Providential Disorder in Plato’s Timaeus?

Embodied Intelligent (?) Souls: Plants in Plato’s Timaeus

In the Timaeus, plants are granted soul, and speci!cally the sort of soul capable of perception and desire. Also in the Timaeus, perception requires the involvement of to phronimon. It seems it must follow that plants are intelligent. I argue that we can neither avoid granting plants sensation in just this sense, nor can we suppose that ‘to phronimon’ is something devoid of intelligence. Indeed...

Paradoxical Time and Providential History in Shakespeare and Bacon

Few of Shakespeare's tragic characters have had so marty detractors as Richard II, who has been variously dismissed as a capricious tyrant, a self-absorbed poet, and a Protean dramatic forcé whose unpredíctable actions at times threaten the structural integrity of the play. This perception has in turn influenced the interpretation of Bolingbroke as a competent antagonist who brings much-needed ...

Political Individuals and Providential Nature in Locke and Pope

A Multiform Desire: A Study of Appetite in Plato’s Timaeus, Republic and Phaedrus

Pettersson, O. 2013. A Multiform Desire: A Study of Appetite in Plato’s Timaeus, Republic and Phaedrus. Filosofiska institutionen. 242 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-506-2325-3. This dissertation is a study of appetite in Plato’s Timaeus, Republic and Phaedrus. In recent research is it often suggested that Plato considers appetite (i) to pertain to the essential needs of the body, (ii) to relate to a...

On the Origin of the Difference of Psyche and Soma in Plato’s Timaeus

P lato is commonly known in the history of philosophy as an initiator of a dualistic concept of body and soul that favors the soul at the expense of the body. By contrast, Nietzsche is known as the thinker who reversed the Platonic order between the “true” intelligible world and the “untrue” sensible world by reinscribing thinking in terms of intelligible ideas in a bodily activity. He is known...