A Living Reasonable Account: On the Status of Timaeus’ Eikōs Logos (Again), JHS 2024 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426924000326 (2024)

Dialectical Method and the Structure of Reality in the Timaeus

Goodbye to the Demiurge? Timaeus’ Discourse as a Thought Experiment

Time and Cosmology in Plato and the Platonic Tradition (Editors: Daniel Vázquez and Alberto Ross), Brill, 2022

I aim to suggest in this chapter that it is possible to understand Timaeus’ whole discourse as a kind of thought experiment placing the audience (and the reader) in the footsteps of a diving craftsman. In other words, Timaeus is presenting to us the great experiment of fashioning the whole of the universe , an experiment which needs to be done not only by (deductive and non-deductive) reasoning, but also with the use our imagination. In consequence, the Demiurge will appear to be an epistemological tool allowing this experience to take place in our own minds, which will imply two important claims allowing to understand the originality of the present interpretation in relation to others: 1) it does not seem necessary to attribute to the Demiurge an ontological role and 2) Timaeus’ experiment cannot be “translated” into a purely argumentative account. In other words, and to the contrary to most didactic approaches, Timaeus’s discourse could not be expressed in an abstract treatise of cosmology for experts based on empirical observation and deductive a priori arguments, for the use of imagination is an essential part of the process.

Plato's Physics of Meta. The Ontology of Image in the Timaeus

On Matter: Schelling’s Anti-Platonic Reading of the Timaeus

2018

This essay contrasts the so-called emanationism of Neoplatonism, particularly Proclus’s, with the naturephilosophy of F.W.J. Schelling. The contention is that Schelling’s thought is Neo-Platonist because thoroughly Platonist (albeit not at all Platonic, that is, dualistic), except that his project stands Neoplatonism on its head by inverting the order of procession. Schelling agrees with Neoplatonism that matter is the lowest and most inferior of the hypostases—not even constituting a proper hypostasis itself, because incapable of self-reversion—but he differs in viewing matter as cosmologically prior to intellect, soul, the demiurge and so forth. The question concerns not the hierarchical but the ontological ordering of matter. For Schelling, procession is not a descent into being (and eventually non-being) from a one beyond being, but an elevation ( Steigerung ) and intensification of being, which precludes the need for return ( έπιστροφή [ epistrophē ]). This is the trademark of ...

To Find the Maker and Father. Proclus’ Exegesis of Tim. 28C3-5, in: Études Platoniciennes, 2, p. 261-283

2006

The metaphysical "monistic" approach of the Platonic Timaeus by the Neo-Platonist Proclus

Journal of Ancient Philosophy 14/1 (2020), 116-160.

In this article, we focus on Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (30a.3-6) about how the divine Demiurge intervenes in matter. It is an interesting extract due to the fact that Proclus manages to combine philosophical perspective with theological interpretation and scientific analysis. In the six chapters of the article, we present the theory on dualism established by the representatives of Middle Platonism, we approach the question of the production of the corporeal hypostases, we examine limit and unlimited as productive powers, we explain production in the sense of co-production as well as why matter without qualities is excluded from the entire procedure, and we discuss the principle of the supremacy of the supreme Principle. The most important conclusion drawn according to Proclus, who adopts moderate skepticism, is that, although in his early dialogues Plato tends to dualism, he does this for methodological purposes, for Plato’s views are actually connected with ontological monism.

The Constitution of the Human Body in Plato’s Timaeus

Croatian Journal of Philosophy, vol. XII, No. 35, 2012, pp. 167-181., 2012

Nature and Divinity in Plato's Timaeus. By Sarah Broadie. New York: Cambridge University

Verity Harte and Raphael Woolf (eds.) (2017) Rereading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows, CUP

Eidos and Dynamis. The Intertwinement of Being and Logos in Plato’s Thought

2022

Series Dynamis. Il pensiero antico e la sua tradizione: studi e testi Editorial Board Francesco Aronadio, Bruno Centrone, Franco Ferrari, Francesco Fronterotta, Fiorinda Li Vigni Scientific Board Rachel Barney, Cristina D’Ancona, Christoph Helmig, Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Pierre-Marie Morel, Lidia Palumbo, Gretchen Reydams- Schils, Barbara Sattler, Mauro Serra, Amneris Roselli, Mauro Tulli, Gherardo Ugolini This volume presents a new reading of how ontology and language intertwine in Plato’s thought. The main idea is that the structure of reality determines how language works. Conversely, analysing Plato’s view on language is key to understanding his ontology. This work first focuses on Plato’s standard theory of Forms and the plurality of functions they perform with regard to thought, knowledge and language. The volume then provides a detailed interpretation of the first definition of episteme as perception in Plato’s Theaetetus, which is ultimately said to make language impossible. The main argument is that basic linguistic acts such as reference and predication rely on fundamental ontological grounds. Finally, the critique of the Theaetetus is connected to the complex account of true and false logoi in the Sophist. The result is a new interpretation of how language is connected to the ontology of kinds put forward in the Sophist, with particular regard to the nature of the kind Being. This book provides a detailed exegetical investigation into a crucial aspect of Plato’s thought, which can also be of interest to those working in metaphysics and philosophy of language. The publication is Open Access thanks to the generous support of the IISF: https://www.iisf.it/index.php/pubblicazioni-iisf/edizioni-iisf-press/eidos-and-dynamis-the-intertwinement-of-being-and-logos-in-plato-s-thought.html