TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

This essay appears to have been occasioned by a passing remark made by Kant's colleague and follower Johann Schultz in a 1784 article in the Gotha Learned Papers (see Note 1 below). In order to make good on Schultz's remark, Kant wrote this article, which appeared in the Berli- nische Monatsschrift late in the same year.

This is the first, and despite its brevity the most fully worked out, statement of his philosophy of history. The “idea” referred to in the title is a theoretical idea, that is, an a priori conception of a theoretical program to maximize the comprehensibility of human history. It anticipates much of the theory of the use of natural teleology in the theoretical understanding of nature that Kant was to develop over five years later in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. But this theoretical idea also stands in a close and complex relationship to Kant's moral and political philosophy, and to his conception of practical faith in divine providence. Especially prominent in it is the first statement of Kant's famous conception of a federation of states united to secure perpetual peace between nations.

The Idea for a Universal History also contained several propositions that were soon to be disputed by J. G. Herder in his Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity, leading to Kant's reply in his reviews of that work (1785) and in the Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786).

Prefatory remarks (1.1–14.3)

Preliminaries I: the target of the Timaeus

1It seems to me to be glaringly clear to all who are not utterly blind to serious literature that the aim of the Platonic Timaeus5 is firmly fixed upon the whole of physical inquiry, and involves the study of the All, dealing with this from beginning to end. Indeed, the Pythagorean Timaeus' own work has the title On Nature in the Pythagorean10 manner. This was, in the sillographer's words, [the point] ‘from which Plato began when he undertook to do Timaeus-writing’. We used this work as an introduction to our commentary, so that we should be able to know which of the claims of Plato's Timaeus15 are the same, which are additional, and which are actually in disagreement with the other man's – and make a point of searching for the reason for the disagreement. This whole dialogue, throughout its entire length, has physical inquiry as its aim, examining the same matters simultaneously in images and in paradigms, in wholes and in parts.20 It has been filled throughout with all the finest rules of physical theory, tackling simples for the sake of complexes, parts for the sake of wholes, and images for the sake of their originals, leaving none of the originative causes of nature outside the scope of the inquiry.

The structure of book 1 of Proclus' commentary

Book one covers the first 204 pages of the first volume of the Greek edition by E. Diehl. In the course of these two hundred pages Proclus introduces his treatment of the work as a whole in about thirteen pages. He then discusses just under fourteen pages of Burnet's Greek text of Plato, from 17a to 27b of the Stephanus edition that supplies the universal method of referring to Plato's text in modern times. That means that it is entirely given over to matters that precede Timaeus' treatment of the physical world, the part that has been so influential over two millennia, and the only part of interest to many scholars. In the course of these pages Socrates had provided a summary of some of the most prominent features of the state that had been proposed at length in the Republic, explaining that he would like to be able to picture that state in operation. And then Critias had explained the feast of words that others then present planned to offer Socrates in return, including a preliminary treatment of a story supposed to have been passed down to him by his grandfather, who had heard it from Solon, who had in turn heard it from an Egyptian priest. That story had been about a conflict between prehistoric Athens, the city of Athena, and Atlantis, once sacred to Poseidon.

The importance of the timaeus and its commentary tradition

Proclus' Commentary on the Timaeus is arguably the most important text of ancient Neoplatonism. The Timaeus itself has proved to be the most important of all Plato's works from a historical perspective, for it remained a key text from the death of Plato, through Hellenistic philosophy, Philo of Alexandria, Middle Platonism, and the Christian fathers, down to the Neoplatonists, and well beyond. The fact that in the past century or so it has been effectively challenged by the Republic for the title of ‘Plato's greatest work’ means little in the 2500-year history of Platonism. The Timaeus was acknowledged as one of the two supreme texts of the Neoplatonist curriculum. The other was the Parmenides, which was of similar importance to many Neoplatonists, but less widely acknowledged as central to a Platonic education.

The commentary itself was usually the major vehicle of Neoplatonist teaching, even though much of what survives on Plato, unlike Aristotle, is not in this form. Interpretation of authoritative texts, including many of those of Plato, was a central part of a Neoplatonist's work. The commentary arose directly out of the reading of texts in the schools of philosophy, though some commentaries went on being used by subsequent generations, for which reason Proclus would have been conscious that he was not writing an ephemeral work, but one that could be used in other contexts.

It is not possible for only two things to be well combined in the absence of some third thing, for there must be some bond between the middle to effect the combination of both. The finest bond is the one which makes both itself and the things that are bound one. (31b9–c4)

The bond in general

In this passage, the bond (desmos) is understood as offering itself as an image of divine unification and the mutual sharing of powers in virtue of which the intellectual causes of wholes achieve their productions. On the other hand, what is fine is here understood as involving a unifying and binding essence and power. For the words well combined and the finest of bonds both appear to me to have this signification. Beginning, therefore, from the Dyad as something aligned with (suzugos) Generation, Procession and Difference, he introduces unification to the things that participate in the Dyad and also harmonious association through the bond – this gift being the second of the things given to the cosmos by the Demiurge.

I beg the misinterpreters of Plato not to raise any of the following objections against his discourse:

• (1) Those who say that semicircles require no kind of bond in the generation of the circle do not speak correctly. For the circle is not established from semicircles but rather the opposite is the case. For when the circle already exists – and not as something composed out of semicircles – then when the diameter is drawn then at that point semicircles are made. The name itself proves this, since ‘semicircle’ has its derivation from ‘circle’ and not vice versa.

• (2) Neither are those who take it that the monad and the dyad are somehow opposed and have no middle correct. For Plato does not say simply that in the case of things of whatever character, there is something between them, but says instead that in the case of such things as are intended to complete the subsistence (hupostasis) of a single composite, [there is something else between the things joined]. Hence, he said that ‘it is impossible to combine two things well alone separate from a third thing’, and the monad and the dyad are not opposites since the dyad is made of monads.

The Demiurge gave it a shape that was fitting and akin to it: for the living thing that was to encompass within itself all living things, the fitting shape would be the shape that includes all the shapes within itself. For this reason it is spherical in form, being entirely equal from the middle to the extremes: he made it rounded off into a circle229 – of all shapes the most complete or perfect and most similar to itself – since the Demiurge thought that similarity was by far more beautiful than dissimilarity. (33b1–8)

After the universal causes (ta aitia ta hola) of the cosmos and the universal composition (holê sustasis), of it and the establishment of an essence that 15 results from its being composed from wholes that are integral to it (ek plêrômatôn holôn), Plato speaks about the shape of the universe – that which surely has been assigned to the universe in accordance with its essence from its creation. This most similar of all the shapes is the fourth demiurgic gift to the universe (5.21 above).

Therefore, though there are also other demonstrations of the spherical shape of the cosmos which are both physical and mathematical and which we shall later examine, for now we shall first consider the Platonic demonstration (apodeixis). This really is a demonstration since the reason why it is (to dioti) is included along with the fact that it is (to hoti). The demonstration is itself triple: the first derives from the One; another from intelligible beauty, and a third from intellectual creation. Or rather, each one of these demonstrations is multiple and is at least triple.

Demonstration from the One

You might say that the Demiurge is one immediately from the One, and you might say that the paradigm is also one, and you might say that the Good is one. From all this you might assume likewise, in the case of the figures, that the figure which is unified to the highest degree is more divine and perfect than that which is not one. For that which the One is among the divine things, and that which the One Living Being Itself is among the intelligible living things, and that which the one Creator and Father is among the demiurges – this role is played in the same way by the sphere among the solid shapes.

There was no air around it that it might be required to breathe; nor did it need to have any sort of organ by which it could take nourishment into itself or again any organ with which to expel what it had previously digested. For since there was nothing else, there would be nothing to come to it or leave it from anywhere. Nourishment was present to it from its own waste, and it came about from its design that all things that it experienced or did were experienced in it and done by it. For its builder thought it better for it to be self-sufficient rather than in need of something else besides itself. (33c3–d3)

Theoria

Through these words he takes away two other kinds of sensation from the universe: smell and taste. It doesn't have the former because the universe would not have respiration, for that which breathes requires a sense of smell. (This is so in this case, even though it is not true that everything that has a sense of smell is such as to breathe. Nonetheless the animals with a sense of smell that do breathe are more perfect than those who do not (cf. II. 87.13)). Therefore this sense is taken away from the universe. As for the latter case, he takes the sense of taste away because the universe does not need to eat; for [only] animals which are nourished are in need of a sense of taste.

Well, then we may again ask, ‘How can this be?’ Isn't it like this: the particular senses do not pertain to the universe, but there is a single, simple sense which is cognizant (gnôristikos) of all the things in it: the colours, sounds, tastes, odours, qualities, being themselves the essences of sensible things as they are in an underlying subject. For if the single sense in us makes use of all the particular senses and knows all [the particular sensibles] by virtue of the same thing (kata tauton), how much more then must the cosmos know at one time all the various sensibles by virtue of one logos and a single sense! Therefore, because it is one thing by virtue of its essence and in just the same way it has been allotted a shape that is uniform, so too it has a single sense that encompasses all the sense objects.