path: root/plato_time_notes.otx

% chapter i
\defpnote{0.1}{A.N. Whitehead, \bt{Process and Reality} 
  (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941), p. 63.}
\defpnote{0,2}{W.H. Walsh, 
  \et{Plato and the Philosophy of History: History and Theory in the Republic,}
  \jt{History and Theory}
  (The Hague: Mouton \& Co., 1962), II, 1, pp. 1--16.}
\defpnote{0.3}{K.R. Popper,
  \bt{The Open Society and its Enemies}
  (2 vols.; 2\tss{nd} ed. rev.; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952).}
\defpnote{0.4}{Walsh, op. cit., p. 6.}
\defpnote{0.5}{See, for example. R.L. Nettleship, 
\bt{Lectures on the Republic of Plato }
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 
1955), and E. Barker, 
\bt{Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle}
(New York: Dover Publications, Imnc., 1959). 
Both of these authors make slight reference to the \bt{Timaeus} while discussing Plato's \dq{Political Philosophy.}}
\defpnote{0.6}{R.G. Bury, 
\et{Plato and History,}
\jt{Classical Quarterly,}
New Series, 1--2, pp. 86--94.}
\defpnote{0.7}{Edward MacKinnon, S.J., 
\et{Time in Contemporary Physics,}
\jt{International Philosophical Quarterly,}
II, 3, (September, 1962), p. 429.}
\defpnote{0.8}{Hermann Gauss,
\bt{Philosophischer Handkommentar zu den Dialogen Platos},
vol. III part 2 (Bern: Herbart Lang, 1961)}
\defpnote{0.9}{Bertrand Russell, 
\bt{Mysticism and Logic}
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday \& Co., 1917). }
\defpnote{0.10}{Whitehead, loc, cit.}
\defpnote{0.11}{Werner Heisenberg,
\bt{Physics and Philosophy}
(New York: Harper \& Brothers, 1955), ch. 4.}
\defpnote{0.12}{See, for example. F.M. Cornford, 
\bt{From Religion to Philosophy}
(New York: Harper \& Brothers, 1957).}
\defpnote{0.13}{F.M. Cornford, 
\bt{Plato's Cosmology},
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1937), p. 8.}
\defpnote{0.14}{Carl G. Hempel, 
\et{Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science,}
\bt{International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science},
vols. I and IT; 
\ul{Foundations of the Unity of Science}
vol. II, no. 7 (University of Chicago Press, 1952)}
\defpnote{0.15}{Hans Meyerhoff, ed., 
\bt{The Philosophy of History in Our Time}
(New York: Doubleday \& Co., 1959), 
which contains a valuable anthology of the important authors in this field and some of their most representative views.}

% chapter ii

\defpnote{1.1}{A.E. Taylor, 
\bt{Commentary on Plato's Timaeus}
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), p. 4.}
\defpnote{1.2}{F.M. Cornford,
\bt{Plato's Cosmology},
p. viii.}
\defpnote{1.3}{Werner Jaeger, 
\bt{Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture}
(3 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), II, pp. 77--78. }
\defpnote{1.4}{Ibid., p. 78.}
\defpnote{1.5}{Ibid., p. 79.}
\defpnote{1.6}{C.F. Hermann, 
\bt{Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie}
(Heidelberg: 1839), in Jaeger, 
op. cit., p. 79}
\defpnote{1.7}{Jaeger, op. cit., p. 79.}
\defpnote{1.8}{Ibid., p. 80.}
\defpnote{1.9}{Theodor Gompers,
\bt{Greek Thinkers},
trans. G.G. Berry 
(London: John Murray, 1905).}
\defpnote{1.10}{Ibid., p. 275.}
\defpnote{1.11}{Ibid., p. 278.}
\defpnote{1.12}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{1.13}{Ibid., pp. 279, 283.}
\defpnote{1.14}{Ibid., p. 284.}
\defpnote{1.15}{Ibid., p. 285.}
\defpnote{1.16}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{1.17}{Ibid., p. 286.}
\defpnote{1.18}{Ibid., p. 287.}
\defpnote{1.19}{Jaeger, loc. cit.}
\defpnote{1.20}{L. Campbell, 
\et{Plato,}
\bt{Encyclopaedia Britannica,}
11\tss{th} ed., Vol. XXI, pp. 808--824.}
\defpnote{1.21}{Ibid., p. 810.}
\defpnote{1.22}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{1.23}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{1.24}{U.V. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
\bt{Platon}, I,
(2\tss{nd} ed.; 
Berlin: Weidman, 1920), in Jaeger, op. cit., p. 80.}
\defpnote{1.25}{Jaeger, op. cit., p. 84.}
\defpnote{1.26}{A.E. Taylor, 
\et{Plato,}
\bt{Encyclopaedia Britannica},
XVIII (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1957), 
p. 49.}
\defpnote{1.27}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{1.28}{A.E. Taylor, \bt{Commentary}, p. 4.}
\defpnote{1.29}{A.E. Taylor, 
\bt{Plato: The Man and His Work}
(6\tss{th} ed.; 5\tss{th} print.; New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1959), 
p. 346}
\defpnote{1.30}{A.E. Taylor, \bt{Commentary}, p. 4.}
\defpnote{1.31}{Constantin Ritter, 
\bt{The Essence of Plato's Philosophy},
trans. Adam Alles (London: George Allen \& Unwin, Ltd., 1933).}
\defpnote{1.32}{W. Lutoslawski, 
\bt{Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic}
(New York: Longmans, 1928.)}
\defpnote{1.33}{John Burnet, 
\bt{Greek Philosophy}
(London: Macmillan \& Co., Ltd., 1914), Part I, p. 212.}
\defpnote{1.34}{Cornford, op, cit.}
\defpnote{1.35}{Wilamowitz, \bt{Platon}, I, p. 591, in Jaeger, 
op. cit., p. 8O.}
\defpnote{1.36}{Constantin Ritter, 
\bt{Neue Untersuchungen uber Platon}
(Munich: 1910), p. 181.}
\defpnote{1.37}{Ritter, \bt{The Essence of Plato's Philosophy}, p. 9.}
\defpnote{1.38}{Ibid., p. 27.}
\defpnote{1.39}{Ibid., pp. 29--30.}
\defpnote{1.40}{G.C. Field, \bt{Plato and His Contemporaries: A Study in Fourth-Century Life and Thought} (London: Methuen \& Co., Ltd., 1930), p. 68.}
\defpnote{1.41}{Ross has summarized these results in tabular 
form: see Appendix A.}
\defpnote{1.42}{A.E. Taylor, \et{Plato,} \bt{Encyclopaedia Britannica}, 
pp. 48--64.}
\defpnote{1.43}{Field, op. cit., p. 4.}
\defpnote{1.44}{According to Field, Plato's benefactor was 
Archytas (Field, op. cit., p. 16), but according to 
Gompers it was Anniceria (Gompers, op. cit., p. 261).}
\defpnote{1.45}{Field, op. cit., p. 18.}
\defpnote{1.46}{Gompers, op, cit., p. 261.}
\defpnote{1.47}{Ritter, 
\bt{The Essence of Plato's Philosophy},
pp. 21--22.}
\defpnote{1.48}{Ibid., p. 22.}
\defpnote{1.49}{Ibid., p. 23.}
\defpnote{1.50}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{1.51}{Ibid., p. 24.}
\defpnote{1.52}{Ibid., p. 25.}
\defpnote{1.53}{Ibid., pe 26.}
\defpnote{1.54}{Ibid., p. 27.}
\defpnote{1.55}{Ritter op. cit., pp. 329 ff.; 
\bt{Untersuchungen uber Platon}
(Stutheeres 1888), pp. 88 ff.}
\defpnote{1.56}{J. Harward, \bt{The Platonic Epistles} (Cambridge: 
The University Press, 1932).}
\defpnote{1.57}{Harward, op, cit., p. 60.}
\defpnote{1.58}{B. Jowett, 
\bt{The Dialogues of Plato}
(3\tss{rd} ed.; New York: Scribner, Armstrong, \& Co., 1878) preface.}
\defpnote{1.59}{H.T. Karsten,
\bt{De Epistolis quae feruntur Platonicis}
(Utrecht: 1864), in Harward, op, cit., p. 61.}
\defpnote{1.60}{Harward, op. cit., pp. 71--72.}
\defpnote{1.61}{Field, op. cit., p. 16.}
\defpnote{1.62}{Harward, op. cit., p. 76.}
\defpnote{1.63}{Ibid., pp. 86--96.}
\defpnote{1.64}{Ibid., p. 86.}
\defpnote{1.65}{Ritter, 
\bt{Neue Untersuchungen uber Platon}, p. 408.}
\defpnote{1.66}{\bt{Tusc, Disp.} V, 35, in Harward, op. cit., p. 189.}
\defpnote{1.67}{Harward, op. cit., p. 192.}
\defpnote{1.68}{Not \e{learned.} Plato is talking about the 
communication of philosophy, not the stating of it, nor 
the acquisition of it, but the process in which, so to 
speak, philosophy happens.}
\defpnote{1.69}{See the Cave Allegory of the \bt{Republic} 507.}
\defpnote{1.70}{i.e., it is in all probability not a posthumous 
edition.}

% ch iii
% ch iv


\defpnote{2.1}{A.E. Taylor, \bt{Plato: The Man and His Work}, p. 2.}
\defpnote{2.2}{Cornford, \bt{Plato's Cosmology}, p. 2.}

\defpnote{2.3}{Gauss, \bt{Philosophischer Handkommentar zu den Dialogen Platos}, p. 157}
\defpnote{2.4}{Cornford, op. cit., appendix, p. 365.}
\defpnote{2.5}{P. Frutiger, \bt{Les Myths de Platon}, (Paris: 1930), pp. 244 ff.}

\defpnote{2.6}{Cornford, op. cit., p. 14.}

\defpnote{2.7}{Q. Lauer, S.J., \et{The Being of Non-Being in Plato's Sophist} (unpublished manuscript; New York: Fordham University).}

\defpnote{2.8}{Cornford, op. cit., p. 8.}

\defpnote{2.9}{A.E. Taylor, \bt{Plato: The Man and His Work}, p. 440.}
\defpnote{2.10}{Cf., V.J. Gioscia, \et{A Perspective for Role Theory,} \jt{The American Catholic Sociological Review,} XXII, 2 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961), pp. 143 ff.}

\defpnote{2.11}{Cornford, op. cit., p. 24.}

\defpnote{2.12}{Ibid., p. 28.}
\defpnote{2.13}{Ibid., p. 30.}

\defpnote{2.14}{Ibid., pp. 31--32.}

\defpnote{2.15}{R.D. Archer-Hind, \bt{Commentary on the Timaeus}, (London: The Macmillan Company, 1888), p. 86, n, 14.}

\defpnote{2.16}{T.T. Taylor, \bt{The Timaeus and Critias of Plato},
(Washington: Pantheon Books Inc., 1952), p. 112. }

\defpnote{2.17}{Ibid., p. 17.}

\defpnote{2.18}{Bury, \bt{Plato and History},\ednote{book or essay?} p. 5.}

\defpnote{2.19}{A.E. Taylor, \bt{Commentary}, p. 73.}

\defpnote{2.20}{Ibid.}
\defpnote{2.21}{Ibid., p. 74.}
\defpnote{2.22}{Ibid.}

\defpnote{2.23}{Ibid., p. 19.}
\defpnote{2.24}{Cornford, op. cit., p. x.}
\defpnote{2.25}{Ibid., pp. 11--12.}


CHAPTER V 
TIME AND THE UNIVERSE 


I The Motive of Creation (29d-30b 

So far, we have been told that the World is a becoming image of an eternal realm. But this is precisely the 
problem. How can like be unlike, or how can the maker 
generate less perfectly than the perfect model. We recall 
the Sophist (265b) distinguishes divine and human production 
and that the Philebus has told us that the cause is the 


maker. But these distinctions only seem to introduce new 
problems. How can there be eternal becoming; would the 
cause of such an eternal becoming have to be a perpetually 
sustaining cause; or does eternal becoming mean that what 
becomes never began, or that what began shall perpetually 
become and continue. These questions must now be confronted, 
for the general issue which underlies them is "what is the 
relation of a becoming image to reality." 

Cornford states that "Plato denied reality to what is 
commonly called matter."! The materiality of this universe, 
however, is not unconnected with the motive for the generation of the Universe by its maker. We shall investigate the 
two issues simultaneously. Timaeus informs us of this motive 


when he tells us that the father of this Universe is good, 


1 Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, p. 31. 



and hence, not jealous of his perfection, so that "he 
desired that all things should come as near as possible to 
being like himself" (29e).° The father therefore: 

took over all that was visible-not at rest-but in 

discordant and unordered motioneand brought it 

from disorder into order, since he judged that 

order was in every way better (70a). 
But the moat striking is: 

That this is the supremely valid principle of 

becoming and of the order of the world, we 

shall be most surely right to accept from men 

of understanding (296). 

Here the first part of the problem of an eternal 
becoming 1s stated. Plato has established that the model 
of the Universe must clearly be the eternal, and that the 
maker of the Universe introduced order, and that this 
order is the most valid basis of becoming. Yet, the 
following statement creates the problem, for it asserts; 
"Now it was not nor can it ever be permitted that the 
work of the supremely good should be anything but that 
which is the best" (30b). Here is the antithesis clearly 
stated: The Universe resembles an eternal model, yet it is 
a becoming Universe, and becoming, heretofore, could not 


be described in superlatives. Becoming is as perfect as it 


can be after it is ordered and endowed with intelligence. 


2 one is tempted to restore the hiatus which Cornford 
habitually tries to remove as "intolerable." Then the 
passage would read, "he desired that all things should 
come as near as possible to being, like himself." 




Plato leaves the problem unresolved at this juncture. 
He says only that the Universe was framed as perfectly as 
possible. It is thus a living being with reason and soul. 
Yet soul is presumably eternal. It is important to realize 
that this problem, namely the reconciliation of eternity 
and becoming, is kept alive during the succeeding passages, 
and has not yet been resolved. this 1s no oversight: Plato 
means to hold this question in readiness until the doctrine 
he is developing can supply the answer. 

thus it is important to notice that the demiurge 


fashions the Universe to the end and by nature toward 


perfection, which seems to mean that its present state is 
incomplete, and yet the Universe is ordered and given 
intellizence so that it might be as perfect as possible. 
Later (in 48a and 52d) we shall have occasion to point 

out the relative omnipotence of the demiurge. At this point, 


we have not yet been told how it is possible to place the 
eternal and the realm of becoming in a harmony without 
flaws. The relation of the eternal model and the becoming 
Universe remains problematic. 

Cornford states that it "...is not easy for us to 
understand" the relative and not absolute omnipotence of 


the demiurge. For it is clear that the demiurge has not 


created ex nihilo, but has ordered the discordant motions 
only in so far as it was possible. Cornford concludes that 
the set of discordant motions, the chaos, the material 


which the demiurge orders, is an eternally present 





material, and so the demiurge cannot be simply equated 
with the God of the Christians.> Cornford wants to help 
Plato avoid the "impossibly absolute divinity" who, being 
absolute, could not involve himself in earthly affairs. 
But this seems unnecessary, since the demiurge is in no 
danger of being impossibly absolute; rather is he in 
danger of being so completely relativized in Cornford's 
description that he becomes, not only not the God of the 
Christians, but not even the demiurgic divinity which 
Plato describes. 

II The Model of the Universe (30c-3ib 

In the next paragraph Timaeus speaks of the model 
after which the demiurge fashioned this Universe. He says 
that we must not suppose that the model was any specific 
Form, for then the Universe would lack the perfections of 
the other Forms after which the Universe was not copied. 
The Universe is most like that Living Being of which all 
the other things are parts, and it contains them all. In 
this, the Universe is very much like the model because 
there are no specific perfections lacking to it. 

What can this Living Being be to whom no perfection 
is lacking and who serves as the model for each specific 
perfection. It cannot be any one Form, for on this supposition there might be others (31a). Nor can it be a Form 


of all Forms, for this position involved the difficulties 


3 A.E. Taylor, Commentary, p. 37. 




mentioned in the Parmenides. Is it The Form of The Good, 
or perhaps the Demiurge Himself? None of these answers 
satiafy. If it were the Good, Plato could easily have said 
so, as he did in the Republic. Nor does the demiurge regard 
his own perfection as a model; he is said to regard a 
model, but he is not described as looking to himself. It 
is hard to see the grounds for Taylor's assertion that the 
demiurge fashions by "an overflow of his goodness. "4 

Plato himself "recapitulates" the third man argument 


of the Parmenides to the effect that the model which 


embraces all the intelligible things there are cannot be 

one of a pair (the simplest number) 
for then there would have to be yet another Living 
Creature embracing those two, and they would be 
parts of it; and thus our world would be more 
truly described as likeness, not of them, but of 
that other which would embrace them (31a). 

The Universe must be one, like its model. Here again the 


Timaeus marches out boldly beyond the doctrines of its 


predecessors, for that One after which the Universe is 
modelled is not the sort of One which is put into the 
mouth of Parmenides in the dialogue which hears his name, 
but a new sort of One which is now to be described. Or 
rather, Timaeus will now present a mythical account of that 
One of which the Universe is the image. 

III The Body of the Universe 1b-32c 


But Plato does not launch immediately into a 


+ tp1a., p. 78. 





description of the One. Instead, he takes the lesson of 


the Philebus to heart and proceeds to reveal how the 


Universe is composed of four primary elements, first the 
traditional fire and earth, and then the third which 
unites them, "for two cannot be satisfactorily united 
without a third" (31b). 

Here Taliaferro'’s brilliant analysis of Plato's 
Pythagoreanism is apropos. He shows how the necessity of 


proportion between lines, planes, and spheres, is a 


generalization of the proportions within lines, planes, 


and spheres. That is, just as the extremities which make 
up a line are proportional to each other, so the plane 
and the sphere have proportional elements; but further, 
the proportion between the line and the plane is proportionally the same as the proportion between the plane and the 
sphere. In the same way, the realms of physics and geometry 
are proportional to each other, as the realm of matter is 
proportional to the realm of soul, and the realm of soul 
with the realm of being. Plato seems to be suggesting that 
there is a general proportionality between being and 
becoming. ° 

Yet this is abstract, and Plato wants to present the 
tale with all the richness of which a myth is capable. 


Although a radical unity of realms has been introduced, 


5 T.T. Taylor, The Timaeus and Critias of Plato, 
pp. 29 ff. 



the structured, leveled unity of these realms must be 
spelled out, for the Universe shares in the intelligibility 
of 4ts model, which comprehends all the things within it 
in a single unity. It 1s as if Plato were building suspense 
into his drama of creation. There is a difference between 
@\& metaphysical dramatist, who writes drama with metaphysical 
overtones and suggestions, and the dramatic metaphysician, 
who writes metaphysics with dramatic overtones. Plato seems 


to be one of the latter sort, since his Timaeus portrays 


the metaphysical origins of the Universe, in such a fashion 

that Timaeus’ account manages to create dramatic suspense. 
Since the Universe is visible, it must be bodily, 

and that which is bodily must have come to be. But, the 

Philebus informed us that the visible must have fire to be 


visible and earth to be tangible, and, since no two can 
be united without a third, fire and earth cannot be united 
without a third. Here in the Timaeus, the third must unite 


fire and earth in the best way possible, which is in the 
manner of a geometric proportion (31c). This is the best 
because "in that way all will necessarily come to play 
the same part toward one another, and by so doing they 
will all make a unity" (32a). Plato speaks here of the 
relation of proportional elements to each other; 2 is to 
4 as 4 is to 8. By transposition, 4 is to 2 as 8 is to 4, 
and in this way the mean, 4, comes to be the outside term 
and therefore it seems to be the outer boundary of the 


proportion. This is the arithmetical way of allegorizing 



the doctrine that proportion is what unifies, just as the 
side of the plane forms the outer boundary of its area, 
There is no need to dwell on the obvious Pythagorean style 
of this image. The point is that the elements of fire and 
earth need to be united in a proportion so that they 
define each other in the unity which they form. But on the 
basis of a simple proportion of this type, the Universe 
would have a plane surface with no depth. Yet we see that 
the World is a solid, "and solids are always conjoined, 
not by one mean, but by two" (32b). Therefore the god set 
water and air between fire and earth, and made then 
proportional to one another. In this way the unity of the 
Universe was achieved, and the proportionality of its 
four elements to each other is their boundary. Further, 
only he who set the elements in proportion could disolve 
it (32c). All of the elements were used up in the construction of the Universe, and in this way the Universe resembles 
its model's perfect unity, for none of the materials were 
left over and it is therefore, in its way, complete. It 
4s also, on that basis, simple, that is, one Universe, and 
hence resembles the unity of its model. Since only he who 
made the Universe can disrupt its unity, and since there 
are no materials left over which could attack the Universe, 
it-.ia free from old age and sickness, which come about by 
the introduction of materials from without. This at first 
seems to mean that the Universe resembles the eternity of 


its model in that those elements which might bring about 





age and sickness to the eternal would have to be outside ite 
definition, and so, the Universe, in its fashion, similarly 
cannot age or succumb to sickness for this would require 
elements outside it, of which there are none (33). 

But the shape of the body of the Universe is "that 
which is fitting to its nature" (33b); it 1s spherical. 
This is an extremely important phrase, since some regard 
Plato's image of time as circular and therefore interpret  
the Platonic Universe as closed, and subject only to 
eternal recurrence, without novelty or growth or process.° 
Therefore it is necessary to dwell on this phrase, for it 
says precisely and unambiguously that the spherical shape 
of the body of the Universe is proper to its nature. The 
foregoing passage clearly tells us that the Universe 
resembles its model in its own way, and that the perfection 
of the Universe is the aspect of the model from which the 
spherical shape derives. It is one thing to say that the 
Platonic Universe is spherical and therefore closed; it 
48 quite another thing to say that the Platonic Universe, 
which is a becoming image, is as perfect as it can be, and 
therefore allegorically spherical. This latter view cannot 
be stressed too strongly, because it is common to regard 
the Platonic Universe as nonetemporal, or as imperfect 


because it is only spherically temporal. Plato, on the 


eS aS ST TS ES 


6 E.g., Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the — 
Infinite Universe (New York: Harper rothers, 1 ° 



contrary, tells us clearly that the perfection of the 
model is the paradigm for the perfection of the Universe, 
which is a becoming image, so that it is appropriate to 
its setyle of perfection for it to be spherical. It is 
necessary to state simply that the question of the temporal 
character of this Universe has yet to be broached and will 
not be introduced by Plato until the discussion of the 
soul of the Universe has been undertaken. It follows that 
descriptions of the temporal character of the Universe 
based on its spherical shape do not follow the logical 
order of the dialogue, for they extract elements of the 
dialogue out of their context, in order to put them 
together in an order which was foreign to Plato's stated 
order. The spherical shape of the body of the Universe as 
Plato describes it, is the way in which the body of the 
Universe resembles the perfection of its model, insofar as 
that model is a self-comprehending figure, that is, a 
figure which is a proportional unity. It is not the — 
function of the spherical shape to resemble the eternity 
of the model; on the contrary; it is the function of the 
revolution of the sphere, governed by the world-soul, to 
resemble the eternity of the model. In so far as the body 
of the Universe is spherical, to that extent does it 
resemble the unity of the model. One must call to mind 
here the impossibility of describing each and every 


characteristic of the Universe at the same time and by the 



same set of words. Plato, like every other writer, cannot 
speak simultaneously of every aspect of his vision; it 
takes time to describe every feature of what one describes. 
The function of an image in this context becomes somewhat 
more evident, and the truism that a picture is worth a 
thousand words is not irrelevant to this characteristic of 
written description. For an image, a picture, can put 
forward thousands of details ina simple simultaneous 
unity, whereas the description of the picture in written 


words must focus on one aspect at a time. Thus Plato 


describes his Universe as a becoming image, to indicate 
that the unity of its elements is complete and harmonious: 
but to reason immediately from its spherical shape to its 
temporal character is an instance of cart-before-the-horsemanship. We must wait until the discussion of the body 
of the Universe has been completed, and then for the 
discussion of the soul of the Universe. Then, and only 
then, does Plato introduce his doctrine of time and the 
relation of time to the eternal model. 

Thus Plato states that the spherical body of the 
Universe is without organs or limbs, because the Universe 
which embraces all living things within itself ought to 
have that shape which comprehends all shapes within itself. 
The sphere is the most perfect shape because it "comprehends 
in itself all the figures there are" (33b). The shape of the 
Universe is proportional to its model: as the model is the 


most perfect model, the sphere is the most perfect shape. 





To accomplish his stated purpose, Plato describes how the 
Universe, as an image, is proportional to its model. In so 
doing, Plato continues to follow his own injunction; as 
reality is to becoming, so is truth to faith. 

But again, it is important to notice that the precise 
description of the relation between an eternal becoming 
and an eternal being has not yet been made clear. It is 
still held out for later comment. In short, during his 
description of the shape of the Universe, Plato has not 
yet said how it can be that the Universe can be an eternal 
becoming. The spherical shape of the Universe 1s basic but 
not sufficient for an insight into Plato's philosophy of 
time. 

Similarly, one cannot pass immediately from Plato's 
aphenteal Universe to Plato's philosophy of time. The motion 
of the sphere, which he is about to reveal, is basic, but 
even thie will not be sufficient for the explication of 
Plato's time-doctrine. The spherical Universe has no 
organs for sight or food, and is therefore not dependent 
on anything else. It has the sort of metion which, above 
all, belongs to reason and intelligence, namely, uniform 
rotation. It does not go from up to down, nor from down to 
up; nor from left to right, nor right to left; nor does 
it go from forward to backward, nor from backward to 
forward; the maker took these six motions away from it in 
the process of ordering its discorcant wanderings. It 


revolves uniformly within its own limits (34a). 



In his description of the body of the Universe, it 
is important to see that the divisions of the Philebus and 


the arrangement of the elements in their proportions are 
recapitulated here in the Timaeus. Otherwise, one fails to 
notice that the relation of fire, air, earth, and water, in 


the Timaeus is a subtle transfiguration of the Pythagorean 


number four, and also a substitution of proportion for the 
Amity which the elements had when ordered by the Nous of 


Anaxagoras, which, as Socrates complained in the Phaedo, 


Anaxagoras introduces early in his work but soon proceeds 
to ignore. Here Plato carries the theme of proportional 
unity into the relation of the elements themselves, It is 
doubly important to take note of this proportionality as 
constituent of the Universe, because Plato has described 
the relation of proportionality as the best sort of unity 
for the Universe, and the Universe must be the best 
possible because it is an image of its model. As we shall 
see, the world soul is similarly the best possible, for, 
not only is it too a resemblance of the model but it is 
the deeper source of the proportional perfection of the 
Universe. 
IV The Soul of the Universe 

The plan of the god who makes the Universe into the 
best image of the best model could not exclude soul from 
his activity, so that the excellent body of the Universe, 
which is spherical, and therefore not dependent on anything 


outside of itself, must in some way be related to a soul. 


208. 


The Soul of the Universe was set in the center, but 
further "wrapped ita body round with soul on the outside" 
(340). Here the transposability of the elements of a proportion comes into the account. For, at first, it seems 
that the center of the Universe cannot at the same time be 
the periphery. But, just as the mean term of a proportion 
can become the extremes by transposition, so the Soul, 
which is first described as the center (the mean) now 
becomes the outer boundary. This use of mathematical image 
seems to be Plato's way to indicate allegorically that the 
very heart of the Universe is also its limit, and that its 
center is not to be taken as a strictly spatial point but 
as the inner principle of the Cosmos, which therefore also 
animates its sphere of functioning and the limits of that 
functioning. Because the Soul of the Universe is both its 
center and its limiting boundary, it is described as a 
"blessed god" (34b). 

One might easily wonder why the body of the 
Universe is discussed before the Soul, which is said to be 
the most excellent source of perfection. Plato explains in 
the next paragraph why this was done. He says that we 
should not suppose, merely because the Soul came later in 
the account of the Universe, that it is therefore younger, 
for that would be an insufferable perversion of right 
order. Already, "There is in us too much of the casual and 
the random which shows itself in our speech..." (34c). The 
priority of Soul in perfection is not absolute and total; 



there are still too many obvious wanderings and deviations 
from the orderly to assert that the Soul is prior in every 
way.! Plato is all too aware that the Universe cannot be 
empirically described as exhibiting the perfections of 
Soul. It seems likely that Plato described the body of the 
Universe before describing the Soul in order to follow out 


his initial premise that the Timaeus will reveal the plan 


of the Universe in an image, so that, by first establishing 
the visible shape of the Universe, he will then be able to 
make use of the shape he attributed to it to fashion images 
of the Soul. This was the procedure of the Republic, for 
there, it was explicitly agreed that the best plan for the 
investigation of the Soul would be to see it writ large in 
the State. So here, it seems that Plato is saying that we 
shall come to understand the Soul of the Universe writ 


large in its body. Throughout the Timaeus the details of 


the image are described before the image itself, but this 
is only an apparent reversal of the order in which the 
Universe was fashioned. It does not seem wise to interpret 
this, (as Cornford and A.E. Taylor do) as "inconsistent." 
If one understands from the outset that the best description 
of the Universe must be proportional "te its reality, then 
the details of the allegorical level of explanation are not 
inconsistent with the details of the reality of the 


7 E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational 
(Boston: Beacon Press, 19 . 



Universe. Only on the supposition that Plato is following 
@ linear plan of description would it follow that details 
are out of place. But if one accepts Plato's approach 
through image, then one remembers that the exigencies of 
written description create the appearance of a linear 
account, whereas, in fact, Plato concentrates on one 
aspect and then another of the entire image, which, in its 
unity, does not serialize or linearize the elements of the 
account. Plato's Universe does not consist of a series of 
elements which must therefore be described one at a time. 
One could more easily attempt to fashion a length of rope 
from grains of sana.° Thus, if one starts from an expectae 
tion that the description of the Universe must be a linear 
account, one should conclude that Plato's description of 
the World-Soul snould have preceeded his account of the 
Body of the Universe. But, if one starts from the awareness 
that Plato is describing those aspects of the Universe 
which will lead to an insight into the whole Universe in 
a simple image, which is the best kind of account of the 
Universe because it is proportional to its kind of being, 
one is not disappointed that Plato describes the Soul of 
the Universe after the body. One ought to recall in this 
regard Plato's deep concern that it is, after all, impossible to reveal the maker of the Universe to all mankind. 


8 George S. Claghorn, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's 
'Timaeus’ (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), p. Bf. 


ett. 
He attempts, by means of his imagery, to communicate to as 
Many as possible. In this way, the recipient of his account 
has been presented with the shape of the body of the 
Universe, and he can now elevate this image by perceiving 
how it has Soul at the center and all around it. 

However, the World-Soul is not so simple that its 
description can rest on the characteristics of centrality 
and periphery. The description of the "parts" of the 
World-Soul follows next, in a passage which Cornford has 
described as "one of the most obscure of the whole dialogue."? Further, he says that the passage "would be 
simply unintelligible to anyone who had not read and 
understood the Sophist."!9 In a note he adds that A.E. 
Taylor has precluded this basis for understanding the 
World-Soul because A.E. Taylor denies a knowledge of the 
Sophist to Timaeus.!! 

By his reference to the Sophist, Cornford points 
out that the "ingredients" of the Soul will be the Forms 
which Plato there said communicated with each other, 
namely, Unity, Sameness, and Difference. Particularly, 
Difference has the character of not-being, yet these Forms 
communicate with each other. In the following passage from 


the Timaeus, Plato describes how the World-Soul comes to be 


9 Cornford, op, cit., p. 59. 


10 Inaa., p. 61. 



! A.E. Taylor, Commentary, p. 128. 



formed, and how the communication of these Forms is 
accomplished in the World-Soul. 


The things of which he composed soul and the manner 
of its composition were as follows: Between the 
indivisible existence that is ever in the same 
state, and the divisible existence that becomes 

in bodies, he compounded a third form of existence 
composed of both. Again, in the case of Sameness 
and that of Difference, he also on the same 
principle made a compound intermediate between 
that kind of them which is indivisible and the 
kind that is divisible in bodies. Then, taking 
the three, he blended them all into a unity, 
forcing the nature of difference, hard as it was 
to mingle, into union with sameness, and mixing 
them together with existence (25a-b). 


This passage bears extensive comment, for several of 
its points are crucial to Plato's development of his 
philosophy of time. 

First, it is clear that the Forms have not been 


repudiated by the Timaeus, since the passage begins with a 


description of the Forms which recapitulates their treatment in the Sophist. The kind of existence which is always 
the same is proper to the Forms, and was proper to the 


Forms as early as the Phaedo and the Republic. But in the 


Sophist, the Different was introduced, based on Plato's 
recognition that it is necessary to say what is-not in 
order to say what is. In short, the entire doctrine of 
notebeing of the Sophist has reappeared in the Timaeus. 
But, just as the initial recapitulation of the Republic at 
the beginning of the Timaeus (28a) does not rest with a 


simple repetition but proceeds further, so here the 


recapitulation of the Sophist doctrine of not-being, on 



the level of the Forms, i.e., Difference, will not end 
Plato's discussion. He means to go beyond this point. Or, 
to put the matter differently, Plato will now investigate 
the relevance of the doctrine of not-being insofar as it 
helps to explain the constitution of the World-Soul. 

The second point to be noticed is the recognition 
that there are, as Cornford translates it, "kinds" of 
existences: there is the "kind" of existence proper to the 
Forms, there is the "kind" of existence proper to divisible 
bodies, and in addition, there is a third "kind" of 
existence, between them, an intermediate existence, proper 
to the Soul of the Universe. Further, these three "kinds" 
are further divided and then further recombined, so that 
there is a whole hierarchy of "kinds" of existence. 
Cornford's diagram is instructive on this point, !@ 


First Mixture Final Mixture 


Indivisible existence 
Divisible existence Intermediate existence 


Indivisible sameness 


Divisible sameness Intermediate sameness Soul 


Indivisible difference 
Divisible difference Intermediate difference 


Note that it is no longer possible to assert that 


there is only one "kind" of existence which deserves the 


le Cornford, loc. cit. "Kinds" is a peculiar 
expression which is repeated here only to assure an 
accurate representation of Cornford's view. 



name, the sort reserved for the Forms in the Republic, 
where all else is mere shadows. In this connection, it 
should be recalled that the Sophist distinguished sharply 
between the kinds of images (eidola), and reached the 


conclusion that some images are false (phantasiai) but 
some are genuine. Of those that are genuine one must 
further distinguish those that are of human origin and 
those that are of divine origin (240a). The Sophist therefore credits images with some sort of existence. But the 
Timaeus does not simply describe the Universe as an 
eidolon, a little Form, so to speak. The Universe is an 


eikon, which now comes to mean that it is like the perfection of the most perfect. cut even this is not the high 
point of Plato's analysis, as we shall see. Nevertheless 

it 1s central to the exposition of this passage to notice 
that the doctrine of the Sophist, which makes it necessary 
to somehow include notebeing in the realm of Forms, is now 
recapitulated, but, in addition, it is not only the reality 
of the Forms but the reality of the whole Universe which 
must now be explained. And in this connection, Plato has 
shifted from a description which accords some sort of being 
to images, to a description of the whole Universe as an 


image, and that the transition from eidolon to eikon is 


intrinsic to this development of doctrine. 
Thus, between the two orders of existence with which 
we were formerly acquainted in the Sophist, namely, the 


eternal and the becoming, Plato has now inserted a third. 



This is a further development of his doctrine of proportion, 
of which we saw the first usage in this dialogue in the 
composition of the body of the Universe. The sort of 
mixture which the Philebus prefigures is now developed in 
Plato's attempt to construct the entire Cosmos on this 


basis. But, in the Philebus, the precise details of the 


manner in which this mixture was to be accomplished were 
left somewhat less clear than they are now painted, for 


the Philebus insisted that the cause of the mixture was in 


fact the god, but the god was not described as the maker 
of the whole Universe; he was there only the mixer of the 
Forms in some things. 

This passage, like the passage at 29, is a radical 
innovation on Plato's part, which takes the doctrine of 
the Timaeus far beyond the doctrines of its predecessor 
dialogues. It is a recapitulation, but the recapitulation 
serves as a basis for an advance. Where once only the 
Forms were ultimately real, now there are "kinds" or 
"sorts" or "levels" of reality; but these are not to be 
distinguished from each other as merely Different; they are 
also the Same, and, further, they are in a proportional 
Unity. The significance of this proportional unity is the 
basis of the succeeding passages, where we notice that the 
basis of knowledge itself has undergone a radical growth. 
And, in addition, the basis of the former division of the 


world into the eternal and the becoming has similarly 



undergone a radical growth, wherein it will no longer be 
possible for Plato to distinguish simply between the eternal and the becoming as separated realms, but the relation 
of the eternal to the becoming will have to be described 
in a new way. Somehow, the eternal and the becoming will 
be related in a way which will explain how it is possible 
to have an eternal becoming. 

This pertains to the statement that the Universe is 
an image. For, as we saw, the Universe is an image which in 
some way is like its eternal model and yet is a becoming 
image; yet it was not explained how there could be any 
reality to such an intermediary thing. The basis for the 
reality of the Universe as an image has now been laid. For 
the World-Soul itself is neither simply eternal nor simply 
becoming; it 1s a proportional unity of the Same and the 
Different. 

But, from basis to doctrine is not an immediate step. 
The lesson of the Philebus and the Statesman, which was 
the caution not to divide too quickly, but to proceed by 
following the right divisions according to the way things 
are, 1s not foreign to the author of these lessons. Before 
he gives the details of the reconciliation between eternal 
being and mere becoming, Plato follows out the division of 
the World-Soul into its precise portions. 

Of course, we should not expect that Plato's 
passages on the motions of the planets will be adequate 


from the point of view of contemporary astronomy, so that 



a detailed commentary on the exact motions of the planets 
will be of interest only to those whose taste runs to 
collecting the opinions of the ancients and constructing a 
history of opinions with no care about their relevance or 
utility to contemporary experience. Plato had no Galileo 
to instruct him, nor a Newton. Furthermore, the invention 
of the telescope and the mass spectrometer have outmoded 
most of Plato’s astronomy. But it is interesting to note 
that Plato looked to astronomy as a case in point. For, if 
the World-Soul united the Same and the Different within 
4tself, and if the World-Soul, by reason of its superior 
dignity, is actually responsible for the motions of the 
planets, it should follow that the revolutions of the 
planets will occur in what Plato will describe as the 
revolution of the Same, the Different, and their Unity in 
the revolution of the uniforn. 

This is precisely the description which we confront 
in Plato's astronomy. It emerges that the seven divisions 
of the Soul are intermediate between the seven basic 
Forms, on the one hand, and the seven planetary distances, 
on the other, which in turn are proportional to the seven 
basic string lengths. Plato tells us that the harmony of 
the musical scale is only one level (or sort, or kind) of 
harmony, and that the Soul of the World is itself an 
intermediate between the ultimate Forms and the body of 


the Universe. The fundamental truth is the assertion of 



proportionality and the harmony of the elements of the 
proportions. !> Plato goes on to construct an intricate 
allegory of the circles of the Same and of the Different; 
he describes how these circles have been joined in the 
center of the Soul, and how the revolution of the Same 
circumscribes the revolution of the Different (the allegorical indication that the Same is the "outer" limit of the 
Different). The seven circles of the Soul represent the 
proportional share which the Soul has in the seven Forms, '4 
just as the seven tones reflect the seven planetary distances, The point is not merely the number of circles, but 
the motion of the circles, since planets and music certainly move. 

Plato tries very hard to make his allegory exact in 
every detail. He indicates that motions are shared 
proportionately by the seven planets, which means, (as 
A.E. Taylor has seen 13) that Plato anticipated our own 
contemporary relativity theory of motion. (Heisenberg 
makes the same point 16), It 48 anticlimactic to note that 
Plato knew the solar system to be heliocentric, although 


this 1s not universally agreed upon. 


13 T.T. Taylor, op, cit., Introduction. 
es According to T.T. Taylor, loc, cit. 


15 A.E,Taylor, Commentary, Appendix. 


16 Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, ch. 4. See 
also MacKinnon, "Time in Contemporary Physics," pp. 428-457. 




Plato next relates the seven motions of the Soul 
to the seven dimensions of the body, which is fashioned 
later than Soul, although it was described earlier. He 
says in summary; 

-e-the soul, being everywhere interwoven from the 

center to the outermost heaven, enveloping heaven 

all around on the outside, revolving within its 

own limits, made a divine beginning of ceaseless 

and intelligent life for all time (36e). 

It 1s unnecessary to point out in this age of 
possible thermonuclear holocaust that Plato's optimism is 
derived from the perfection of the Universe which is the 
image of the perfection of the model, and not from the 
sort of empirical observation which has created pessimism 
in many quarters. However, one should note that Plato's 


Sicilian adventures did result in a sadness which Plato 


describes in his Seventh Letter. The difference between 


Plato's sadness over the outcome of Sicilian politics and 
the contemporary pessinism lies in the world-wide scale 

on which contemporary destruction can be accomplished. One 
might wish to derive a sense of optimism from the possibility that the Universe will go on even if the planet earth 
does not harbor any human life. For Plato refers to the 
life of the World-Soul as it inspires the body of the 
Universe, and not to the life of man, which, Plato was 
aware, 1s all too short. In the Myth of Er, the Republic 
describes the life of man as a span of one hundred years, 
and the cycle of good life as a span of ten thousand years. 


Here in the Timaeus intelligen life is "ceaseless." 





But the discourse concerning the World-Soul was not 
written only to illustrate that Plato was master of the 
Pythagorean system of numbers. Where Pythagoras would 
derive the proportions of any body from the numbers 1, 2, 
3, and 4, Plato establishes harmonic intervals which do not 
sum to the perfect number 10; instead, he leaves the end 
of the proportions open, so that the scale of tones or the 
planetary differences might be further calculated, if one 
wished. '7 Here one could agree with A.E. Taylor that Plato 
has given a "provisional" tone to his dialogue, 8 but, at 
the same time, one would have to disagree that Timaeus does 
nothing more than recite fifth-century Pythagoreanism, for 
Plato's Universe is not strictly Pythagorean. There seem 
to be several reasons for this, not the least of which is 
Plato's use of Pythagorean numerology in a description of a 
Universe which has far more complexity, and, at the same 
time, far more simplicity than the Universe of Pythagoras. 
This is most evident in the Pythagorean insistence that the 
Forms (numbers) are the ultimately real, and the World of 
appearance is less real. In what follows, Plato will reveal 
that there is a kind of knowledge proper to the World-Soul 
which transcends a knowledge of number, by including it in 


\&@ more comprehensive knowledge. 


'T Dodds, op. cit. 


18 A.E. Taylor, Commentary, p. 113. 




Thus, the body of the Universe is visible, but the 
Soul of the Universe is invisible, and is the "best of 
things brought into being by the most excellent of things 
intelligible and eternal" (37a). Because the Soul has been 
blended out of the Same, the Different, and the Existent, 
she is "in contact with anything that has dispersed existence or with anything whose existence is indivisible" (37a) 
In this way the Soul is like anything that is, and it can 
therefore know anything that is, "either in the sphere of 
things that become or with regard to things that are always 
changeless" (37b). 

Thus, even though the World-Soul is the intermediate 
form of existence between what is eternal and what becomes, 
Plato can still say that there are two "levels" of existence, 
one eternal and one becoming. But he no longer says that 
there are only two forms of existence, nor that these two 
"levels" or spheres are exhaustive of all existence. Since 
the Soul is intermediate, it is a third "level" of existence. 
Yet, one courts danger by the simple enumeration of the 
number of forms of existence for one misses the whole 
emphasis which Plato has put on proportionality throughout 
the Timaeus. The Soul could not know either realm if it 


were simply in between the eternal and the becoming; the 
point is that the Soul is in a proportional unity with the 
eternal and the becoming, and so, it is part of each and 
each is part of it. Plato tells us in the following 


passage that both the circle of the same and the circle 


ke) 





of the different transport their respective judgments into 


the Soul: 

Now whenever discourse that is alike true, whether 

it takes place concerning that which is different 

or that which is the same, being carried on without 

speech or sound within the thing that is self-moved, 

is about that which is sensible, and the circle of 
the different, moving aright, carriea its message 
through all its soul-then there arise judgments 

and beliefs that are sure and true. But whenever 

discourse is concerned only with the rational, 

and the circle of the same, running smoothly, 

declares it, the result must be rational 

understanding and knowledge (37b, c). 

Several features of this passage bear comment. First, 
it states that belief arises from the circle of the 
Different, (which includes the realm of the many, the 
dispersed, and the sensible objects of perception) and that 
beliefs must be sure and true if they arise from the 
proper revolution of the circle of the Different. Second, 
it describes this sort of judgment as intrinsic to the 
World-Soul, and not an inferior sort of knowledge. For the 
Same and the Different constitute Soul; no longer is Soul 
only the superior portion of the divided line. Third, the 
knowledge of the Same and the knowledge of the Different 
both comprise Soul, and are both proper functions of Soul, 
having allegorically, the relation to each other of 
proportionality. This is not to say that rational knowledge 
alone is not better; rather, it asserts that belief and 
opinion are not bad or impossible. Both judgments are 
necessary to what Soul is, and both sorts of knowledge arise 


when Soul does what Soul does; namely, generate the motions 



of the Universe. Lastly, the judgment by the Soul is 
called an aesthesis, which, unlike the English word 


"judgment," extends to feeling and to the appreciation of 
beauty as well as of truth. This capacity to Know aesthetic'ally is of the utmost significance in Plato's Universe, and 
it is especially necessary for a consideration of the next 
topic to which Plato addresses himself, namely, time. For 

if time is a Form then reason alone will comprehend it. But 
if time is an image, then its beauty is as important as its 
truth. 

V Time as Image (to 39e) 

Up to this point in his development of the construction of the Universe, Plato has insisted that the Universe 
embodies in its proportional way the perfection of its 
model, and yet the model is consistently described as 
eternal, while the Universe is said to be an eternal becoming. The Universe is described throughout the foregoing 
passages as a reality which is as perfect as it can be, and 
yet Plato nowhere says how a visible and tangible body can 
be like its eternal indivisible model. Even the existence 
of the World-Soul and its participation in the whole of the 
Universe, in its divisible as well as its indivisible aspects 
that is, in its sameness and in its difference, is not 
sufficient to confer on the Universe the closest approximnation to the perfection of the eternal model, even though 
Plato usually attributes the highest perfections to Soul. 


In the following passage, Plato finally makes explicit the 



way in which the Universe of becoming most resembles the 
eternity of its model. To all the perfection which he has 
attributed to the Universe, including intelligence, 
judgment, and uniform revolution, he now adds the perfection 
which enables the Universe to resemble its eternal model 
to the fullest extent possible, the ultimate perfection of 
which the Universe is capable. Plato writes: 

When the father who had begotten it saw it set in 

motion and alive, a shrine brought into being for 

the everlasting gods, he rejoiced and being well 

pleased he took thought to make it yet more like 

its pattern (37c). 

When the Universe was set "in motion and made alive," 
the requirements which Socrates had laid down in the 
beginning of the dialogue were met. However, Plato does 
not end his sentence on this condition; he adds that the 
Universe was alive and in motion, and, in addition, it was 
a shrine (agalma). This peculiar word has caused the 
commentators no small difficulty.'9 Its meaning is not 
fixed and precise, since it may mean a statue or it may 
mean a thing of joy. But the connotation of the word 
suggests that either the statue or the thing of joy are 
made by the lover who beholds in the statue an image of 
his loved one, which makes the agalma both a statue and 
a thing of joy. One recalls that the dialogues of the late 


period, especially the Sophist, have consistently lent 


49 aly, Taylor, Cornford, Archer-Hind, Bury. 



themselves to an exposition of the difference betweer a 
mere statue, which may or may not be faithful to the 
proportions of the original model, and a genuine image,  
which is faithful to the proportions of the original model. 
The agaima is not only faithful to its original model but 
the model is a loved one whose very visage brings joy to 
the heart of the beholder. Heretofore, the Universe was 
described as an image, (eikon) but in this passage it is 
described as agalma, an image which brings joy to the 
heart of the beholder. 

But the Sophist distinguished between human and 
divine images. One can understand that a human craftsman 
might take delight in an image of his loved one, but when 
the maker of the Universe takes delight in the image of 
the perfection of the eternal model, it is another matter. 
For this image is said to be a shrine for the everlasting 
gods, and the plural is unmistakable. For the plural gods 
have not made the Universe; this was the work of the 
demiurge; yet the Universe is not described as a shrine 
for the demiurge but for the everlasting gods. It is 
tempting to conclude from what first seems to be a glaring 
inconsistency that Plato had made the Universe to be a 
place in which the gods may worship the Living Being who 
is the model of the Universe. Or, going beyond the surface 
of the allegory, one might conclude that the One Living 
Being who is the maker of the Universe takes delight in 
Himself in the image of Himself which is called the 



Universe, since Plato clearly says that the maker rejoiced 
when he beheld it. But it is first necessary to state that 
Plato does not offer these interpretations himself, and we 
are forced once again to remind ourselves that the finding 
of the maker of the Universe is a hard task and the 
revelation of the maker to all mankind is impossible. It 
seems best to interpret the passage in the light of Plato's 
own statement that the exact and specific description of 
the maker is impossible. Nor does it seem wise to expect 
that Plato is trying to bring us to the point where we 
ourselves experience the reality behind the veil of 
allegory, in the hope that we will experience what he means, 
even though he does not say it explicitly. Although this 
might very well be Plato's intention, we have no way of 
knowing whether he has designed this passage, indeed, this 
entire dialogue, to create the basis of such an experience, 
Although it is impossible to pretend that we do not 
project our own views on to the structure of Plato's 
philosophy, since we are moderns and our minds are attuned, 
as it were, to our own era, nevertheless we ought to 
attempt to plumb Plato's meaning, so far as we can. To 
assert that this is impossible is to abandon all historical 
scholarship; to assert that this poses no difficulty at all 
is naivyete in the extreme. Thus, despite the agreement 
which Augustine and many other philosophers felt when 
confronting this passage, we ought not to conclude that 


Plato has "anticipated," as the saying goes, the doctrines 



of Christianity. One could as well say that the ineffability which characterizes Plato's maker of the Universe is 
due to his acquaintance with Buddhist or Mosaic doctrines 
of the ineffability of the Divine. 

One must rest at Plato's statement that the Universe 
is an agalma, and that the maker rejoiced when he saw that 
it was alive and in motion. In the Phaedrus (at 252d) 
there is a similar usage of agalma, in which the lover 
chooses his love (eros) as if the love were a shrine 


(agalma). There is another use in the Laws (931a) where 


parents who receive proper veneration from their children 
are regarded as instances of agalma. 

However, one must recall that Plato has said all 
through the Timaeus that the Universe was fashioned by the 
demiurge, who in turn looks to the perfection of the 
eternal model, and not to himself as the locus of the 
eternal model, so that the simple equation of the eternal 
model with the demiurge runs counter to the stated details 
of the allegory. Again, it would seem to be a modern 
projection to interpret this division of the model from the 
demiurge as a justification for the claim that Plato 
distinguished the Father from the Creator. From such an 
interpretation one could reach out to the conclusion that, 
for Plato, Summun Bonum est diffusivum Sui, but this 
stretches interpretation far beyond Plato's stated words. 

The attempt on the part of some commentators to 


assert or to deny these implications of Plato's words, 



then, seems to represent an attempt to fit Plato's 
meaning into more contemporary doctrines. One cannot quarrel with those who find inspiration in Plato's text, but 
this is not the question. The question is, what did Plato 
mean? And in this context, it seems beside the point to 
fit Platonism into more recent doctrines of creation, and 
rather more to the point to relate the details of Plato's 
intricate allegory to what is clearly demonstrable and 
attributable to Plato as a fourthecentury genius, and not 
@ twentieth-century commentator on twentieth-century 
investigations. The great controversy which Plato's 
demiurge has created will not be settled in these pages. 
The point under discussion is the distinction between the 
Universe as a shrine and the Universe as an image, and the 
fact that Plato described the Universe as an image (eikon) 
throughout the preceding passages, but now refers to it as 
a shrine (agalma). 

But a relatively full view of this shift of emphasis 
must include stylistic as well as theological considerations. 
For, Plato will put forward in the next few passages, a 
doctrine of time as a special sort of image, and, in 
order to avoid calling both the Universe and time by the 
same name, Plato has elevated the Universe to the status of 
\& shrine-image so that he can refer to time as another 


sort of image. Recall that the beginning of the Timaeus 


confronts the reader with the need to avoid blasphemy, and 


yet the equally insistent need not to demean the Universe 



or to rob it of any due measure of perfection. Thus the 
Universe as a shrine becomes the locus of divine function, 
and as we shall see, the Universe as temporal becomes the 
manner of divine function: respectively the place where 
the demiurge acts and the way in which he acts. There is a 
further note which should be added. For a shrine may be 
occasionally empty of the presence of the god to whom it 
is dedicated, or it may be filled with his presence. And 
it is precisely this distinction which bears on the 
following passage. For the Universe has so far been endowed 
with body and Soul, but the maker sought to make 1t yet 
more like its eternal model, not only a shrine in space 
but in some way an eternal shrine, as much like its model 
as it can be. 

(Just )2° as that pattern is the Living Being that 

is forever existent, so he sought to make this 

Universe also like it, so far as it might be, in 

that respect. Now the nature of the Living Being 

was eternal, and this character it was impossible 

to confer in full completeness on the generated 

thing (374d). 

Here Plato speaks the paradox which has run through 
the previous discussion of the Universe as an eternal 
becoming. He states openly that the model is the Living 
Being who is eternal but the Universe is a generated thing 


which therefore cannot be eternal in the same way. It 1s 


this difference between the model and the Universe which 


20 Cornford has "So." 



must be reconciled in order to describe the Universe as a 
thing which is as much like its model as possible. And to 
accomplish this, Plato says: 

But he took thought to make, as it were, a moving 

likeness (eikona) of eternity; and at the same 

time that he ordered heaven, he made, of eternity 

that abides in unity, an everlasting likeness 

moving according to number-that to which we have 

given the name Time (37d). 

In this passage, the themes of eternity, image, and 
time culminate in a synthesis, of which there are several 
aspects. First, notice that the act of the demiurge which 
brought order to the original chaos, which Plato has 
already described, is said in this passage to be the same 
act as the act of making time. Second, notice that time as 
an image is made, not of chaos but of eternity. Third, 
note that Time is a moving image and an everlasting image. 
Fourth, note that Time is said to move according to number, 
Fifth, note that we have given it the name of Time. I shall 
discuss each of these aspects in turn. 

1. The activity of the demiurge.--The Universe has been 
described throughout the Timaeus as made by an act of the 


demiurge, whose activity brings order out of the discordant 
motions which confront him. This feature of the allegory 
has elicited much comment, and some of the commentators 
would like to conclude that the demiurge does not create 
ex nihilo because Plato clearly says that the demiurge 


was confronted by a chaos of discordant motions. ©! Others 


21 Cornford, op. cit. 



would like to conclude that it is merely a detail of the 
allegory which does not jibe with the details of literal 
experience, so that one can dismiss the chaos as only a 
mythical element but not a real thing. Both views seem 


unnecessary, for Plato was neither writing mere allegory 


nor Christian Theology. It seems more to the point to show 
that Plato once before introduced a prior consideration 
into his account after he has introduced a later consideration, as we saw, for example, when he described the World-Soul after the World-body. There, it was to give the reader 
the necessary materials out of which he could fashion the 
image through which Plato put forward his account of the 
process. Plato of course attributes to Soul a superior sort 
of perfection than that which he attributes to body, but 
not because these parts of the Universe stand in an 
external hierarchy of items which are spatially and existentially discrete; rather, the proportional unity of the 
entire Universe is his primary desideratum, and he says 
repeatedly that the Universe is an image, and that we 
must see it as we see images, in their unity. But one 
cannot simply call off a list of parts if one wishes the 
reader to appreciate and know the unity of the image, since 
the list would create the impression of a linear, serial 
juxtaposition of parts, whereas the Universe is the most 
excellent unity of things that have become. 

So here, the doctrine of Time, the aspect of the 


Universe by which it most resembles its eternal model, has 



been introduced last in the account of the perfected 
Universe, and we are told that the making of Time is 
accomplished by the demiurge in the same act as the order~ 
ing of the original chaos. Plato has again introduced the 
most difficult aspect of the doctrine he is fashioning, 
after the materials have been- provided for the reader to 
see the doctrine in its unity. Logically, since the act of 
ordering the Universe is the same as the act of making Time, 
one might expect that these two aspects of the act of 
constructing the Universe should have been discussed toget~ 
her. But this runs into a severe difficulty, which is the 
simple fact that Plato did not do so, which leads to the 
contradiction that what we should expect Plato to say is 
not what we should expect Plato to say; in other words, if 
we are being faithful to the development of Plato's logic, 
we ought not to expect him to put the making of Time and 
the making of order into the same paragraph since he did 
not do so. It is only necessary to perceive that these 
aspects are united better in an image than by serial logic, 
to follow Plato's meaning as exactly as he states it. Thus 
the function of image as an explanation of the relation 
between time and eternity is not less than logical; on the 
contrary, the image provides the basis to transcend the 
linear appearance of philosophical logic and to reach into 
the heart of Plato's doctrine of the Unity of the Universe. 


2. Time is said to be made as an image of eternity.--At 
first, this seems to mean that the demiurge fashioned the 



Universe out of the material of an original chaos, but 
fashioned Time out of the material of eternity. This is 
not only a philosophical difficulty but also a function of 
translation. For, in English (American?) we say that 
something 1s an image of something, which does not mean, 
for example, that the image of Freud, is made out of the 
material of his flesh. An image of Freud can be made of 
photosensitive paper, of clay, or bronze, or the graphite 
scratchings of a pencil, or colored pigments, etc. However, 
when one discusses the Universe as an image, a Universe 
which has been described as exhausting all of the four 
elements out of which it is made, what can the image be 
made of. But the answer stares us in the face. Plato has 
said that the Universe is a Unity of the four elements of 
fire, earth, air, and water, which has Soul indivisibly in 
each and every one of its parts. One cannot then expect the 
image, which the Universe is, to be made of any one of these 
so-called ingredients; the Universe is an image precisely 
because it is a Unity. Just as the Universe is a Unity, so 
4s it an image, and one can as reasonably ask of what is 
unity made as one can ask of what is an image made. The 
Universe, as image, is like the Soul of the Universe; it 
is indivisible from its existence. Thus, insofar as Time 
is an image, it is not compounded out of the elements of 
chaos or out of the perfection of eternity. Time as image 
is Plato's way of describing, "as it were," the temporal 


-unity of the Universe. The phrase "made of" seems 



ambiguous only because in English, the preposition "of" 
is sometimes used to indicate apposition, sometimes to 
indicate the genitive, as in derivation. The "of" here is 
appositive. 
3. Time is said to be a moving image, and an everlasting 
one.--We have already been given the ingredients of this 
aspect of the Universe from which we may construct an image. 
For the motions of the circles of the planets have been 
described as due to the ordering perfection of the Soul of 
the Universe, and we are aware that the several motions of 
the circles within the Universe take place within that 
sort of motion which is best suited to the perfection of 
the Universe, namely, uniform rotation. Because Uniform 
rotation is the best sort of motion, which best suits the 
sort of perfection the Yniverse has, we know that the 
Universe is a sphere which revolves and comprehends all the 
other motions of the circles within itself. Just as the 
Soul comprehends all that can be comprehended because it is 
indivisible from every area of the Universe, so uniform 
rotation includes the several motions of the circles which 
revolve within the sphere of the Universe. The question now 
arises whether the motion which characterizes Time is the 
uniform motion of the entire sphere itself, considered 
apart from the subsidiary motion of the interior circles, 
or whether it is one of the lesser motions of one or some 
of these circles, or whether it is all of these motions 


in some sort of unity. But we have been given the material 



from which to reach this conclusion, for we have been told 
that the making of Time is the same act as the making of 
order. Thus, Time is the proportional unity of all the 
motions of all the circles, including the motion of the 
outer sphere, insofar as these are a unity. For, as order 
unifies chaos, Time unifies motion. Once order has brought 
the elements of chaos into a unity, they are no longer 
elements of chaos, but of unity. So, once Time has brought 
unity into the several motions of the circles, they are no 
longer only several circles, but are now the elements of 
the proportional Unity of Time. It would be wrong to 
suppose that order is the principle according to which the 
many elements of the spatial universe have been united 
into a One and that Time is the principle according to 
which the many elements of the temporal Universe have been 
united into a One, because that would lead to the conclusion that there are two Ones. Two Ones would create the 
third man problem which has been adduced already in the 
Timaeus to show that the Universe is One and only One, or 
one One. The Universe is a radical Unity, not simply of 
spaces and Times, but, one ought to say, of Time-space. 

At the same time, however, one must assert that the Unity 
of the Universe is not a simply homogeneity without parts, 
for that would be the destruction and not the construction 
of a Universe. Plato's Universe is neither atomistic nor 
pantheistic; it is a unity of proportional realities, a 


moving image. 




The second aspect of the moving image is the everlasting character of its motion. Again, we have been furnished with the material to construct an understanding of 
this characteristic. 'e have already called attention to 
Plato's optimism in his use of the word "ceaseless," by 
which he seems to indicate that the Universe must resemble 
eternity by being indestructible. This feature of the 
Universe might well be called its alleged immortality, and 
it is therefore appropriate to recall again that the 
Universe exhausted all the elements out of which it was 
fashioned. It was said, on this basis, that there were no 
forces outside of it which might attack it and that it 
was therefore impervious to age and sickness. There is 
nothing outside the Universe which might attack it and so 
it must be immortal, ceaseless, indestrutible, everlasting. 
Can Plato have concluded naively that there are no dangers 
to which the Universe is subject? To answer this, it is 
necessary to recall the reservation with which the whole 
character of Time has been prefaced. Plato says clearly 
that the perfection of Time was given to the Universe as 
far as it was possible to do so. but why should it not be 
fully possible? For two reasons. First, if the Universe 
were as eternal as its model it would be identical with 
its model and there would then be no difference between the 
model and the reality. But this cannot be, for the Universe, 
being visible, must have been generated, and must therefore 


-have been fashioned on a model. Secondly, throughout his 



philosophy, Plato repeatedly uses the phrase "as far as 
possible" without giving a doctrine of possibility which 
would explain the meaning of the phrase. Both the need for 
a model and the limit of possibility are related to the 
doctrine of notebeing. The meaning of this doctrine of 
not-being for the realm of the Forms, was first revealed in 
the Sophist, where it becomes the Different. The Universe 
is both the same as and different from its model, so that 
it is like its model and yet it is-not like its model. 
Having said that the Universe is a Unity of the Same and 
the Different, and having said that Time gives the closest 
approximation to perfection that the generated Universe 
can attain, one should expect that Plato will now develop 
his doctrine of notebeing on a cosmological scale, as he 
has developed his doctrines of eternity and image and Time 
on a cosmological scale. This new doctrine of cosmic note 
being is found in the second half of the dialogue, where 
the relation of necessity and the receptacle of becoming 
is discussed. One can conclude at this point only that the 
perfection of Time is as perfect as it is possible for the 
demiurge to make it, but, since the demiurge is not 
absolutely omnipotent, the full character of eternity could 
not be conferred on the Universe. The demiurge must 
persuade necessity, not force it. 

Or, to put the matter in another way, insofar as the 
perfection of the Universe depends on the activity of the 


rational demiurge, it is perfect; but insofar as the 



Universe depends on the reluctance of necessity to be 
persuaded by the demiurge, it lacks perfection. Thus the 
everlasting image, which we call Time, is subject to the 
recalcitrance of necessity. In recognising this, we rescue 
Plato from the charge of naive optimism, for the perfection 
of the Universe is its everlasting character, but this is 
not the same as asserting that the Universe is absolutely 
perfect; even Time must confront necessity. 
4, Time 18 said to move according to number.--Again, we 
have been furnished with the material to understand this 
assertion. We know already that the Universe considered as 
a whole is a sphere, but considered as the proportional 
unity of the many circles and living beings which inhabit 
it, it 18 a populated sphere. Thus Time is neither the 
revolution only of the outer periphery nor only the sum of 
the rotations of the many circles which inhabit the interior of the sphere. Time is the order which the One Universe 
enjoys; (correlatively, the order of the Universe is the 
Time it enjoys). Time encompasses both the Unity and the 
multiplicity of the Universe insofar as it is the perfection of the Universe which makes it most like its eternal 
model. It would be a serious misreading of this phrase to 
assert that Plato's Universe is simply a Pythagorean 
Universe because Time moves in it according to number. 
Such a view focuses on the plurality of motions within the 
Universe but ignores the proportional Unity which these 


motions have in the Universe. This is not to say that 



Plato's Universe is non-Pythagorean. On the contrary, there 
is a great deal of Pythagorean wisdom in this dialogue, and 
one should not forget that Timaeus, the principle speaker 
of the dialogue, is represented as a Pythagorean. But it is 
a long way from the assertion that there are Pythagorean 


elements and themes in Plato's Timaeus to the assertion 


that the whole dialogue is only a Pythagorean tale. Time 
moves, no doubt. Time orders the Universe. And the many 
motions which the Universe includes are not excluded from 
the ordering perfection which Time brings to the Universe. 
But it seems more reasonable to say that Time moves the 
many, and that Time brings order to the many by moving 
them in accordance with the perfection of which Time is the 
image. To derive the reality of Time from the number of 
motions in the Universe would be tantamount to the 
assertion that Time is a subsidiary perfection of multiplicity, whereas the passage clearly states that Time 
brings the Universe into a closer and more perfect relation 
to its eternal model. 

5. We have given it the name Time.--Once before, Plato 
expressed a desire to use the right name for the Universe, 
and he said there that we ought to give the name to it 
which is most appropriate and acceptable to it (24b). It 

is inetructive to recall that the difficulty of finding 
the right name would remind Plato of Cratylus, his first 
teacher, as it calls up for us the dialogue which bears 


_his name. But one should also recall that the difficulty 



of finding the right name for the Universe, and for Time, 
are related to Plato's concern to avoid blasphemy. For we 
must remember that the majority of simple Athenians had 
deities and names for those aspects of the Universe which 
they regarded as mysterious. Thus the name of Time could 
very well have precipitated controversial discussions in 
Plato's Athens which could swell to the dimensions which 
they had reached with Socrates. The Phaedo would convince 
anyone that Plato was not afraid of death, and so it does 
not follow that Plato is cautious out of fear. It is better 
to think that Plato regarded thinking through the doctrine 
of the Timaeus as a more important work than entering into 
a polemic with those who could not understand it, especially 
if we are correct in asserting that the Timaeus is not only 
a synthesis of doctrine but a preparation for the Critias 
and the Laws, which were intended to have direct political 
influence. 

These five aspects of Plato's doctrine of Time, then, 
show that Plato has come to relate eternity, image, and 
Time in a new synthesis, which passes far beyond the way in 
which these doctrines were treated separately in prior 
dialogues. But we shall not conclude that the passage just 
discussed is sufficient to establish our hypothesis, for 
Plato has not completed his discussion of Time. Before we 
can conclude that Plato's image of Time is the high 
synthesis we claim it to be, we ought to have the entirety 


of Plato's doctrine of Time before us. 




Before adding, the final details, perhaps a small 
summing up is in order. Plato has said that the Universe 
is a shrine, and that its deepest perfection is its 
temporality, which is the way it is ordered. Time is a 
moving image, because the Universe resembles its eternal 
model as closely as possible. 

Plato now speaks of the parts of Time, having already 
spoken of the Unity of Time. He says that there were no 
days and nights, or months and years, before the Universe 
came to be, and that all of these came into being simultaneously. However, he says 

All these are parts of Time, and 'was' and 'shall be' 
are forms of Time that have come to be; we are wrong 
to transfer them unthinkingly to eternal being. We 
say that it was and is and shall be but '1is' alone 
really belongs to it and describes it truly; 'was' 
and 'shall be’ are properly used of becoming which 
proceeds in Time, for they are motions (37e). 

There is much that is important in this passage, but 
the central point which concerns our exposition of Time is 
the phrase "becoming which proceeds in Time." By this small 
phrase, Plato indicates that there is a distinction to be 
made between becoming and Time, and that these two worda 
do not indicate the same reality. It is important to notice 
that the familiar antithesis between eternity and time is 
not identical with the antithesis of eternity and becoming. 
For it is clearly said that becoming proceeds in Time. We 
must attempt to see how Plato relates Time, Becoming, and 


eternity in a meaningful way. Plato does not put them in 


_@ simple juxtaposition, for there are clearly three of 


é 
" 



them, and their relation to each other is not a simple 
opposition. We have seen that Time introduces the perfect 
order which characterizes the Universe, and we have been 
told that the Universe is a becoming image. How are these 
statements to be reconciled so that the Universe may 
continue to have the perfection which it has been said to 
have. The key to this problem is given in the following: 

But that which is forever in the same state 

immovably cannot be becoming older or younger 

by lapse of time nor can it ever become s0; 

neither can it now have been nor will it be 

in the future; and in general nothing belongs 

to it of all that Becoming attaches to the 

moving things of sense; but these have come 

into being as forms of Time, which images 

eternity and revolves according to number (38a). 

The important consideration here is the phrase 
"moving things of sense," for it specifies the realm of 
becoming, as the realm of the moving things of sense. Here 
is Plato's familiar doctrine that the things of sense keep 
moving and therefore give rise to difficulties for the 
intelligence which would like them to be still so that the 
things of sense would be as stable as the names we give to 
them. But the context of the doctrine has been changed. 
Formerly, intelligence had to go beyond the merely visible 
because the constant changes in the visible realm made 
knowledge impossible. This early conviction of Plato led 
to the theory of Forms, which are eternal and therefore 
sufficiently stable for intellectual comprehension. But 


now, the greatest perfection of which the Universe is 


capable is the perfection which Time brings as the 



principle of order. We are now informed that becoming 
proceeds in Time. Thus it is inexact to say "...that what 
is past is past, what happens now is happening, and again 
what will happen is what will happen, and that the non-existent is the non-existent" (38b). Plato has affirmed 
that the ordering of the Universe has been made even more 
like its model by Time, the moving image of eternity. The 
theory of the Forms, up to this point, has told us that 
things share in Forms and therefore achieve a certain 
resemblance to being. But Plato tells us now that resem-= 
blance is not enough, for it leaves too wide a gap between 
being and becoming. Thus the Forms by which things resemble 
being are further perfected by Time, by which, things share 
in the eternity of being, as much as possible. Time, then, 
even perfects the Forms because Time helps things share in 
the intimacy of eternity's own nature. By Time, things 
share in the divine ordering of the Universe. 

Time came into being together with the Heaven in 

order that, as they were brought together, so 

they might be dissolved together, if ever their 

dissolution should come to pass: and it is made 

after the pattern of the everenduring nature, in 

order that it may be as like that pattern as 

possible: for the pattern is a thing that has 

being for all eternity, whereas the Heaven has 

been and is and shall be perpetually throughout 

all time (38b, c). 

Thus Time embraces all. By it, becoming most "becomes" 
Being. It has been generated like the forms of Time but it 


transcends them, because it has been made to increase the 


great intimacy which becoming has been brought to have 



with Being. 

This could be paraphrased in several ways. One could 
speak of the relation between becoming and being as that 
of Time, such that they are constituted by that relation 
with respect to each other. One could say that Time is the 
consummation of the contact which becoming and being have 
with each other. One could speak in Hegelian language and 
say that Time is the Mediation of Becoming, by which 
becoming "becomes"being. But out of profound admiration for 
Plato's greatness as a stylist, Plato's imagery should be 
retained. But the truth must be understood as well as seen. 
"Time, the moving image of eternity," is spoken in the 
language of philosophical poetry, a language largely of 
Plato's invention. The phrase is beautiful as well as 
truthful, for it not only relates the realms of eternity and 
becoming truthfully but it also relates them beautifully, 
in the kind of elegant simplicity we expect of great truths. 
Time has so perfected the Universe that what merely becomes 
incessantly is now enabled to share in the perfection of 
eternal being. Time transfigures what merely becomes into 
what really is, without destroying its becoming. 

Thus it is not illegitimate to ask "where is time," 
and Plato answers that, since the World-Soul is responsible 
both for the order and the motion of the numbered Universe, 
Time lives in the Soul of the Universe. Time accomplishes 
the ceaseless transcendence of becoming, for, by Time, 


things which only became, now "become" being. 




It is important to state that Time does not so 
completely accomplish its transfiguration of mere becoming 
that nothing any longer becomes; the unification which Time 
introduces into the manifold realm of becoming is a 
proportional Unity, so that becoming no longer needs to te 
excluded from the perfection of the Universe, but can now 
enter into it on its own terms. Things which become, become 
intelligible by Time, because Time introduces order into 
their motions, whereas ceaseless becoming as such, unordered by Time, has no order at all, and hence no intelligibility. Thus, where once Plato insisted that only the eternal 
is intelligible, now he asserts that Time brings becoming 
into the realm of the intelligible by introducing order 
into the realm of the incessantly becoming. 

The basis for the often-asserted statement that 
Plato's image of Time is circular, derives in part from his 
description of the Universe as a sphere which revolves 
uniformly, and in part from the following passage: 

In virtue then of this plan and intent of the god 

for the birth of Time, in order that Time might 

be brought into being, Sun, Moon, and five other 

stars-wanderers as they are called 22 were made 

to define and preserve the numbers of Time. 

Having made a body for each of them, the god set 

them in orbits 23 in which the revolution of the 


Different was movingein seven orbits seven 
bodies (38c). 


22 They do not really wander; see Laws 822a. 


Cornford has "circuits." 




It 1s not necessary to follow Plato into the 
detailed descriptions which he gives for the motions of 
each of the planets and for each of the spheres, since as 
we noted previously, his observations were limited as much 
by the lack of such modern instruments as the telescope, 
the mass spectrometer, radio telescopes and 200-inch lenses 
as by the absence of Kepler, Copernicus, and Newton. The 
general point is this; Time is the perfection of the 
Universe and is coterminous with the ordering activity of 
the demiurge; the numbers of Time, corresponding to the 
many of bodies, are made visible by the bodies we call 
Planets, which revolve both in their various orbits within 
the circle of the Different and the circle of the Same. 
Time gives rise to the orderly motions of the bodies 
called the planets and the stars. "Thus for these reasons 
day and night came into being, the period of the single 
and most intelligent revolution" (39c). And again: 

In this way then, and for these ends were brought 

into being all those stars that have turnings on 

their journey through the Heaven: in order that 

this world may be as like as possible to the 

perfect and intelligible Living Being in respect 

of imitating its ever-enduring nature (39e). 

The planets, then, are living beings who follow out 
prescribed courses according to number, But the perfection 
of the Universe which Time introduces is not merely the 
month or the year or the day or the night; these are the 
numbers of Time, just as was ard shall be are the forms 


of Time. Time, the reality, is the order of the Universe in 



motion. Time is neither motion nor the result of motion 
(indeed, quite the reverse is true; motion is the result 
of the order which the demiurge elicits from chaos). Nor 
is Time becoming, for becoming proceeds in Time. In short, 
Time is the Life of the Universe, which was foreshadowed 
in the Sophist, where the Stranger Bays: 

And, Oh Heavens, can we ever be made to believe 
that motion and lite and soul and mind are not 
present with sNeing. Can we imagine Being to be 


devoid of life and mind, and to remain in awful 
unmeaning and everlasting fixture (249a)? 





CHAPTER VI 
TIME AND SOCIETY 


While it has not escaped the attention of the 
scholars whose interest leads them to the Timaeus that its 
doctrine of Time is inseparable from the doctrine of the 
eternal model, the purpose or role of Plato's Time image 
is frequently overlooked. ! Similarly, while it is true that 
Plato fashions his image of Time with great care and is 
conscious throughout his formulation of a desire not to 
distort the ineffable while yet speaking of it, it seems 
that insufficient attention has been paid to the relevance 
of the introductory remarks in the opening section of the 
Gialogue to this image, and the relation of these remarks 
to Plato's doctrine of Time. 


To rectify this oversight, it is only necessary to 


recall the opening passages of the Timaeus where Socrates 
had agreed to the plans which Timaeus and Critias had made 
for their talk: Timaeus intends to describe the origin of 
the Universe and to carry on his account until it had 

reached the time when man made his appearance; thereafter, 


Critias intends to take up the account and to describe 


' For example, in his chapter on the doctrine of the 


Timaeus, Ross (W.D. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas 
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951).) discusses the role of 
Time not at all. 



ancient Athens; both of these accounts are to be given so 
that Socrates may fulfill his wish to hear an account of a 
real city, not an imaginary one; not a tale of "some noble 
creatures in a painting, or perhaps of real animals, alive 
but motionless" but an account of real creatures, "in 
motion, and actively exercising the powers promised by their 
form" (19c). In this way, Plato gently suggests that the 
power to describe the actual origins of the best society 
are beyond Socrates, and it must be the task of others to 
supply it. This is the meaning of the obviously inadequate 
recapitulation of the doctrines of the Republic, which are 
mUch too briefly summarized in the opening passages of the 
Timaeus. There is no need to look for deeper or more arcane 
meanings in Socrates' confession of inability to construct 
such an account; it is not the absence of opinion on 


Socrates part, as it was in the Theatetus. In the Timaeus, 


Socrates does not say that he is "only" an opinionless 
midwife who must deliver the philosophical offspring of 
those pregnant with the truth; on the contrary, he says 
quite openly that he is not up to the task, and that the 
power to tell such a story is beyond him. It has been 
generally agreed among the scholars that the opening 
passages of the Timaeus "recapitulate" the Republic, © and 


most of those who do not agree on the order of the 


2 Gauss, Philosophischer Handkommentar zu_ den 
Dialogen Platos, p. Le 



dialogues as they have been described in chapter II agree 


that the Timaeus must be later than the Republic for this 


interpretative reason. And it has long been agreed that 
the Republic is the work in which Plato reveals a political 
philosophy, or, as we call it, a philosophy of society. 

But if we take separate conclusions, on which the scholars 
agree, and, if we attempt to see them in relation to each 
other, we shall arrive at a simple and yet, to the best of 
my knowledge, an uncommon conclusion. If (1) 1t is true 
that the Republic is a dialogue in which Plato has attempted to see the powers of the soul "writ large," that is, 

if the Republic is a dialogue in which the state is seen 

as a magnification of the soul; and, together with this, 

4f (2) we see that the Timaeus is a dialogue in which the 
"alive but motionless," society of the Republic is recapitulated, and, if we add to this (3) the fact that the 
Timaeus first develops a doctrine of Time before setting 
out the details of the best form of society, we may draw a 
startling conclusion; Plato has made the doctrine of Time 
the basis of a new Platonic sociology. Where the Republic 
describes a State based on the view that only the eternal 
is real and all else is mere becoming, the Timaeus describes 
a society based on the perfection which Time confers on 


the discordant motions of a primordial chaos. Plato has 


3 Jowett, Ihe Dialogues of Plato, II, pp. 456~7. 



shifted the basis of his sociology from the eternal to the 
temporal; no longer is it his view that the realms of 
eternity and becoming are separated by an unbridgeable 
chasm; now, in the Timaeus, through the gradual process we 
described in Chapter II, Plato has arrived at the formulation of a doctrine in which Time is, so to speak, the 
bridge between these two realms. 

But this image of Time as a bridge falls short of 
Plato's meaning. It would be better to say that the 
Universe which the Timaeus reveals is a proportional unity 
of many levels, and that Time is the proportion between 
eternal being and incessant becoming. But further, it is 
necessary to recall that Plato does not use this sort of 
intellectually precise language; he prefers to say that 
Time is the moving image of eternity, because the richness 
and allegorical suggestiveness of the phrase "moving image" 
captures two very different levels of meaning, i.e., both 
the ineffable truth of the eternal model of the Universe, 
and the magnificent beauty of the concrete relations within 
the visible Universe. 

To the best of my knowledge, Bury is the only writer 
who has seen that the Republic is Plato's first Philosophy 
of History, and that in the Timaeus Plato modifies this 


view. But Bury nevertheless concludes that there has been 


4 Bury, "Plato and History," p. 5. 


() 



no growth of Plato's doctrine, and that the conclusions of 
the Timgeus are implicit in the views stated in the Republic, 
This seems to stretch the meaning of the term "implicit" 
beyond reasonable bounds, for, on this basis, we should 
have to conclude that Plato's movement from an eternal 
basis to a temporal basis is no development, but merely an 
explication of former views. It is difficult to see how one 
can say that the basis of society in one dialogue is 
eternity and the basis of society in another dialogue is 
Time, and that the one view is "4mplicit" in the other. 

Similarly, it 1s hard to see the grounds for A.E. 


Taylor's assertion that the Timaeus is only an introduction 


to the Critias, since, as we said above, such a view would 


so linearize Plato's philosophy that we should have to 
view the Laws as the only source of Plato's mature philosophy. One should not ignore the early works of a genius 
such as Plato when one reads his later works, since this 
procedure deprives one of the measure of the man and the 
gradual maturity which he was able to reveal in his late 
writings. 

It seems to us more reasonable to follow Cornford 


into the opinion that the Timaeus was the first of a 


projected trilogy of dialogues, which were to have revealed 
Plato's reflections concerning the basis of the best 
possible form of society, after a life-long concern for 


this subject. If it 1s true that Plato's Sicilian adventures 


were of such a nature as to discourage and disillusion the 



great man from his life-long hopes to bring about good 
government, we should expect to see bitterness and pessimism in the works written after these experiences. But we 
find no shallow despair in the Seventh Letter or in the 


Timaeus; rather we confront a dialogue which is written 


in a style especially designed to appeal to those whose 
philosophical training was not so arduous nor so disciplined as Plato's own. Plato does not become a disdainful 
elitist, nor is the Timaeus a children's allegory, 

written by a sour old grandfather, for there is a great 
deal in it which requires strenuous philosophical reflection and painstaking attention. Yet, even those without 
philosophical training and exacting logical skill can be 


moved by the poetry which Plato has made in the Timaeus. 


It is both a mature philosophy and a beautiful myth which 
seems to be designed as well for the elite philosopher as 
for the untutored statesman. | 

Thus it seems pointless to criticise the Timaeus as 
an uneven dialogue which skips about from the level of 
thought to the level of myth, and, on the basis of such a 
criticism, to prefer to look to other dialogues for more 
philosophical meanings because the style of earlier dialogues 4s more even and their philosophy more exactly 
stated. This is not unlike preferring to look in the 
pantry for the broom only because there is a light in the 
pantry, when, in fact, the broom is in a darker but more 


'spacious room in the attic. 





If it is true that the Timaeus was written after 


Plato's later and more mature reflections on the requisites 
for the best possible society, as we tried to establish in 
the third chapter, one should not ook to the Republic for 
Plato's most mature doctrines of society. And yet those 
writers who wish to discuss Plato's philosophy of society 
as a philosophy of history or as a political philosophy 
seem more drawn to the Republic, and few of them go to 
the Timaeus as the source of Plato's teaching on this 
subject." 

This is not to complain that scholarly inattention 


plagues the Timaeus, for the Timaeus has not gone without 


@ great deal of comment by writers in almost every century 
in the West. Yet it has not been viewed as the dialogue in 
which Plato makes his most explicit statements on the basis 
for the best possible form of society, and no writer in the 
modern era has seen in it the culmination of Plato's gradual 
development beyond the doctrine of eternity in the Republic. 
And yet this seems to be precisely what Plato has done. 
This 1s not the place to examine and comment in 
detail on the elements which, according to Plato, would 


characterize the best form of society, since these 


) Walsh, Plato and the Philosophy of History. See 
also Barker, Politica ought of Plato and istotle, 


Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Pilato, 
Popper, The Open Society and ite Bpentes, and numerous 
anthologies which present Plato's Republic but seldom if 


ever present the Timaeus. 





specifications are to be found in part in the Critias and in 


great detail in the Laws. It 1s not our purpose here to 
describe exhaustively Plato's later sociology. The issue 
here is the role of Plato's image of Time as a basis for 
his later sociology, insofar as this can be ascertained 


by a careful reading of the Timaeus in its chronological 


and doctrinal context. The Timaeus seems to be unequivocally 
clear on this issue, for Plato shows repeatedly in this 
dialogue that the basis for a sound understanding of his 
sociology is the role of Time in the nature of the Universe. 
Thus, betore Critias can accomplish his promise to furnish 
Socrates with an account of ancient Athens in her prime of 
social life, Timaeus speaks a monologue which comprises 
almost the entire work which bears his name. In the first 
half of the dialogue, which discusses the Universe insofar 
as it is due to the Work of Reason, Plato leads gradually 
and ineluctably to the basis of the rational perfections 
which are brought to the Universe by time. In the Republic 
the perfections of society derive from a participation of 
the state in eternal justice; in the Timaeus, society is 
perfected by ame, which brings order to chaos. 

The most serious objection to our conclusion is the 
claim that Plato only speaks of the gradual construction 
of the Universe as if it were gradually brought into 
existence, when his actual meaning remains hidden between 
the lines. A.E, Taylor adopts this view, when he says that 


Plato believes the Universe is eternal, and therefore it 



does not actually have a temporal character (Archer-Hind also holds this view). In short, Taylor claims that 
Plato described the Universe as if it were gradually 
brought into being because it would be easier for Plato's 
readers to comprehend his meaning in this way.° 

Happily, Plato himself seems to upset this view in 

the Timaeus, when he distinguishes quite carefully between 
the eternal and the becoming, between a false image and a 
genuine image, between a mere myth and a genuine myth. If 


the Timaeus were only a myth designed to create the appearance of the truth but not to reveal the actual truth, it 
would follow that Plato has cast his whole account of the 
origin of the Universe into the deceptively simple mold of 
orderly succession. But the discrepancy between the 
deliberately temporal image which Plato has created and 
the calm stillness of the eternal, which he recurrently 
describes, seems too wide to support the interpretation 
that Plato remained an eternalist in the midst of a 
temporalist account. ¢ 

It seems better to view Plato's statements about the 


temporality of the Universe as the basis of its perfection, 


6 A.E. Taylor, Commentary, pp. 689 ff. 


f J.F. Callahan, Four Views of Time in Ancient 
Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), 
r tly says that A.E. Taylor errs here because of his 
adoption of Aristotle's notion of Time. 



and to reject the assertion that Plato's Universe is 
actually eternal even though he says it is temporal. But 
there is a deeper point, and it is this; to continue to 
distinguish so sharply between eternity and Time after 
reading the Timaeus is to miss a major doctrine of the 
Timaeus, which describes philosophically-mythologically 
the proportional relation between the realms of eternity and 
becoming, and to view the role of Time as the mediator 
between these realms, such that they are no longer as 
separate as they were described to be in the Republic, but 
are aspects of a proportionally united Universe. The 
assertion that Plato separates eternity and Time ignores 
Plato's description of their relation in the Timaeus, where 
Time is said to be the proportional unification of becoming 
and eternity. By viewing Plato's doctrine of Time as the 
"mediation" of becoming, one can reach the basis of Plato's 
late sociology, since Plato repeatedly has Timaeus say that 
the gradual origin of man must be sought in the gradual 
origin of the Universe, and it is precisely Timaeus' 
function to reveal Plato's doctrine of Time so that Critias 
can take up the account of man. To assert that Plato held 
a static view of the Universe but spoke of it as a gradual 
process, because he was unable to discuss the whole 
Universe at once, seems to misinterpret the crucial 
significance of Plato's definition of Time as an image. 

For the Image is the whole Universe, and, furthermore, it 


ia deliberately described as a moving image. As we have 



said repeatedly above, Plato was not unable to describe 
the whole Universe at once; he did so in an image, and 
while it is true that he gradually reveals the elements 
and aspects of the image in a serialized description, he 
nevertheless insists that the Universe is one image. In 
short, Plato no longer impales himself on the horns of a 
dilemma by separating eternity and Time; he has transcended 
such an impasse by describing a Universe which is both 
hierarchical and processual, yet neither in isolation. 

One may continue to dissect logically Plato's Universe 
into one part hierarchy and one part process, but it 
seems to see that it is the dissector and not Plato who s0 
bifurcates the Platonic Universe. That is, one may analyze 
the Platonic Universe into logically discrete categories, 
and focus now on the hierarchic aspect and now on the 
processual aspect, but one can also say that Plato's 
Universe is a proportional unity in which the temporal 
hierarchy (or the hierarchical temporality) are concretely 
related. Thus one could reject A.E. Taylor's view that 
Plato believed the Universe to be eternal but described it 
as if it were temporal, so that Plato could communicate 
better to the philosophically ill-equipped. 

However, it should be borne in mind that the Timaeus 


does not itself contain a new sociology, but presents the 


basis for one, for we must look to the Critias and the Laws 


for the details of Plato's later view of society. It is our 
contention here that this later view is unintelligible 


oe 



without a sound interpretation of Plato's moving image 
of eternity. 
It follows that the entire basis of society and the 
communal life of man is not to be found completely within 
those aspects of the Universe which are due to the orderly 


perfections which derive from Time. For our analysis has 


stopped midway in the monologue of Timaeus; we have 


described, up to this point, only the works of reason, and 
have not presented any discussion of those aspects of the 
Universe which derive from necessity. Plato has not 
described the demiurge as absolutely omnipotent, for even 
the demiurge must attempt to persuade necessity, not force 
it, to yield to the urgings of Time and order.® 
The admission that Time itself is not all powerful, 


but must confront, so to speak, the cosmological inertia 


of necessity, serves to strengthen, not weaken, the 


8 There are several aspects of Plato's discussion 
of Time and Society which bear a marked resemblance to 
some aspects of the philosophy of Anaximander, but a 
discription of these similarities and differences would 
require a lengthy discussion which would take us into 
the origin of Plato's doctrines, whereas it is only our 
purpose here to present and examine Plato's doctrine. 
For example, while it would be instructive to investigate 
the extent of Plato's indebtedness to Anaximande:''s 
dark saying about the reparation which things offer in 
Time for their injustices, (see, for example, John 
Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (4th ed.; London: Adam 
and Charles Black; New York: Tne Macmillan Co., 1930), 
pp. 52-53.) it would necessitate more comment than 
we have room to present here. 



conclusion that Time brings perfection. Whereas it was 
once possible to say that Plato viewed the eternal as the 
only source of perfection and viewed the temporal realm 
of becoming as the source of imperfection, it now emerges 
that Plato has made a sharp distinction between incessant 
becoming, which is indeed less than perfect, and 'time, 
which brings perfection even to becoming. When becoming 
1s ordered by Time it is no longer merely incessant, nor 
only a ceaseless and perpetual fluxion of chaotic changes, 
but an ordered motion which is perfected by Time, the source 
of orderly motion. Necessity belongs to mere becoming; 
Time belongs to reason and eternity. 

It follows that a society will be perfect insofar as 
it regards Time as the paradigm of its style of life, and 
that society will be imperfect insofar as it regards mere 
becoming as the model for its political flux. And these 
are exactly the doctrines which Plato develops in the 


Critias and the Laws. The Critias, as much as we have of 


it, describes the "mythical" kingdom of Atlantis, and we 
have a brief foretaste of this description in the opening 


passages of the Timaeus. In the third book of the Laws, we 


have what the moderns would call a philosophy of history, 
or, in other terms, what could well be described as an 
incipient philosophical anthropology. The third book of 

the Laws dwells at aveat length on the questions which 

we are now examining; it is concerned with "immense periods 


of Time" and "thousands of cities" which came to be and 




have now disappeared from memory, and puts the question 
to itself whether there may not be a discernible pattern 
in the rise and fall of these cities. Or, to see the 
matter from another point of view, one could point to the 
tenth book of the Laws where questions about what we 
might call divine providence are raised and discussed, in 
a context which is explicity temporal. Or again, one could 
cite quotation after quotation from almost any book of the 
Laws which would show that Plato was much interested in 
the relative durations of various things, from constitutions to kingdoms and from mountains to men. 

But these investigations must be left to another 
time when they can be treated with the exhaustive documentation they deserve. It has been our purpose to spell out 
in detail the reasons for adopting the view that there is 
a Platonic philosophy of time and that this philosophy is 
inseparable from Plato's concern for the best possible 
society. 

Before the final words are written, however, it 
seems appropriate to state a few opinions which have emerged during the course of this study. While it would be 
impossible to draw final conclusions about the relevance 
of Plato's philosophy of time to the intellectual pursuits of the modern world without at the same time presente 
ing a history of Platonic scholarship for all of the 
intervening years between Plato's era and our own, it is 


possible to state a few opinions which have been reached 



on this subject, providing caution is advised about the 
extent to which we may derive philosophical satisfaction 
from a careful reading of Plato's works. 

Perhaps the most persistent opinion which comes to 
mind concerning Plato's philosophy of time is the frequents 
ly stated view that the Greeks viewed the world as closed 
and that their view of history was in sharp contrast to 
our modern view of the open Universe. While it is not 
possible to state that this view of the Greek world as 
closed is without any foundation, it is not only possible 
but necessary to confront the closed view with the import 
of the doctrine of time which we find in the Timaeus. It 
is simply incorrect and therefore, unscholarly to repeat 


the naive eternalism of the Republic, if the Timaeus is as 


late a work as it seems to be. One should not continue to 
separate the eternal from the temporal after one has 


studied the Timaeus, and one could say with some accuracy 


that the whole import of the Timaeus has been to remove 
this intolerable dichotomy by revealing the manner of 
relation of these two aspects of the Universe. 
This is not to assert that Plato came in the end to 

a simple monism in which all things are merely becoming. 
As we have said repeatedly, time perfects becoming. But 
there is an ineluctable gradualism in the Universe the 
Timaeus describes which cannot be ignored, and, while 

it is true to say that our modern notion of process is 


'richer by far and more concrete than ever a Greek could 



imagine, it 1s also true to say that there was some 
degree of openness in the Greek Universe and that it 
would be false to state simply that it was a closed world. 

The political implications of this openness deserve 
some attention although it is only possible to suggest 
some more obvious points here. If the Universe is closed 
and is in some way a completed whole, it becomes the 
business of the statesman to discern those Laws by which 
the Universe attains its style of perfection and to fashion 
human laws in such a way that human perfection is sought 
in copying the perfection of the Universe. In this way 
the constitution of the state should be only a copy and 
an imitation of the Universe. 

If, on the other hand, the Universe is open ard is 
in some way incomplete and unfinished, it becomes the 
business of the statesman to model his constitution as far 
as possible on the pertection of the Universe and thereafter to improvise and invent those measures which seem 
best under the circumstances. If such a statesman can 
be found, he will understand that the sources of imperfection are not solely derived from the failure of the citizens to model themselves on the eternal forms, but might 
result from the very incompletion of the statesman's 
actions. In other words, it follows from a completed world 
that its citizens must adjust themselves to its patterns; 
4t follows from an incomplete world that its citizens 


play a part in its completion. It does not follow that 



the citizens of an incomplete world must live ina 
totalitarian regime where all law emanates from an elite 
few who claim to have discovered the basis of all law. To 
put the matter differently, it can be said that a closed 
Universe has no room for human innovation, whether it be 
political, scientific, or philosophical; the converse 
statement would read that only in an open Universe can the 
citizenry aspire to creative participation in the processes 
of the state. 

Unfortunately, this simple division of worlds into 
those that are closed and those that are open is not 
applicable to Plato's Universe, since it is a world in 
which there are eternal models as well as incomplete 
republics. Something of a similar view obtains in current 
anthropology in which one may read many statements to the 
effect that there are some basic exigencies of human nature 
which must be met in any culture, but that there are a 
number of ways in which cultures can set about handling 
these exigencies in their own respective styles. Plato's 
Universe is neither simply open or simply closed; nor does 
it suffice to say that it is both. The Platonic philosophy 
handles this question in a different way, for it describes 
a world in which there are stages of completion and degrees 
of openness. Thus for Plato it is possible to claim the 
best of both possible worlds, for he can assert that there 


are eternal models for human political action and that 



there are necessary innovations and inventions which the 
statesman must create. To the extent that the human 
invention resembles the temporal order which the Universe 
achieves, to that extent is it good. In other language, 
one can say that the Platonic conception of perfection 
which appears in the Timaeus is a gradualist notion, such 
that a thing is perfect if it is as good as it can be at 
a given time. Perfection then is a stage concept which 
refers itself inevitably to a basic pace at which perfec~ 
tion is achievable. 

In this way, one can see that the Platonic Universe 
is neither simply open nor simply closed, and that he who 
uses the paradigm "open or closed" really uses a spatial 
idea, not a temporal one, and is therefore guilty of a 
species of philosophical reductionism. The question is not 
whether the Universe is closed or open but whether there is 
in the Universe sufficient ground for the gradual attainment of perfection. Even this last statement seems to put 
perfection at the end of the process, whereas in fact it is 
possible to say in the Platonic idiom that a thing is as 
perfect as it can be while it is proceeding at its proper 
pace of attainment. In this way, one does not need to 
assert that perfection is attainable only in some otherworldly realm, or that only those things which have 
achieved release from the quagmire of time have entered 
into eternity. On the contrary, those things which have 
nothing of time in them but share only in the incessant 



flux of becoming have no measure of eternity in them 
precisely because eternity can be brought to becoming only 
by time. 

To use another perspective, the same point can be 
made in another way. In a Universe in which the eternal is 
removed from the temporal by a radical division, only those 
things which have transcended the Aaviaton may properly be 
called eternal. Thus, no individuality can be claimed for 
any person who has not transcended time and achieved 
eternity. But in Plato's Universe, each person who finds 
his proper pace of achievement may be said to be as eternal 
as he can be at the moment, or that his perfection consists 
of the entire process of attainment. It is therefore 
necessary for the citizens of the Republic to model thenselves entirely upon the eternal forms or be called failures, where the citizens of the realm founded on the philosophy of the Timaeus may be said to posess individuality 


insofar as they attain perfection to the extent that it is 
possible to attain it at the time. In this way, another of 
the frequently asserted opinions about the world of the 
Greeks is found wanting. In conversation with philosophers, 
'one frequently hears that there were no genuine individuals 
in the Greek world, since genuine individuality would 
scandalize the Greek notion of an ordered and predictable 
world. We must clarify the statement that there is individuality in the Greek world; a more accurate statement would 


read that there is a genuine basis of individuality in the 



philosophy which Plato reveals in the Timaeus, but this 
statement must be quickly followed by the statement that 
there were few Greek individuals. While it is true on the 
one hand to state that most Greeks felt the Universe to be 
closed, it is nonetheless true that Plato's Timaeus does 
not reveal such a Universe. 

This creates something of a problem for the historian 
who would like to see one ethos in the age which produced 
both Plato and Aristotle. If the Timaeus reveals the | 
philosophy herein described, we must separate Plato from 
his pupil even more widely than is sometimes the practice, 
for it does seem to be true that Aristotle's Universe is 
closed, since it is a world in which time is described as 
an accident. Surely this is far from Plato's view of time 
as the source of the perfections which make it possible for 
him to regard the Universe as a shrine. It is necessary to 
state that the gap between the moving image of eternity and 
the measure of motion is even wider than it has usually 
been described, if the viewpoint herein adopted is credible. 

Again, this is not the place to discourse upon a 
philosophical prejudice, nor is it claimed that the 
philosophy of Plato is superior to the philosophy of 
Aristotle. Such statements do violence to the historical 
view which regards philosophies as different because they 
were written by different men in different times with 


different needs. Aristotle was not confronted with the 



same political realities that confronted Plato, and to 
that extent, at least, we should, expect their political 
philosophies to differ. However, it remains true that 
Plato placed time at the very heart of his doctrine and 
that Aristotle placed time at the accidental periphery of 
his. To that extent, Plato's philosophy of time is more 
congenial to the modern mind which occupies itself with 
questions of historical process and temporal being. 

Viewed in this light, it becomes possible to see 
the basis of Whitehead's remark that Plato has spawned 
almost the entire philosophical heritage of the West. 


Furthermore, it becomes possible to compare Science in 


the Modern jiorld to the Timaeus, since the authors of both 


works attempted not only to write a history of contemporary 
science but also to show in their discussions of the 
scientific theories prevalent in their respective eras 
that beyond the reach of the sciences there were insights 
upon which the sciences unknowingly depended. 

In that same spirit, I have attempted to write of 
Plato's image of time, since it is my conviction that every 
age, and not only Plato's or even Whitehead's, depends 
unknowlingly on a view of time and derives its basic 
cognitive orientation from its time-view. 

If 4t 18 true that Plato matured until the last, and 
that he sought in the end to plumb the awesome mystery of 
time and eternity, I felt that his search could only 


enlighten the attempts of a working sociologist to make 



some sense out of his own era by viewing it, in the last 
analysis, as a moving image of eternity. 

There is one aspect of the temporal perfection of 
the Universe which deserves special attention in the light 
of modern interests, and that is the special perfection 
which develops in the individual man in time. We pointed 
out in chapter three that Plato made frequent use of the 
age of the speaker in several dialogues, sometimes accusing 
the speaker of naivete because of his youth and sometimes 
praising the venerable age of the speaker and the wisdom 
which came to him because of his age. For example, in the 


Parmenides, Socrates is very young and Parmenides is very 


old, and Plato implies clearly that the very young do not 
yet have the requisite insight for profound subjects. This 


is again true in the Theatetus wherein Socrates is now 


the old and wise man, as opposed to the young and malleable Theatetus. In view of the fact that the Timaeus casts 
the whole middle doctrine of individual reminiscence into 
\& more generalized sociological frame of reference, it 
should be pointed out that Plato has not abandoned his 
reminiscence theory in the later dialogues: actually, he 
has fortified it by showing that there is a cosmological 
basis for the sort of memory which a society must have 
in order to be as fully societal as it is possible to be. 
Thus, just as the society develops in time, so the 
individual citizen develops in time, and in time, the | 


citizen not only ages, but he matures and grows wise. It 



is this very maturity of insight which Plato himself 
experienced with his own advancing years, and it is therefore unsurprising that we find in the later dialogues a 
doctrine in to which the perfection of reason is attained 
by those individuals who have participated more fully in 
time than those younger philosophers whose maturity is yet 
unreached. 

To put the matter somewhat more technically, Plato 
has so closely related cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis 
by reason of their mutual participation in time that it 
is also possible to relate the ontogenesis of the individual citizen to the same basis in time. While it was always 
possible to say with Plato that the older man is probably 
the wiser man, it 1s possible, after a careful reading of 
the later dialogues, to assert that the older man ought to 
pe the wiser because of his fuller participation in time. 
Or to put the matter in more modern language, the gradual 
development of the individual person takes place not only 
according to psychological processes, but also according 
to sociological and cosmological processes, since all of 
these processes may be seen as particular manifestations 
of the pertections which Time brings to the Universe. 

Therefore, I assert that a careful reading of the 
Timaeus in its doctrinal and chronological context leads to 
the following conclusions. 

Plato's final formulation of a doctrine of Time was 


revealed in his Timaeus. In that work, he tells us that 



Time is the basis of society, from which the society 
derives the perfections of life and mind in motion. Thus 
it is false to divide eternity and time from each other 
since Time delivers perfections and perfects mere becoming 
s0 that it most resembles the source of perfections. It is 
g00d to regard Time as a moving image of eternity since 
this phrase indicates the mediatory role of time. The 
simple division of eternity versus time is false, since 
eternity differs most from mere becoming. Time perfects 
becoming by relating it concretely to eternity. In this 
way, the things of the Universe may achieve individuality 
since they need not be either completely eternal nor 
merely becoming but may be best what they are by being as 
fully as possible what they are when they are. Thus, from 
the early formedoctrine of the middle dialogues, Plato has 
advanced to a new position. It is neither a renunciation of 
the Form-doctrine nor a simple extension or reapplication 


of it. In the Timaeus, the Forms are paradigms and have 


reality only to the extent to which the things modelled 
upon them derive their perfections from them. The earlier 
Form-doctrine described a number of perfect Forms from 
which things differed by reason of their imperfection; the 
later form-doctrine describes a set of Forms which are 
originative, such that they give of their perfection in a 
process called Time. 

In such a world, society is not a realm removed from 


@ penultimate world of silent and unspeaking self posession, 



but becomes the way in which eternal perfection discloses 


itself, which Plato calls the moving image of eternity. 





APPENDIX A 


Ross! gives a tabular presentation of the order 
of the dialogues according to "five leading students" 
of the subject. Since the order of the early works is 
not in question here, the table is abbreviated to show 
the order of the dialogues starting with the Republic, 
on which there is wide agreement. However it should be 
noted that Ross does not distinguish between stylistic 
criteria and stylometric criteria and uses the two 
interchangeably in his chapter on the order of the 
dialogues. With the exception of the Phacdrus, the 


scholars cited by Ross give substantially the order I 
have adopted as the most probable. 


Arnim _ Lutoslawski Raeder Ritter Wilamowitz 
Rep. 2-10 Rep. 2=10 Rep. Rep. Rep. 
Theaet. Phaedr. Phaedr. Phaedr. Phaedr. 
Parm. Theaet. Theaet. Theaet. Parn. 
Phaedr. Parn. Parn. Parn. Theaet. 
Soph. Soph. Soph. Soph. Soph. 
Pol. Pol. Pol. Pol. Pol. 
Phil. Phil. Phil. Tin. Tin. 
Tin. Tim. Critias Critias 
Critias Critias Phil. Phil. 
Laws Laws Laws Laws Laws 
Epin. 


' wep. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 2. 



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ABSTRACT 


Victor Joseph Gioscia 
B.S8., Fordham College 
M.A., Fordham University 
Plato's Image of Time 
Dissertation directed by J. Quentin Lauer, Ph.D. 


The most explicit formulation which Plato made of 
his philosophy of Time is found in his Timaeus. In this 


dialogue, he reexamines some of the doctrines he had 
formulated in the Republic. 

By reference to a wide concensus of scholarly 
opinion, it is established that the timaeus is very probably 
the last dialogue Plato completed and edited, that it is 
tollowed only by the incomplete Critias and the unedited 
Laws. These facts, taken together with the fact that the 


Timaeus recapitulates some doctrines of the Republic, 


Give the Timaeus a central importance in Plato's reflections 
on society. 


This means that the Timaeus contains a "later" 


doctrine than the Republic and that in the Timaeus we 


rind a reflective advance over the doctrines ot the 
"early" and "middle" dialogues of Plato. 
The study traces the evolution of the three themes 
of eternity, image, and time anda shows that Plato discussed 


them in an increasingly generalized fashion as he grew 


older. It traces the development or these themes from 
the Republic through the Parmenides, Theatetus, Sopnist, 
Statesman, and Philebus. 
| The study espouses the view that the Timaeus contains 
Plato's most mature reflections on the themes of eternity, 
image, and time, and that the formulation in the Timaeus 
reformulates some of the doctrines of the Republic, and 
therefore one ought not to regard the Republic as the 
final trormulation of Plato's pnilosophy of eternity, image, 
and time. | 
Further, the themes of eternity, image, and time 
are treated in the Timaeus in an explicitly sociological 
framework, and are said to be part and parcel or the 
4nquiry into the best society and its basis in time. 
Plato included cosmology and sociology within a 
larger perspective, in which the origin of the Universe 
and the origin of society were seen as stages in a temporal 


process. His account of these matters in the Timaeus is 


preceded by statements to the erfect that it is only on 
the broad canvass of the entire Universe that the best 
account of society's origins can be painted. 

The use ot such metaphorical phraseology is not 
arbitrary, and one must frequently deal in metaphor to 
explain Plato's meaning because Plato makes extensive use 
of metaphor throughout his Timaeus, indeed, throughout 
most of his philosophy. Plato's discussion of temporal 


processes contains a definition whose central term is the 
word image (eikon not eidolon). Since Plato defines time as 
an image, it becomes the problem of the commentator to 
reveal as clearly as possible the significance or this 
definition and the use of image as one of its principal 
terms. 

the study concludes that Plato viewed the entire 


Universe as an Image and sees Time as the Life of Society. 


VITA 


Victor Joseph Gioscia, son of Joseph and Anne 
D'Onofrio Gioscia, was born June 13, 1930, in New York, 

New York. He attended Xavier High School, New York City, 
and was graduated in June 1948. 

He entered Springhill College in September 1948, 
transferred to Fordham College in September 1950, and 
received the degree of Bachelor of Science in June 1952. 

He received the Hughes Award in Philosophy and an 
Assistantship in Philosophy. He was accepted as a 

graduate student and was given a Research Assistantship 

in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Fordham 
University in September of 1956. He majored in Theoretical 
Sociology under the mentorship of Professor N.S. Timasheff 
and received the degree of Master of Arts in February 1957. 

He was employed as a Lecturer in Sociology nt Fordham 
College in 1958, as an Instructor in Sociology at Fordham 
University School of Education in 1959, and as a Lecturer 
in Anthropology-Sociology at Queens College of the City 
University of New York in 1961 and 1962. 

He was accepted as a graduate student in the Graduate 
School of Arts and Sciences of Fordham University in 
February 1957, where he majored in the Philosophy of 
Society under the mentorship of Professor J. Quentin 


Laver, S.d.