Plato's Method in Timaeus

Bibliographic Data

ID23236856
AuthorsAryeh Finkelberg (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume117
Issue3
Pages391-409
Publication date1996-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe American Journal of Philology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9475 • E-ISSN: 1086-3168
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ajp.1996.0046
OpenAlexW2003282466
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited11

Plato's Method in Timaeus Aryeh Finkelberg I In the long dispute between advocates of the metaphorical and the literal interpretations of the Timaeus creation story the exegetic potential of the dialogue has been exhaustively presented, yet with no decisive outcome,1 for, as has been repeatedly recognized, the issue can hardly be settled by a direct appeal to the text.2 This being the case, assistance has been sought in the evidence of Plato's immediate disciples, but here again the discussion reaches a deadlock: partisans of the literal construal appeal to the authority of Aristotle, who censures Plato for admitting that the universe is created,3 while champions of the metaphorical interpretation address themselves to the Academy, who insist that Plato maintained the ungeneratedness of the world.4 Yet in seeking support from the authority of Plato's pupils, scholars seem to overlook the fact that the modern controversy takes a different shape from the one between the early Academy and Aristotle, and that on the point now disputed Plato's disciples did not disagree at all. In their insistence that Timaeus exhibits inconsistencies suggesting a systematic approach behind the chronological account, adherents of the metaphorical interpretation take these inconsistencies as a discrepancy [End Page 391] between the content and the form of the dialogue.5 Accordingly, they regard the cosmogonical narrative as a kind of circumlocution for a non–cosmogonical doctrine, a fact supposedly revealed by Plato in many hints, dispersed throughout the dialogue, aimed at falsifying the chronological order of the account and thus intended to induce the reader to strip off the cosmogonical disguise.6 This approach turns the dialogue into a pointless and unnecessarily misleading equivocation.7 Besides, this construal is historically unwarranted, for, as Robert Hackforth put it disagreeing with F. M. Cornford, it deviates "from the line taken by Xenocrates himself" in "arguing, not that Plato spoke of the coming into being of the universe , but that he never really spoke of it at all."8 Shaped as a rejoinder to the metaphorical interpretation, the approach [End Page 392] of upholders of the literal interpretation also comes short of meeting the problem adequately. In rejecting the view of the Timaeus narrative as metaphorical and advocating its plain sense these scholars infer, or rather take for granted, that the chronological account must represent Plato's genuine position. The inference is fallacious: Timaeus may be a truly cosmogonical account, but it does not necessarily follow that Plato's position must have been cosmogonical. The view of the Timaeus cosmogonical narrative as no more than a translucent metaphor of a non–cosmogonical doctrine may thus be abandoned and the discrepancies presumably exhibited by the account not construed as between the atemporal content and chronological form of the dialogue, but rather as between Plato's general systematic approach and his chronological account in Timaeus. According to this interpretation, the chronological exposition would be a strategy adopted by Plato for certain methodological reasons. Since this construal, which I conventionally term "methodological," would share with the literal one the view that the immediate purport of the Timaeus account is cosmogonical, the dispute would focus on the question of how this purport is related to Plato's general position; the literal interpretation thus would be the claim that the cosmogony is not merely the immediate purport of the Timaeus narrative but its ultimate purpose.9 Properly stated, the problem of the interpretation of the Timaeus narrative addresses the question of whether the cosmogonical account is a self–sufficient teaching attesting Plato's ultimate position, or rather a methodological device. This is indeed a proper formulation of the exegetical alternative, for precisely such was the controversy between Aristotle and the Platonists. Both sides were unanimous in regarding the Timaeus account as cosmogonical, but they differed in that Aristotle considered the Timaeus cosmogony as Plato's doctrine, while the Platonists defended the master, insisting that this was but "for the sake of " an account fashioned after the method of geometers, and [End Page 393] that his true approach was systematic.10 Whether in their construal of Timaeus the Platonists were guided by the master's advice or by some other motive...

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