Plato's Parmenides and Timaeus

Here are my thoughts on Plato’s Parmenides and Timaeus. I read the introduction to Parmenides and then decided after reading the first few pages of the dialogue that I’m not going to bother with trying to read and understand this one, which is known as the most difficult of all of Plato’s dialogues. It’s not on St. John’s College reading list, and I’ve listed to a podcast on it and read the introduction, so I’m going to call that good enough. After all, people apparently debate, even today, about what the heck the dialogue even means. From the introduction, I do like the idea that Parmenides cautions against dualism on the basis that really reality is all one thing and you must grasp all of it. I also like the idea that if we could completely intelligibly talk about the forms or ultimate reality, then we would become gods instead of creatures half of soul and half of body, and that is one of our big difficulties in discussing them. Definitely saw echoes of that in some of C.S. Lewis’s ideas in the Screwtape letters and Christian ideas more generally.

With Timaeus, my biggest overall thought is that his dialogue is TOTALLY different from every other dialogue that I’ve read. I knew it would be, but it’s still a jarring read after all of the other dialogues. It’s one long speech instead of a dialogue, and it’s all about a likely account of how the physical, material world came to be and operates instead of anything about the forms, or justice, or virtue or any of those things. I would also say that it’s the dialogue with probably the least utility for modern readers, because so many of Plato’s empirical theories express in it are so wrong, while his value judgments and thoughts about the forms and their relationship to the world of becoming (found in other dialogues) are eternal. E.g. one very wrong idea is that like always groups with like, but really the universe behaves in the opposite way and entropy increases rather than decreases. I honestly skimmed a lot of the stuff about the 4 elements and how the triangles all fit together, how illness works, etc. just because it’s pretty involved, pretty boring, and, again, does not impart useful knowledge other than as knowing where scientists might have started. My hope is that the main value in the empirical ideas will be to see contrasting views in Aristotle.

From the introduction, I like the idea that Timaeus basically warns Socrates that he can’t “know God.” The best we, as humans can do, is the likely account. I like the idea that music is what binds together the mathematical nature of the universe although to be honest I don’t remember actually seeing that in the dialogue itself. Another interesting and I imagine very influential idea is of the demiurge himself—the craftsman who creates the world of becoming—and the fact that he creates the best of all possible worlds or the most perfect world that he can create to match the world of forms as best as he can. Clearly, this is an idea that’s going to echo down in Christian thought. I also like the idea of time as a way to essentially make the world of becoming more eternal so that it’s more like the reality of the forms. I like the idea that we were given sight so that we could study the universe, learn mathematics, etc.

In the dialogue itself, here are a few things that stood out. Early on there is a part where in just a couple of paragraphs, Timaeus dispenses with the difference between understanding and true belief. Understanding always has a true account and true belief is just believing something that happens to be true but lacks a true account. This is nuts since this is something Plato has spent books trying to figure out, and here he just handwaves it in a couple paragraphs. He also says that this is also proof that the forms exist, although I’m a little unclear on why that’s the case. This is all around line (or whatever it is 51 and 52).

Right after that, another interesting bit where he says there are three things: the realm of understanding (forms); realm of becoming (sense perception), and “space,” which is where the stuff that comes to be comes to be. It’s like the palette where stuff coming to be shows up.

There’s this long discussion about how the invisible triangles making up air, water, fire, and earth all are structured differently. It’s all pretty much nonsense to modern readers, but it does have something interesting in that is argues for different building blocks for each type of stuff as the reason for different reactions, and it’s a definite theory that others can test and work from. I’m curious what Aristotle is going to do with it. Similarly, he has grains of the modern theory that more motion equals more heat and energy in various elements.

Interesting how Plato says only a god could understand the different frequencies that make up colors—which of course we now do.

Late in Timaeus, in the part dealing with diseases, there is a very odd bit where Plato argues we shouldn’t reproach people for wrongdoing because it’s not their fault—it’s the upbringing or some sort of imbalance. Doesn’t seem to match with Socrates/Plato who cares very much about morality and is also uncomfortably “modern” (in a bad way).