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3 results

Galen: Writings on Plato's Timaeus
  • Compendium of Plato's Timaeus; Commentary on the Medical Statements in Plato's Timaeus
  • Edited and translated by Aileen R. Das, Pauline Koetschet, Mark Schiefsky
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • To Galen, Plato was the great authority in philosophy but also had important things to say on health, disease, and the human body. The Timaeus was of enormous significance to Galen's thought on the body's structure and functioning as well as being a key source of inspiration for his teleological world view, in which the idea of cosmic design by a personified creative Nature, the Craftsman, plays a fundamental role. This volume provides critical English translations of key readings of the Timaeus by Galen that were previously accessible only in fragmentary Greek and Arabic and Arabo-Latin versions. The introductions highlight Galen's creative interpretations of the dialogue, especially compared to other imperial explanations, and show how his works informed medieval Islamicate writers' understanding of it. The book should provoke fresh attention to texts that have been unjustly marginalized in the history of Platonism in both the west and Middle East.

  • 14 - Galen and the tripartite soul

  • from Part IV - Parts of the soul in the Platonic tradition
  • Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    Plato and the Divided Self
    Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012, pp 331-349

  • Summary

    Radical psychic contingency involves not just the moderate idea, present in Republic VIII-IX, that it is contingent how the parts of any given human soul are related to one another, but involves, more radical ideas: first, that with respect to at least some of the so-called parts, it is contingent what sort of internal structure each actually has in any given individual; and second, that it is contingent how many genuine parts actually belong to any given individual soul. Embracing contingency would allow Plato, to ventriloquize about differently constituted souls in different dialogues and even in different passages within the same dialogue. The ideal epithumêtikon seems to be something like a collection of the sort of necessary appetites that Socrates contrasts with unnecessary ones. The thumoeidos will rule the soul of a timocratic character, while the epithumêtikon will rule the souls of oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical characters.