Phi201 Plato's Timaeus

Phi201 Wk2, lec2, (lec4)


Recall - the Good rules the realm of the Forms as a unifying principle. The Forms constitue a Living Creature (Realm of being)

In Timaeus - a craftsman or demiurge takes the realm of Being as a model or archetype, and constructs in its image a likeness, which is our world of sense. Demiurge is not jealous, so he makes the world as good as possible, i.e spherical, 'a rotatory sphere devoid of organs & limbs'. But it is different fromt he blueprint in that it exists in time, whereas the blueprint, the world of Forms, is eternal.

Plato's Timaeus admits that this account is not true knowledge, but merely probably or 'likely' (and jokes that this is in accordance with the nature of the subject matter, which is a mere likeness). A truly precise account of the world of sense is not, for Plato, possible.

The 'rotatory' sphere is imbued with a World-Soul and this is the infusion of Person (Lodos) in pre-existing chastic matter (Different from Biblical creation)

"the god took over all that is visible - not at rest but in discordant and chastic motionism and brought it from disorder to order, deeming that the latter state was in every way better "

At the end of the B&T excerpt we see that archetypal Forms give rise to copies (or imitations or instantiations) which inhabit 'the receptacle' i.e. space. Typewriter analogy. Knowledge has forms as objects, opinion has copies or images or likenesses as objects. The receptacle is something in between: 'bastard reasoning' takes it as object.

This account is modified in Platinus. In Plato, transcendent Forms don't think, they're thought about, known about. Equally, in Aristotle, immanemt form, e.g. that of a statue doesn't think. But when you think about the statue, its form enters your mind, inhabiting a certain special intellectual matter. In this sense a form, for Aristotle, can think itself. Platinus applies this idea from Aristotle to Plato's transcendent forms, to the Living Creature, which is then understood as an Intellect (Nous).


Another modification: because world of Being itself is an agent for Platinus, you don't need a separate demiurge. The world of Being, Nous, Intellect, itself gives rise to the likeness, our world.

This process of giving-rise-to is known as emanation like the emanation of light from the sun.

Also, instead of the material world being created and imbued with soul, the Soul emanates directly from the intellect and in turn gives rise to matter. Temporarilty still distinguishes world=Soul from intellect.