Image and Knowledge in Plato’s Timaeus

Abstract

The Timaeus is mainly a cosmological monologue. Timaeus presents a discourse on the cosmos’ creation by a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, as an image of a changeless, everlasting model. In his proemium (Tim. 29b1-d3), Timaeus claims that the status of his cosmology is subject to the status of the subject-matter. That is, the cosmos as a whole is an image (εἰκών) of an eternal model and will thus be likely (εἰκώς). Then, cosmology, accounts of the cosmos, being itself a verbal image, will inevitably possess the property of likelihood, and furthermore, stands in proportion (ἀνὰ λόγον) to accounts that are stable and irrefutable. Timaeus elaborates this point by comparing it to the proportion: “Being is to Becoming, truth is to convincingness” (29c3). Timaeus’ methodological and epistemological claim in his proemium seems to impose limitations on human capacities of understanding the world. That is, one can never produce accounts that are completely accurate and consistent as long as those accounts are about things that are images of something else. Does this mean that our knowledge about the world will always be only as approximate to reality as possible but partially inaccurate and unstable? Moreover, Timaeus claims that accounts of what is permanent and stable and evident with the help of reason are stable and permanent, and thus can be accurate and irrefutable (29b5-c1). Does this imply that the only kind of accounts that human can make to achieve accuracy and irrefutability is accounts of cosmic models? However, whether the understanding of cosmic models is beyond human capacities is unspecific in Timaeus monologue. In order to understand the scopes of knowledge Timaeus defines in his cosmology, and thus to figure out the extent of accuracy and irrefutability of verbal images, i.e., accounts, within human capacities, we need to consider, firstly why Plato has Timaeus claim the contingent nature of accounts upon subject-matters and what entails such nature, and secondly what is the meaning of the term “εἰκώς,” that is, how to understand the relation between Being and Becoming, truth and convincingness, and likely account and stable and irrefutable ones. This paper will firstly draw an analogy between the Demiurgic creation of the cosmos and Timaeus’ discourse of cosmogony and cosmology, and then derivatively analogize knowledge acquirement in a general sense to the former, so as to explore the similarities and dissimilarities between the cosmos’ creation and Timaeus’ monologue in terms of making images of something else. Bearing these analogies in mind, it will argue that the proportion of Being to Becoming indicates the degree of likelihood in Becoming as being the image of Being, and the proportion of truth to convincingness means the proportion of knowledge of cosmic models among things one believes to be true. It concludes by briefly sketching the nature of Timaeus’ cosmological monologue.