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VIII. Plato’s Physics: The Timaeus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
IN some ways it is regrettable that consideration of the Timaeus has been dominated in recent years by the controversy concerning its place in the sequence of Plato’s dialogues. Plato’s recognition of a duty to say what he could about the physical universe and to enter seriously into Greek enquiry περì φύσεως makes this dialogue, or rather Timaeus’ monologue, of outstanding significance—wherever the dialogue belongs in relation to the rest. Anyone approaching the subject should read first G. E. R. Lloyd’s article on ‘Plato as a Natural Scientist’ in JHS 88 (1968), 78–92. We have recently a contribution from Vlastos in Plato’s Universe (Oxford, 1975), a series of lectures given at the University of Washington, with annotations on various cruces of the dialogue.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1976
References
Notes
1. Owen’s article is reprinted in Allen’s, R. E. collection of Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics (London, 1965)Google Scholar as also is the reply by Harold Cherniss, ‘The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato’s Later Dialogues’ which first appeared in AJPh 78 (1957). In that journal three years earlier Cherniss had dealt with one of Owen’s objections in an article ‘A Much Misread Passage of the Timaeus (Timaeus 49c7—50b5)’. Owen’s objections to the phrase at 38b3 are also dealt with by Cherniss, in JHS 77 (1957, Part I), 18–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2. There is now a valuable French work by Paquet, Leance, Platon. La mediation du regard (Leiden, 1973)Google Scholar, which discusses the importance of phrases like άποβλέπειν е’к in Plato. It is the fullest study yet produced on the language pattern.
3. There is now a detailed study by Brisson, Luc, Le même et l’autre dans le Timèe de Platon (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar. This is a very wide-ranging study of Plato’s later dealing with ontology and cosmology.
4. Gulley, in AJPh 75 (1960), 113-30Google Scholar; Mills, in Phronesis 13 (1968), 145-70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lee, in AJPh 88 (1967), 1—28Google Scholar. Lee’s article is referred to by Mills in an appendix to his article.
5. Vlastos’s Plato ‘s Universe has a very extensive bibliography, which mirrors the variety of topics within the Timaeus and can be a very profitable aid to further exploration.
6. The question of ‘cause’, raised by the discussion at 47a, and of the ‘wandering cause’ has been discussed by H. J. Easterling in Eranos 65 (1967) and by T. M. Robinson in his treatment of the Timaeus in Plato’s Psychology (see p. 47), 91—110.I have maintained my earlier view that there is a ‘psychic’ factor in the chaotic motion, in my enlarged edition of the Theory of Motion, 147—56.
All this links on to theology on its negative side—the question of the origin of evil. I do not accept the dualistic view put forward by.Plutarch in his On the Generating of the Soul in the Timaeus of Plato, a tract which Cherniss has recently added to the Loeb Library with an important introduction. Cherniss’s essay ‘On the Sources of Evil in Plato’, originally in TAPA 98 (1954), 23–30 Google Scholar, is reprinted in Vlastos’s second volume, 244-58. The most important article apart from this is Meldrum, H., JHS 70 (1950), 65–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.