Socrates Request And The Educational Narrative Of The Timaeus

Timaeus is not an independent work. Rather, it is the premier dialogue in an unfinished trilogy that also includes Critias, of which we have only a fragment, and Hermocrates, which is forecast in Critias but was presumably never written. There is demand, and has been for some time now, for an account of the relevance between the extant parts of the trilogy, namely the pertinence of Timaeus’ cosmology to Critias’ war story. Over time this demand has been refined. There is now a more specific interest in the relevance of the cosmology to what is commonly known as “Socrates’ Request”—that is, what Socrates is asking of his interlocutors at the outset of the trilogy. While Charles Ives certainly addresses the former, more general demand, the primary concern in this book is with the latter, given the obvious aptness of Critias’ contribution. Socrates, at least in part, is asking for a story about a war, and Critias provides it. What is far from obvious is how Timaeus’ contribution fits into this picture. In order to illuminate the nature of this contribution, Ives first establishes that Socrates is asking for an encomium with two areas of focus, which will be taken up by Critias and Timaeus. Critias will speak on war—more precisely, on the war between ancient Athens and Atlantis. Timaeus will speak on the warriors’ education as philosophers, and in particular on the formation and nature of the philosophical soul. To show the relevance of Timaeus’ speech to the request, Ives highlights the educational aspects of the dialogue, charting the progress of an educational program that aims at health. The book especially focuses on the convalescence of intellect, which ushers in discussions of the medical dimensions of Timaeus’ physics; the markedly Platonic project of becoming like god; and the comprehensively philosophical soul that leads its possessor to success on the battlefield. Socrates’ Request and the Educational Narrative of the Timaeus is written for those interested in ancient philosophy and philosophy of education.

Timaeus and Critias is a Socratic dialogue in two parts. A response to an account of an ideal state told by Socrates, it begins with Timaeus’s theoretical exposition of the cosmos and his story describing the creation of the universe, from its very beginning to the coming of man. Timaeus introduces the idea of a creator God and speculates on the structure and composition of the physical world. Critias, the second part of Plato’s dialogue, comprises an account of the rise and fall of Atlantis, an ancient, mighty and prosperous empire ruled by the descendents of Poseidon, which ultimately sank into the sea.

The dialogue takes place the day after Socrates described his ideal state. In Plato's works such a discussion occurs in the Republic. Socrates feels that his description of the ideal state wasn't sufficient for the purposes of entertainment and that "I would be glad to hear some account of it engaging in transactions with other states". Hermocrates wishes to oblige Socrates and mentions that Critias knows just the account to do so. Critias proceeds to tell the story of Solon's journey to Egypt where he hears the story of Atlantis, and how Athens used to be an ideal state that subsequently waged war against Atlantis. Critias believes that he is getting ahead of himself, and mentions that Timaeus will tell part of the account from the origin of the universe to man. The history of Atlantis is postponed to Critias. The main content of the dialogue, the exposition by Timaeus, follows.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be of substantial length, and include critical notices of major books. OSAP is now published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback. "'Have you seen the latest OSAP?' is what scholars of ancient philosophy say to each other when they meet in corridors or on coffee breaks. Whether you work on Plato or Aristotle, on Presocratics or sophists, on Stoics, Epicureans, or Sceptics, on Roman philosophers or Greek Neoplatonists, you are liable to find OSAP articles now dominant in the bibliography of much serious published work in your particular subject: not safe to miss." - Malcolm Schofield, Cambridge University "OSAP was founded to provide a place for long pieces on major issues in ancient philosophy. In the years since, it has fulfilled this role with great success, over and over again publishing groundbreaking papers on what seemed to be familiar topics and others surveying new ground to break. It represents brilliantly the vigour—and the increasingly broad scope—of scholarship in ancient philosophy, and shows us all how the subject should flourish." - M.M. McCabe, King's College London

"When all the gods had assembled in conference, Zeus arose among them and addressed them thus" . . ."it is with this line that Plato's story of Atlantis ends; and the words of Zeus remain unknown." -- Francis Bacon, New Atlantis Of all the writings of Plato the Timaeus is the most obscure and repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the greatest influence over the ancient and mediaeval world. The obscurity arises in the infancy of physical science, out of the confusion of theological, mathematical, and physiological notions, out of the desire to conceive the whole of nature without any adequate knowledge of the parts, and from a greater perception of similarities which lie on the surface than of differences which are hidden from view. To bring sense under the control of reason; to find some way through the mist or labyrinth of appearances, either the highway of mathematics, or more devious paths suggested by the analogy of man with the world, and of the world with man; to see that all things have a cause and are tending towards an end-this is the spirit of the ancient physical philosopher. He has no notion of trying an experiment and is hardly capable of observing the curiosities of nature which are 'tumbling out at his feet, ' or of interpreting even the most obvious of them. He is driven back from the nearer to the more distant, from particulars to generalities, from the earth to the stars. He lifts up his eyes to the heavens and seeks to guide by their motions his erring footsteps. But we neither appreciate the conditions of knowledge to which he was subjected, nor have the ideas which fastened upon his imagination the same hold upon us. For he is hanging between matter and mind; he is under the dominion at the same time both of sense and of abstractions; his impressions are taken almost at random from the outside of nature; he sees the light, but not the objects which are revealed by the light; and he brings into juxtaposition things which to us appear wide as the poles asunder, because he finds nothing between them. He passes abruptly from persons to ideas and numbers, and from ideas and numbers to persons, -from the heavens to man, from astronomy to physiology; he confuses, or rather does not distinguish, subject and object, first and final causes, and is dreaming of geometrical figures lost in a flux of sense. He contrasts the perfect movements of the heavenly bodies with the imperfect representation of them (Rep.), and he does not always require strict accuracy even in applications of number and figure (Rep.). His mind lingers around the forms of mythology, which he uses as symbols or translates into figures of speech. He has no implements of observation, such as the telescope or microscope; the great science of chemistry is a blank to him. It is only by an effort that the modern thinker can breathe the atmosphere of the ancient philosopher, or understand how, under such unequal conditions, he seems in many instances, by a sort of inspiration, to have anticipated the truth. The influence with the Timaeus has exercised upon posterity is due partly to a misunderstanding. In the supposed depths of this dialogue the Neo-Platonists found hidden meanings and connections with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and out of them they elicited doctrines quite at variance with the spirit of Plato. Believing that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, or had received his wisdom from Moses, they seemed to find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church, the creation of the world in a Jewish sense, as they really found the personality of God or of mind..

This book develops for the readers Plato’s Socrates’ non-formalized “philosophical practice” of learning-through-questioning in the company of others. In doing so, the writer confronts Plato’s Socrates, in the words of John Dewey, as the “dramatic, restless, cooperatively inquiring philosopher" of the dialogues, whose view of education and learning is unique: (1) It is focused on actively pursuing a form of philosophical understanding irreducible to truth of a propositional nature, which defies “transfer” from practitioner to pupil; (2) It embraces the perennial “on-the-wayness” of education and learning in that to interrogate the virtues, or the “good life,” through the practice of the dialectic, is to continually renew the quest for a deeper understanding of things by returning to, reevaluating and modifying the questions originally posed regarding the “good life.” Indeed Socratic philosophy is a life of questioning those aspects of existence that are most question-worthy; and (3) It accepts that learning is a process guided and structured by dialectic inquiry, and is already immanent within and possible only because of the unfolding of the process itself, i.e., learning is not a goal that somehow stands outside the dialectic as its end product, which indicates erroneously that the method or practice is disposable. For learning occurs only through continued, sustained communal dialogue.

Originally published in 1980; Greek text retained from earlier edition, commentary updated, with new English translation and introduction.

The much-anticipated anthology on Plato'sTimaeus-Plato's singular dialogue on the creation of the universe, the nature of the physical world, and the place of persons in the cosmos-examining all dimensions of one of the most important books in Western Civilization: its philosophy, cosmology, science, and ethics, its literary aspects and reception. Contributions come from leading scholars in their respective fields, including Sir Anthony Leggett, 2003 Nobel Laureate for Physics. Parts of or earlier versions of these papers were first presented at the Timaeus Conference, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in September of 2007.To this day, Plato's Timaeus grounds the form of ethical and political thinking called Natural Law-the view that there are norms in nature that provide the patterns for our actions and ground the objectivity of human values. Beyond the intellectual content of the dialogue's core, its literary frame is also the source of the myth of Atlantis, giving the West the concept of the "e;lost world."e;