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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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The Power of the Likely Story in Plato's <em>Timaeus</em>
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on July 29, 1983 by Peter Kalkavage. <br /><br />Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is an overview of Plato's dialogue <em>Timeaus</em>. He invites his listeners to dwell in particular on the aspects of homecoming and return in the dialogue and discusses the <em>Timaeus</em> in conjunction with Plato's <em>Republic</em>.
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Kalkavage, Peter
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Annapolis, MD
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1983-07-29
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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sound
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English
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lec Kalkavage 1983-07-29
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3849" title="Typescript">Typescript</a>
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St. John's College
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Plato. Timaeus
Plato. Republic
Homecoming
Mythology
Socrates
Tutors
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Text
·r he Power of the Likely Story
Peter I<alkavage
This material may be protected by
Copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Cooe)
.I would like to spea)c with you this evening about Plato's Timaeus as a whole. I
will not go into any great depth about anything. I will simply talk to you about
what .things the dialogue invites us to consider. I hope this lecture will serve as
an introduction to your reading of this altogether strange book.
The Timaeus is the Platonic story of return. It is about a homecoming of a very
special and complex nature. In the Republic, you recall, Socrates attempts to found
a just city in speech.
As the conversation goes on, Socrates' task of praising
justice becomes transformed into his praise of philosophy.
Socrates exhorts
Glaucon--and us indirectly--to lift our gaze away from sensed beauties to intellected
beauties, away from becoming and towards the precise realm of being (Rep. VI, 518c
4-22). In the Timaeus, Plato takes us back to the world of becoming, to everything
this world implies--our bodies and all their actions and sufferings, the visible
heaven and its motions, the structure of the four elements and their transmutations,
also the realm of political action and political history. The theme of the Timaeus
is the so-called "real world." The theme is also our inevitable membership in and
fascination for this world. Strangely enough, this "real world" with which we think
we are so familiar is presented in an extraordinary way. It is presented through the
power of ""!lyths or stories. As readers of the Timaeus, we are faced with several
great questions. These are (1) What is the structure and purpose of the world of
becoming? (2) What in particular is our place within this world? and (3) What can
we learn from the myths of the Timaeus about these pressing questions?
The high-point of the dialogue is the famous lik~ly story of Timaeus, the eikos
mythes.
This myth portrays and imitates the work it took to bring a cosmos into
being. It is a story that mixes the nature of artful production.· with the nature of
begetting. Like Socrates' effort in the Republic, the likely story tells of how a
regime is founded. But the Timaeus does not begin with the question of the cosmos.
It begins with the question of the best political order. The likely story does not
stand alone.
A dramatic prologue, concerned for the most part with politic al
questions, precedes the likely story and gives it its place. Before taking up the
likely story, then, we must look briefly at this prologue.
A casual glance at the men who meet Socrates at the start of the dialogue shows us
that the Timaeus is about worldliness. It is a cosmopolitan dialogue. Critias is
the Athenian aristocrat who studied with the sophists, wrote his own poetry, and
became one of the thirty tyrants. Hermocrates is the famous Sicilian statesman and
orator we meet in Thucydides' history. As for Timaeus, here is what Socrates says
about him: "Timaeus here, being from Locri, the best- regulated city in Italy, who
is inferior to nobody in these parts in substance and class, has managed the greatest
offices and honors in his city; moreover, he has in my opinion come to the peak of
all philosophy." In deed and in thought, Timaeus is a man of the world(Tim. 20al-5).
He combines the study of natural order--especially the order of the heavens--with the
·Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor in Annapolis.
He delivered this lecture, intended to
be an introduction to the Timaeus, to the January Freshmen in the summer of '83 .
18
�political life.
The central image that governs the Timaeus is the ;easting of Socrates. Yesterda·y
Socra~es played the host to Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates, and some unnamed fourth.
These men had asked Socrates what his views were about the best political order, and
Socrates gratified them. Today the tables are turned.
The former guests become
hosts who must now, in the interests of justice, pay Socrates back with a feast of
logos. They must give Socrates his rightful guest-gift. This provocative image of
feasting Socrat.es goes along with an extremely important fact about' the
dialogue--Socrates does not cross-question anybody or inquire into anything. Instead
he remains silent while his hosts entertain him with long speeches.
The Timaeus
presents us with a most uncharacteristic Socrates, a dressed-up Socrates who minds
his own business and silently listens. If the task in most of the other dialogues is
to penetrate Socrates' ironic questioning, the task here is to understand his silent
receptivity. What is it, one wonders, that fills Socrates' silence?
But Socrates is not completely silent.
He provides a disturbingly incomplete
summary of the Republic and then announces the task he has imposed on his hosts.
Socrates states this task in a two-fold way--in the form of a desire and of an image.
Like someone who beholds beautiful animals somewhere and desires to see them move and
strive with one another, Socrates beholds the city he has founded and desires to see
it engaged in what he calls a fitting war, a polemos prepon(l9b3-20c3).
Socrates' desire is the reason why the action of the Timaeus takes place. This
desire is not easy to understand and raises a number of difficult questions. Why is
it right to compare the just city of the Republic to a beautiful animal? Even if it
is true that the visio~ of a beautiful living thing begets in us the desire to see
that thing move, why must the motion take the form of warfare? What in us, exactly,
is gratified by such a vision, such a war-movie? Although it is difficult to
understand the true basis of Socrates' desire, this desire introduces a central theme
for the dialogue as a whole. It points to the desire to go beyond order simply to an
actual ~iving order, to go ·beyond mere speech to the world of deeds.
Socrates'
desire is the invitation to think together orderliness, life, and war.
Critias has just the story to gratify Socrates, a story about an Athens grown
young and ·beautiful. This Athens, according to Critias, is Socrates' own just city
brought to life.
Once upon a time, this young Athens fought and defeated the
insolent Atlanteans when they tried to. enslave the world. Critias says his account
is no mere myth--like Socrates' speech the day be:!=ore--but is "true in every way"
(20d7-31, 26c7d3).
Critias' story about Solon's trip to Egypt is about far more than Athens' heroic
past. It is also about the cosmic cycle of birth and death, the circle of time which
governs all men and cities. Not altogether unlike Timaeus' story of circular motion,
the story of Critias tells about the periodic births and deaths of great
civilizations, about how what· a civilization calls progress is in fact recollection,
recovery from the last destruction. Critias' story thus is an account of the eternal
look, the eidos, of cosmic history.
There are two things I want to mention about Critias' story. The first is that
the Egyptians are important for the stories of both. Critias and Timaeus. When we
first meet Solon in the story, he is showing off his memory. He tells the p:r;iests
stories about what he considers to be the oldest things. He 'even tries to count the
number of years ago all these things happened.
But Solon is corrected by an
extremely old priest.
"Solon, Solon," the priest says, "you Greeks are always
children • • • you are young in soul, every one of you"(22b4-8). The priest proceeds
to show Solon how old everything is in the Egyptian city, how everything has been
frozen in time, kept changeless through long-standing customs. Egypt is the land of
conscientiousness.
It is a land where the rulers are priests, scientists and
historians all rolled into one. In its political structure, the Egyptian city is a
bad likeness of the just city in the Republic. I t is something of a joke. The
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�··Egyptian archives are loaded with stories about the past, stories of great deeds and
cosmic annihilations. But the Egyptian city itself experiences no real change and
has no history.
This city seems to be. that part of the cosmos that possesses
stability, order, memory, and scientific accuracy--all these things without life and
passion. The Egyptian city is a dead soul writ large.
The second thing I want to mention about Critias' story has to do with the history
of cities, especially Athens' history, and the circle of time.
Critias tells us
about the Atlanteans' fall from their once god-like condition. But he does not point
out how deeply relevant this lesson is for his present-day Athens.
The insolent
campaign of the Atlanteans surely reminds us of Athens' campaign in Sicily. We have
Hermocrates in the dial0gue to remind us of that event and its outcome. Closely
related to the end of the war with Sparta is the overthrow of the democracy in
Athens. Critias played a very large role in this violent event. In the Timaeus,
Critias reaches back in memory ·for Athens' first and best condition. As I read his
story, I think of men's attempts to reach back in time in deeds as well as in memory.
I think of the historical Critias' attempt to revive the rule of the few. There is a
great deal in the Timaeus to remind us of the fate of Athens. Perhaps no other
dialogue (with the possible exception of the Menexenus) points more beyond and
outside of its own mythes to the living deeds and speeches of history. If we say,
then, that the Timaeus is about the cosmos,-we must be careful that we refer to the
entire realm of becoming. That means the realm of history as well as the order of
nature. History and nature are put together in this dialogue. They constitute the
two dimensions of what we mean by time.
Timaeus' likely story, like the story of the Egyptian priest tells Solon, is about
the cosmic order which gives life and death to all things within it. It is about the
temporal space in· which men, gods, and cities have their being.
Cri ti as gives
Timaeus a piace in the feasting of Socrates. Since Timaeus is the most astronomical
of all of them, he must generate the cosmos down to the birth of human nature. At
this point, Critias will take over and give human nature its political stamp
(27a2-b6). But Timaeus may have designs of his own quite apart from Critias' attempt
to glorify young Athens. To see what these designs might be, we must look at the
likely story in its own terms.
Timaeus' story is about the founding of the cosmic regime. Timaeus reaches back,
much farther back than the memories of either Critias or the Egyptian priest can go,
to the truly first and oldest things, to the true archai. A divine craftsman or
demiurge is the hero of this story.
The world comes ta" be out of this god's
intelligent and generous nature. The god is not a grudging god. He wants all things
to be like himself as far as this is possible.
·
But the work of making a cosmos is also the gratification of a desire. Timaeus'
story gratifies the desire Socrates had--and which we ourselves might have--to see a
beautiful non-moving structure brought to life.
The demiurge gazes upon this
intelligible structure, this eidos of the world, and crafts a living image of it.
The cosmic order also has a medicinal or curing function. It corrects and tunes a
previous condition of disorder and noise.
In its being as Timaeus says "not at
peace," the pre-existing chaos resembles a city plagued by faction, a city out of
tune with· itself. For this reason, Socrates seems to be right when he calls the
likely story a nomos, that is, a law and a song(Tim. 29d4-6).
There are two matters of terminology I would like to address before I attempt to
lead you through Timaeus' speech. The first matter has to do with the word kosmos.
The second is about that all-important phrase, eikos mythes, "likely story."
· To get a sense of the word kosmos, we must remember this word's association with
beautiful arrangements of all kinds and with moral splendor. If a man is kosmios, he
acts and speaks in a fitting way on all occasions.
Aristotle speaks of
great-souledness, megalapsychia, as a kind of kosmos of the moral virtues.
(Nie.
Eth. IV,iii,1124al-2). And Homer tells us in the second book of the Iliad that the
20
I\
�loud-mouth Thersites knew ~ithin his heart many words but not according to a kosmos.
He is ou kata kosmon, that is, indecent(Iliad II,21~). Kosmos, then, means a great
deal more than the order of the physical universe. It points to the fact that human
beings are in love with ornament and display. At the same time, kosmos implies the
virtues connected with orderliness and decency.
In its dramatic form, the Timaeus imitates the various meanings of this rich word
kosmos. Plato gives our imaginations a sort of parody of this fondness in us for
what is showy and beautifully arranged.
The guest-gift Socrates is supposed to
receive certainly seems to be "just right." His hosts are perfectly suited (so we
are told) to play the part of philosopher-statesmen. Cri tias' story is just the
~hing for Socrates' desire and for the current Athenian holiday as well.
Timaeus is
just the man to give a speech about the cosmos. Socrates has even dressed up for the
occasion. He refers to himself as kekosmemenos(Tim.20c2). Of course, the absence of
the fourth host is a haunting omission from the dialogue's own kosmos. It is curious
that Plato's most formal, most artificial dialogue should also contain this emphatic
absence, that the Timaeus should begin with an embarrassment.
The sense of the phrase "likely story" is related to what I have been saying about
the word kosmos. Timaeus gives two reasons why an account of becoming must take the
form of a likely story. The first is that the cosmos itself has a likely mode of
being. It is an image. But Timaeus gives a second reason. He addresses Socrates by
name and reminds him that we have a human nature.
It is fitting for us, says
Timaeus, to accept the likely story and not to search beyond it. As Timaeus reminds
us, the likely sto.ry . belongs not t"o the region of Socratic inquiry but to the region
of trust, pistis. Timaeus makes his point with the language of proportionality.
Being, he says, is to becoming as truth is to trust(Tim.29c3).
The likely story is geared to our humanness and receptivity. It is addressed not
so much to our inquisitive selves but moreso to our very human selves who must at
some point stop searching and take a stand. The likely story is addressed to our·
spiritedness and not to a detached intellect. It furnishes us with a kind of shield
of moving images in which we may safely place our trust. The story is largely about
scientific matters--matters of physics, astronomy, and physiology. But it does not
intend to speak to that Egyptian part of the soul that craves o}?jectivity and factual
accounts. If we take the likely story on its own terms, we come to see that "likely"
does not mean "merely probable," that "story" does not mean "merely a myth." In its
very strangeness, the likely story has a peculiar form of power. Timaeus reminds us
at one point that we must guard this power, this dynamis(48dl-4).
What does this power consist in? One of the great feats of the likely story is
its ability to give us an image of things in their wholeness. Nothing in Timaeus'
story is cut off, abstracted from the life of the whole - not even death or disease.
Everything has place and therefore meaning. Even body, in its structure and motion,
is permeated with the meaningful constructions of arithmetic and geometry. Another
power lies in the way Timaeus presents the various sciences. .All the sciences,
especially music and astronomy, are closely connected by Timaeus with the good of the
cosmos and the good of man.
These sciences are shown to be moral aswell as
intellectual disciplines.
But. the greatest power of the -l.ikely story lies in its overall presentation of
orderliness. A world~order is not something we can take for' granted if we are at all
moved by Timaeus' speech. The world is the result of an extraordinary effort. The
demiurge must at one point force Same and. Other together in order to make the music
of the heavens. And the star-gods must wrestle with the great problem of joining the
best in us to the worst if we are to have birth at all. It is true that Timaeus
wishes to construct the best possible world in speech. But he fulfills this goal
through the meeting and overcoming of obstacles, . obstacles which exist not just
because the gods are not smart enough or powerful enough but because of the nature of
things. The greatest power of the likely story consists in this ability to show us
21
�what we are up against whenever we speak and act within the world of becoming. If
the story offers us a shield, a form of human safety,- it seeks no less to expose us
to ·the difficulties and risks within. thii;; world. Let us return now to the· stocy
itself.
The cosmos comes into being in this way--the demiurge decides that his product:
will be the best and most beautiful only if it possesses intelligence, nous. But
since intelligence cannot be placed directly in the body, god puts intelligence in
the so~l and the soul in the body(Tim.30 bl-cl). When Timaeus goes on to build the
soul of all things, what he constructs is the life of the intellect. The soul is
manifested in the circuitry of the heavenly motions.
These outwardly appearing
motions Timaeus identifies with the inner acts of thinking. They are the circles of
Same and Other.
The heavens, then, provide human beings with a magnificent and
trusty image of the innermost self. Since our truest and intelligent selves for
Timaeus originate in the stars, we may say that thinking--especially astronomical
thinking--is the human soul's homecoming.
Cosmos is a being in whom we see an image of ourselves. Like us the cosmos has
body, soul~ and intellect. But unlike us, it is a whole and not a part. As the
whole of all partial beings such as ourselves and the cosmos is not in need of
anything. It is a rotating sphere. It needs no hands or feet. It suffers neither
disease nor old age.
It is its own best friend.
The soul of the cosmos is
furthermore eternally active, always touching the whole of being and be.coming and
always engaged in giving accounts.
It is fitting that Timaeus would call such a
being a "happy god" (Tim. 34b8). With such a life as the cosmos enjoys, it is no
wonder that our human good should consist in imitating this god.
One point of great importance is the fact that the cosmos eternally gives accounts
of itself to itself. Logos in this way becomes a life-giving feature of the whole,
and our reflective activity is given its higher purpose. Men can give accounts
because account-giving goes on eternally though in silence. When a human being gives
an account, he taps and retrieves this silent eternal logos. He gives it voice. The
fact that human beings think and speak is not a matter of indifference ·to the nature
of things. Timaeus urges us to accept, to trust in a world which is fulfilled in its
being only in the act of its being known and spoken about. The cosmic logos has its
fruition in the human logos. Unless some human beings inquire into nature's.secrets,
the cosmos will not be a "happy god."
Looked at as a whole, the likely story is downward in direction. It takes us on a
journey from a changeless paradigm to a living cosmos. Once we are within this
cosmos, we travel from the star-gods to man and· from man to the various kinds of
beasts.
These beasts, like the sexual distinction, come into being because the
"first men" were either cowardly, unjust, or stupid. Education is the return to our
first and best star~like condition. But within the likely story's downward journey,
there is a radical break. Timaeus tells us that he left out the cause that most
physicists are constantly talking about. He left out the work of ananke, necessity,
the work of mindless bodily interaction. To remedy this lack, he says he must begin
all over again.
Timaeus' second beginning is the · most dramatic moment for the likely story.
Earlier in his speech, Timaeus had been victimized by necessity, by what he calls
"the form, the eidos, of the wandering cause." He constructed the body before the
soul, thus perverting the natural orde!r o.E first and second.
He apologized by
telling us that just as men's deeds are subject to what is chancy and random, so are
their words (34b10-35al). What Timaeus now uncovers is that it is wrong to speak ill
of necessity. For although it wanders and produces irregular untrustworthy effects,
this 'cause is necessary for the construction of the whole. The gods make our eyes
primarily so that we might gaze at the heavens and learn. decency from them. . But they
cannot make the eyes without giving them the actual power of seeing. Contrary to its
being simply identical with chance and chaos, necessity must be enlisted as a
22
�co-worker with intelligence in the making of a.world. Cosmos, says Timaeus, was in
fact
generated out of the systasis--the
standing-together
and conflict--of
intelligence an~ neces~ity(47e5-48a2).
•
What is it, then, that is finally responsible for the production of a cosmos?
What holds together the purposeful cause of intelligence and the non-purposeful cause
of necessity? Timaeus' answer is one that fits an account in the region of trust.
It is an answer that also fits a statesman's view of the world.
The bond between
intelligence and necessity is none other than persuasion.
Intelligence is said to
have persuaded necessity to b~ guided, for the most part, by the intellect's good
intentions(48a2-5).
Necessity, we see, is not entirely mindless.
Like the middle
part of the soul Socrates speaks of in the Republic, necessity can be made to heed.
reason even though it does not possess reason.
~~
Timaeus takes on a great number of very difficult questions in his long story of
necessity. One such question is "what is a body?" But the greatest question in this
part of the story, and the most provocative and difficult for the whole likely story
is this--What is the nature of space? What is that in which and out of which the
world of body and change makes its appearance?
What is that fluid and exciting
surface which causes the eidos of fire, for example, to be reflected? Timaeus calls
this principle of apparency the receptacle, the hypodoche.
It is, he says, the
mother and wet-nurse of becoming(49a4-6).
The word hypodoche comes from the verb hypodechomai. Two senses of this word are
of special importance for the Timaeus. The first is the sense of entertaining, being
receptive to, strangers. The receptacle take·s on form the way Socrates accepts hi.s
guest-gift and the way we are asked by Timaeus to accept the likely story.
The
second sense of hypodechomai is "to conceive or become pregnant." The receptacle is
the place-giver of all things that come to be.
It is their host.
But it is also
their life-giver.
Space is not a void for Timaeus.
Nor is it a merely passive
medium. It is the original womb that gives appearance, motion, and life to the eide
on which the demi urge gazes.
Timaeus tells us a story about how god schematized
space "by means of forms and numbers"
(53a7-b5). He constructs the regular Platonic
solids as the archetypes or perfect models of the four elements, fire, air, earth and
water. But he reminds us that these geometrical objects have their home in a living
order. He tells us that the pyramid for example is not only the element but also the
seed of fire(56b3-6).
It is wrong, then, to speak of a god who forced his will on chaos. The receptacle
is not merely the absence of order.
It is rather the potential for form.
The
receptacle, prior to the god's ordering, is filled with the traces of the four
elements (53bl-5). These embryonic elements belong in their own regions of space but
are constantly fighting for power in each other's territory. The receptacle is the
place of this battle, this ambitious and turbulent change of place. The mother of
becoming is endowed with a shaking or vibrating motion.
As the elements wander and.
lose their place, she attempts through this shaking motion to send them back home.
As the receptacle jostles the elements, she herself is jostled.
Timaeus' account of the elements' interaction is filled with. the language of
cities at war.
In the elemental strife, there are winners and losers, friends and
enemies. The same thing is true about our bodily substances. At one point Timaeus
tells us about the bad effects of bile on the whole body. If the body gets the upper
hand,. he says~ bile will then be t.hrown out of the body "like fugitives out of a city
in revolt" (85e2-86a2).
Throughout the likely story, there are similar efforts to
gratify Socrates' desire for a "fitting war." The war of elements is made fitting by
Timaeus' enlistment of mathematics.
In Timaeus' story of the receptacle, place and change of place are inseparable •
. The regions or topoi of space are fixed.
But one does not occupy a given place
forever.
Moreover, one cannot have place without holding on to one' s place.
In
order to maintain our bodily health, for example, Timaeus says we must con_stantly be
23
�.on the move. We must set up internal vibrations in order to withstand the attacks of
the external, all.en. world that seeks to destroy us. We must, he says, imitate the
'receptacle(88c7-89al). The entire life of becoming depends on circulation, and this
circulation in turn depends on the · warring elements.
Without the perceptual
instability of the receptacle and her contents, there could be no life in the cosmos.
It is a great mistake to think that the life of human beings or cities can ever nave
the permanence of a Socratic eidos. As Socrates reminds us in the Republic, eveb if
the best city came into being, it would necessarily degenerate on account of unlucky
marriages(546al-547a5). The story Solon brought back from Egypt stresses this truth,
the truth that the cosmos is the divine shaker of all civilizations.
In the likely
story, all things change place, souls as well as bodies. If a man lives a good life
and imitates the motions of the heavens, he returns to his first and best condition
as a star. If he fails 'to live such a life, he is reincarnated as a beast. All the
animals, says Timaeus, keep passing into one another with the loss or gain of
intelligence (Tim. 92cl-3).
Whenever anything in the world loses its place, the
receptacle makes the necessary adjustments.
Because of the receptacle, human life is ruled by the mysterious power of place.
It is important to our happiness that we have place. Also it is important that we
sometimes give up a place, that we change place. Ambition is the desire for a high
place in the world.
In the Antigone Creon curses the man who holds anything dear in
place of his fatherland. He says such a man is nowhere, oudamou
(Antigone 182-3).
Critias displays this political attachment to place by transforming the best city
into Athens, by making much of his own family, and by referring to the festival at
which the young become full-fledged members of the city. Timaeus' receptacle, along
with its elemental powers, does more than furnish the demiurge with building material
and tools. It is the power that constantly settles and unsettles human life.
After Timaeus tries to clarify the difficult and obscure eidos of space, he tells
a story about the mathematical structures that space was persuaded to take on. He
constructs four of the five regular solids (all but the dodecahedron) and assigns
them to the four primary bodies--earth, air, fire, and water.
Timaeus' mythical
physics, his putting together Empedocles and Pythagoras, is stunningly imaginative
and gratifying.
It is the counterpart to the construction of the soul out of the
musical ratios. Timaeus' story of body and change is only secondarily an attempt to
account for the actual phenomena.
Its primary goal is to transform the bodily into
the non-bodily, into the intelligible.
It seeks to persuade us that the world of
body could be imagined as a world of mathematical objects in motion. The story gives
the human intellect a home within the otherwise unfriendly region of body.
In the concluding portions of the likely story, Timaeus shows us how we were put
together by the gods. There are three things I want to say about this part of the
story. First, Timaeus builds us in such a way that our nature imitates the nature of
the whole to which we belong.
Second, our bodies are re-interpreted for us as the
outward show of inner invisible truths about us. And third, our nature comes to be
defined as the tension between intelligence and necessity I spoke about earlier.
This tension now takes on a specific form.
It is the tension between loving the
intellect and loving life for its own sake.
Timaeus will attempt to do justice to
both these loves.
The section· about our bodies is filled with stories that are both tragic and
comic. One such story concerns the neck. The neck was invented because the gods had
to join the best in us to the worst in the best possible way. They have to join the
head's di vine circuits to the mortal parts of the soul housed in our torso.
The
purpose of the neck is to join and to separate the god and the beast in us (Tim.
69d6-e3). The mouth too is defined by the cosmic dualism. It was made for the sake
of the best and most beautiful stream of speech that flows out and the stream of
nutrition that flows·in(Tim.75d5-e5). The story of hair is another memorable moment.
If the gods did not in some way protect the head, our lives would be in great danger.
24
�·But if they covered up the head with a great deal of flesh, we would become stupid
and insensitive(Tim~75e5-76d3).
Hair is the comBromise between long life and
intelligence. As such,· 1ike the mouth and the neck, it is a reminder of the riddle
that makes us who we are.
All the physiological stories. Timaeus tells us are
designed to show how the soul comes to be revealed through the nature of the body.
Timaeus shows us how immensely difficult it is to make a whole human being.
This
story of divine making in turn shows how difficult it is to be a whole human being.
I have spoken very generally and very inconclusiv~ly about this amazing ·book.
There is much that remains to be considered. The most important part of what remai~s
does not have to do with the likely story's intricate puzzles. What we must wonder
about finally is the likely story's silent listener. Has Socrates been gratified by
the likely story? There is much in the story to indicate that he would be pleased
with it. After all, Timaeus' speech does seem to gratify a desire Socrates had in
his youth and which he speaks of in the Phaedo(Phaedo97b8-99d3).
I mean the desire
that the good be invoked as a cause of becoming.
Before we can. understand Socrates' desire and possible gratification, we must
beware of thinking that the likely story is the ultimate story for Plato. There are
other stories in the dialogues, each one speaking in its own way about the cosmos and
human place.
I am thinking especially of the stories. about the soul's topoi in the
Phaedo and the Phaedrus. To a very great extent, Timaeus' story is about the virtues
of lawfulness and moderation projected into the nature of the cosmos.
It is about
that necessary part of human and.cosmic life that has to do with keeping one's place,
with being just.
The likely story is the sort of high-minded yet realistic speech
one would expect from a man who was an astronomer and a great statesman. But let us
remember. The recipient of the story is the erotic Socrates, a Socrates who asked to
hear speeches because of his desirous nature., his love of gazing.
In o't.p.er
dialogues, Socrates is feisty.
He is a troublemaker.
In the Timaeus, he':~-~·is
suspiciously well-behaved and kosmios.
Socrates' desire, the true center of t'.fie
T.imaeus, confronts us with an important question--whether the likely story, for all
its virtues and powers, is finally just to the nature of human desire, to the whole
of human nature.
I said at the beginning of this lecture that the Timaeus was the
Platonic story of return.
Is it a true and complete return to ourselves, a true
homecoming? We have the silence of Socrates to remind us of this question.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
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paper
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8 pages
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Title
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The Power of the Likely Story in Plato's <em>Timaeus</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on July 29, 1983 by Peter Kalkavage. <span>Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is an overview of Plato's dialogue </span><em>Timeaus</em><span>. He invites his listeners to dwell in particular on the aspects of homecoming and return in the dialogue and discusses the </span><em>Timaeus</em><span> in conjunction with Plato's </span><em>Republic</em><span>.<br /><br /></span>(Reprinted from <em>Energeia</em>, Winter 1984)
Creator
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Kalkavage, Peter
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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1983-07-29
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Language
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English
Identifier
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FaFi-KalkavageP023 The Power of the Likely Story
Relation
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3808" title="Audio recording">Audio recording</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato. Timaeus
Plato. Republic
Mythology
Homecoming
Socrates
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1fbe0d84d88c7a02fb7645a38bbfbebb.mp3
0c1e3b2ab456cd2bc3a3f6ef61165485
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
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Original Format
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audio cassette tape
Duration
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01:10:02
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Political Music of Plato's <em>Timaeus</em>
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 24, 2000, by Peter Kalkavage as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
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Kalkavage, Peter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
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2000-03-24
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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sound
Format
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mp3
Language
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English
Identifier
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LEC_Kalkavage_Peter_2000-03-24_ac
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3841" title="Typescript">Typescript</a> (Entitled "Plato's <em>Timaeus</em> and the Will to Order")
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato. Timaeus
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/21119542993fe09fa6502a1fcc860183.mp3
3d154a276049819d519e4760350993f9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
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wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:03:39
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Music and the Idea of a World: On Plato and Schopenhauer
Creator
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Kalkavage, Peter
Publisher
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St. John's College
Date
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2015-11-06
Rights
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Format
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mp3
Type
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sound
Identifier
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Bib # 83465
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 6, 2015, by Peter Kalkavage as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Language
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English
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1079">Typescript</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Music
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788-1860. Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.
Plato. Timaeus
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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