Timaeus Outline (after Desmond Lee)
Philosophy 6396, Spring 1997
Dr. Cynthia Freeland
Introduction
(sections 1-3) (pp. 29-40)
Characters: Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates, Socrates
- True morality is based on the order and harmony of the macrocosm, as
revealed to the soul before birth.
- Plans for a trilogy by Plato: Republic (ideal state in outline), Timaeus
(creation from gods down to men), "Atlantis?" (the ideal state in action).
- The views and capacities of poets, sophists, and philosophers.
- Critias: Atlantis Myth (20e-27a)
- Timaeus' Prelude: Physics as a "likely story" (eikos muthos)
Main Section I: The Work of Reason
29d-47e, (sections 4-14) (pp. 40-65)
-
A. The creation and creator (Demiurge) 29d-31b
His motives (29d-30c) and model (30c-31a); one world, not many
- B. The body of the world 31b-34b
Four primary bodies (31b-c), wholeness (32b-
c), sphere (33b-34a), central soul (34b)
- C. The World-Soul 35a-39e
Composition: being, becoming, same, different (35a); division into harmonic
intervals (35b-36b); circles of the Same and the Different, and planetary circles
and motions (36b-d); Time=the moving image of eternity (37c-38c); planets as
instruments of time (38c-39e).
- D. Further broad details 39e-40d
The four kinds of living creature (39e-40b): heavenly gods, winged things,
water creatures, creatures of the land; the earth's rotation (40b-c); other
heavenly bodies too complicated to describe here (40c-d).
- E. Human soul 40d-44d
The traditional gods, their creation and destruction (40d-41a); the Demiurge
instructs the gods to make lesser creatures (mortals) (41a-d); composition of
human souls (41d-42d), with each soul assigned to a star; destiny, incarnation,
and reincarnation (42d-44d)
- F. Human body (44d-47e)
Head given limbs (44d-45b); eyes and the mechanism of vision (45b-46a);
mirror images; the
purposes of seeing and hearing (46c-47e)
Main Section II: The Work of Necessity
47e-69a
(sections 15-36; pp. 66-95)
-
A. The "straying cause" (47e-48e)
- B. The "receptacle" (48e-49a)
- C. Preliminary account of the four elements (49a-50d)
- D. The ideal figures
- E. Motion and Rest (57d-58c)
- F. Elemental Varieties and Compounds (58d-61c)
- G. Sensations (tactile, pleasure and pain, tastes, smells, sounds, colors) (61c-
69a)
Main Section III: Necessity and Reason Combined
68e-92c
(sections 37-50; pp. 96-124)
- A. Subordinate gods; mortal parts of soul (68e-73a)
- B. Human frame and "externals" (hair, etc.) (73b-76e)
- C. Plants (77a--b)
- D. Digestion/Respiration; growth/decay (77c-81e)
- E. Diseases of body/diseases of mind (82a-87c)
- F. Balance and fitness of body and mind (87c-90d)
- G. The sexes (90e-92b)
- H. Conclusion (92b)
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