The Timaeus

The Timaeus is a Platonic dialogue mentioning a variety of topics and involving a creation myth told by Timaeus.

Mythic mode

Timaeus sets down a principle near the start of the dialogue: that a discourse on a given topic must follow the style of what it is about. This dialogue, among other things, is about the composition of the soul. The soul is a kind of mediating force; it partakes in both the visible and the invisible.

The mode of thinking best suited for visible things is the logical mode, using the faculty of logos, while on the other hand, the mode of apprehension best suited for invisible things is the noetic mode, using the faculty of nous (“mind”). Socrates is the perfect interlocutor for a logical discourse, since he is so talented at testing the logical strength of the argument that is being presented. Often, Socrates’ role in these dialogues is to interrupt someone when they start to take themselves too literally, overestimating their ability to make reality conform to their opinion of it.

As for noesis, it is necessarily impossible to convey in the form of a written work—although, Plotinus tried, and perhaps the Parmenides could be considered the closest thing to a dialogue written wholly in a “noetic mode” by Plato himself.

What style is best suited to a dialogue about the soul? Something that is between a purely logical and a purely noetic style. It should have a kind of narrative, but the narrative should not be vulnerable to Socratic interrogation; in other words, it cannot take itself literally. Indeed, to say that something is “literally true" is an oxymoron. To say nothing, however, is useless. One solution is the one chosen by Timaeus in the dialogue: the likely myth.

World soul mixture

Timaeus describes the world soul as being constructed by the demiurge out of a mixture of mixtures: We start with six different substances; there is being, the same, and the different, and each of these in turn comes in two variants: the indivisible and the divisible. The soul (psyche) is made up of the three basic substances; however, it is neither entirely divisible nor entirely indivisible but partakes of each (or neither). Therefore, the demiurge begins by mixing together, in a κρατήρ, the indivisible and divisible variants of each substance. Having thus created intermediate being, intermediate sameness, and intermediate difference, It then proceeds by taking each of these mixtures, and in turn mixing together those into a single mixture. This, then, is the material out of which the world soul is fashioned, which is done according to Pythagorean harmonic proportions.

See also