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  1. Plato on Sunaitia.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Apeiron 56 (4):739-768.
    I argue that Plato thinks that a sunaition is a mere tool used by a soul (or by the cosmic nous) to promote an intended outcome. In the first section, I develop the connection between sunaitia and Plato’s teleology. In the second section, I argue that sunaitia belong to Plato’s theory of the soul as a self-mover: specifically, they are those things that are set in motion by the soul in the service of some goal. I also argue against several (...)
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  2. What Timaeus Can Teach Us: The Importance of Plato’s Timaeus in the 21st Century.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Athena 18:58-73.
    In this article, I make the case for the continued relevance of Plato’s Timaeus. I begin by sketching Allan Bloom’s picture of the natural sciences today in The Closing of the American Mind, according to which the natural sciences are, objectionably, increasingly specialized and have ejected humans qua humans from their purview. I argue that Plato’s Timaeus, despite the falsity of virtually all of its scientific claims, provides a model for how we can pursue scientific questions in a comprehensive way (...)
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  3. Plato's Theory of Reincarnation: Eschatology and Natural Philosophy.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Review of Metaphysics 75 (4):643-665.
    This article concerns the place of Plato’s eschatology in his philosophy. I argue that the theory of reincarnation appeals to Plato due to its power to explain how non-human animals came to be. Further, the outlines of this theory are entailed by other commitments, such as that embodiment disrupts psychic functioning, that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, and that the soul is immortal. I conclude by arguing that Plato develops a view of reincarnation as the chief tool that (...)
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  4. The Soul’s Tomb: Plato on the Body as the Cause of Psychic Disorders.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (1):119-139.
    I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to the (...)
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  5. Evil, Demiurgy, and the Taming of Necessity in Plato’s Timaeus.Elizabeth Jelinek & Casey Hall - 2022 - International Philosophical Quarterly 62 (1):5-21.
    Plato’s Timaeus reveals a cosmos governed by Necessity and Intellect; commentators have debated the relationship between them. Non-literalists hold that the demiurge, having carte blanche in taming Necessity, is omnipotent. But this omnipotence, alongside the attributes of benevolence and omniscience, creates problems when non-literalists address the problem of evil. We take the demiurge rather as limited by Necessity. This position is supported by episodes within the text, and by its larger consonance with Plato’s philosophy of evil and responsibility. By recognizing (...)
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  6. Before the Creation of Time in Plato’s Timaeus.Daniel Vázquez - 2022 - In Daniel Vázquez & Alberto Ross (eds.), Time and Cosmology in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. pp. 111–133.
    I defend, against its more recent critics, a literal, factual, and consistent interpretation of Timaeus’ creation of the cosmos and time. My main purpose is to clarify the assumptions under which a literal interpretation of Timaeus’ cosmology becomes philosophically attractive. I propose five exegetical principles that guide my interpretation. Unlike previous literalists, I argue that assuming a “pre-cosmic time” is a mistake. Instead, I challenge the exegetical assumptions scholars impose on the text and argue that for Timaeus, a mere succession (...)
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  7. Self‐Motion and Cognition: Plato's Theory of the Soul.Douglas R. Campbell - 2021 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (4):523-544.
    I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...)
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  8. From Craft to Nature: The Emergence of Natural Teleology.Thomas Johansen - 2020 - In Liba Taub (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science. Cambridge University Press. pp. 102-120.
    A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of an end or a purpose. So saying that ‘X came about for the sake of Y’ is a teleological account of X. It is a striking feature of ancient Greek philosophy that many thinkers accepted that the world should be explained in this way. However, before Aristotle, teleological explanations of the cosmos were generally based on the idea that it had been created by a divine intelligence. If an intelligent power made (...)
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  9. Cosmic and Human Cognition in the Timaeus.Gábor Betegh - 2018 - In Philosophy of Mind in Antiquity. London: Routledge. pp. 120-140.
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  10. Os Princípios Explicativos no Timeu de Platão.Luciana Valesca Fabião Chachá - 2018 - Dissertation, Ufrj, Brazil
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  11. Platons Timaios und Kants Übergangsschrift (2015). Sonderegger (ed.) - 2015 - Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
    Following the structuring hints given by Plato in his Timaeus you find, that the dialogue – actually Timaeus' lecture – falls in two parts, not in three as Cornford, Brisson and others suggest. The main division follows the two invocations of the gods (27c, 48d). The first part presents the world in its noetic form, poetically described as the work of the demiurg. Timaeus opens this part giving first his premises in the form of an introduction, which lead his presentation. (...)
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  12. Przemowa Demiurga w Platońskim „Timajosie” a współczesne pojęcie godności [Demiurge’s Speech in Plato’s “Timaeus” and the Contemporary Concept of Dignity].Marek Piechowiak - 2013 - In Antoni Dębiński (ed.), Abiit, non obiit. Księga poświęcona pamięci Księdza Profesora Antoniego Kościa SVD. Wydawnictwo KUL. pp. 655-665.
    Today, dignity recognized as a fundamental value across legal systems is equal, inherent and inalienable, inviolable, is the source of human rights and is essential for its subject to be recognized as an autotelic entity (an end in itself) that cannot be treated as an object. The analysis of the extract from Plato’s Demiurge’s speech in Timaeus reveals that Plato developed a reflection on something that determines the qualitative difference between certain beings and the world of things, and that forms (...)
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  13. A Likely Account of Necessity: Plato’s Receptacle as a Physical and Metaphysical Foundation for Space.Barbara Sattler - 2012 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2):159-195.
    This paper aims to show that—and how—Plato’s notion of the receptacle in the Timaeus provides the conditions for developing a mathematical as well as a physical space without itself being space. In response to the debate whether Plato’s receptacle is a conception of space or of matter, I suggest employing criteria from topology and the theory of metric spaces as the most basic ones available. I show that the receptacle fulfils its main task–allowing the elements qua images of the Forms (...)
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  14. The Life Forms and Their Model in Plato's Timaeus.Karel Thein - 2006 - Rhizai. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 2:241-273.
    The Intelligible Living Thing, posited as the model of our visible and tangible universe in Plato’s Timaeus, is often taken for a richly structured whole, which is not a simple sum of its four major parts. This assumption seems unwarranted – most specifically, the dialogue contains no hint at any complex intelligible blue print of the world as a teleologically arranged whole, whose goodness is irreducible to the well-being and individual perfection of its parts. To construe the rich structure of (...)
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  15. Moral Virtue and Assimilation to God in Plato's Timaeus.Timothy A. Mahoney - 2005 - In David Sedley (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Xxviii: Summer 2005. Oxford University Press. pp. 77-91.
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  16. Plato's Theology Reconsidered: What the Demiurge Does.Richard D. Mohr - 1985 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (2):131 - 144.
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  17. Timaeus on Color Mixture.Mark Eli Kalderon - manuscript
    Now with extra footnotes, by editorial demand! Final version accepted by Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. -/- This essay consists in a trick and a potential insight. The trick consists in a minimalist interpretation of color mixture. The account of color mixture is minimalist in the sense that, given certain background assumptions, there is no more to Timaeus’ account of color mixture than the list of the chromatic pathēmata and the list of how these combine to elicit perceptions of all (...)
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