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cryo_guy's review against another edition
3.0
“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.”
*
On Plato:
Well it started out sort of interesting where the demiurge creates everything who is this single, perfect immortal being and so exerts perfect will and reason. But even that is really just caught up in Timaeus' astronomical leanings which, to me, are Plato's harmony by another name. Harmony is even mentioned explicitly at the end so I don't think I'm wrong in that. Then after that it devolves into a mathematical reasoning of the physical world and living beings and I'm sure there's some interesting stuff about the early development of biological thought but it was a bit lost on me. I'm curious as to the overlap with Hippocrates. And I also detected some influence on Lucretius? Maybe?
Overall this was a pretty boring dialogue. Although it did have its moments, it had little for me to grab onto and run with. Like so many dialogues that have really memorable passages, the Timaeus also fell victim to being merely about the demiurge and it's actually got a lot more to it. Just not a lot more that I can say much about.
On Donald J Zeyl:
I don't want to call him completely incompetent, but I found his footnotes asinine and his intro and explanations woefully inadequate. Sure, they gave a decent overview of past scholarship but they had absolutely no life or interpretative vigor to them. And to my sensibilities, they were way off the mark. He's perfectly happy to say Plato is advancing such and such a doctrine and even in this “late” dialogue I find that to be, at worst, patently false, at best, grievously errant-a product of calcified, uncritical Platonic scholarship. It's disappointing really, because normally Hackett has great Plato translations and commentaries, but for a more obscure dialogue like the Timaeus, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.
To temper my disgust a bit, he does hit the main points. But I had to stop reading his footnotes to appreciate the dialogue and I had to skip around the commentary to retain my sanity which I hardly ever do.
Random other stuff:
Zeyl makes a huge point about the Greek verb gigonen and to be and coming to be and translations thereof. None of it is clear or helpful. To use another person's words “that's extremely cryptic and not at all helpful.” Hmph.
One of the first big things is whether the creation story is literal or metaphorical. Ugh this is just exactly the sort of obsolete thing I'm talking about. But hey it's what all the big guys have talked about so it must be THE THING to talk about.
An interesting thing Zeyl seems not to realize the importance of: that the entire passage is called a “likely account.” There's even a fun bit of reasoning Timaeus does that says hey well we don't have the absolute truth so we must accept the likeliest thing; here's what I think is the likeliest! Zeyl uses a bunch of big words to make it seem like this is just Plato doing lip service to the limits of the various disciplines he's combining to give an account of reality. But this brings up another really terrible aspect of Zeyl. He continuously refers to all of the arguments, all of Timaeus' arguments in his speech as Plato's. Sigh. Mistake number one buddy. Mouthpiece Shmouthpiece, let alone some wayward astronomer.
And actually now that I'm remember there is the cool story at the beginning about Atlantis and Egypt and Solon that has an odd touch of Euhemerism to it, if I can use that term not too anachronistically here.
There's also a neat bit about color that goes through what combinations of colors make other colors. Ancient colors, cool!
I really did like Timaeus' bit about likely accounts: “what being is to becoming, truth is to convincingness.”
It's funny that this whole speech about the creation of the universe and such is supposed to be the introduction to a speech about talking about how cities will act in competition with others. Timaeus makes a stray comment like we don't have enough time to address x important topic, as is so often the case and I wonder whether that might pertain to his whole speech-that's it's a digression that suits him and not really the topic at hand. “Perhaps later on we could at our leisure give this subject the exposition it deserves.” But the comment is about more PLANETS that the ASTRONOMER doesn't want to go on about.
“And what is more, we also say things like these: that what has come to be is what has come to be, that what is coming to be is what is coming to be, and also that what will come to be is what will come to be, and that what is not is what is not. None of these expressions of ours is accurate. But I don't suppose this is a good time right now to be too meticulous about these matters.”
I suppose I got bogged down in the bulky end of Timaeus speech where he's just describing things and there's not really much to say about it.
Zeyl: “It is a cardinal doctrine of Plato's metaphysics that nothing in the world of sense experience retains its character permanently.” I hate this man SO MUCH.
Okay I'm not gonna lie I skipped over a lot of his serious engagement with the math and science of Timaeus otherworldly ramblings. I'm sure there is something to be gained by taking it seriously. But I just couldn't take this man seriously who continuously insisted on saying that Timaeus is spouting the honest-to-Zeus truth about what Plato's metaphysics is. So since I abhor this guy and his interpretation so much I'll just go ahead and reveal my secret: I don't believe that Plato EVER advances a positive metaphysics in any of his dialogues. Of course he had one and yes it was probably some form of realism like what he talks about in his dialogues. But I insist that it is an entirely vain enterprise to try to deduce Plato's metaphysics is from the dialogues-they are merely theories to be contemplated and made use of.
Well, my last crazy thought is that most of Plato's dialogues are trying to make someone look stupid and that person here is obviously Timaeus. Without Socrates as a dominant interlocutor its hard to know exactly in what way Timaeus is being stupid, but I have some theories and it's half mooning over astronomy and half being an expert medical man of science.
It's apparent enough that I don't buy any of this dialogue being a treatise on Plato's metpahysic, but since I held that opinion before I read the dialogue and even that sometimes isn't enough I would like to clearly state: After having read the Timaeus, I am not convinced that it indicates anything solid about Plato's metaphysics.
I guess I'm gonna have to read the Critias to see if that connects any of the dots here (as it's part of the alleged trilogy with the hypothesized and nonexistent Hermocrates).
Oh and of course, the last shoutout is to Judeo-Christian theology which plundered this dialogue for all sorts of fun theology that I'm not even going to approach except to mention it here with a flippant final flourish of fireworks flare! After all, in Raphael's School of Athens, is not Plato pointing upwards to the heavens (Heaven) and holding his best dialogue the Timaeus (Italian: Timeo) which features the number one deity, the demiurge (God)??!!
By Zeus, what have I done?!
*
On Plato:
Well it started out sort of interesting where the demiurge creates everything who is this single, perfect immortal being and so exerts perfect will and reason. But even that is really just caught up in Timaeus' astronomical leanings which, to me, are Plato's harmony by another name. Harmony is even mentioned explicitly at the end so I don't think I'm wrong in that. Then after that it devolves into a mathematical reasoning of the physical world and living beings and I'm sure there's some interesting stuff about the early development of biological thought but it was a bit lost on me. I'm curious as to the overlap with Hippocrates. And I also detected some influence on Lucretius? Maybe?
Overall this was a pretty boring dialogue. Although it did have its moments, it had little for me to grab onto and run with. Like so many dialogues that have really memorable passages, the Timaeus also fell victim to being merely about the demiurge and it's actually got a lot more to it. Just not a lot more that I can say much about.
On Donald J Zeyl:
I don't want to call him completely incompetent, but I found his footnotes asinine and his intro and explanations woefully inadequate. Sure, they gave a decent overview of past scholarship but they had absolutely no life or interpretative vigor to them. And to my sensibilities, they were way off the mark. He's perfectly happy to say Plato is advancing such and such a doctrine and even in this “late” dialogue I find that to be, at worst, patently false, at best, grievously errant-a product of calcified, uncritical Platonic scholarship. It's disappointing really, because normally Hackett has great Plato translations and commentaries, but for a more obscure dialogue like the Timaeus, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.
To temper my disgust a bit, he does hit the main points. But I had to stop reading his footnotes to appreciate the dialogue and I had to skip around the commentary to retain my sanity which I hardly ever do.
Random other stuff:
Zeyl makes a huge point about the Greek verb gigonen and to be and coming to be and translations thereof. None of it is clear or helpful. To use another person's words “that's extremely cryptic and not at all helpful.” Hmph.
One of the first big things is whether the creation story is literal or metaphorical. Ugh this is just exactly the sort of obsolete thing I'm talking about. But hey it's what all the big guys have talked about so it must be THE THING to talk about.
An interesting thing Zeyl seems not to realize the importance of: that the entire passage is called a “likely account.” There's even a fun bit of reasoning Timaeus does that says hey well we don't have the absolute truth so we must accept the likeliest thing; here's what I think is the likeliest! Zeyl uses a bunch of big words to make it seem like this is just Plato doing lip service to the limits of the various disciplines he's combining to give an account of reality. But this brings up another really terrible aspect of Zeyl. He continuously refers to all of the arguments, all of Timaeus' arguments in his speech as Plato's. Sigh. Mistake number one buddy. Mouthpiece Shmouthpiece, let alone some wayward astronomer.
And actually now that I'm remember there is the cool story at the beginning about Atlantis and Egypt and Solon that has an odd touch of Euhemerism to it, if I can use that term not too anachronistically here.
There's also a neat bit about color that goes through what combinations of colors make other colors. Ancient colors, cool!
I really did like Timaeus' bit about likely accounts: “what being is to becoming, truth is to convincingness.”
It's funny that this whole speech about the creation of the universe and such is supposed to be the introduction to a speech about talking about how cities will act in competition with others. Timaeus makes a stray comment like we don't have enough time to address x important topic, as is so often the case and I wonder whether that might pertain to his whole speech-that's it's a digression that suits him and not really the topic at hand. “Perhaps later on we could at our leisure give this subject the exposition it deserves.” But the comment is about more PLANETS that the ASTRONOMER doesn't want to go on about.
“And what is more, we also say things like these: that what has come to be is what has come to be, that what is coming to be is what is coming to be, and also that what will come to be is what will come to be, and that what is not is what is not. None of these expressions of ours is accurate. But I don't suppose this is a good time right now to be too meticulous about these matters.”
I suppose I got bogged down in the bulky end of Timaeus speech where he's just describing things and there's not really much to say about it.
Zeyl: “It is a cardinal doctrine of Plato's metaphysics that nothing in the world of sense experience retains its character permanently.” I hate this man SO MUCH.
Okay I'm not gonna lie I skipped over a lot of his serious engagement with the math and science of Timaeus otherworldly ramblings. I'm sure there is something to be gained by taking it seriously. But I just couldn't take this man seriously who continuously insisted on saying that Timaeus is spouting the honest-to-Zeus truth about what Plato's metaphysics is. So since I abhor this guy and his interpretation so much I'll just go ahead and reveal my secret: I don't believe that Plato EVER advances a positive metaphysics in any of his dialogues. Of course he had one and yes it was probably some form of realism like what he talks about in his dialogues. But I insist that it is an entirely vain enterprise to try to deduce Plato's metaphysics is from the dialogues-they are merely theories to be contemplated and made use of.
Well, my last crazy thought is that most of Plato's dialogues are trying to make someone look stupid and that person here is obviously Timaeus. Without Socrates as a dominant interlocutor its hard to know exactly in what way Timaeus is being stupid, but I have some theories and it's half mooning over astronomy and half being an expert medical man of science.
It's apparent enough that I don't buy any of this dialogue being a treatise on Plato's metpahysic, but since I held that opinion before I read the dialogue and even that sometimes isn't enough I would like to clearly state: After having read the Timaeus, I am not convinced that it indicates anything solid about Plato's metaphysics.
I guess I'm gonna have to read the Critias to see if that connects any of the dots here (as it's part of the alleged trilogy with the hypothesized and nonexistent Hermocrates).
Oh and of course, the last shoutout is to Judeo-Christian theology which plundered this dialogue for all sorts of fun theology that I'm not even going to approach except to mention it here with a flippant final flourish of fireworks flare! After all, in Raphael's School of Athens, is not Plato pointing upwards to the heavens (Heaven) and holding his best dialogue the Timaeus (Italian: Timeo) which features the number one deity, the demiurge (God)??!!
By Zeus, what have I done?!
the_zach_who_reads's review against another edition
3.0
Plato has a really weird origin of the universe
davidmencik's review against another edition
4.0
This book is masterpiece of philosophy and most of the reviews are about Atlantis. I mean who cares about Atlantis when you get to read about Plato's vision of creation of Cosmos. The ideas of Demiourgos, Time as the "movable" eternity (I read dialogue in Serbian translation and am not sure if the term movable is right). Matter as the third being that is capable of accepting any form.
It is also worth mentioning the fact that Timaeus was in fact the most influential Plato's dialogue until only couple of hundred years ago. In Raphaelo Santi's painting "The school of Athens" Aristotle is holding in his hand "Metaphysics" and Plato is carrying Timaeus.
It is also worth mentioning the fact that Timaeus was in fact the most influential Plato's dialogue until only couple of hundred years ago. In Raphaelo Santi's painting "The school of Athens" Aristotle is holding in his hand "Metaphysics" and Plato is carrying Timaeus.
elizabethreads98's review against another edition
3.0
*read for school.
This was an interesting read, to be sure. It was complicated and tough to get through, yet rewarding in a sense. I had to work hard to understand what I was reading and the many concepts it held, but I really enjoyed that process. But boy was everything about this a bit whacky.
Do I love reading Plato? No. Will I read more of his work? Yes.
This was an interesting read, to be sure. It was complicated and tough to get through, yet rewarding in a sense. I had to work hard to understand what I was reading and the many concepts it held, but I really enjoyed that process. But boy was everything about this a bit whacky.
Do I love reading Plato? No. Will I read more of his work? Yes.
therealesioan's review against another edition
4.0
This dialogue is definitely indicative of the nature of Plato's late works; it's very technical, rationalistic and autistic. The poetry of the erotic dialogues like Phaedrus and Symposium is gone. As is the romantic search for truth above all else like in trial and apology dialogues. Plato's clearly become disinterested in stagecraft at his old age. He tries the dialogue style for the first few pages to then just give up and hand Timaeus a long essay to serve as the rest of the book. I can certainly see how the Nietzschean critique of Plato's rationalism applies here.
Despite that, I think this yoke has some of Plato's most profound formulations. Firstly the influence of the Pythagoreans is particularly present here, even in the first three words of the text; "One, two, three-". The line sets the tone for the discussion where mathematics and geometry is at the core of the discussion. Plato is famous for including subtle hints in the first words of his dialogues, such as in the Republic where the first three words are "I went down" echoing the allegory of the cave.
But anyway as I said mathematics is at the core of Plato's cosmology here. In strong contrast to Pagan Hellenic origin myths like Hesiod's. Plato fundamentally privileges Being, Order and Harmony over Becoming, Chaos and Disunity. He sides with Parmenides over Heraclitus, Apollo over Dionysus. This at least in his metaphysics of the Heavenly Bodies and the Demiurge. He posits a sort of monistic cosmos with the Nous as the generating energy emanating through existence.
The emphasis on intelligence and number as defining the superstructure of this world is certainly picked up from the Pythagoreans, though it seems Plato leans more toward their geometry than their arithmetic. I like how the coherence and pre-destined nature of the universe in astrology, number, etc applies to society and the individual also. As we all posses the capacity for noesis. Through this we must all strive for inner and outer taxis and harmony.
This ties into Plato's biopolitics here. So just as the the microcosm is solely beholden to the macrocosm, the individual is always inherently a part of the wider world-soul. In this sense the individual can never be formally isolated from the community, from the cosmos. We all have our divine roles in the organic structure of reality. This translates in real terms to the tripartite caste system which Socrates mentions picking up from Egypt in the dialogue. The priest, warrior and merchant castes are the three components of every Indo-European society.
Despite that, I think this yoke has some of Plato's most profound formulations. Firstly the influence of the Pythagoreans is particularly present here, even in the first three words of the text; "One, two, three-". The line sets the tone for the discussion where mathematics and geometry is at the core of the discussion. Plato is famous for including subtle hints in the first words of his dialogues, such as in the Republic where the first three words are "I went down" echoing the allegory of the cave.
But anyway as I said mathematics is at the core of Plato's cosmology here. In strong contrast to Pagan Hellenic origin myths like Hesiod's. Plato fundamentally privileges Being, Order and Harmony over Becoming, Chaos and Disunity. He sides with Parmenides over Heraclitus, Apollo over Dionysus. This at least in his metaphysics of the Heavenly Bodies and the Demiurge. He posits a sort of monistic cosmos with the Nous as the generating energy emanating through existence.
The emphasis on intelligence and number as defining the superstructure of this world is certainly picked up from the Pythagoreans, though it seems Plato leans more toward their geometry than their arithmetic. I like how the coherence and pre-destined nature of the universe in astrology, number, etc applies to society and the individual also. As we all posses the capacity for noesis. Through this we must all strive for inner and outer taxis and harmony.
This ties into Plato's biopolitics here. So just as the the microcosm is solely beholden to the macrocosm, the individual is always inherently a part of the wider world-soul. In this sense the individual can never be formally isolated from the community, from the cosmos. We all have our divine roles in the organic structure of reality. This translates in real terms to the tripartite caste system which Socrates mentions picking up from Egypt in the dialogue. The priest, warrior and merchant castes are the three components of every Indo-European society.
rosenectur's review against another edition
3.0
Another Plato book I read for a Philosophy class. After Intro to Philosophy I was invited to be in Great Books, which is an invite only discussion based Philosophy class. This book, which has the first references to Atlantis in it, is more or less about science. Explaining the way Plato/ Socrates uses logic to figure out how the universe IS. To Plato the world can be understood by reason and not always by senses. Some ideas are down right silly to modern readers, some are surprisingly insightful. My favorite is that the four elements (fire, earth, air and water) are made up of different triangles, and those triangles combine in different patterns to make up the basis of everyday matter. The "everything is made of triangles" hypothesis seems silly, but part of his writings rings of an atomic understanding or grasping.
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