COMMENTS ON CARSON’S PAPER ON PLATO’S TIMAEUS
Ron Hustwit
College of Wooster
Carson wants the reader of the Timaeus to read the text metaphorically and not literally. He directs attention particularly to the role of the Demiurge, which Carson believes is all too often understood as an efficient cause – a cause necessary to bring order to the chaotic Receptacle of sensible stuff. This external efficient cause is necessary to initiate motion as the Forms of which the objects of the sensible world are copied are static and eternal and cannot bring into existence or shape anything on their own.
The case for a metaphorical reading is not hard to make. The reader of the Timaeus is treated to a lengthy preface to Timaeus’ tale that has the account pass through Solon and Critias and Hermocrates to Timaeus, who must also reconstruct it from his memory. The age of the tale may be as old as 9000 years. It is significant that Plato does not allow Socrates to to recount the story himself. Clearly the reader is being prepared for a metaphorical reading at the beginning of the account in 28a(the focus of Carson’s attention): that which always is (aei) and has no becoming and that which is always (aei) becoming never is. Herein we have Plato’s two worlds – the invisible and visible, the intelligible and the sensible, the world of Forms and the world of copies, the upper and lower parts of the Divided Line. Noticeably absent from these two worlds is the efficient cause that makes the copies of the eternal, invisible Forms appear in the visible world. There is no Demiurge on the Divided Line nor place on it for the two world ontology. So, it may seem to a reader of the Timaeus that Plato needs to bring in an outside agitator to get things moving and shaking.
Carson thinks that he can help the reader to understand Plato by substituting a metaphorical reading for a literal reading of the Timaeus. A metaphorical reading allows the substitution of a teleological causation of the visible world for an efficient-mechanistic causation of that world. A teleological cause is consonant, Carson points out, with Plato’s developed project that we have seen in his dialogues to this point. And, of course, it is. The theory of Forms as presented in the Phaedo and Republic is a theory of causation (aetias). There the Forms can be understood as both the efficient and final causes of the objects – both their reason for being and the reasons for why they are as they are. They – the objects – came into being as they are for reasons grasped by the intelligence. They are this way by necessity,given the limitations put upon the project, bringing shape and order to the spatial-temporal, visible world. The account of the becoming of the physics of the visible world by way of necessity of the Timaeus squares perfectly, as Carson argues, with Plato’s earlier accounts. I am convinced and instructed by his reading.
Notice what else lines up with his reading: The Receptacle can be read as a metaphor rather than a literal chronological claim with an ontological status separable from the visible world always in process of becoming. We may shave off thisextra-metaphysical entity introduced to fill a gap in the explanation. Also notice how the metaphorical reading is like Plato’s use of myth in other dialogues – in the Meno, for example, serving to present knowledge of the Forms as an apriori presupposition.
[I would like to hear Carson say more about the consonance of his reading with the knowledge of the sense world in the Theaetetus.]
Carson’s third point concerns the translation of the sentence at 28a. In that sentence, the Greek aei (is always) occurs twice: the first modifying the Form grasped by reason and the second modifying that grasped by sensation as “is always in the process of becoming.” Some translation, however, drop the second aei and others retain it. Carson argues that the second aeishould be retained. The significance of this dispute among the translators is significant.
The Forms have eternal existence and are static. So, the modifier aei – that they always exist – is clear in their case. But how are we to understand the aei modifying the visible world in the process of becoming? Are we to say that what is grasped by the senses is always in the process of becoming or that that visible world in the process of becoming always exists? If we keep the aei, it appears to grant an eternal status to the becoming – a kind of Heraclitian flux structured by Logos. And if we drop the aei, it appears to invite the interpretation that “the becoming” of the visible world is continually coming into and out of eternal being. The latter interpretation would make a lot of daily work for the Demiurge.
Carson wants to keep the aei in both places, that is, as modifying the visible becomings as well as the reason grasped Forms. This allows for the visible, becoming world to be shaped and maintained by the Forms with the latter serving the role as final cause and not merely as efficient cause. Carson’s preference for keeping the second aei in translation is, of course, consonant with his urging the metaphoricalreading of the Timaeus. It relieves the Demiurge of much daily work if not complete redundancy.
[I would like to hear Carson say whether I have correctly understood him on this point of the translation of aei. I would also like to hear him speak more to his point in the last paragraph on the connection of the second aei to the Neoplatonists. I did not follow that.]
I will add in conclusion how much I enjoyed reading his clear and well-written paper and how helpful I found it in reading the Timaeus. It crystalized my unformulated instincts in reading the dialogue. Having, read the paper I thought: “Of course it should be read this way” and promised not to pass over his help in teaching Plato to undergraduates.