Space, Time, Shape, and Direction: Creative Discourse in the Timaeus

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter, I explore the parallel between the shape of Timaeus’ discourse in Plato’s dialogue and the shape of the world that he describes. There is, plainly, an analogy between Timaeus’ act of describing a world in words and the demiurge’s task of making a world of matter. This analogy implies a parallel between language as a system of reproducing ideas in words, and the world, which reproduces reality in particular things. It becomes clear that authority lies not in the retelling of a truth already told, nor in the description of a world already made, but in the creation of a likeness in words of the eternal Forms. The Forms serve as paradigms both for the physical world created by the demiurge, and for the world in discourse created by Timaeus: his discourse gains its validity not from faithfulness to the way things appear, or the way particular things ‘actually happened’, but in virtue of its attempt to express in words a likeness of the perfect and eternal reality.

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