Timaeus
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~80,400 words · 382 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Timaeus. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/timaeus
- MLAPlato. "Timaeus." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/timaeus.
- ChicagoPlato. Timaeus. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/timaeus.
What it is about
The account of how the world was made: a divine craftsman ordering chaos while looking at an eternal model, together with a cosmology, a physics of the four elements and a human physiology.
Context and history
Through the Latin Middle Ages this was very nearly the only Plato the West could read, which is why it shaped Christian thinking about creation far more than the rest of his work. It is also the source of Atlantis, mentioned here and in the Critias and in no other ancient text.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Of all the writings of Plato the Timaeus is the most obscure and repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the greatest influence over the ancient and mediaeval world. The obscurity arises in the infancy of physical science, out of the confusion of theological, mathematical, and physiological notions, out of the desire to conceive the whole of nature without any adequate knowledge of the parts, and from a greater perception of similarities which lie on the surface than of differences which are hidden from view. To bring sense under the control of reason; to find some way through the mist or labyrinth of appearances, either the highway of mathematics, or more devious paths suggested by the analogy of man with the world, and of the world with man; to see that all things have a cause and are tending towards an end—this is the spirit of the ancient physical philosopher. He has no notion of trying an experiment and is hardly capable of observing the curiosities of nature which are ‘tumbling out at his feet,’ or of interpreting even the most obvious of them. He is driven back from the nearer to the more distant, from particulars to generalities, from the earth to the stars. He lifts up his eyes to the heavens and seeks to guide by their motions his erring footsteps. But we neither appreciate the conditions of knowledge to which he was subjected, nor have the ideas which fastened upon his imagination the same hold upon us. For he is hanging between matter and mind; he is under the dominion at the same time both of sense and of abstractions; hi← Back to Plato