Interpretation, Vol 17-2

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Winter 1989-90 Volume 1 7 Number 2

165 Joseph Cropsey

193 Govert den Hartogh

223 Richard Myers

Christopher Kellyand

Roger D . Masters255 Mark S. Cladis275 Leslie Paul Thie le

T. F. Morris

The Whole as Setting fo r Man:On Plato's Timaeus

Made by Contrivance and th e Consent of Men:Abstract Principle and Historical Fact inLocke's Political Philosophy

Christianity and Politics in Montesquieu'sGreatness and Decline of the Romans

Rousseau on Reading "Jean-Jacques": TheDialogues

Emile Durkheim and Provinces of EthicsNietzsche's PoliticsThe Argumen t in the Protagoras that No One

Does What He Believes To Be Bad

305

309

313

317

Book ReviewsRobert R. Sullivan

Will Morrisey

Horst-Jiirgen Gerigk, Unterwegs zurInterpretation Hinweise zu einer Theorieder Literatur in Auseinandersetzung mitGadamers Warheit und Methode

Catherine H. Zuckert, editor, Understandingthe Political Spirit: PhilosophicalInvestigations from Socrates to Nietzsche

Patrick Coby, Socrates and the SophisticEnlightenment: A Commentary on Plato' sProtagoras

Mary P. Nichols, Socrates and the PoliticalCommunity: An Ancient Debate


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Interpretation

Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin

General Editors Seth G. Benardete Charles E. ButterworthHilail Gildin Robert Horwitz (d . 1987)Howard B. White (d . 1974)

Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph CropseyErnest L. Fortin John Hallowell Wilhelm HennisHarry V Jaffa David Lowenthal Muhsin MahdiHarvey C. Mansfield, Jr . Arnaldo Momigliano

(d . 1987) Michael Oakeshott Ellis SandozLeo Strauss (d . 1973) Kenneth W Thompson

Editors Wayne Ambler Maurice Auerbach Fred BaumannMichael B laustein Patrick Coby Christopher A.Colmo Edward J. Erler Maureen Feder-Marcus

Joseph E. Goldberg Pamela K. Jensen Grant B.Mindle James W. Morris - Will MorriseyGerald P roietti Charles T. Rubin Leslie G. RubinJohn A. Wettergreen (d . 1989) Bradford P. WilsonHossein Ziai Michael Zuckert Catherine Zuckert

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InterpretationWinter 1989-90 A Volume 17 Number 2

Joseph Cropsey The Whole as Setting fo r Man: On Plato'sTimaeus 165

Govert den Hartogh Made by Contrivance and the Consent of Men:Abstract Principle and Historical Fact inLocke's Political Philosophy 193

Richard Myers Christianity and Politics in Montesquieu'sGreatness and Decline of the Romans 223

Christopher Kelly and Rousseau on Reading "Jean-Jacques": TheRoger D. Masters Dialogues 239Mark S. Cladis Emile Durkheim and Provinces of Ethics 255Leslie Paul Thiele Nietzsche's Politics 275T. F. Morris

Book ReviewsRobert R. Sullivan

Will Morrisey

The Argument in th e Protagoras that No OneDoes What He Believes To Be Bad 291

Horst-Jurgen Gerigk, Unterwegs zurInterpretation Hinweise zu einer Theorieder Literatur in Auseinandersetzung mitGadamers Warheit und Methode 305

Catherine H. Zuckert, editor, Understandingthe Poli tical Spiri t: PhilosophicalInvestigations from Socrates to Nietzsche 309

Patrick Coby, Socrates and the SophisticEnlightenment: A Commentary on Plato' sProtagoras 313

Mary P. Nichols, Socrates and the PoliticalCommunity: An Ancient Debate 3 1 7

Copyright 1990 interpretation

ISSN 0020-9635


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The Whole as Setting for Man: On Plato's TimaeusJoseph CropseyThe University of Chicago

Plato's Timaeus brings together Socrates and three of the four people whohad requested, and received, on th e preceding day, an account by him of hisviews on th e polity. The review that Socrates gives "today" of th e account thathe gave "yesterday" presents the barest sketch of a portion of th e Republic:division of labor resulting in a warrior class that is good to friends and harmfulto enemies (acting on a definition of justice proposed and rejected in the Republic); gymnastic and music education fo r such guardians; their renunciation ofwealth in favor of community and virtue; masculinization of women and theiradmission to all activities in the city; dissolution of the family; a eugenic arrangement, falsely put forth as a lottery, by which the authorities will procureth e mating of good with their kind and bad with theirs, and the continuingpromotion and demotion of citizens between th e classes of good and bad (evidently made necessary by th e predictable failure of th e predictive eugenic device). Notably missing from th e review as such, and perhaps therefore alsofrom th e account being recapitulated, is any thematic reference to th e philosopher-king, that is, to th e sine qua non of good po lity , n ame ly , th e conjunctionof reason and power that supposedly would guarantee effectual good in th epolis as it would do also in the cosmos as a whole under god. How fa r it mightdo so is hinted vaguely in the passage (19E) in which Socrates, alluding to th emen who would be at the same t ime philosophers and statesmen, doubts thatSophists could rise to the subject of those mens doings in verbal and literalpolemics.

The Timaeus, which will prove to be about the constitution of th e whole , isthus a sequel to th e Republic in th e tr ip le sense that th e bulk of Timaeus followsdirectly a sketch of a sketch of th e Republic, th e action of Timaeus follows th eaction of the Republic as th e lesser Panathenaea follows th e Bendideia, and th eargument of Timaeus is set in motion, if somewhat indirectly, by Socrates'desire to see th e good polis, presumably that of th e Republic, in action, whichproves to mean in strife. The good polis is situated in a whole from which strifecannot be banished, as will appear; the good polis must necessarily contemplateand be fit fo r war , if only because fo r some reason there must always be defective cities. From Socrates' desire to see th e good polis in action flows not

I am grateful to Pro fe ssor Eve Ad le r fo r a close and extremely helpful reading of this manuscript.

interpretation, Winter 1989-90, Vol. 17, No. 2


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166 Interpretationawkwardly th e question, What is the nature of th e Whole in which man, hisgood, and his politics are situated? How hospitable to man , his good , and hispolitics is that Whole?

Socrates' desire to be told about "our" city in contention is to be gratified ina complicated way. After he has disqualified Sophists fo r th e task, on theground that they are rootless wanderers , city less and thus without th e interestfrom which comprehension could grow, and has rejected also the poets , whosegift fo r imitation leaves them helpless when the task is to speak of what theyhave not exper ienced, Socrates turns to his companions , Critias, Hermocrates,and Timaeus, neither Sophists nor poets , who should prove equal to the request. They proceed th ro ug h the recounting by Critias of a palaeology ofAthens that had originated with Egyptian priests and descended by way ofSolon to one of Critias's ancestors and thus to Critias h imself. A t the heartof th e tale is an apparent confusion: When Socra tes inquired about "our" city,he meant th e good city of his sketch, but Critias's tale will refer to primordial Athens, of course also "our" city, to which will be attributed much thatearns praise by resemblance to "our" city of th e sketch. Critias's tale will blurth e distinction between th e good polity that could be considered simply goodand th e polity of a polis that might have been th e best to have been experiencedby men , and thus perhaps th e best possible.

Crit ias begins th e history of the tale he is about to tell with an encomium ofSolon, th e apparent conductor of the story into Greece from Egypt. Solon, th ewisest of the seven sages, is described as an accomplished poet who might havebecome an outstanding one if he had not turned to statesmanship, or ratherlegislation, in th e service of Athens at a t ime when the city had fallen intocorruption. We are given to understand that Solon returned to Athens carryingwith him an image of th e ancient city in its excellence. Nothing within what iswritten in th e dialogue reveals whether or how far that image guided or couldhave guided Solon's legislation, or whether Solon's poetic gift might have encroached on his ability to project what he had never experienced and so couldnot imitate. The praise of Athens implicit in its palaeological identification withth e good city seems to be diluted by the invasion of th e city's recent historicallegislator by a poetical genius.

The thematic response to Socrates' request for a discourse on th e good polisin action begins with th e recounting by Critias of Solon's story. This occurs ina Dassage (21E-26D) in which Critias adumbrates the account of the good cityin action that, according to th e plan, would be presented fully in Critias, to befollowed by a discourse of Hermocrates (Crit. 108) on a related subject notspecified. Critias proceeds to relate that Solon, traveling in Egypt, learned thatth e Egyptians possessed written records of their history reaching back eightthousand years, and a knowledge that Athens was a thousand years older thanthat. It was that palaeo-Athens whose extraordinary virtue came to a peak in thewar that Athens won fo r Greece, defeating th e hordes from western Atlantis


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The Whole As Setting for Man: On Plato's Timaeus 167and saving all in the East from subjection. The Athenians' ignorance of theirnoble origins is explained by the incidence of natural disasters that obliteratedentire generations, inducing an amnesia that th e literacy they lacked could haveaverted. In Phaedrus {21AC ff.), Socrates is elaborate on th e price paid bymankind fo r the Egyptian gift of letters, but Egypt here gets back some of itsow n by showing th e Athenians that they do not know themselves, as they mighthave done in the face of a devastating cosmos , because they could not setthemselves down in writing. Plato's obvious inversion of East and West, andreplacement of Persia with Atlantis, reminds th e Athenians that their writtenrecord is mirror as well as ikon. The Socratic depreciation of writing might beunqualifiedly defensible in a world to which overwhelming natural calamitieswere unknown; but th e Socratic world is a cosmos of brutal blindness to th edifference between nobility and barbarism, Athens and Atlantis. The full meaning of th e blatant substitution of Atlantis for Persia in this tale will not becomeclearer until in the Critias itself the genuine merits of Atlantis are disclosedwealth and power temperately used, splendor combined with mild institutionsand no lack of military prowess until a decay set in that we know from th eRepublic inevitably afflicts and brings down th e best of regimes that th e mindcan discover. It is notable that Critias contains a much m o re e xten sive description of Atlantis than of palaeo-Athens, and in fact never more than reaches th etheme of palaeo-Athens in action at war. The intention of Timaeus-Critias-"Hermocrates" is

silentlyinterred.

At any rate, an important element of what th e Egyptian priests imparted toSolon was the precis of the Egyptian const i tut ion, offered as the reproductionof the palaeo-Athenian polity, itself the s up po se d r eg im e of th e good city.Cited f irst is th e c as te s ys te m of division of labor: segregation of priests, artisans, herdsmen, hunters, farmers, and warriors, which latter were singular inusing shields and sp ears u nd er th e tu te lage of Athena. Further, as fo r "wisdom"th e law provides fo r the investigation of th e cosmos with a view to discoveringall the ways in which th e divine beings bear on human things, up to divinationand medicine. Seen in a certain light, th e "wisdom" of th e Egyptians and of th epalaeo-Athenians wa s identical in its principle to m od er n n atur al science, aiming, as both do, at the relief of the human condition th rough the extortion of th esecrets of the v is ib le w or ld fo r the sake of disarming and exploiting the cosmicfo rce s. The "wisdom" that they conjoined with th e power had th e character ofep is tem e, not sophia, fo r their minds were burdened with a sense th at th roughout th e visible world there blew a wind that bore the seeds of their destruction.Athena, war-loving and philosophic, out of her care fo r them planted th e Athenians in a well-tempered climate suited to bring forth th e wisest of men. Thephilosophy of Athena herself seems to have consisted of effectual knowledge ofcosmic causes and their human bearing.

Now Critias presents a perfunctory sketch of the wa r of th e Atlantans andth e palaeo-Athenians (24E-25D) in which nothing circumstantial is said about


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168 Interpretationthe action, but th e merit of th e Athenians and th e historic importance of theirvictory are lauded. In ways that are almost obtrusive, Plato will suppress thedescription of the good city in action throughout the supposititious trilogy 77-maeus-hemi-Critias-"ermocrates." Whereas in the Republic (466E ff.) Socrates describes the manner of the good city's war-making as evident, so muchso that he appeared on th e point of passing over it in favor of the kingship ofphilosophy yet he then proceeds to discuss it in detail, here in Timaeus his chiefor ostensible interest is in th e manner of th e good city's war-making and th esubject does not arise either here or in the sequel. One wonders whether th egood city in its state of action, that is to say at war , must by th e nature ofthings shed its goodness, which is its justice, because to make war means andcan only mean to do good to friends and allies and to harm enemies. To escapeth e force of this stricture by appealing to the conception that it is just to givethe unprovoked aggressor what he deserves, or even to reciprocate whatever th eother has imposed upon one , is only to flee to yet another of th e definitions ofjustice that Socrates had exploded early in th e Republic, readmitting them(442E) by exposing them as vulgar reflections of true justice, which is a rulership by alliance made "possible" by the willingness of unwisdom to be governed by mind. If th e justice of th e good city is to be saved by an invocation ofth e formula that justice is doing one's own singular deed, but the good city inits peculiar act is at war , then even without foreknowledge of what is to followin Timaeus, one may be prompted to wonder about the human situation, aboutth e inescapeable imperfection of our organs of social life, and eventually aboutth e blindly destructive cosmos , capable of appearing as th e monstrous overwhelming or as the cleansing instrument of nous and good, nature or god , orperhaps both if they should be seen as one and the same. That th e Republicshould be "followed" by Timaeus, th e grand cosmology, thus seems right, as italso seems right that the "problem" of th e cosmos should be brought to sightthrough humanity as seen th ro ug h th e prism of political life where justice orgood has its equivocal problematic existence.

Critias has now given a preview of th e story of the Atlantans and th e palaeo-Athenians, promising to tell th e story in full, in due time, if Socrates willaccept it as tan tamount to a discourse on his good city in action. Socratesconsenting, Critias announces the plan of th e discussion that is to follow. First,fo r no reason that is stated, th e eminent astronomer Timaeus will speak tobegin with, on the coming into being of th e cosmos and then finally on th egeneration of man (anthropon physin). Critias will proceed with the human partof the account, assimilating the available human beings to the palaeo-Atheniansand those in turn to the citizens of th e good city. Critias pointedly omits Hermocrates from th e plan, leaving it to Socrates to reintroduce Hermocrates as aprospective speaker early in Critias, thereby furnishing the occasion fo r asomewhat sharp exchange between Critias and Hermocrates who speak in insinuations about each other's courage. That of Hermocrates is never tested.


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus 169The discourse of Timaeus occupies almost th e whole of th e dialogue. It

begins with a proemium that is preceded by Socrates' injunction to Timaeusthat he call on th e gods, as is customary, before beginning. Timaeus compliesrather perfunctorily, revealing in th e first speech of the subsequent dialogue,Critias, that th e god to whom he prays is the one created long ago in deed andjust now (in Timaeus) by us in speech, i.e., th e cosmos itself, as it exists in itsapparent inaccessibility to our perfect understanding and as it exists in thelikely construction of it with which we are to content ourselves.

Timaeus begins his discourse by distinguishing th e Being from the Becoming things, correlating th e former with Knowledge gained through thinking andreason and the latter with Opinion gained through sense perception withoutreason. Whatever Becomes does so necessarily as the effect of a cause. AsTimaeus proceeds, he translates, fo r the immediate purpose only, cause intomaker or artificer (demiourgos), contrasting the maker who contemplates anexternal model, always th e same, and th e maker whose envisioned paradigm isitself something that came into being (and thus was and will be other than it is).Of course, what is fashioned after an eternal paradigm must necessarily bebeautiful (kalon), that made after a produced one, not so. Timaeus is speakingth e language of Socratic orthodoxy, which is why we are especially interestedin th e locution (28A) that refers to th e artificer's producing the "idea and capability" (idea kai dynamis) of his object. The translation of idea as form or shape(Schleiermacher says Gestalt) is not satisfactory in view of other passages (cf.Philebus 25A; Statesman 258C) in which Plato speaks of ideas as being madeor brought into being by men , in the teeth of th e most widely accepted view ofPlatonic philosophy as insisting on th e Ideas as th e eternal and intelligible archetypes. It would seem that, whatever might be the eternal paradigm of th ewhole that is copied by god, that paradigm does not have th e name of Idea.

The cosmos is a perceptible, and it therefore came into being and is amongthe things accessible to opinion and must be the effect of th e operation of somecause. Timaeus speaks of th e difficulty of discovering th e maker and father ofthis whole, adding that it would be impossible to speak to "all" about him evenif he were discovered. Ye t Timaeus is able to go on to offer as an evidence onthis crucial point that it is clear to "all" that th e artificer was contemplating aneternal paradigm in making this whole , fo r it is the most beautiful of th e th in gsthat have come into being and its maker is th e best of causes. The visible worldor cosmos is subject to perception and opinion but the paradigm of which it isth e merely tempora l copy is knowable and always Same. Timaeus now makesit clear that th e subject of his discourse will be th e visible whole, th e copy andnot th e archetype, and therefore that what he will have to say will itself haveth e character, which is to say the lack of clarity, of certainty and of intelligibility, belonging to a copy rather than having the quality of demonstrativetruth. Throughout the body of his extended statement, Timaeus will maintainwhat he has prepared in this his proemium, that his account of th e whole is


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170 Interpretationonly likely, as befits a likeness, and should be judged with the understandingthat human beings can do no better. In view of the utter improbability or im-plausibility of much of what Timaeus will cover with the word eikos or someform of it, it is best to understand by it, through its translation as "likely," alikeness to the truth as a myth or even a benign falsehood that may be a verisimilitude. In the last words he utters in Timaeus, Socrates concurs in th eburden of Timaeus 's proemium, offering no comment on the plain implicationthat th e necessarily good Father and Maker of all did not open up to man th egreatest boon that human beings could enjoy, which is certain knowledge of th eeternal being that is th e truth of their existence.It is on the point of th e goodness of god that Timaeus begins (29D) his

immense lecture on the whole. Timaeus affirms th e goodness of god, presenting as th e instance of goodness his absolute freedom from envy of any thing ofany kind. All should be as good as possible, that is, as much like himself aspossible. We need not suppose that goodness means only freedom from envy,and indeed what follows immediately makes such a supposition impossible, butwe cannot exclude it from the characteristics implanted in his works by th egood maker who seeks to make his products like himself as far as possible. Ifmen were made without envy, by how much would contention and th e likelihood of conflict be reduced? We do not know, any more than we know whatthe action of th e good polis would consist of, or whether th e polis would cometo be, if envy did not exist among men. At any rate, Timaeus adduces th eauthority of th e wise men (andron phronimon) for th e assertion that th e governing principle of generation and of the cosmos is this of th e goodness of th emaker and his desire that everything resemble him in goodness as far as possible. But could a mere human being know this sovereign truth about a beingwho is not a copy of anything but is both the artificer from paradigms and also,evidently, himself the self-imitating paradigm of freedom from envy, and ofgood in any other sense as well? Timaeus speaks cautiously, twice (29A and30A) appealing to the criterion of the rightly su itab le, themis , in justifying hisattribution of goodness to th e making and desiring of god. His discourse is infact a hymn to the goodness of th e god and his work, reaching a climax in th eargument that, a rational entity being superior to an irrational one, the cosmosmust have reason, thus a soul, and must therefore be a living thing, an animal.This, says Timaeus, is what ought to be said (dei legein) according to th e likelyaccount (30B).In the short passage that follows, Timaeus attempts to justify that paradoxi

cal characterization of the cosmos as an animal by describing th e paradigmaticanimal of which th e cosmic animal is a copy. Instead of a description of th earchetypal animal , Timaeus recites th e formal property of th e absolute intelligible animal (noeta zoa) as being simply what includes within itself all th e particular intelligible animals, as th e cosmos contains all th e particular visibleanimals. Shortly, Timaeus will enlarge on this sparse disclosure and in so doing


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The Whole As Setting for Man: On Plato's Timaeus -171will suggest that th e cosmos, th e animal of animals, must be scrutinized withlimitless attention if th e difference between it and a machine is to be detected(cf. 77B).

Now Timaeus wonders whether the heaven is one or many or infinitelymany and decides that it must be one, fo r it is the animal that includes all theintelligible animals and must therefore be the ultimate singular of that kind. Itis notable that Timaeus approaches th e question of th e unicity of th e cosmosthrough th e quality of the whole as a living thing. Turning to the generated,bodily cosmos, he explains its visibility and its palpability through its composition of fire an d earth respectively, thus obliging himself to explain the union oftw o unlikes. This he does by recourse to proportion, and more specifically toth e mean proportional. For reasons mathematical, th e th re e-d im e n sio n alcosmos m us t c on si st of four elements, thus introducing w ater and air, in orderto satisfy a co nd itio n arising out of the nature of proportion, and it is thatproportionality among th e elements that makes a one out of th e many that theyare. It goes w ith ou t saying that to speak of proportionality among fire, earth,air and water is to treat them as quantities, which Timaeus will do elaboratelyin a trigonometry that is to follow, for which he prepares by describing thecosmic animal as including all the shapes (schemata) there are while it itself isa sphere (33B). W e can only wonder how a perfect sphere could contain perfectly the rectilinear figures which will be the matter of Timaeus 's eventualtrigonometry, as we m ight hope that he will le t us see how proportionali ty, theuniter of th e unlike, binds together body and soul w ithout reducing soul toquantity. The question will soon be addressed in some fashion.

Now (33B-34A) Timaeus provides the details of th e appearance of th e cosmic animal , the great living globe. It has no eyes or ears, fo r there is nothingoutside itself to be seen or heard, nothing with which to breathe or eat orexcrete fo r all air is within it and all matter is simply r ec yc le d w it hi n it. Itss u ff er in g s a nd its doings originate as they must within itself. For hands and feetit could have no use. Its only motion is th e rotation imparted to it by god. Thec os m ic a ni ma l is self-contained in every respect in which a recognizable animalis not, and it is utterly helpless, namely , with regard to locomotion, in animportant respect in which recognizable animals are self-dependent. Whatcould save this description of th e animal of animals from the imputation ofcosmic perversity would be th e presence within it of a soul that accords decisively with that of some recognizable animal. To th e description of th ecosmic animal's soul Timaeus now fortunately turns (34B).

We learn first that the soul , whatever it proves to be, existed before th ebody. Since it will soon be called by the word Idea, w e m igh t su ppo se that it isthe pre-existing reason, rationality, or tru th th at finds a manifest perceptiblereality in matter. What follows will be a lesson in th e nature and meaning ofsuch a relation of rationality and embodiment.

The soul of th e cosmos is a compound constructed of th e Indivisible/Al-


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172 Interpretationways-the-Same and th e Corporeal/Generated/Divisible, together with a thirdthat is a mean between th e first two. We know nothing whatever about thenature of a composite of tw o mutually exclusive contradictories such as divisible and indivisible. If it were "somewhat divisible" it would be simply divisible. Timaeus allows that it is difficult to mix such immiscibles as other andsame, but explains the result as th e effect of th e force applied by god. Whatever the difficulties that hinder mixing the immiscible, th e reason fo r positingsuch a mixture becomes evident when Timaeus describes the distribution of theimprobable mixture itself into portions: He had to provide fo r the division ofIndivisible/Same into quantities marked by eternal being, eternal order, andendless mutability. As he now makes clear, his mind is fixed on number andproportion or ratio. The sequel will show that his mind conceives the cosmos asth e visible that embodies the rational qua mathematical. It is given to Timaeusth e astronomer to describe the soul of the cosmic animal as th e rationality ormindedness that governs th e motion of th e great cosmic beings. He will eventually (47B) speak of the revolutions of reason (tou nou periodous), as he now(36E-37A) speaks of the soul's participating (metechousa) in reasoning andharmony, leaving us to weigh th e import of what he has presented since heshowed th at th e motion of the cosmic animal's body was simply imparted to it,its doing as a whole entity being only an endless rotation. Now we know thatthe soul that suffuses that body is th e rationality of mathemat ics , a passive orembedded reason rather than thinking: again, a quality imparted to it. Nothingthat Timaeus has said contributes, except by mere asseveration, to our beliefthat th e cosmos is a living, that is, a self-moving and thinking being, except byinference from a definition of life that we are expected to deduce from th easseveration. If life is no more th an th e execution of imparted motions and th epossession of a rational principle that is in fact th e mathematical formula thatdescribes those motions, then the cosmos is a living thing with a soul that isindeed bonded to a body as a body and its state of motion or rest are inseparably bonded. In a passage of striking boldness (40AB), Timaeus, while speakingof the divine luminosities in th e sky, will identify their uniform motion in oneplace with their thinking always th e same things about th e same things.

When Timaeus finishes his verbal construction of th e cosmic orrery (36D),he considers himself to have finished, eo ipso, the verbal construction of th esoul. He has told of the soul's composition out of the natures of Same, Otherand Being (ousia), the ingredients apportioned and kept together by the unfailing adhesive, proportion. Now (37A) Timaeus sets out to explain how soulworks to produce opinions and knowledge, proceeding to declare that, withoutnoise or sound, when soul seizes upon something whose substance (ousia) isdistributed or is indivisible, th e soul is moved throughout itself and declares(legei) the truth about what it has encountered, generating true opinion aboutthe empirical and Other, and knowledge about the rational and Same. He givesthe reader every reason to conclude that soul receives and conveys its int ima-


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The Whole As Setting for Man: On Plato's Timaeus 173tions by way of motions and without words; and he ends by denying that whatentertains opinion and knowledge is anything but soul. This after he has usedth e same word, ousia , to mean substance qua Being and substance qua thing-that-is, leaving th e reader to wonder how or whether he distinguishes them.

And god saw what he had wrought , and he was pleased, but he saw beforehim th e task of making the cosmos, th e conjoined body and soul, even morelike th e paradigmatic eternal animal, within the constraint that nothing madecould be eternal. Thus th e generating father took it in mind to make "a movableimage of eternity"(eiko kineton t inos aionos) (37D), a simulacrum of th e eternal resting One in th e tempora l that moves according to number , th e visibleMany. Time and Heaven are coeval, which seems to compel us to concludethat Eternity preceded Time, that Eternity "was" before th e god made th eHeavens and brought into being th e motions that divide Time into days andmonths and years. But Timaeus denies immediately that one could say thatEternity "preceded" Temporality, just as one must not say of Eternity that itwas or will be, only that it is. Time cannot be a portion of Eternity because theeternal is precisely One and Indivisible, which is "why" it is also simply Beingitself: Eternity and Being converge in IS. If th e Eternal could speak, it wouldsay (and one must defeat th e temptat ion to say, "It would always say") "I am,"never "I shall be," but of course there is no way to conceive of the Eternal'sspeaking, fo r speech implies before and after in utterance.

Timaeus 's account of th e eternal and th e tempora l obliges us to interpret hisdeclaration that the latter is th e image of th e former when th e latter is thecontradiction of th e former. A movable image of that the essence of which is tobe inaccessible to th e concept of motion is more than merely paradoxical. It hasthe character of an idol, the image of the unimaginable, than which it is hard toconceive of anything more false or more misleading. But Timaeus goes nofurther than to allege that th e tempora l is th e image of th e eternal "as far aspossible"(38B). What is the intention behind the divine ordering of the visibleso that it might suggest th e invisible, th e tempo ra l to point toward th e eternal?We are told (39B) that god lit th e heavens with th e sun so that the animals whowere capable of it might participate in number , through astronomy what onemight call the gift of th e heavens. We are given to believe that god formed th eheavens to be a light to th e understanding of men, to set them in fact on th eroad to philosophy (cf. 47AB).

Now god must fulfill the cosmos by installing in it not only those animalswhich are th e heavenly gods , mostly of fire, the luminaries of day and night,but also those corresponding to the remaining three ideas of animal life thatwhich moves through the air, that of the water , and th e kind with feet that goon land. Marveling at the intricacy of th e heavens, Timaeus observes th at th eenormous complexity of the divine movements aloft presents itself to those whocannot calculate in the forms of signs and terrors. The very heavens that godconstructed to be a visible image of th e intelligible paradigm become, across


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174 Interpretationth e grain of his desire, the ground of fear and superstition. Could god havemade men proof against unreason? Before we are given th e answer to thatquestion, Timaeus notices in a brief passage (40D-41A) the Olympian gods , th epopular gods of th e city, leaving no doubt that his speaking of them in the samebreath with those frightened men who cannot see divinity in th e heavenly arithmetic is purposeful. He pours his sarcasm on th e poets, who claim a specialrelationship with the gods they confect, giving out what they make it appearwas revealed to them by kinsmen. Whether this speech gave pleasure to Critiaswe have no way of knowing. It is followed immediately by Timaeus 's distinguishing the gods whose motions are evident and th ose th at reveal themselvesonly so far as they elect to do so, thus making clear his own understanding ofthe mode of god's communication with mankind.

Timaeus's speech is a likely likeness of truth, as god's visible world is alikeness of eternity. Timaeus teaches that the Timeless and unmoving is pictured in th e motion inseparable from the nature of th e organs of Time. There isapparently no way to reach truth, i.e., being, except through th e mediation ofits imperfect likeness or incorporation. Arithmetic itself has to come to sight,literally, on th e suggestion of th e luminous bodies in the heavens; but is thereanything aloft that makes sensible the arithmetic and harmonic means by whichintervals and their innumerable subdivisions are brought into order by the activemind of man? If mankind is to any degree free from the hand of god, it wouldseem to be through possessing th e power of calculation, by use of which th euniverse ceases to be, in itself, in principle, mysterious, unintelligible, andtherefore frightening. By these reflections, we can help ourselves to understandTimaeus's animadversions on th e poets , who seem to be doing something notcompletely different from Timaeus's own act: with their Ge and Uranus, theirKronos, Zeus and Hera, they were making an account or likeness of the samephenomena of Heaven and Earth, and the same birth of Time, that struck th eeye and then th e reflection of Timaeus. Is not Timaeus's speech a cosmologicpoem in prose? Is it not a poem because it is a myth , as he himself calls it(59C, 68D, 69B)? W e would only be compelled to look for th e differencebetween them. Timaeus's account differs from that of th e poets in that his godand gods are incapable of misanthropy, and thus cannot be thought of as fearsome. Not Timaeus and not any other man could deny th e occurrence of naturalcatastrophes capable of destroying some or even all human and other life onearth, but for Timaeus there is nothing malign and therefore nothing frightful inthe reason of th e whole , which is mathematics. Timaeus has discovered the godwho is free from misanthropy, who so far as possible brings only good to man,and whose beneficence does not consist in a mere harmlessness arising out ofirrelevance to human happiness, for god is th e ground of philosophy.

This is not to say that th e life of man is without penalties of a divine origin.Timaeus composes a tale (41A-D) of a conclave of the gods, convoked by godhimself whose purpose is to charge them with th e making of man and all th e


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus 175other animals that are not divine. Timaeus's god delegates th e birth of man tobeings who themselves came into being, for if he himself were to be the generator of subordinate animals they would have to be immortal. He explains to hisaddressees, the "gods of gods,"that although they themselves came into being,they will not pass away, fo r only he could bring about their dissolution and hewould not be guilty of putting asunder what he had joined together, therebyexplaining too why he may not generate man. Yet there must be mortal animals, fo r the perfection of th e whole demands th at th e perfect animal includeevery possible kind of living thing. Timaeus's god calls fo r th e generation ofanimals who must be mortal "lest they be equal to thegods,"but th e tale makesit unmistakably clear that th e interest being served is the completion of th evisible manifestation of the intelligible whole rather than the aloofness of god.The burden of god's speech to th e gods is his refusal to be th e culpable cause ofany ill that might befall man , including th e rebirth in an inferior form that willfollow man's foreseeable wickedness as its punishment. The gods whom hecharges with th e management of man are not fallen stars but exactly thoseluminaries to whom he engages fo r an undisturbed existence. Timaeus has contrived a god th e father to whom creation could look with affection and respect,unspoiled with fear but who demands no testimonies of gratitude or subservience and whose laws are written in theirsubjects'omposition where reasonsfo r transgression may of necessity lodge but temptation thereto would be irrat ional.

Now Timaeus begins his description of th e interplay of the ceaseless flux ofmatter that is th e somatic ground of animal life and th e revolutions of the soulthat is joined to the body. Between 42E and 46C, he elaborates a dynamicmechanics to account fo r nutrition and perception, all in te rms of motion and,self-evidently, of what is capable of motion. In th e short but weighty passage46C7-E6, Timaeus relegates these causes in te rms of flux of body to the classof secondary or subordinate causes, speaking of them as being among thosethat god makes use of "to serve him fo r perfecting as fa r as possible the idea ofthe most good."ere T imaeu s disparages the mere physicists or corporealistsfo r failing to understand that not body but only soul can think. Distinguishingthe causes belonging to mindful nature (emphronos physis) and those belongingto the motion that arises out of mindless necessi ty, he admonishes the lovers ofmind and knowledge to regard the former first and then th e latter. Timaeus hasdistinguished nature and th e visible world, and the respective studiers of thetw o realms, as Socrates does in Philebus (59A) where he differentiates natureand cosmos and their investigators explicitly. It is to be noted particularly thatPlato puts the disparagement of th e mere scientist in th e mouth of aprofessional astronomer who evidently had no need to abjure th e cosmos inorder to reach th e philosophic insight into nature. Since everything said is beingsaid in the presence of Socrates, the reader is prompted to wonder whether th elatter's silence is the acknowledgment of a merited rebuke of th e turn from


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176 Interpretationscience he claims to have had to make for the sake of wisdom (Phaedo 96 ff.)or is his tacit admission of concurrence in a remark that expresses his ownprofoundest belief from the beginning.

In fact enlarging on this thought, which grew out of his mechanical explanation of th e power of sight, Timaeus asserts that th e thing of greatest worthcontributed by our vision, and so intended by god, is that it opens up to us th espectacle of th e whole , number and "the nature of the all,"and thus philosophy, of which he says th a t th ere can be no greater good fo r a mortal. Perhapsstrangely, Timaeus can go on to refer to the good which we should say thatgreatest good itself p romo te s, n ame ly , our own emulation of th e serene andorderly reason of th e heavenly geometry. Philosophy, the investigation of theinner nature of the outer cosmos, is the means to ihe perfection of human life,fo r it is the means by which that soul that is shared by all and by man may bebrought, within man, to the same tranquil perfection of revolution that governsthroughout heaven. Similarly, hearing is given to us with a view to th e reception of music , thus to harmony and th e enhancement of th e orderly revolutionsof th e soul within. It is hard to conceive of a universe not grotesquely differentin appearance from the one familiar to us in which the whole would be morebenignly hospitable to man, to his tranquility and his perfection, or the god ofth e world more kindly affected to us. We must therefore make the necessaryeffort to remind ourselves that Timaeus's tale is being told in response to Socrates'request for an account of the good city in action, meaning in a state ofcontention or war.

We are assisted in that effort by Timaeus's announcement (47E) of a changein th e direction of his speech. Hitherto he has concentrated in the main (healludes to a brief exception, which might be 40D-41A, on the poets) on th eworkings of mind; now he will speak on th e things that come about throughnecessity. He must do so because th e generation of this cosmos was by way ofa mixture of mind and necessity, a dyad that must forever dominate the whole.In order to investigate necessity, Timaeus must consider th e nature of fire,water, earth and air as those ingredients, always misunderstood as primordial intheir perceived character, were before th e coming into being of Heaven. IfTimaeus is speaking accurately, he is affirming th e existence of th e elements insome absolutely archaic form before th e beginning of time, or before there wasbefore, "during" unimaginable eternity. Whatever that form might prove to be,we know certainly that th e elements in their verity cannot be likened to syllables or irreducibles. Timaeus knows that in essaying to describe th e truth of th eeffectual universe, he must include th e influence of the orbital (48B) cause aswell as th e eternal static, and that his project fo r analyzing th e so-called elements is th e signal for a re-commencement of th e account of the whole. At th eoutset of what he repeatedly asserts will be only the likeliest of such accounts,he invokes th e protection of god th e protector (o f travelers? 48D).

The second account of the whole begins (48E) with a revision of th e schema


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The Whole As Setting for Man: On Plato's Timaeus 177of forms (eide) that Timaeus has relied on hitherto. Besides the forms of Paradigm and Imitation, a third must be brought out which will be th e medium inwhich all Becoming takes place. The study of fire and its congeners is thenecessary beginning of the explanation of the requisite third fundamental.

The beginning of Timaeus's new account reveals immediately his rejectionand th e basis of his rejection of th e popular understanding of th e status of thefour supposed elementary materials. By processes of rarefaction and condensation, the so-called elements are t ransformed into one another (54B-C, earthalone will be shown as remaining uncommuted): what is now water condensinginto stones and earth or becoming air through rarefaction, air in turn becomingfire that condenses into air that turns into moisture which again solidifies asearth and stones. The standing elements are replaced by a ceaseless flux. Theissue now becomes, what that is not in flux supports that fluctuation thatTimaeus sees as he deepens the investigation into th e heart of that in whichBecoming is, "the truly subsistent by nature"(52B). The first, negative answeris, it is not the familiar elements , for each of these is already formed as a kindof something whereas what is to be sought as the absolutely underlying must bereceptive of all forms, itself precisely and therefore possessing none.

Timaeus's new account of th e whole begins as a project for discovering themost general categories of all things. These prove to be three in number: th ething itself; the perceptible of th e thing itself; and that in which all things arethat are. Timaeus "knows" that there is such a thing as, for example , unchanging fire itself because he "knows" that Knowing (nous) differs from True Opinion and it follows that each must have its proper object, the object of nousbeing th e very form or eidos of fire i tsel f. This ungenerated, unalterable, unre-ceptive, impenetrable, immiscible, imperceptible (definable apparently in pri-vatives except fo r "intelligible") corresponds with what we expect to recognizeas th e Idea of Fire, the answer to the question what is fire. Next, there is whateveryone perceives as fire and calls by the same name as th e first, but thatcomes into existence and passes out of it always in some location (topos),always moving , accessible to what Timaeus calls opinion (doxa). Third, thereis everlasting Place, which comes to our mind through a confused inferencethat we draw from the fact that everything we perceive sensibly exists in somelocation. Because every copy of paradigmatic being is somewhere , we falselysuppose that the all-inclusive, absolutely enfolding and thus somehow supporting is space, in some otherwise unoccupied portion of which each existent findsits locus. But Timaeus, in his depreciation of this instinctive or pre-scientificconception of space, implies that the encompass ing, that in which we and allthings live and move and have our being, is more than th e receptive as th emerely void would be receptive; it is the actively receptive that enters into th eexistence of every entity. Timaeus had intimated its nature provisionally wherehe said that fire is the local ignification of th e everlasting Place, as water is itshydrification (5 IB, 52D). Besides Being and Becoming, the paradigmatic


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178 Interpretationwhence and the perceptible engendered, there is th e underlying Wherein thatstands as the matrix of th e elements as of all the manifest flux, a participatingmed ium , ubiquitous as aether but endlessly protean in its potentiality fo r materializing as objects of perception.

It is the very plethora of potentialities that it contains that gives this ThirdFundamental, the Suckling Nurse of the Generated (52D), its efficacy in shaping the whole while serving as its host. According to Timaeus's story, Place isfull of potentialities which exist in a state of tension with one another and thusin a paradoxical condition of productive activity. The activity produced by th efriction, as we might say, of dissimilar potentialities is explained by Timaeus'sconstruction that posits motion as th e result of th e presence of heterogeneity, orOther. He attributes mot ion , a shaking or being shaken (seisthai) (52E), to th eall-embracing and all-receptive Place, a motion that appears to be an example,perhaps th e only example , of th e doing of a self-moved or unmoved mover. Itis notable that the movement within Place is self-evidently not movement fromplace to place and also that it is not the effect of an intelligent, purposiveintention but is the mechanical result of "mere conditions,"say of th e necessitythat heterogeneity less irenically called strife by th e predecessors of Socrates generate motion.

There is one feature of Timaeus's account that should be noted especially,namely , his insistence (50D-E) that the recipient of forms (morphas) have noform of its own, just as the sculptor's clay must be kneaded into perfectsmoothness , at th e same time, as we have just seen, that the heterogeneity ofpotentialities within it be so real as to have th e power to generate motion. Toput the issue otherwise , the great recipient of forms, if capable of motion andof being moved , and as we shall see of transmitting motion, must be material ,but be simultaneously in one sense only th e possibility of being formed yet inanother sense already contain the forms of heterogeneity within. It would seemthat the form contained within must be of such a nature as not to violate thecondition that Place as a whole be perfectly unformed. What Timaeus alleges isnot incompatible with the presence within Place of th e eternally existent possibilities of all things that can come to be possibilities which qua archetypaland eternal are indistinguishable from th e Ideas.

Any such speculation would have to be compatible with Timaeus's notionthat movement results from the relation of th e potentialities within Place, indicating that he conceives those potencies or powers (dynameis) as being literallyenergetic, as if th e very existence of Other means tension or strife, fo r good orill without any inclination of strife itself toward good or evil. At any rate, th eaction of th e potencies so agitates th e entirety of Place that Place in turn displaces th e forms, sending all flying, at th e same t ime sorting out th e fourelements in their rudimentary conditions so that each consorted with its ownkind before th e whole was made up out of them. Now Timaeus proceeds to th ecrucial description of th e construction by god of th e four elements, constituted


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus 179as shapes (schema) by forms and numbers (eide and arithmoi). What fo llows(53C ff.) is th e detailed trigonometry by which Timaeus rationalizes atomism,thus curing it of th e mindlessness that would render it unacceptable to a thinkerwho could not represent the whole without good, somehow understood, aspresent at th e beginning. Thus Timaeus sets out to describe th e nature of th esmallest particles of th e four elements , presenting it through a tale of their firstproduction. Since they are solids, their bulk must be bounded by planes. Hedoes not consider th e possibility of spherical atoms, which would have th emerit of mimicing th e perfect whole but which, of course, could not abut oneanother except at points of tangency, leaving interstices void of elementarymatter. Timaeus's physics rejects th e hypothesis of void not only through th econstruct of Place but through th e undefended assertion of the rectilinearity ofthe plane surfaces bounding th e smallest particles (subject to th e reservationthat finite rectilinear figures could not, as the curvilinear also could not perfectly fill a sphere) which he refrains from calling atoms, i.e., uncuttables,because, as we know and as we shall soon be told in a corrected version, th esmall particles are eminently frangible and largely commutable from element toelement.

Rectilinear plane figures are composites of triangles, and all triangles can beconceived as composed of right triangles, isosceles and scalene. Timaeus now(53E-54A) adopts Beauty as th e criterion of th e excellence of th e entities hemust discuss, Beauty somehow standing in place of or as in fact being Good,and he declares the scalene right triangle to be the most beautiful thing out ofwhich to construct the beautiful elements , fo r it is th e immediate component(when doubled) of th e equilateral triangle. Timaeus says in passing (53E) thathis reasoning will disclose, if it succeeds, th e tru th not only about th e generation of th e elements but also about the mean proportional (ana logon en meso ) ,i.e., the expression a:b = b:c, which happens to be th e formula for the relationof th e segments of the Divided L ine. What is the truth about th e mean proportional, and how can it be related to the isosceles right triangle? Perhaps asfo llows: The so-called Pythagorean theorem indicates that the relation betweenth e hypotenuse and th e legs of the isosceles right triangle involves an incalculable square root, what the Greeks cal led, as we still call , an irrational number.The proportion between th e leg and th e hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangleis as illusory or anomalous as the relation between th e diameter and th e circumference of a circle, notwithstanding that th e quantities being related are perfectly finite. The relation of mean proportionality cannot be applied to th e sidesof an isosceles right triangle without maintaining the absurdity that th e squareon th e hypotenuse is equal to (rather than twice, cf. Meno) th e area of th esquare formed by th e legs as sides; but the intrusion of th e irrational {2 in th earithmetic of the isosceles right triangle points to th e parallel fact that affectsthe mean proportional as it necessarily incorporates th e power of 2: the irrational is in principle inescapable by th e perfection and beauty of number. The


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180 Interpretationirrational lies at the heart of the beauty of the most beautiful and most constitut ive of forms. It might be worth mentioning further that the Greek word for th epotentialities whose tension resulted in th e basic, fruitful agitation of Place isdynamis, th e word fo r an exponential power.

Timaeus develops (54C ff.) in detail the construction of the smallest particles of the four elements , fire, air, and water out of scalene right triangles andearth out of th e isosceles, the latter element constituted as a cube each of whosesix sides is formed of four isosceles triangles. We are not told why the square,the side of th e cube , is shown to be constructed of isosceles rather than scaleneright triangles, which can be done easily. To have done so would have gainedthe advantage in elegance of reducing earth to the same mathematical element,the scalene right triangle, as the rest of th e cosmos. Timaeus appears fo r somereason to make earth exceptional when he constructs it of a triangle that unitesthe equality of tw o of its sides with the irrationality in th e dimension of th ethird. However this may be, Timaeus stops to make explicit that th e primaryscalene triangle has a hypotenuse twice the length of th e shorter leg, and thatth e remaining side must therefore be equal to or some multiple of th e squareroot of three, of course irrational. Out of such anomalous material th e entirevisible universe is to be constructed, afflicted by


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus -181minuscules, which are not earth but proto-earth, but sufficiently to lose thecharacter of proper earth until by chance they m eet again (xyntykhonta); andhow the particles of water, fire, and air engage o ne a no th er in a p ol em ic c he mistry c on d uc te d o n a field of battle where victory and defeat (56E-57C) result inth e splitting and recombination of th e molecules and consequent commutationof elements (earth excepted). Timaeus explains these happenings by recurringto th e trigonometry of the primary forms with their angularities of greater andless acuteness , adding now to th e properties of th e small particles th e alternative of submissiveness in defeat, with loss of identity as a result, and combativeresistance to domination, resulting in lonely exile or defeat a nd a ss im ila tion .Timaeus has composed an epic of wa r that c ou ld c la im to describe a combatwhose duration, scope, a nd c on se qu en ce s e xc ee d those of th e wa r between th eGreeks and the Trojans as th e latter exceed those of th e wa r between th e frogsand the mice. P la to has made Timaeus the rational poet of th e everlasting epicof th e r at io na l an d the irrational, of peace and war.

There is ceaseless restlessness throughout th e whole , brought on by th e action of the cosmic sphere's c e ntripe ta l c o mp u ls io n which seeks to fill everyemptiness , and thus promotes the w ar of the particles as they encounter, fracture and reconstitute themselves. Necessary fo r th e origination of motion isdissimilarity or Other, w itho ut w hich there is no distinction of mover andmoved , and also there is the primal impulse that has its source in the sphere'sirresistible compulsion to minimize its volume. In his present account of th esphere's s tr ug gl e a ga in st every vestige of void within it, Timaeus does not ofcourse consider the ubiquity of Place as synonymous with the a priori exclusionof void from the sphere of the whole.

At this point, it might be in order to observe that Timaeus's first majorargument , the one that culminated in th e entity of Place, wa s dominated by th egoodness of god who suffused the whole with r ea so n and ordered th e heavensto display themselves and their secret arithmetic to ma n fo r th e advancement ofphilosophy. Since the recommencement , Timaeus has scarcely noticed god buthas confined himself to the elaboration of a mathematical physics that purportsto account fo r th e ground of all matter an d th e origin of motion. The transitionfrom th e doing of god the mindful sower of soul to the power of necessary truththat marked the new beginning will be sustained as Timaeus passes from hisaccount of what is perceptible to his account of perception (62C ff.) and therewith of the causes of the perceptibility of th e perceptible.

Fire acts on ou r body by virtue of th e geometry of its particles, which aresharp, small , acutely a ng led and in rapid motion, thus apt for penetrating, dividing and cutting our flesh. Timaeus seems to be aware of no need to bridgeth e huge gap between th e interaction of p ar ti cl es a nd th e sensation of warmthbeyond the suggestion that the word for heat is related etymologically to theword fo r chopping up . Even if the etymological speculation be not fanciful, itwould bespeak nothing more useful than a tautology or a prescientific hunch.


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182 InterpretationAs Timaeus goes on to account fo r "cold," he refers to the expected phenomenaof mot ion, c om p re ss io n a nd density, but adds the observation that whatever isdriven together o r c om p re ss ed contrary to nature will fight according to natureto remove itself from its affliction. Of course the unnatural compression thatunderlies the shivering of the uncomfortable ma n might have been produced byhis exposure to sleet, which is as natural as is his compression an d discomfort.The natural sleet and the n at ur al m e ch an ic s o f the man's p ar ti cl es are in th eparadoxical relation of opposing influences whose strife is indistinguishablefrom their harmony. The boundary between agitation and serenity begins tobecome indistinct. Timaeus's discourse on the nature of heavy and light (62C)continues in a similar vein. Heavy and light seem to have to be understood byreference to a bo ve and below, heavy meaning no more than seeking below andlight th e opposite; but Timaeus reminds th at th e whole is a sphere composed ofparticles whose motion is governed by the centripetal thrust inherent in th esphere itself, t an tamount to abhorrence of void. The aggressive angularity ofthe particles does the rest, and Timaeus has thus shown how there is no absolute above and below, only inner and outer. He has replaced, for th e philosophic mind , the naive image of a cosmic equatorial plane with a rationalschema of center and periphery. In general, the principle of Timaeus's physicsis not grav ity , a tt rac ti on , or "love" but compression, struggle, or "war" thatproduces th e effectual simulacrum of philia, forcing like to associate with likeby sorting the particles according to their size and geometry.

Timaeus must explain pleasure and pain (64A). Suffice it to say that he doesso in terms of th e motion of particles, th e sensations of pain or pleasure depending on th e resistance to their displacement or lack of it on th e part of th evarious particles. In passing, he refers th e pleasures an d pains associated withfillings and emptyings in the body to "the mortal of th e soul"(65A) which canhardly be incorporeal. His account of th e senses of taste and smell runs in th efamiliar mechanical channel , but his explanation of hearing produces the surprising assertion that th e motion of the audible that comes from without terminates at th e liver. Ridicule would be premature in view of th e eventual identification of the liver as th e organ of divination (71-72). His account of visionand the perception of colors turns on th e interaction of the fire emanating fromus and th e fire that encounters that optic stream from without. Timaeus refers tohis explanation as a likely myth (68D) (cf. 59C "the idea of the likely myth":idea as plausible construct).

Having drawn this part of his tale to its conclusion, Timaeus declares thathis discourse has so far dealt in th e things that are born of necessity, which theDemiourgos took and used in generating the autarkic, most p er fe ct go d. TheDemiourgos is th e architect of th e good in everything that was to come intobeing. Thus, tw o kinds of causes are to be distinguished, th e necessary and th edivine, and it is th e divine that must be inquired after in order to gain a happylife so far as our nature permits. The inquiry into th e necessary is fo r the sake


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus 183of th e divine, fo r it is impossible to reach th e latter without going through th eformer. With this statement, Timaeus purges himself of th e imputation of beinga vulgar mechanist. Equally, there is no approach to philosophy except throughknowledge of the polemic reason that lies in th e heart of th e perfect godcosmos.

Timaeus now (69B) proposes another re-commencement in order to complete his myth. He repeats briefly th e tale of god's infusing the original disorderwith commensurability (symmetria) within and among the parts so that, however possible, they should be in a state of proportion and commensurability(analoga, symmetra). We are in a position to take seriously th e qualification"however possible"that Timaeus attaches to those terms of mathematics.Dwelling on god's delegation to his progeny of th e task of constructing th emortal things within the one cosmic animal he had made, th e tale relates howth e lesser gods encased the immortal soul in a body in which they enclosed alsoa mortal soul that Timaeus desc ribes as th e seat of pleasure th e tempter towickedness , pain th e evicter of good, rashness and fear the advisers in folly,spiritedness obdurate before dissuasion, and hope th e seducer, all mixed together with irrational sensation and headlong lust. They did this out of necessity so much we are told and no more , although our minds are drawn back toth e worm of irrationality and incommensurability lodged in th e core of th eapple of ineluctable mathematical reason. We know without being told that thatnecessity was superior in power to everything that could be called by th e nameof god, and that the highest god had power only to keep his hands clean bydeputizing others to execute the demand of necessity that man be made punishable before he merited punishment , the bitterest hysteron proteron to mar th ework of a philanthropic god or the most consoling myth to illuminate th emind of a philanthropic man.

Making the best of an imperfect situation, th e inferior gods take pains tokeep the mortal soul away from th e immortal as well as they can, seating th elatter in the head, the former in th e trunk, further dividing th e trunk with adiaphragm so th at th e better passions, courage and spir i tedness, might be nearerto reason and abler to collaborate with it in restraining th e base desires. Timaeus has begun his anatomical psychology on th e premise of th e tripartition ofth e soul that is familiar as a principle of the Platonic Socratic doc trine. We canonly surmise, helped by Socrates' si lence, how much of Timaeus's discourse isgratifying to Soc ra te s. T imaeus goes on to describe th e organs of th e bodyaccording to the ways in which their purely mechanical functioning serves, aswell as possible, the hegemony of reason over th e passions lodged in thoseorgans. Thus th e lungs cool and protect th e heart, put in place fo r that purposeby th e provident gods who , as Timaeus says, planted there "the idea of th elungs" (70C). Soon (71 A) he will say that god , not th e gods , contrived "theidea of th e liver" and installed it in its place. Unchecked by Socrates, Timaeusrefers easily to the idea of lungs and liver, without any such hesitations as


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184 Interpretationperplexed young Socrates over whether there could be ideas of the hair, nails,and mud (Parmemides 130C-D). Installing an idea appears to mean fashioninga concrete body that has a function fo r which the body is adapted. In th epresent case, the idea of the liver is set in its place so that the mirror-like organmight reflect the monitory thoughts of the mind as frightening images to overawe th e organs below the d iaphragm. Timaeus produces an extraordinary account of the interaction of mind and liver, showing in detail the corporeal statesof the organ as effects of a particular state of the mind , and th e psychic equivalent of each of those states of the organ in what might be seen as an exactparallel of soul and body. T he astonishing doctrine of th e liver comes to a headin Timaeus's disclosure of the liver's function in divination. The liver, participating not in reason and wisdom (logos, phronesis) , lies asleep at night in at ranquil state of equanimity and performs its divination. Timaeus surprises byfailing to offer a single hint of an explanation of dreams as consequences offevers or chil ls, hunger or satiety or any other condition of th e body. What hestresses instead is th e functioning of this important contributor to our psychiclife in the absence of any reasoning within it whatsoever. Dreaming, or divination, arises in us exactly when th e mind is either dormant or distracted bydisease or "enthusiasm," some invasion by god at any rate not in command ofitself. Since Timaeus distinguishes dreams and waking visions, we gather thatdreams belong to the dormancy of th e mind and waking visions to i ts d is tr action and enthusiasm. In either case, th e true interpreter of divination or th e trueprophet is that man who is in full possession of his mind, fo r th e frantic andpossessed, considered by the vulgar to be prophet ic , would only compound th eunreason inherent in the enthusiasm. Every intelligent man , in a state of vigilance, is his own prophet , th e construer of his visions and voices. W hat Timaeus calls divination or prophecy is given to us in mitigation of our baseness,not of our ignorance; it is an instrument of conscience, not of revelation, as wein our t ime might say, and as such as Spinoza would find reasons to reaffirm.For Timaeus, th e mortal soul is a party to th e struggle of good against necessary badness, a struggle that is an episode of what appears as a cosmic polemic,evidence of which we have already seen.

With a remark about the function of th e spleen as th e cleanser of the liver,Timaeus concludes his discourse on the mortal and immortal soul (72D), andproceeds to the discussion of the rest of th e body, more exactly, of th e comingto be of th e rest of th e body, "in the same fashion," by which he apparentlymeans explaining the form of an organ as instrumental to a moral good fo rman. The first explanation of Timaeus's that we will encounter is of the belly.The central fact is the spectacular length of th e intestines. For this Timaeus ha sa characteristic rationalization: because of our grossness, we would surely go toexcess in eating and drinking if th e intestines, by their great length, did notretain food and drink inordinately and thus delay th e sensation of depletion thatwould be the signal fo r further gormandizing. Even th e body is enlisted in th e


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus 185moral combat against itself. Timaeus's inference of morphology from moralteleology is as evident here as in any of th e other manifold places in which itpresents itself as epiphany.

In an extraordinary passage (73A-75D), Timaeus recounts th e generation ofthe bones and flesh and other such bodily matter, but especially of th e "marrow"which plays a crucial part in th e constitution of living material. We aretold that god reverted to th e pristine triangles, selecting th e best of them andrecombining them as the most precise specimens of th e four eleme.nts. Out ofthese he made mar row, th e all-seed for every mortal kind. This marrow is saidby Timaeus to be the medium or substance in which soul is bound to body, thatis, in which life itself comes to be. God div ided th e life-stuff into portions thathe shaped in conformity with th e kind of soul each was to embody. The portionthat was somehow to contain th e divine soul or mind was formed as a sphere(as was said before [44D]) in th e first story of th e cosmogony. That the brainbears only vague resemblance to a sphere is a fact that may be passed over inthe interest of the intended meaning of the passage, which seems to be that th emorphology of th e visible and generated organ is inseparable from its psychicnature, excellence, and function. This marrow in which body and soul areunited is distributed in various shapes and then encased in suitable bones, rigidand jointed, along with th e apparatus of connecting tissue and flesh that makeup th e body as we know it all presented as fo r the sake of th e protection ofth e seed within, i.e., th e marrow. The bones most be-souled (empsychotata),most inclusive of soul, are least covered with flesh; those with least soul, withmost and densest flesh: the gathering of flesh about the head would have madethe mind oblivious, unreceptive to the signals from without , as if those latterwere emanations resembling missiles obliged to penetrate matter by parting itwith force.

Now (75A-B) Timaeus reveals a deep-lying tension in th e nature of things:th e necessity that accompanies our existence has produced a disjunctionbetween what conduces to activity of the spirit and what , through abundanceand density of flesh, conduces to protection of th e corporeal medium of thatactivity. The lungs do not suffocate the heart that they protect, but a mass offlesh and bone about the brain-marrow would stultify th e mind within it. Ourmakers , having deliberated, chose intelligence fo r us rather than longevity.That they decided as they did was perhaps to be expected; th at th e choice wasforced upon them, or that the whole is so constructed that th e good of intelligence is by its nature exclusive of th e good of (indefinite) existence is sobering and astonishing. However the antithesis is to be explained, we see it borneout in th e fragility of the good city of the Republic; and we see its thoughtaffirmed in th e Garden of Eden.

Yet Plato sees what might be the exception to this rule that tends to prove it.The mouth serves the end of necessity by admitting nour ishment , and of th emost good by expelling speech, the instrument of mind. It can serve the tw o


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otherwise conflicting ends by violating the principle, said to be nature s own ,that each function is performed best by that agent whose only function it is.This dictum is the basis fo r th e division of labor that inspired the structure ofthe best polis, in which the coincidence of mind and power , of intelligence andforce, of r ea so n and coercion, in the person of the philosopher-king representsthe same violation of the principle of division of labor, of disjunction of necessity an d good , as comes to sight in the physiology of th e mouth. The naturalprinciple of division of labor, necessary fo r th e achievement of the good, seemsto rest on the conflict between the conditions of durability or existence and th econditions of intelligence or mind or, to fall in with Timaeus's assimilation toeach other of m ind and Being, then of Being itself. We have been well prepared fo r a disjunction between existence in time and th e t imeless being ofunalterable mind , but it is surprising to find that what we may have been prepared fo r was not the mere disjunction but th e active opposition between th etemporal and the eternal. At th e same time, but in th e contrary direction,the supposed antinomy of th e body on the one hand and both soul and idea onth e other seems to be compromised in th e physiology that encompasses th eimplanting of th e idea of the lungs and th e idea of th e liver as well as th eanimization of th e marrow and th e motility of th e soul. While nothing shouldinduce us to forget th e m a je stic o rd e rlin e ss of th e motions in heaven, we arereminded that the order or intelligibility within those motions is supplied byreason in the form of a mathematics dominated by proportion but vexed withth e incommensurabilities of the irrational numbers.

Timaeus explains the genesis of skin and hair (76), and then comes to account fo r th e presence of the nails. He purports to describe th e synthesis ofsinew, skin and bone that eventuates in nail, and then takes the occasion toremind of th e difference between th e co-causes or subordinate causes thatbrought the thing into being and th e superlatively causal intelligence (aitiotatedianoia) (76D) that intended its existence with a view to what was to come.What our makers foresaw wa s th e descent from ma n of all th e other animals,beginning with woman , many to be in need of something harder than mereflesh at the tips of their extremities. What Timaeus is adumbrating here is th etale of th e punishment of evil-doers by demotion, after death and by reincarnation, through th e ranks of th e lower forms of life. Woman is indeed derivedfrom man , not to be his companion but to be his fate; but of this we shall leammore when it becomes Timaeus's theme.

Still to be explained is the genesis of man's nourishment. Timaeus will notundertake to explain the preservation of life in ma n through nutrition withoutremarking, with an apparent casualness that belies th e gravity of th e remark,that man's life consists, by necessity, of fire and th e breathed air (pneuma)(11 A). This bold affiliation of life to th e tw o most rarefied m ater ia l e le m en tswill be amplified (80D) when Timaeus maintains that fire reduces the alimentto particles of usable size and then rises with them after the ascending breath


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The Whole As Setting for Man: On Plato's Timaeus 187itself, in a collaboration of blood and breath that is in our day to o understood tooccur , if with a different bearing. In any event , what feeds us must resemble ussufficiently but not excessively. Accordingly, th e gods made a mixture of th ehuman nature with certain other "ideas and sensibilities"(ideais, aisthesesi)(11A) to form the vegetable kind. "Everything whatsoever that participates inlife may justly and most rightly be called a living being," (77B) th e latter term(zoon) being th e word also for animal. Aristotle (de Anima, 414ab) will speakof the vegetative soul as present in those living th in g s th at are without thoughtor locomotion. He will not make th e astonishing assertion that they know sensat ion, pleasure and pain, and desire, which Timaeus affirms in an access ofdogmatic consistency with what he has desc ribed as characteristic of man'slower belly . What characterizes, and impoverishes, th e soul of th e lower belly,shared with th e souls of the vegetable "living things," is the incapacity fo r theinternal motion that is the condition fo r a mental life as also for local motion.Timaeus does not retreat from th e association of the functions of life with themotion of matter. The deta iled account of th e physiology of nutrition that follows is itself preceded by what appears to be a description of th e circulatorysystem, a description that rationalizes th e bilateral symmetry of the "veins" andtheir turning about the head as being in the service of revealing th e sensationsfrom both sides of th e body to the whole body. His anatomy of nutrition andrespiration is of interest to us for th e vigor with which it is made consistentwith the universal principles of mechanical necessi ty, i.e., motion of body, andplenitude of matter , i.e., absence of void. The life of th e cosmos and of all thelesser living things belonging to it is dominated by the contiguity of irreducibleparticles of matter that absolutely fill th e whole and that are characterized bymotion t raceable to the trigonometry that becomes phenomenal through thelinked media of heat and cold, and rarefaction and condensation. From th eremoteness of th e heavens to the ventral recesses, the whole is one and explainable as one, enabling Timaeus to offer to elucidate (80A) therapeutic cupping,swallowing, th e motion of bodies th ro ug h th e air, and th e character of sound,including the pleasure given to the wise by their perceptions of the sounds thatmimic th e divine harmony in mortal motion. Many other wonders are renderedintelligible by the power of the insight that there is no void, no running downof motion through its dissipat ion into an emptiness. We are not forbidden tospeak of nothing, but it is clear that we can do no more than say its emptyname. Having grasped this and also the ineluctability of th e impulse by whichlike is obtruded upon like, the thinker will recognize in every part of thecosmos th e replica of the whole. Lest we have forgotten it, Timaeus refers(81B-D) to the polemic trigonometry that is at th e root of the irenic attraction oflike and like. T he triangles of the body become exhausted in their ceaselesscombat with the external , and they become incapable of attacking the alimentary material with a view to co-opting it to the animal. The inner triangles canno longer defeat but are defeated by th e exoteric world. This is senescence, and


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188 Interpretationw h e n the triangles have lost their efficacy, or as on e might say their spiritedness, the soul departs pleasantly because naturally: the essence of death in ourcosmos is not rest but defeat by an externality that always lurks for attack.

The foregoing conception of uneventful death is carried forward and confirmed in the immediate sequel , a long an d detailed passage on morbidity(81E-86A). What m i g h t be called basic disease occurs in the presence of excess , deficiency, or displacement of quantities of the four elements in th e body,or th e alteration of them to form unsuitable variants perhaps isotopes whichdisrupt a physical equilibrium that is maintained in th e body only so long aslike is added to or taken away from like and the proportions of th e whole areunchanged. Like to like and th e stability of proportion are a formula for th ereconciliation of ceaseless motion and unbroken rest. The massive existence ofdisease testifies to th e power of the forces whose tendency is to oppose thatreconciliation. Timaeus's advance to the second order of disease indicatessomething of the character of those forces. There is a natural direction for th egeneration of th e derivative materials of th e body from the primary four elements: marrow, bone, flesh, and sinew, as well as blood to begin with. Then,with the incidence of disease, instead of flesh and sinew being formed fromblood, fo r example, flesh degenerates and reverts to th e veins, attacking th eblood. Enmity and wa r are th e te rm s used by Timaeus to characterize the relat ions among th e components of body that have departed from the order of theirnatural revolutions (83A). In sum, when blood is replenished not from its natural nourishment but by a reflu x toward itself of its own product, the applicationof "opposite" to like is contrary to th e laws of nature (para tous te s physeosnomous) (83E). The great standard of nature is an order whose principle of liketo like is called, in an exceedingly rare use of th e expression, th e laws ofnature; the standard is not called an Idea, the eternal unchangeable which is th etrue being of every becoming. It is hard to conceive th e efficacy or constitutionof a successful foe of th e Idea; but disease compels Timaeus to conjure th esuccessful enemy of the laws of nature. He discovers a blind necessity, call itth e irresistible cosmos, in which strife and the irrational coexist in enduringtension with reason and good personified as a god. We are p re se nt ed w it h th espectacle of the principle of like to like, which is a philia, in perpetual strugglewith a principle of hostility. Since th e struggle of concord with discord is astruggle, it appears evident that th e dominance of strife is as su re d no t by itsvictory but by th e mere fact of everlasting engagement.

Timaeus proceeds from th e pathology of reversals of th e natural order ofconstruction in th e body to what he calls th e third kind of disease, traceable todisorders of th e internal air, phlegm, and bile, in each case brought on by ablockage in the system of circulation that is such a massive phenomenon ofvitality. Should th e fiery bile press its attack overwhelmingly, it w o ul d r ea ch toth e marrow itself and destroy by heat the bonds that fasten th e soul to th ebodya manner of speech that cannot be presupposed unconditionally to bepurely figurative.


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The Whole As Setting fo r Man: On Plato's Timaeus 18 9Suitably enough, Timaeus passes on to the diseases of th e soul that arise out

of th e state of th e body (86B). He has in view such mental disorders as madness (mania) and stupidity (amathia), insisting that whatever partakes of theseis sickness, immediately identifying the excess of pleasure and pain as being ofthat kind and as th e greatest of th e diseases of th e soul. He tra ce s th e venerealfrenzy to a superabundance of semen which is in turn produced by a porosity ofth e bones. (H e does not discuss nymphomania .) He leaves no doubt that thewicked are not so voluntarily and that to blame them is not right. In this striking disquisition, Timaeus has found means of arriving at th e conclusion that noman is voluntarily wicked. Wickedness is indeed inseparable from a failing ofmind a proposition akin to the Socratic formula that virtue is knowledge butth e wickedness and ignorance or stupidity in the soul have their causes in defectof th e body and its nurture (trophe) (86E). The unbroken silence of Socrates inth e face of this confirmation of his doctrine that no one is wicked voluntarilyleaves th e question of his reaction to such confirmation open to speculation.

Timaeus elaborates his referral of the vices to states of the body by relatingth e states of the body to th e movements (phora) of th e soul , in apparent appealto a principle of th e parallel of body and soul if not the reduction of the latter tothe former. Completing his pathology of the soul , he asserts that th e evils ofpolitical regimes and of the things spoken in public and private, not counteracted by any education, comprise a second cause of men's wickedness , involuntary just as was the diseased state of th e body. The true malefactors are th eones who make men wicked , not their corrupted victims. And whom, we mayask, could he regard as more culpable th an th e veritable corrupters of youth. Hecloses by recommending to each that he flee from evil and pursue its opposite,but only after he, Timaeus, has d rawn man and his soul into th e closest proximity to th e cosmos and its governance by necessity.

As a physician of body and mind , he accepts the burden of proposing remedies as well as providing pathology and diagnosis (87C). The principle ofrestoration to health is, understandably, the same as th e principle of th e maintenance of health, namely , symmetry and proportion between body and soul.Symmetry or commensurability and proportion between incommensurableswould be unintelligible except as a figurative suggestion not meant fo r closeinspection. But Timaeus is at some length in prescribing fo r the combination ofboth body and soul that we call living being, doing so in terms that make clearth e seriousness of his belief that vice and disease, virtue and health, are statesbelonging to a whole in which body and soul are locked in a relation of reciprocating motions such a doctrine as seemed novel to Thomas Hobbes whenhe proposed it. A powerful soul shakes the body for good or ill, and a domineering body joined with a mind that is small and weak will be home to a grosshuman being, stupid, forgetful and ignorant. Lest body and soul fall into disproportion, they should both be cultivated to strength, and th e means forachieving such symmetry are gymnastic and music. This evocation of the Republic brings sharply to view th e difference between th e repression of th e de-


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190 Interpretation

mands of the body that is characteristic of the Republic and the prominence ofthe body's influence in its copartnership in motility with the soul that is asserted in the Timaeus, as if the latter dialogue is itself in a relation of correctivecounterpoise with the work to which it is the sequel.

Music and gymnastic are presented by Timaeus as forms of exercise, modesof inducing motion in soul and body so that both may imitate as fa r as possiblethe eidos or form of the Whole itself, which is in ceaseless motion; for only inmotion can the hostile influences, also motions , be kept at bay or overcome andlike be allowed to consort with like fo r th e preservation of health. The physicof reciprocal automotion on th e part of body and soul together constitutes th etrue or best regimen fo r th e composite animal , th e basis of a life most according to reason (89D). It is notable that, in th e passage of the Republic (444) thatmay be considered parallel to Timaeus's discussion of health and virtue, thereis no reference to mot ion , although there is repeated reference to nature and tonatural h iera rchy . The Republic dwells on hegemony (o f the best), Timaeusstresses reciprocity between higher and lower, the tw o differing from one another as hierarchy differs from equilibrium. As will appear presently, Timaeushas almost completed the account that will constitute his project fo r bringingheaven down to earth with his moral kinetics.

Now Timaeus tu rn s to th e condition of th e guiding soul itself, a subject thathe will treat only cursorily. Recurring to his account of th e th ree parts of th esoul as loca ted in the head, chest, and abdomen, Timaeus simply adapts to th isconfiguration the doctrine of balanced, proportional motions and (which mustinvigilate th e drowsy reader) of th e superiority of motion to rest, that he hasa lready amply elaborated in his physic of the body and of th e composite ofbody and soul.Having shown th e origin of man, Timaeus prepares for th e conclusion of his

discourse by describing th e generation of th e rest of th e animal kind, and in sodoing reveals that his

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