pq^2 and p^2q, between p^3 and q^3. "Hence the god set water and air between fire and earth" (32b). Polyhedral theory of the elements. "Let us now assign to fire, earth, water, and air the [regular polyhedra]. To earth let us give the cube, because of the four kinds of bodies earth is the most immobile and the most pliable ... And of the solid figures that are left, we shall next assign the least mobile of them to water, to fire the most mobile, and to air the one in between" (55d-56a). The dodecahedron "still remained, and this one the god used for the whole universe" (55c). Applications of the polyhedral theory ("a moderate and sensible diversion," 59d). Water=icosahedron has 20 equilateral triangles as its sides, while fire=tetrahedron has 4 and air=octahedron 8, so "when water is broken up into parts by fire or even by air, it could happen that the parts recombine to form one corpuscle of fire and two of air" (56d), i.e., steam is two parts air and one part fire. A second example may illustrate how the relative sizes of the polyhedra matter (61a). Fire is of course the smallest, followed by air. Thus, for example, water can normally be dissolved by air (evaporation) by air octahedra slipping in between the water icosahedra. But since the fire tetrahedra are smaller they dissolve water much more efficiently. And if the water is sufficiently packed (ice) then air cannot dissolve it at all since only fire can get through the cracks. Experiments denounced. Timaeus' "well-reasoned account of colors" (67d) includes principles like "red mixed with black and white is of course purple" (68c). "But if anyone who in considering these matters were to put them to an actual test, he would demonstrate his ignorance of the difference of the human and the divine. It is god who possesses both the knowledge and power required to mix a plurality into a unity and, conversely, to dissolve a unity into plurality, while no human being could possess either of these, whether at the present time or at any time in the future." (68d). Human anatomy is an appendix to the soul. "The entire body" was created "as its vehic

An educational introduction to a complex text

Reading Zeyl's translation of Timaeus is like taking a college-level seminar on this classic text. His introduction is longer than the text and gives background and insight to the translation. That coupled with the many footnotes throughout the text, explain Zeyl's translation of the Greek, offer alternative translations for certain key words or concepts, and make Zeyl's case for why he made some of the translation choices he did.The text itself is one of the classics of western thought, offering among other things Plato's theory on creation, how and why the world and its parts was formed. While less well read than Plato's other works such as the Republic, the ideas in this book influenced writers for centuries to come including St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Be forewarned, however, this is not light reading. Plato's ideas are quite intricate and are frequently explained using geometric models. You may want to brush up on your high school geometry before tackling this treatise.