Companion to Plato's Timaeus
A companion to Plato’s Timaeus from the Cooper Complete Works collection. (Dm me on Twitter @gruidae_james for a PDF.) This was written for a class I taught this semester, so it’s very rough. A condensed version should be posted later this year in the history of philosophy series I have planned. The condensed version will include several of the references I used to build my lectures and this guide but did not make it into the text itself—including Plotinus’ Enneads, Schelling’s notebooks on the Timaeus and Philebus (and the excellent commentaries on Schelling’s reading of the Timaeus from Iain Hamilton Grant and Naomi Fisher), and the incomparable study of Plato by Rosemary Desjardins titled Plato and the Good: Illuminating the Darkling Vision. As always, thanks for your readership and patience! (I did not forget about the Critical Theory series, I just overextended myself this semester and got my ass kicked.)
Introduction to Timaeus’ Speech
City as Living Being (Form and Activity, Organized and Self-organizing beings, Non-living and Living beings)
The Timaeus has three interlocutors: Socrates, Critias, and Timaeus himself. The dialogue opens with Socrates reconstructing the speech he gave the day before, which we know as Plato’s Republic, on “the kind of political structure cities should have and the kind of men that should make it up so as to be the best possible.” (1225-1226) Having reviewed the conversation of the day prior—on the ideal city (polis) and its ideal citizens—to the satisfaction of Timaeus, Socrates expresses his dissatisfaction, claiming to feel like one who has appreciated the form of a magnificent animal but longs to see its activity (in motion, engaged in struggle or conflict). (1227) The true measure of the excellence of the organization of a city is a test of its capacity to self-organize—that is, to produce and reproduce itself in response to its environment. This distinction between organized, or formed, and self-organizing, or self-forming, beings will be crucial for the concept of cosmos (kosmos) developed in the course of the Timaeus. This difference between being that is merely organized and being that is self-organizing largely dictates Plato’s understanding of the division between non-living and living beings: non-living beings are either formed/organized from without (e.g., a statue is sculpted by a sculptor according to a certain form) or have the (variable) capacity to receive form from without (e.g., matter of different kinds has variable potential to be formed in specific ways); living beings are self-forming/self-organizing, or are in some sense cause and effect of themselves (e.g., nutrition is self-causation because it allows a living being to reproduce itself as an individual, while reproduction proper is self-causation because it allows a living being to reproduce itself at the level of its species).
→ Digression: War as test of self-organization. Returning to the focus on the ideal city in particular, the test of a city’s capacity for self-organization would involve, Socrates muses, observing how the city competes with other cities in a contest. Socrates identifies war as the test most capable of measuring the excellence of a city, no doubt because of the extreme conditions that would throw the intellectual, cultural, ethical, and military development of each city into relief by comparison or contrast with the other. From the way each city practices warfare to the way each city enters into negotiations for peace, war forces each city to reflect or express its virtue—not only its capacity to self-organize for the sake of survival but also its capacity to self-organize for the sake of flourishing. (1227-1228)
Why does Timaeus give the first speech?
The opening of the Timaeus leads us to believe that it will be Critias, not Timaeus, who will repay Socrates’ speech from the day prior on the ideal city (The Republic). In fact, Socrates assigns Critias this task, asking him to tell a story that shows how the ideal city, when tested by war, will prove its noble character. (1228) Critias begins by telling a concise version of a narrative said to have been told to Critias’ great-grandfather, Dropides, by Solon (~630-560 BCE). Solon was a statesman and lawgiver in archaic Athens. He is introduced by Critias as “the wisest of the seven sages” (1228), revered not only for his reforms—constitutional, economic, and moral reforms that both emancipated the lowliest Athenians from debt-slavery/forced marriage and lowered the requirements for Athenian citizens to hold public office while empowering the citizenry by giving them power to elect their politicians—but also for his poetry. (Relevant to our investigation here, Solon is reported to have said ‘count no man happy until he is dead’ since fortune gives all and takes all regardless of human plans.) This narrative is about Athens itself: “The story is that our city had performed great and marvelous deeds in ancient times, which, owing to the passage of time and to the destruction of human life, have vanished.” (1228) Here, Plato makes a very interesting (implicit) argument: the capacity of human beings to tell stories, or historical narratives, of political victory and defeat is conditioned by the relationship between human history and natural history. The story that Critias tells is, strictly speaking, hearsay—it is a story that was told (either to Critias himself or someone else in Critias’ family) by his ancestor, Dropides, which was told to Dropides by Solon, who was himself told this story by Egyptian priest-scholars. The greatest of Greek sages, who tried to teach Greek history to the Egyptians, needed to be taught the history of Greece by Egyptian priest-scholars: “Ah, Solon, Solon, you Greeks are ever children.” (1230)1 The Greeks are ever children because the natural disasters that destroy human life also destroy human culture.
Myth and Natural History
The Egyptian priest-scholar explains further that these natural disasters inevitably leave their trace on the culture of the human beings who survive the catastrophe—as in the case of the Greek myth of Phaethon, son of the Sun-god Helios, who takes his father’s chariot and tries to drive the circuit around the earth (turning night into day and one season into another) that his father is responsible for driving, but Phaethon is incapable of doing so and drives too close to the surface of the earth, burning everything on the earth’s surface (until Phaethon himself was destroyed by a lightning bolt).2 The Egyptian priest-scholar says that the truth behind this myth is a natural-historical explanation—namely, that deviations in the movements of the heavenly bodies that travel around the earth have caused conflagrations that burn the total surface of the earth (what we would, today, call mass-extinction events) as well as the natural disasters in the form of floods, which destroy the human cities near rivers and oceans, leaving only the shepherds and farmers in the mountains behind to tell their descendants stories about the cities and lost cultures that they, as inhabitants of the mountains, were never familiar with.3 Myth, according to the Egyptian priest-scholar, is the mode in which human beings explain and narrate their history to themselves after a natural disaster has erased most, or all, of the peoples and cultures from before the catastrophe. The Egyptian priest-scholar compares Solon’s narrative of the history of Greece to a nursery tale—a result of the fact that the Greek land is, geographically, located in a region both vulnerable to natural disaster and populated by shepherds and farmers who live in the mountains.4 Consequently, the cultural memory (and historical narrative) of the Greeks only extends back to the last of the great floods and the written, historical records the Greeks made of their own history were lost in the crisis. This is relevant for Critias’s purpose—to narrate the ancient history of Athens, the forgotten account of the period in which it excelled in war, law, and culture. (1231) We can finally answer the question posed above: Why does Timaeus speak first? Critias tells us that in order to give an historical account or narrative of the virtue of ancient Athens, he will need to possess Timaeus’ account of the history of the universe itself, leading up to the formation of human beings and their place in the cosmos as a whole.5
Outline of Platonic Cosmogony in the Timaeus
I. Basal Unit of Cosmogony; Cosmogony as ‘Likely Story’
In the course of the Timaeus, Plato’s task is twofold:
to determine the form (or structure) of the basal unit (composed of three elements–each element is called a kind or gene) from which the cosmos develops;
to demonstrate how the recapitulation or iteration or repetition of this one basal unit can account for both the unity and the difference of the cosmos with itself.
This basal unit has a triadic form, and tracing the different triads as they appear in the Timaeus will be sufficient for giving a synopsis of the dialogue as a whole. In the course of the dialogue, we find that the triadic form is dynamic—that is, each triad (from the basal unit on) is in motion given an internal tension between its elements. Each triad, in short, is a natural process. Taken together, all of the triads in the dialogue constitute a single world-process, or are different moments in the development of one cosmos. Timaeus’s presentation of this world-process leading from one triad to another in a sequence (e.g., from triad 1–being-becoming-craftsman–to triads 2 and 3–for the body and soul of the cosmos) is supposed to give us a ‘likely story’ of the formation of the cosmos, and a ‘likely story’ is the best we can hope for in natural history because (1) the cosmos is still undergoing formation (i.e., if we can produce a true account of the formation of the cosmos, by the time we’ve successfully given this account the cosmos has already changed) and (2) human knowledge and activity is a part of the process of formation and re-forms that process (i.e., the development of natural science prompts changes in social life, which, in turn, changes the structure of our natural environment itself, as in the case of advances in agricultural science or the discovery and manipulation of atomic fission).
Basal Unit 1 (Intelligence)–Triad 1
Basal Unit–Triad 1:
(i) Being (understanding)
(ii) Becoming (sensation/opinion)
(iii) Craftsman (logos)
The basal unit of the Timaeus dialogue consists of three elements—Being, Becoming, and the Craftsman. (pp. 1234-1235) These three terms are metaphysical categories, or the fundamental constituents of reality itself. Each is, moreover, paired with an epistemological category that determines how we know each metaphysical element–(i) Being is to understanding as (ii) Becoming is to sensation/opinion as (iii) Craftsman is to logos. In other words, we know (i) Being by understanding, (ii) Becoming by sensation/opinion, and (iii) the Craftsman by giving an account (logos) of the order (logos) of the cosmos. To make the last pair—(iii) Craftsman-logos—intelligible, we need only recall that our task, as Plato shows in the course of the Timaeus, is to approximate in our explanation or account (logos) of the cosmos the order (logos) of the cosmos itself. Our task is to repeat, at a smaller scale, the activity of the Craftsman in initiating the world-process that gives the cosmos form or brings order out of disorder. We know something that has come to be by its causes, or by discovering how it was made. This applies as much to the cosmos itself as it does to any given being (e.g., a butterfly or laptop).
Likely Story
If explaining the cosmos requires us to repeat its genesis in imitation of the Craftsman, our account (logos) will nevertheless at best be an approximation of the order (logos) of the cosmos of which we are a part. Plato explains:
Since these things are so, it follows by unquestionable necessity that this world is an image of something. Now in every subject it is of utmost importance to begin at the natural beginning, and so, on the subject of an image and its model, we must make the following specification: the accounts we give of things have the same character as the subjects they set forth. So accounts of what is stable and fixed and transparent to understanding are themselves stable and unshifting. We must do our very best to make these accounts as irrefutable and invincible as any account may be. On the other hand, accounts we give of that which has been formed to be like that reality, since they are accounts of what is a likeness, are themselves likely, and stand in proportion to the previous accounts, i.e., what being is to becoming, truth is to convincingness. Don’t be surprised then, Socrates, if it turns out repeatedly that we won’t be able to produce accounts on a great many subjects—on gods or the coming to be of the universe—that are completely and perfectly consistent and accurate. Instead, if we can come up with accounts no less likely than any, we ought to be content, keeping in mind that both I, the speaker, and you, the judges, are only human. So we should accept the likely tale on these matters. It behooves us not to look for anything beyond this. (Ibid. pp. 1235-6)
To condense this passage: (1) because we are a part of the cosmos as a whole, our perspective of the whole is necessarily partial; (2) because the universe has ‘come to be,’ and is therefore still in the process of becoming, we can never give an exhaustive account of the universe. At best, we can provide a likely story. This is the significance of the passage where Timaeus says ‘the Craftsman was not jealous,’ and so generated order from disorder as a way of sharing his excellence (p. 1236). This is an ethical relation of generosity, but it is also an epistemological relation: like is known by like.6 The Craftsman seeks, insofar as he is excellent, to share that excellence with reality itself (ethical relation) and he does so by recognizing what is like himself in excellence (epistemological relation)–namely, Being, on which he models the cosmos.
II. Account from Intelligence
In the Timaeus, Plato’s thesis is that any account of the cosmos as a whole—including both cosmogony, or the genesis of the cosmos, and cosmology, or order of the cosmos—will be a mixture of two kinds of account:
a how-account or account by necessity: in what manner is the cosmos formed and given what constraints?
a why-account or account by intelligence: was the cosmos formed for the sake of a telos?
The Living Cosmos–Triad 2
Living Thing–Triad 2:
(i) Body (matter)
(ii) Intelligence (telos)
(iii) Soul (bond)
It is because the Craftsman was not jealous but shared his excellence, Timaeus continues, that cosmos is best understood as a living thing,7 or as both organized and self-organizing, both formed and actively self-forming. Moreover, this living thing is the self-organizing organization of all living things, and this is why the cosmos is one or singular and unique. The crucial insight here is that the cosmos is a unity of differences in the way that any organism is a whole of parts or organization of organs. According to Plato, a Living Thing is a triadic form consisting of the following elements: (i) a material body; (ii) an intelligence that drives it to a certain telos; (iii) a soul that serves as a bond between body and intelligence. In the simplest terms, the cosmos is organized in the sense of a world-system and self-organizing in the sense of a world-process.8 This is the basis for Plato’s discussion of the triadic form of both the body (Triad 3) and soul (Triad 4) of the cosmos. The Craftsman himself is the cosmic intelligence that determines the telos of the world-process as it forms a world-system.
Body and Soul of the Cosmos–Triads 3 and 4
Body (composition-structure) of Cosmos–Triad 3:
(i) fire (visible matter)
(ii) earth (tangible matter)
(iii) air/water (two-sided third term that mediates/relates fire and earth)
Soul (mover) of Cosmos–Triad 4:
(i) Same (regular motion)
(ii) Different (irregular motion)
(iii) Being (establishes proportion or ratio between same-regular and different-irregular motions)
Time: Time results from these two triads (the cosmic soul moves the cosmic body): the planets are early products of the formation of the body (composition-structure) of the cosmos (triad 3; pp. 1236-1239) and are set into motion by the soul (mover) of the cosmos (triad 4; pp. 1239-1241). Because of their composition-structure and motion, the planets “keep time” in their orbits–in other words, though the planets change by occupying Different places, they do so through traveling the Same orbital paths perpetually. This is what Plato means by the claim that time is the moving image of eternity—because everything that is ‘begotten’ or ‘has come to be’ must always be subject to Becoming, the perpetual motion of the planets by which we measure time serves as a visible ‘image’ of eternal Being.9 Given the fact that the perpetual motion of the planets remains the same, this motion can be used as a consistent measure of change in the rest of the cosmos—e.g., taking the interval required for one planetary body or star to complete its orbit around another allows us to distinguish between past, present, and future.
Completion: Against this consistent measure, we can appreciate how the organization (given the composition-structure of the cosmic body) of the cosmos self-organizes (given movement of the cosmic soul) to the end of completion (harmony as beauty, or unity-in-difference). We measure completion given the generation of new beings that are integrated into (and an integral part of) the cosmic hierarchy. From top to bottom: Divinities (gods → daemons) → humans (man → woman) → animals (birds → land animals → fish). (p. 1243) At this point in the dialogue, we hear a speech from the Craftsman himself in which he instructs the gods to help him create human beings. (pp. 1244-1245) The Craftsman stirs the remaining ‘soul’ (Same-regular motion and Different-irregular motion) that was available for the creation of the universe in his mixing bowl, producing the immortal souls of human beings. He then assigns the gods the task of fashioning the most excellent bodies they can for human beings, to which the immortal human souls will be joined. By doing so, the gods imitate the Craftsman himself, sharing their excellence with the cosmos by bringing as much order and beauty as they are capable of to human beings. (p. 1245)
Service to the Divine: We learn that the Craftsman could not create humans directly, but only indirectly, since he is not capable of withholding his power and could only create more gods. He delegates the task of completion to the gods given their position in a lower rung of the cosmic hierarchy. Since the gods can only do their best as well, humans will occupy the rung directly below divine beings (pp. 1245-1246). This will be important for understanding the ethical task humans have, their piety or service to the divine that requires them to care for the cosmos by increasing its beauty-harmony, by bringing order out of disorder wherever possible.
Formation of Human Being 1 (Intelligence): The first account of the formation of the human being focuses on the formation of the human soul. (pp. 1245-1250) This focus follows from the overarching concern of this part of the dialogue to give an account for the cosmos by intelligence, or according to its telos (beauty-harmony). This is because the soul is the (moving) bond that mediates/relates the purpose of intelligence (in this case, beauty) and the matter the intelligence in question (in this case, the gods) is given to achieve that purpose. For our purposes, it is only important to note that humans are like the gods/planets in that we have immortal souls (a mixture of Same/Different motions) and unlike the gods/planets in that we have mortal bodies. Plato calls this our ‘twofold nature’ (p. 1245). This divides the soul further, since the soul is responsible for mediating/relating the telos of intelligence with the constraints of matter. In other words, the soul is what allows us to subordinate the how to the why, or the constraint of necessity to the telos of intelligence. Therefore, the soul is divided between its connection to the divine and immortal (the perpetual motions of the planets that approximate Being) and its connection to the material and mortal (the changes to which material elements are subject in Becoming). The former part of the soul, oriented toward the immortal, makes us capable of what Plato calls understanding (the Same-regular motion of the human psyche that allows us to recognize Same-regular motion in the cosmos). The latter part of the soul, oriented toward the mortal, makes us susceptible to what Plato calls sensation (the Different-irregular motion of the human psyche that makes it difficult for us to recognize Same-regular motion in the cosmos) (pp. 1246-1247). Because this first account of the formation of the human being is an account by intelligence, the process of the formation of the human being is dictated by the telos of the human being. This is why the formation of the body begins with the head, which is only subsequently given a torso, limbs, a front and back, a face, and internal organs (p. 1248). As far as organs are concerned, Plato begins with the eyes. Humans are said to have eyes for the sake of seeing the perpetual motions of the planets, which humans ought to recognize as examples of perfection and imitate in order to live ethically (pp. 1248-1250). Plato then moves to the ears, which humans are said to have for the sake of appreciating harmony (p. 1250). Humans, in short, are formed with the capacity to imitate the perpetual movements of the planets and find harmonious compositions beautiful. Our organs and senses are formed to orient us towards what is most beautiful and excellent (regular, well-ordered, well-proportioned, harmonious).
III. Account from Necessity
Immediately after explaining that humans are a mixture of immortal and mortal elements (immortal soul, mortal body), Plato shifts to giving an account of the cosmos by necessity. Because the cosmos is an offspring of Necessity and Intellect, our account of the cosmos must include both. However, for Plato, because intelligence explains why the cosmos exists at all, the necessity that pertains to how the cosmos came to be is subordinate to the telos that intelligence pursues in causing the cosmos:
For this ordered world is of mixed birth: it is the offspring of a union of Necessity and Intellect. Intellect prevailed over Necessity by persuading it to direct most of the things that come to be toward what is best, and the result of this subjugation of Necessity to wise persuasion was the initial formation of the universe. (p. 1250)
Basal Unit 2 (Necessity)–Triad 5
Basal Unit 2–Triad 5:
(i) Being (eternity/perfection)
(ii) Becoming (time/imperfection)
(iii) Receptacle (capacity of matter to be both formed into elements with necessary constraints and organized in light of the telos of intelligence)
Timaeus claims that our new starting-point for the account by necessity must be what he calls the receptacle (p. 1251), which forms the third term of a second basal unit—this time, it is the basal unit of the cosmos insofar as it is formed by necessity. The receptacle is the essence of the four elements—triad 3: (i) fire; (ii) earth; (iii) air/water. The receptacle is compared to one piece of gold which is formed into a series of different shapes, each of which is a non-essential form (triangle, circle, square) of what it essentially consists of (gold) (p. 1253). Because the receptacle is the capacity of matter to become the elements, and the elemental forms are what makes matter sensible (e.g., fire–visible; earth–tangible), the receptacle itself is not sensible (p. 1255). In some sense, the receptacle, because it is the capacity for the Becoming of matter, does not itself ‘come to be’ at all! Once they exist, the elements are constrained by their forms (pp. 1256-1261) to interact or intermix with one another in certain ways. (pp. 1261-1263) However, the elements only exist at all for the sake of the excellence of the whole cosmos. This is why, Timaeus continues, we cannot even talk about different kinds of matter or different composite bodies without implicit reference to human sense-perception. (pp. 1263-1264) In other words, though we cannot say that fire exists for the sake of human sight, we can say that human eyes/sight and fire exist together in their likeness for the sake of the perfection of the cosmic whole. The telos that explains why both human eyes/sight, on the one hand, and fire, on the other, exist at all is not a human purpose. Rather, both eyes/sight and fire exist for the sake of the Beauty of the cosmos as a systematic, interconnected, and harmonious whole. Accordingly, Timaeus concludes his account by necessity explaining how sensible properties that result from motions/mixtures of the four elements interact with ensouled bodies like ours (pp. 1264-1266) and generate sensations of pleasure (equilibrium/proportion between the structure/motion of the parts of the human body; equilibrium/proportion between the structure/motion of the human body and its environment) and pain (disequilibrium/disproportion between structure/motion of the parts of the human body; disequilibrium/disproportion between structure/motion of the human body and its environment). (pp. 1266-1267) In other words, Timaeus’ study of the different senses and the material properties they are sensitive to—taste/flavors (pp. 1267-1268); smell/odors (p. 1268); hearing/sounds (pp. 1268-1269); sight/colors (pp. 1269-1270)—is meant to demonstrate the systematic interconnection of the human body and the cosmos, or the likeness between different parts of the system of the human organism and different parts of the cosmic organism. Timaeus ends by saying that sensation is worth studying because these interactions between our senses and material properties determine (1) equilibrium and disequilibrium of the body; (2) proportion and disproportion of elements composing body; (3) integration and disintegration of systems of organs; (4) facilitation or arrest of body’s appropriate motions. (pp. 1266-1267) Our ability to live healthy lives depends on the necessity that dictates how the cosmos is organized and self-organizes materially. The account by necessity concludes with Timaeus qualifying his account as merely ‘likely’ once again, since only the gods can mix plurality into unity and dissolve unity into plurality. (p. 1270).Put simply, only the gods could provide an exhaustive account of the interactions between sense-capacities and material properties. Based on our limited, partial perspective of the cosmos as a whole and the mortality of our bodies, no human will ever be able to experience or understand the full spectrum of interactions between sense-capacities and material properties.
IV. Combined Account (Intelligence and Necessity)
As the dialogue concludes, we learn that the two accounts—by intelligence and by necessity—are, in fact, one single account of the formation of the cosmos. This overarching account includes both intelligence and necessity, both ‘that for the sake of which’ and ‘in what manner/given what constraints’ the universe is formed. As argued earlier in the dialogue, the account by intelligence has to take priority over the account by necessity—since only intelligence explains why the cosmos exists at all—but must be supplemented by the account by necessity—since only necessity explains how the cosmos exists. In giving a combined account, Timaeus says we must distinguish between two forms of cause—divine causes (causes of intelligence—for the sake of a telos) and necessary causes (causes of necessity—given the constraints of matter). The paradigmatic divine cause is the Craftsman; the paradigmatic necessary cause is the receptacle. This distinction has ethical importance:
And so all these things were taken in hand, their natures being determined then by necessity in the way we’ve described, by the craftsman of the most perfect and excellent among things that come to be, at the time when he brought forth that self-sufficient, most perfect god. Although he did make use of the relevant auxiliary causes, it was he himself who gave their fair design to all that comes to be. That is why we must distinguish two forms of cause, the divine and the necessary. First, the divine, for which we must search in all things if we are to gain a life of happiness to the extent that our nature allows, and second, the necessary, for which we must search for the sake of the divine. Our reason is that without the necessary, those other objects, about which we are serious, cannot on their own be discerned, and hence cannot be comprehended or partaken of in any other way. We have now sorted out the different kinds of cause, which lie ready for us like lumber for carpenters. From them we are to weave together the remainder of our account. (p. 1270)
Formation of Human Being 2 (Combined–Intelligence and Necessity): Given the constraints of necessity, the divine intelligence introduces as much order, beauty, and harmony into disorder as possible. (p. 1271) Resuming the account he gave previously of the formation of the human being according to intelligence, which focused on the formation of the human soul by the Craftsman, Timaeus now turns to a second account of the formation of the human being according to both intelligence and necessity. The gods take the immortal soul fashioned by the Craftsman and encase it within a mortal body, which doubles the soul—one part is immortal given its connection to the divine and the other part is mortal given its connection to the body. (p. 1271) The motions of the soul are divided into motions of intelligence and motions of necessity. The motions of intelligence orient us towards the divine and enable us to participate in the divine task of creating beauty (concerns of immortals). The motions of necessity disturb us in this task because of pleasure and pain (concerns of mortals). This division of the soul is replicated in the body, as the body is oriented both ‘up’ towards the divine in the form of the head and ‘down’ towards the necessary in the form of the rest of the body. Because every dyad in the Timaeus implies a third term that mediates/relates contraries, we find that in the doubling of the soul into immortal and mortal and the doubling of the body into ‘higher’ and ‘lower,’ a third term is introduced in each case that mediates/relates immortal and mortal (soul), higher and lower (body). The immortal-divine part of the soul is called reason and the mortal-necessary part of the soul is called appetite, and spiritedness mediates/relates them. If reason is what directs us to immortal concerns (the divine task of creating beauty/order) and appetite is what directs us to mortal concerns (the necessary task of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain), spiritedness is a concern for honor that allows us to feel anger or shame at ourselves or others for giving in to appetite and forsaking reason. This triad—reason; appetite; spiritedness—is replicated in the body, which is divided into the ‘higher’ (head/reason) and the ‘lower’ (abdomen/appetites) by a ‘middle’ (midriff/spiritedness). (p. 1271)10
Ethical holism: This parallelism between the triadic form of the human soul and the triadic form of the human body is what provides the basis for Plato’s ethics: maintaining the organized hierarchy of soul/body that allows us to self-organize for the sake of beauty. This is why Timaeus will claim below that bodily health, or maintaining the integration of the body (internal proportion of the elements that compose it and the systematic relations between organs), is a necessary complement to psychic health, or maintaining the optimal proportion of motions of the soul (a balance between pursuing immortal concerns by reason and mortal concerns by appetite). In other words, humans must take care of their mortal bodies and their material environments in order to fulfill their divine service of bringing order out of disorder. According to Plato’s ethical holism, humans are required to live well-ordered lives (psychically and physically) for the sake of contributing to the continued formation of a beautiful, well-ordered cosmos. Timaeus explains that given the constraints of necessity, the gods formed our bodies to be more capable of pursuing immortal concerns and participating in the divine than to address mortal concerns more efficiently. This means that humans are compromise-formations: organized and self-organizing for the sake of living better and more beautiful lives, not longer and more pleasurable lives (pp. 1275-1276).11
Reincarnation and Latent Capacities/Organs: The myth of reincarnation is introduced to show us the consequences of the ethical decision of living for the sake of immortal concerns or mortal concerns. Each human being has the latent capacity to live for the sake of ‘lower’ or mortal concerns like longevity and pleasure, and if these are pursued at the cost of pursuing immortal concerns this latent capacity is actualized in their subsequent incarnation. This, Timaeus says, accounts for our likeness and unlikeness relative to other living beings–in each of us, we find latent capacities for living ‘lower’ lives and undeveloped organs suited for these ‘lower’ lives. Despite claiming that non-human animals are ‘lower’ in the cosmic hierarchy than humans, Timaeus says the gods foresaw that human beings would be distracted by mortal concerns and reborn as other living things.12 In fact, human beings at their most well-ordered psychically and physically—in the Timaeus, the paradigm for the human being is ‘man’—have latent capacities and organs to be reincarnated as every other living thing. Even plants—which Timaeus claims were created for the sake of sheltering humans and other organisms—are a living actualization of the ‘vegetative’ capacity and organ-system in the human body dedicated to the function of nutrition and growth. (p. 1277)13
Disease and Health of Body: For Plato, diseases of body and psyche are defined by stasis, an internal conflict (or, literally, civil war) between the parts of the body or soul given the destabilization of their appropriate, hierarchical order. Disease of the body is defined as (i) a disproportion in the ratio of material elements/compounds that compose the body to the effect of (ii) creating conflicts that disintegrate the integration of the body as a hierarchical system (parts in conflict with other parts and with the whole). (pp. 1281-1285) Disease of the soul is defined as a disharmony in the motions of the soul, and it includes both madness and ignorance. (pp. 1285-1286). As these motions determine our behavior, our pursuit of some mortal concerns at the expense of others (e.g., pleasure at the expense of health) and our pursuit of either mortal or immortal concerns at the expense of the other (e.g., neglecting bodily health for the sake of creating beauty) is a psychic disharmony that creates physical disorder. For Plato, all disease is inherently psychosomatic, as the psyche itself is the mediation/relation between intelligence/immortality/reason and necessity/mortality/appetite.
Disease and Health of Soul/Psyche: For Plato, a well-ordered life is both ethically good and aesthetically beautiful (the two are inseparable for Plato), which requires both a well-ordered body and a harmonious soul. (pp. 1286-1287) We are responsible for cultivating and maintaining hierarchies in which the higher parts/motions guide or govern the lower parts/motions: (i) physical hierarchy of the parts of our body, (ii) psychic hierarchy of the motions of our souls, and (iii) hierarchy of immortal concerns and mortal concerns. Health is defined as the imitation of the systematic structure of the cosmos in our bodies and harmonious motion of the cosmos in our soul. (pp. 1287-1288) The good and beautiful life is also the true life. Rational life should be understood literally as mastering the ratios in the following triads: (i) living being: the ratio between intelligence and necessity mediated by soul; (ii) soul: the ratio between reason and appetite mediated by spiritedness; (iii) body: the ratio between ‘high’ and ‘low’ mediated by ‘middle.’14
There are, as we have said many times now, three distinct types of soul that reside within us, each with its own motions. So now too, we must say in the same vein, as briefly as we can, that any type which is idle and keeps its motions inactive cannot but become very weak, while one that keeps exercising becomes very strong. And so we must keep watch to make sure that their motions remain proportionate to each other. Now we ought to think of the most sovereign part of our soul as god’s gift to us, given to be our guiding spirit. This, of course, is the type of soul that, as we maintain, resides in the top part of our bodies. It raises us up away from the earth and toward what is akin to us in heaven, as though we are plants grown not from the earth but from heaven. In saying this, we speak absolutely correctly. For it is from heaven, the place from which our souls were originally born, that the divine part suspends our head, i.e., our root, and so keeps our whole body erect. So if a man has become absorbed in his appetites or his ambitions and takes great pains to further them, all his thoughts are bound to become merely mortal. And so far as it is at all possible for a man to become thoroughly mortal, he cannot help but fully succeed in this, seeing that he has cultivated his mortality all along. On the other hand, if a man has seriously devoted himself to the love of learning and to true wisdom, if he has exercised these aspects of himself above all, then there is absolutely no way that his thoughts can fail to be immortal and divine, should truth come within his grasp. And to the extent that human nature can partake of immortality, he can in no way fail to achieve this: constantly caring for his divine part as he does, keeping well-ordered the guiding spirit that lives within him, he must indeed be supremely happy. Now there is but one way to care for anything, and that is to provide for it the nourishment and the motions that are proper to it. And the motions that have an affinity to the divine part within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. These, surely, are the ones which each of us should follow. We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at our birth, by coming to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects our faculty of understanding, as it was in its original condition. And when this conformity is complete, we shall have achieved our goal: that most excellent life offered to humankind by the gods, both now and forevermore. (pp. 1288-89)
Cycle of Reincarnation: As indicated above, even the reincarnations of human beings that are conditioned by disharmony in the soul and disorder in the body are necessary for ‘filling out’ or completing the cosmos. Consequently, the disharmony/disorder of the human being is nevertheless ‘recovered’ as part of the harmony/order of the cosmos as a whole (pp. 1289-1291).15 Even our failures to live ethically, in imitation of the structure and motions of the divine cosmos, are anticipated and accommodated by the cosmos itself. It is a vision of plentitude and unity-through-difference that should inspire us to serve the divine and, accepting our position in the cosmic system-process, actualize the potentials for beautiful order that remain for us to articulate:
And so now we may say that our account of the universe has reached its conclusion. This world of ours has received and teems with living things, mortal and immortal. A visible living thing containing visible ones, perceptible god, image of the intelligible Living Thing, its grandness, goodness, beauty and perfection are unexcelled. Our one universe, indeed the only one of its kind, has come to be. (p. 1291)
Ibid.: “[W]hen [Solon] asked those priests of theirs who were scholars of antiquity about ancient times, he discovered that just about every Greek, including himself, was all but completely ignorant about such matters. On one occasion, wanting to lead them on to talk about antiquity, he broached the subject of our own ancient history. He started talking about Phoroneus—the first human being, it is said—and about Niobe, and then he told the story of how Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the flood. He went on to trace the lines of descent of their posterity, and tried to compute their dates by calculating the number of years which had elapsed since the events of which he spoke. And then one of the priests, a very old man, said, ‘Ah, Solon, Solon, you Greeks are ever children. There isn’t an old man among you.’ On hearing this, Solon said, ‘What? What do you mean?’ ‘You are young,’ the old priest replied, ‘young in soul, every one of you. Your souls are devoid of beliefs about antiquity handed down by ancient tradition. Your souls lack any learning made hoary by time.[’]” (1229-1230)
Ibid.: “The reason for that is this: There have been, and there will continue to be, numerous disasters that have destroyed human life in many kinds of ways. The most serious of these involve fire and water, while the lesser ones have numerous other causes. And so also among your people the tale is told that Phaethon, child of the Sun, once harnessed his father’s chariot, but was unable to drive it along his father’s course. He ended up burning everything on the earth’s surface and was destroyed himself when a lightning bolt struck him.” (1230)
Ibid.: “This tale is told as a myth, but the truth behind it is that there is a deviation in the heavenly bodies that travel around the earth, which causes huge fires that destroy what is on the earth across vast stretches of time. When this happens all those people who live in mountains or in places that are high and dry are much more likely to perish than the ones who live next to rivers or by the sea. Our Nile, always our savior, is released and at such times, too, saves us from this disaster. On the other hand, whenever the gods send floods of water upon the earth to purge it, the herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains preserve their lives, while those who live in cities, in your region, are swept by the rivers into the sea. But here, in this place, water does not flow from on high onto our fields, either at such a time or any other. On the contrary, its nature is always to rise up from below.” (1230)
Ibid.: “All right, Socrates, what do you think of the plan we’ve arranged for our guest gift to you? We thought that because Timaeus is our expert in astronomy and has made it his main business to know the nature of the universe, he should speak first, beginning with the origin of the universe, and concluding with the nature of human beings. Then I’ll go next, once I’m in possession of Timaeus’ account of the origin of human beings and your account of how some of them came to have a superior education. I’ll introduce them, as not only Solon’s account but also his law would have it, into our courtroom and make them citizens of our ancient city— as really being those Athenians of old whom the report of the sacred records has rescued from obscurity—and from then on I’ll speak of them as actual Athenian citizens.” (1234)
Ibid.: “All right, Socrates, what do you think of the plan we’ve arranged for our guest gift to you? We thought that because Timaeus is our expert in astronomy and has made it his main business to know the nature of the universe, he should speak first, beginning with the origin of the universe, and concluding with the nature of human beings. Then I’ll go next, once I’m in possession of Timaeus’ account of the origin of human beings and your account of how some of them came to have a superior education. I’ll introduce them, as not only Solon’s account but also his law would have it, into our courtroom and make them citizens of our ancient city— as really being those Athenians of old whom the report of the sacred records has rescued from obscurity—and from then on I’ll speak of them as actual Athenian citizens.” (1234)
For more, see the following article on the history of the epistemological argument that like is known by like in the thought of Empedocles:
Kamtekar, Rachana. “Knowing by Likeness in Empedocles.” Phronesis, vol. 54, no. 3, 2009, pp. 215–38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40387986. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022. / Link: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kamtekar/papers/Knowing%20by%20likeness%20in%20Empedocles.pdf
Timaeus: “Very well then. Now why did he who framed this whole universe of becoming frame it? Let us state the reason why: He was good, and one who is good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible. In fact, men of wisdom will tell you (and you couldn’t do better than to accept their claim) that this, more than anything else, was the most preeminent reason for the origin of the world’s coming to be. The god wanted everything to be good and nothing to be bad so far as that was possible, and so he took over all that was visible—not at rest but in discordant and disorderly motion—and brought it from a state of disorder to one of order, because he believed that order was in every way better than disorder. Now it wasn’t permitted (nor is it now) that one who is supremely good should do anything but what is best. Accordingly, the god reasoned and concluded that in the realm of things naturally visible no unintelligent thing could as a whole be better than anything which does possess intelligence as a whole, and he further concluded that it is impossible for anything to come to possess intelligence apart from soul. Guided by this reasoning, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, and so he constructed the universe. He wanted to produce a piece of work that would be as excellent and supreme as its nature would allow.” (p. 1236)
Ibid.: “This, then, in keeping with our likely account, is how we must say divine providence brought our world into being as a truly living thing, endowed with soul and intelligence. This being so, we have to go on to speak about what comes next. When the maker made our world, what living thing did he make it resemble? Let us not stoop to think that it was any of those that have the natural character of a part, for nothing that is a likeness of anything incomplete could ever turn out beautiful. Rather, let us lay it down that the universe resembles more closely than anything else that Living Thing of which all other living things are parts, both individually and by kinds. For that Living Thing comprehends within itself all intelligible living things, just as our world is made up of us and all the other visible creatures. Since the god wanted nothing more than to make the world like the best of the intelligible things, complete in every way, he made it a single visible living thing, which contains within itself all the living things whose nature it is to share its kind. Have we been correct in speaking of one universe, or would it have been more correct to say that there are many, in fact infinitely many universes? There is but one universe, if it is to have been crafted after its model. For that which contains all of the intelligible living things couldn’t ever be one of a pair, since that would require there to be yet another Living Thing, the one that contained those two, of which they then would be parts, and then it would be more correct to speak of our universe as made in the likeness, now not of those two, but of that other, the one that contains them. So, in order that this living thing should be like the complete Living Thing in respect of uniqueness, the Maker made neither two, nor yet an infinite number of worlds. On the contrary, our universe came to be as the one and only thing of its kind, is so now and will continue to be so in the future.” (pp. 1236-7)
Ibid.: “Now when the Father who had begotten the universe observed it set in motion and alive, a thing that had come to be as a shrine for the everlasting gods, he was well pleased, and in his delight he thought of making it more like its model still. So, as the model was itself an everlasting Living Thing, he set himself to bringing this universe to completion in such a way that it, too, would have that character to the extent that was possible. Now it was the Living Thing’s nature to be eternal, but it isn’t possible to bestow eternity fully upon anything that is begotten. And so he began to think of making a moving image of eternity: at the same time as he brought order to the universe, he would make an eternal image, moving according to number, of eternity remaining in unity. This number, of course, is what we now call “time.”” (p. 1241)
What makes this second account of the formation of the human even more complex is a distinction between the synchronic structure of the human body and the diachronic process by which it is formed. The structure is detailed by an explanation of the systematic interconnection of heart, lungs, windpipe, and liver (pp. 1271-1273). The process occurs in the following sequence of formations: lower abdomen, bones and marrow, skull, sinews and flesh, fat, teeth and tongues, skin, hair, etc. (pp. 1273-1277).
This accounts for the fact that Plato has Timaeus connect a discussion of the circulatory and respiratory systems (pp. 1278-1280) with both the production of biological waste in digestion and death of old age. (pp. 1280-1281)
Ibid.: “Sinew, skin and bone were interwoven at the ends of our fingers and toes. The mixture of these three was dried out, resulting in the formation of a single stuff, a piece of hard skin, the same in every case. Now these were merely auxiliary causes in its formation—the preeminent cause of its production was the purpose that took account of future generations: our creators understood that one day women and the whole realm of wild e beasts would one day come to be from men, and in particular they knew that many of these offspring would need the use of nails and claws or hoofs for many purposes. This is why they took care to include nails formed in a rudimentary way in their design for humankind, right at the start. This was their reason, then, and these the professed aims that guided them in making skin, hair and nails grow at the extremities of our limbs.” (p. 1277)
Plato’s thesis that even the lowest rungs of the cosmic hierarchy participate in the divine helps explain Timaeus’ strange digression about the human liver. Despite its location in the lower abdomen and its function in the appetitive motions of the soul, the liver participates in the divine by giving humans prophetic dreams. (pp. 1272-1273)
For example, Plato explains that disproportion is created in the soul by a bad ratio of activity to inactivity in psychic motions–e.g., if one only exercises one’s reason at the expense of one’s body a disharmony is created in the soul that disorders the body and leads to an accelerated dissolution of the whole. (pp. 1288-1289)
Ibid.: “These, then, are the conditions that govern, both then and now, how all the animals exchange their forms, one for the other, and in the process lose or gain intelligence or folly.” (p. 1291)