Timaeus

by Benjamin Jowett (Translator), Plato

Overview

Donald Zeyl's translation of Timaeus meets the highest standard of clarity and naturalness in English while achieving fidelity to the Greek. This new edition introduces contemporary readers to Timaeus by combining in one volume Zeyl's masterful translation and his long introductory essay of circa one hundred pages which situates the dialogue in the development of Greek science, discusses long-standing and current issues of interpretation, and gives an assessment of the role of Timaeus in the history of Western thought. Notes are provided to elucidate difficult passages. Includes an analytic table of contents and a select bibliography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781545080610
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	06/05/2017
Pages:	74
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.15(d)

About the Author

Plato (428/427 or 424/423 BCE - 348/347 BCE) was a philosopher, as well as mathematician, in Classical Greece, and an influential figure in philosophy, central in Western philosophy. He was Socrates' student, and founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with Socrates and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.

Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion and mathematics. His theory of Forms began a unique perspective on abstract objects, and led to a school of thought called Platonism. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.


Plato and Pythagoras:

Although Socrates influenced Plato directly as related in the dialogues, the influence of Pythagoras upon Plato also appears to have significant discussion in the philosophical literature. Pythagoras, or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, allegedly exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. AThere is evidence that Plato possibly took from Pythagoras the idea that mathematics and, generally speaking, abstract thinking is a secure basis for philosophical thinking as well as "for substantial theses in science and morals". Plato and Pythagoras shared a "mystical approach to the soul and its place in the material world". It is probable that both were influenced by Orphism.

Aristotle claimed that the philosophy of Plato closely followed the teachings of the Pythagoreans, and Cicero repeats this claim: Platonem ferunt didicisse Pythagorea omnia ("They say Plato learned all things Pythagorean"). Bertrand Russell, in his A History of Western Philosophy, contended that the influence of Pythagoras on Plato and others was so great that he should be considered the most influential of all Western philosophers.