“It would not be right for the lesser to govern the greater. But we often speak carelessly and recklessly.”
Plato's Timaeus
Hello friends,
There is a great mystery at the heart of this philosophical and poetic tradition that we have all inherited. I say "we" because it belongs to all of us, even if we might have only a passing interest in poetry or philosophy. The words we have, and their meanings, were passed down to us by the speakers who came before us. All forms of language represent an oral tradition. Philosophy, or conceptual analysis, is the art of unpacking the meanings of the words we use. Poetry, then, one could say, is the art of packing those words with meanings.
This mystery is connected to a Platonic dialogue that became the primary representation of Plato’s thought throughout the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance, only to be eclipsed by his Republic in the last 200 years or so. The dialogue I am referring to, of course, is Plato’s Timaeus.
It makes sense that the work would have fallen out of vogue in recent times. It’s one of the few dialogues in which Socrates barely speaks. It can barely even be called a dialogue; it’s essentially a long monologue. And the monologue is a very strange cosmological story about how the world may have come into being, complete with claims about the four elements (earth, water, air, and fire), planetary influences on the earth, and a strange fixation on ratios and geometry, specifically triangles.
And yet, this work of Plato’s was celebrated as the most complete encapsulation of his doctrine for over a thousand years. I’ll share some thoughts about what might be going on with it. But first, please find our schedule for the next couple of weeks below:
Current Schedule:
Monday, 5/20, 8pm EST: Creative Writing Workshop (closed)
Tuesday, 5/21, 7pm EST: Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, Book III, Chapters 16 - 32 (open)
Wednesday, 5/22, 7pm EST: On Break.
Saturday, 5/25, 11am EST: Pascal's Pensees, 121 - 150 (open)
Monday, 5/27, 8pm EST: J.K. Huysmans' La-Bas, Chapters 14 - 15 (closed)
Tuesday, 5/28, 7pm EST: Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (closed)
Wednesday, 5/29, 7pm EST: Mary Robinson's Thoughts on the Condition of Women (open)
Saturday, 6/1, 11am EST: Montaigne's Essays ("A Proceding of Some Ambassadors," "Of Fear," "That Men Are Not To Judge of Our Happiness Till After Death") (open)
Some Thoughts on Plato’s Timaeus
Before we continue discussing Plato’s Timaeus, please allow me to take a brief diversion. Dante often references the Timaeus in his works. He also famously uses Virgil as his guide. Virgil, the poet, was deeply influenced by Cicero, the philosopher, who translated Plato’s Timaeus from Greek to Latin.
Part of what's interesting here lies in the Timaeus’ cosmological narrative: the world that exists (nature) is an imperfect copy made by a God of a perfect original form. So, if one hopes to come closer to reaching unchanging eternal truths while living within the fluctuating world of illusion, then one should search for the more perfect models of that which currently exists and strive to imitate them. This is what Dante, Virgil, and Cicero did. Here’s Cicero:
“However, I send my friends, who are interested, to Greece, that is, to the Greeks, to draw from the sources rather than follow the streams. What no one had yet taught or where students could not gain knowledge, I have made known to our people as much as I could—I do not expect much admiration for my efforts. They could not seek it from the Greeks, and after the death of L. Aelius, not even from the Latins. Yet in my earlier works, which imitated but did not translate Menippus and were sprinkled with a certain humor, many elements from deep philosophy and dialectic were included, making it easier for the less learned to understand through a certain charm and invitation to read. We aimed to write philosophically even in laudations and the prologues to the Antiquities if we succeeded.” – Cicero, Academica, Book 1, Ch 1.
Once one begins to “draw from the sources” rather than “follow the streams,” certain circumstantial details emerge from texts as potentially deliberate echoes of earlier works. For example, Dante goes to some lengths to explain in the Convivio why he wrote a commentary to his poetry in vernacular Italian rather than Latin, given that Latin is the more formal, complex, and sophisticated language.
“Consequently, the main point is established: that Latin would not be subject in relation to the canzoni, but sovereign…” Dante, The Convivio
If you write one work in a more universal language and a second work in a language that is more contextually specific to a time and place, then the second work can be meant to “serve” the first one. This point becomes even more interesting when one considers that Dante wrote The Monarchia in Latin and the Divine Comedy in Italian vernacular. Latin is the source, Italian the stream.
But now observe the following quote from Cicero’s translation of Plato’s Timaeus:
“Thus, the eternal God created this perfectly blessed god. However, the soul was not placed last, only after the body was made, for it would not be right for the lesser to govern the greater. But we often speak carelessly and recklessly.” – Cicero’s translation of Plato’s Timaeus
Here, Cicero appears to be saying something very similar to what Dante said: the soul is the greater thing that was made first, the body is the lesser thing that was made after and that serves the soul. So, in this analogy, Virgil’s Latin poetry could be construed as the soul to the body of Dante’s Italian poetry.
But a skeptical reader might stop me here and ask the question: can we be justified in thinking that Dante, Virgil, and/or Cicero were using this analogy? Here’s another excerpt from Cicero’s translation of Plato’s Timaeus:
All pairs require a third element to hold them together, as a kind of bond or link. The most suitable and beautiful bond is that which makes the elements it connects as unified as possible. This is best achieved by what the Greeks call "analogia," and we—daringly, since we are introducing this for the first time—might call "proportionate comparison" in Latin.
The italics above are mine, and they indicate the portion of the text that belongs to Cicero rather than Plato. Interestingly, there is no overt way to tell that they belong to Cicero rather than Plato other than by noticing the change of context that Cicero makes in the text and comparing it to the original. This is not the only time such a subtle break from the translation occurs.
There is more work to be done to prove this hypothesis, but if one reads enough of these types of authors, one starts to see recurring hints that this type of writing (and reading) may be going on. Here’s Borges:
... A year has passed, and I reread these pages. I can attest that they do not stray beyond the bounds of truth, although in the first chapters, and even in certain paragraphs of others, I believe I detect a certain falseness. That is due, perhaps, to an over-employment of circumstantial details, a way of writing that I learned from poets; it is a procedure that infects everything with falseness, since there may be a wealth of details in the event, yet not in memory.... I believe, nonetheless, that I have discovered a more private and inward reason. I will reveal it; it does not matter that I may be judged a fantast. The story I have told seems unreal because the experiences of two different men are intermingled in it.
An analogy occurs when someone recalls a principle from one situation and applies it to a new situation, thereby offering explanatory or predictive power. If one author has been influenced by an earlier writer, then one can anticipate the second author’s thoughts if sufficiently familiar with the former. Theoretically, this could enable the second author to communicate in a manner that only those who had fully read the first author understood: the mysterious element that binds the body to the soul... is analogy.