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Topography in the Timaeus: Plato and Augustine on mankind's place in the natural world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Catherine Osborne
Catherine Osborne
Affiliation:
St Anne's College, Oxford
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In this paper I shall be considering the relationship between the shape or structure of the world and the moral position occupied by human beings, particularly with regard to man's attitude towards and use of the natural resources of the material world he inhabits.

1. The shape of the world

There are two basic spatial metaphors that we frequently use in analysing notions of value and morality: one is the scale of up and down, with high and low or top and bottom as alternative ways of referring to the same type of hierarchy; the other is the notion of a centre, the bull's eye: if we are self-centred we value ourselves more highly than other things; if we have an anthropocentric view we value humanity above other animals. Thus we usually suppose that we put whatever we value most highly (on the one set of metaphors) at ‘the centre of things’ (on the other set).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 34 , 1988 , pp. 104 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1988

References

NOTES

1. Furley, David, The Greek Cosmologists I, The formation of the atomic theory audits earliest critics (1987)Google Scholar.

2. Timaeus 17a–19a9. On the close parallels with the Republic see Owen, G. E. L. ‘The place of the Timaeus in Plato's dialogues’, CQ 3 (1953) 79–95, pp. 89–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. 17c1–2.

4. 27a3–6.

5. 27a7; cf. Critias 106b7. Critias is an Athenian, one of the Thirty Tyrants (or perhaps his grandfather).

6. 20a7–b7; Critias 108a5–b1. Hermocrates is the Syracusan general responsible for the defeat of the Sicilian Expedition. On the relevance of these allusions to Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War see Gill, Christopher, Plato: the Atlantis story (1980)Google Scholar. The Critias remains unfinished and the Hermocrates does not exist at all. This point concerns the internal expectations within this dialogue and has nothing to do with the chronological order of Plato's dialogues.

7. Timaeus 21e.

8. 22b.

9. 23d7–e2.

10. 24e–25a. The Timaeus emphasizes world-geography. Only in the Critias do we get a detailed account of the layout of things on Atlantis itself. In the Critias the capital city of Atlantis has a centrifocal layout, but neither the city, nor the fertile plain in which it is located, is at the centre of the island but at a mid-point on one coast (113c).

11. 23c3–6, 24c5–d7, 25b5–c1.

12. 17a1.

13. 20b 1–7.

14. 19b–c. Note that Republic 9 raised the question of the ideal state in practice, 592a10–b4.

15. The point of this is not to say, as Cornford suggested (Plato's cosmology p. 20), that Plato means that natural science is a peripheral concern, only marginally relevant to his main interest which is morality and politics. Rather it indicates what relation does obtain between natural science, or politics, and the study of true being that is real science for Plato. Natural science is marginal, and myth, but these may actually give it an important status with regard to the truth to which it approximates. See, on the serious nature of Plato's science, Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘Plato as a natural scientist’, JHS 88 (1968) 78–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the status of ‘verisimilar accounts’, Ashbaugh, A. F., Plato's theory of explanation (1988)Google Scholar.

16. Timaeus 33b2–7.

17. 40b8–c3.

18. 92c7–9.

19. The Demiurge is presented as a logical conclusion from the status of the world as ‘becoming’, 28a.

20. 28c5–29b2.

21. The world is a likeness not a reflection. The model is works of art: εἰκών, 29b2, 92c7; μίμημα, 48e6.

22. 33c–d.

23. 33b, 36b6–d7.

24. 36d8–e1.

25. 32d1–33b1, 29d7–30a7.

26. 34c4–6.

27. At 36c4–5 the circle of the same is outermost. 39a 1 is unclear.

28. 40a4–b4. Some of the gods, however, are located on the inner wandering spheres, and the earth too is a god, 40b–c. In addition there is a third class of gods, the gods of mythology, 40d6–41a3.

29. 41a7–8, 42e6–7, 69c3–5.

30. 41e.

31. 41c.

32. 41d1–2.

33. 42b5, 90e6–91al. This view of women might seem surprising after the recapitulation of the Republic's teaching on equality for women, Timaeus 18c1–4.

34. 92a2–7.

35. 91d6–el, 46c–e2.

36. Strictly speaking there can be no ‘is’ for non-eternal things, 37e3–38al. Cf. Theaetetus 157a7–c2 and 182a–d. Owen (1953) 85–6.

37. A further candidate for marginal status between being and becoming is the ‘receptacle’, 50c7–e1, 51a4–b2. On the ambiguous status of the receptacle and its place as a triton genos (48e, 52a) see Derrida, J., ‘Chôra’ in Poikilia: études offertes à J. P. Vernant (1987) 265–96Google Scholar. It is noteworthy that the account of the receptacle is roughly the midpoint of the dialogue (see Derrida 276). On the relation of chora to the same and the different see Brisson, Luc, Le même et l'autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon (1974) 178–220Google Scholar.

38. Critias also claims truth for his story, which he calls a logos, not a muthos, 20d7–8; on the other hand in the Critias he is more cautious, likening his account to an artistic image (Critias 197a–e). In the context of the Timaeus it is clear that this truth claim is important. For a discussion of the status of the Atlantis story see Gill, Christopher ‘The genre of the Atlantis story’ CP 72 (1977) 287–304Google Scholar. On the relation between genres of being and genres of discourse see J. Derrida (n.37) 266–7.

39. De div, QQ. 83.30.

40. De div. QQ 83.30.

41. Tract. in Joh. 40.10.

42. Plutarch preserves a tradition, which he attributes to Theophrastus (Quaest. Plat. 1006c; cf. Numa 11) that Plato changed his mind and in later years removed the earth from the centre of the universe, on the grounds that such a position was ‘not fitting’. At Numa 11 he implies that this was because the central body ought to be something great and dominating. Cf. also Chalcidius In Tim. ch. 100 and Theo Smyrnaeus Expositio 187.13–188.7: both witness to a sense of discomfort at the idea that the centre of bulk or the ‘mathematical centre’ should not also be the centre of life or vigour, nevertheless concluding that for Plato the sun, though off-centre, was really the ‘heart’ of the cosmos. Neither grasps Plato's vision that the centre of the sphere should be the least honourable place. See Solmsen, F. ‘A heliocentric interpretation of the Timaeus’, Classical Weekly 37 (1944) 187–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. I am grateful to Robin Osborne for criticism of the structure of an earlier version of this paper, causing me to abandon its once centrifugal format. Thanks are also due to the audience at the 1988 Triennial meeting of the Greek and Roman Societies for their constructive discussion, and particularly to Chris Gill, M. M. Mackenzie and Robin Waterfield for points they raised then and afterwards.