Plato's Timaeus

In this course, we will explore the Timaeus, Plato's account of the nature and creation of the universe. This work, from Plato's late period, with its highly notable postulations of the Demiurge and the receptacle, received the place of prominence in the ancient reception of Plato and contains a number of challenges in interpretation for contemporary scholars of Plato. We will carefully examine the work and its contributions to Platonic metaphysics, physics, psychology, teleology, cosmology, and theology. In so doing, we will also consider questions of how we are to understand it as a likely story, its role within the Platonic corpus, and its engagement with pre-existing traditions of Greek natural philosophy.