In the fourth century bce, Greek thinkers first articulated the idea that supreme wisdom takes the form of theoria. These philosophers defined their new conception of knowledge in different ways, using different modes of discourse. In addition to offering philosophic analyses and discussions of theoria, the fourth-century philosophers employed powerful rhetoric in the attempt to define this new intellectual practice. None offered a completely neutral or analytic account of theoretical activity; all developed what G. E. R. Lloyd calls “a discourse, or one might say a rhetoric, of legitimation.” In this chapter, I will examine one of the central strategies deployed in the attempt to conceptualize and legitimize philosophic theoria, namely, the frequent use of the discourse and structures of traditional theoria.

The fourth-century philosophers borrow the notion of “contemplating the spectacle of truth” not from the Presocratic tradition but from a specific civic institution – that of theoria. In ancient Greece, theoria was a venerable cultural practice characterized by a journey abroad for the sake of witnessing an event or spectacle. This chapter will examine the three most prominent forms of theoria in the classical period: visits to oracular centers, pilgrimages to religious festivals, and journeys abroad for the sake of learning. In all journeys of theoria, the pilgrim or theoros traveled away from home to see some sort of spectacle or to learn something about the outside world, thus confronting foreign peoples and places. In classical Greece, the theoros could be sent as an official representative of his city, in which case the theoria was carried out in a civic and political context. But a theoros could also venture forth on his own, enacting a “private” rather than a “civic” theoria.

Plato is famous for his denigration of the physical world. In the myths in the Phaedo and Phaedrus, however, and in the “likely account” in the Timaeus, Plato offers a very positive account of the physical cosmos as a whole and of certain (exceptional) bodies within it. In particular, he identifies certain bodies as perfect (or near-perfect) “images” of the Forms: they are not just shadowy eidola, but agalmata or “sacred images” of true reality. These bodies are either exceptionally beautiful bodies in the terrestrial realm or the heavenly bodies in the celestial sphere. Although Plato generally has a very negative view of the sensible world, he makes an exception in the case of physical beauty: beautiful bodies have a sort of sacred status which generates, for the philosopher, the kind of sacralized visualization that theoroi experience at religious festivals and sanctuaries.

Italo Calvino's dazzling book, Mr. Palomar, offers a portrait of postmodern ways of seeing. Its hero, Mr. Palomar – named after a famous telescope – spends his time conducting experiments in viewing and contemplating the world around him. In a chapter entitled “The Contemplation of the Stars,” Palomar ventures out to look at the heavens “in order to detach himself from the earth.” In this endeavor, Palomar deliberately follows the example of the ancient Greeks who, he believes, achieved knowledge and tranquillity from this exercise. He goes to the darkness of a nearby beach and, after spending half an hour perusing his astronomical charts, settles down to study the stars.

This activity, however, turns out to be quite complicated: “to decipher a chart in the darkness he must also bring along a flashlight. The frequent checking of sky against chart requires him to turn the light on and off, and in the passages from light to darkness he remains almost blinded and has to readjust his vision every time” (43).

Wonder plays an essential role in the pursuit and practice of theoria, yet it is rarely analyzed in the scholarly literature. As Aristotle stated so memorably in the Metaphysics:

Aristotle's conception of theoria represents a distinct departure from his predecessors. Aristotle explicitly refers to traditional theoria in discussing philosophic contemplation, but he uses only some of its standard features. In particular, he retains the idea that theoria involves detachment from practical affairs and “seeing” something divine and true. But he dispenses with the notion of a round-trip journey abroad. As we will see, he compares the philosopher to a theoros who goes to a festival simply for the sake of seeing the spectacle.

Plato offers a detailed discussion of philosophic theoria in the Republic books v–vii. He locates this discussion in the context of a conversation between quite specific characters, one of whom has dedicated his life to the search for wisdom. As in all his dialogues, Plato places the specificity of the characters in a dialogical relation to the general and abstract ideas under discussion. The drama of the dialogue, in short, corroborates but also complicates the issues set forth in the arguments and myths. This drama features characters in a particular historical context engaging in philosophical discussions on various topics. In the dialogue as a whole, the characters' lives and personalities enrich and illuminate the intellectual arguments. In the Republic and other dialogues dealing with theoria, Socrates' highly idiosyncratic persona affects our interpretation of the text and its account of theorizing.

One of the basic puzzles of the Timaeus-Critias concerns the thematic unity of the dialogue. Why is the bulk of the dialogue taken up with a discussion of natural philosophy when it apparently sets out simply to give an account of a war between Atlantis and ancient Athens? What, if anything, does natural philosophy have to do with war?

The Timaeus-Critias is presented as a continuation of the Republic. Socrates begins by reporting a conversation he had yesterday, in which he described a constitution (politeia) which in outline matches that of the Republic. He now expects his listeners from yesterday to repay him in kind. Here is what he wants:

At the beginning of the Timaeus-Critias Socrates likened himself to a spectator wishing to observe beautiful animals in motion. At the end of the work the world and its denizens have been shown to be just that. The cosmos itself is a beautiful animal moving in time and space and it is composed of animals, planets, humans, and other animals, whose design displays the greatest possible rationality. Even the city and its actions can be understood by its place within the greater cosmic order. As readers we are placed in the position of observers of a cosmos which, like that famously presented on the shield of Achilles in Iliad 18 and reconstructed on the cover of this book, invites us to understand our role as human beings and citizens by inclusion in a world order. If this is the world we live in, if this is how nature works, then we should arrange our lives accordingly. The Timaeus-Critias coaxes us into adopting an ordered life, not by knockdown argument, but by showing our place in a picture. It is the detail and completeness of this picture that draw us in. Cosmology plays an important role here particularly for those of us who have not been brought up in a well-ordered city and who therefore lack first-hand experience of paradigms of good order.

Chapter 1 argued that the connection between the Atlantis story and Timaeus' cosmology lies in teleology. Nature in general and human nature in particular are geared towards the good. We acted against nature if we chose a life of injustice and could expect to suffer for it, whilst a life of justice would be rewarded with happiness in this life as in the afterlife. In chapter 2 I considered the Atlantis story and argued that it is a story about the actions of good men, of the sort envisaged by the Republic. We were warned not to take the story as a historical representation, but as a true story in the sense that it correctly represents how good people would prevail in war.

In this chapter I turn to the status of Timaeus' account. Timaeus famously describes the status of his account as an eikōs muthos or as an eikōs logos, that is, as a likely story or myth or as a likely account. This description occurs as the conclusion of the methodological passage at the beginning of Timaeus' speech. Timaeus will later litter his account with reminders that his account is likely. There is therefore no doubt that he means us to pay close attention to this passage. This chapter focuses on the two major questions we face when assessing the status of Timaeus' account. What does he mean by calling his account ‘likely’ and why does he call it alternately a likely muthos and a likely logos?

For Timaeus, as we saw in the last chapter, the world is a product of craftsmanship. However, craftsmanship is not the only cause of the cosmos. Another is ‘necessity’. The introduction of this cause occasions Timaeus to make a fresh beginning to his cosmology at 47e3–48b3:

It should perhaps come as no surprise to us that the demiurge needed another principle apart from reason when he fashioned the universe.

I start with Cornford's diagnosis of Plato's view of the perceptible world and perception. Cornford reacted with justification against Taylor's assimilation of Timaeus to a modern positivistic view of science. Taylor had suggested that the status of our accounts of the natural world as merely likely could ultimately be overcome with the progress of empirical science. The Timaeus story was for Taylor a myth only ‘in the sense that it is the nearest approximation which can “provisionally” be made to exact truth’.Cornford was surely right to object that our accounts could in principle only ever be likely in so far as they are accounts of a likeness.

Cornford's and Taylor's positions are contraries but not contradictories. For whilst mutually exclusive, they are not jointly exhaustive. Whilst Taylor gives too much to perception, I want to argue that Cornford gives too little. In natural philosophy perception stands in a complex interactive relationship with reason. It is the aim of this chapter to analyse this relationship.

From the Phaedo we are familiar with the view of the body as a sort of prison for the soul. The body disrupts the proper workings of the soul, giving rise to irrationality in an essentially rational immortal soul. Embodiment is represented as a punishment for the soul. As Socrates puts it, ‘the philosopher's soul utterly despises his body and flees from it, seeking to be alone by itself’ (65d).

If this is our only impression of Plato's view of the relationship between the body and the soul, then reading the Timaeus may come as a surprise. For, as I aim to show, the dialogue offers a more complex and often more constructive view of the role of the body and the contribution it may make to our rationality and happiness. This view is based, I shall argue, on a detailed teleological account of the body and its relationship to the soul. I hope to show that readers of Plato who ignore the Timaeus risk getting a seriously incomplete picture of his thought on soul and body. This applies particularly to our understanding of the origin of the tripartite soul and the nature of soul–body interaction, where it might be argued that the Timaeus offers the most developed account of any Platonic dialogue.

The argument proceeds as follows. I start by sketching the composition of the world soul according to Timaeus. This is the necessary starting-point since the human soul has its origin in the world soul.

The last chapter argued that necessity arose out of the nature of the simple bodies in conjunction with the receptacle. The receptacle played an important role in accounting for the necessary motions, particularly in explaining why bodies with like natures move towards each other. However, it would be a mistake to think of necessity as simply emerging out of the receptacle as such. For, I argued, the pre-cosmic receptacle does not on its own support the notion of necessity. This chapter considers Timaeus' account of the receptacle in more detail. In the process, it should become clearer how Timaeus distinguishes the states of the receptacle after and before the creation of the cosmos and thus how he sees the difference between a world that is governed by teleology and one that is not.

At 48e Timaeus says that you need three basic principles to explain the cosmos. Two of these, the notions of being and becoming, we are already familiar with from the beginning of this dialogue and from other Platonic dialogues. But now Timaeus adds a third principle, that of the receptacle of coming-into-being. What exactly Timaeus means by the receptacle has been debated since antiquity. Does he mean the matter out of which physical things are composed, as Aristotle suggested? Or does he mean the space in which physical objects are located? Timaeus himself calls the receptacle ‘space’ (chōra), but never ‘matter’ (hulē). However, this fact hardly settles the question.