Plato - Timaeus and Critias

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

TIMAEUS AND CRITIAS

PLATO (c.427347 BCE), Athenian philosopher-dramatist, has had a profound and lasting influence upon Western intellectual tradition. Born into a wealthy and prominent family, he grew up during the conflict between Athens and the Peloponnesian states which engulfed the Greek world from 431 to 404 BCE. Following its turbulent aftermath, he was deeply affected by the condemnation and execution of his revered master Socrates (469399) on charges of irreligion and corrupting the young. In revulsion from political activity, Plato devoted his life to the pursuit of philosophy and to composing memoirs of Socratic enquiry cast in dialogue form. He was strongly influenced by the Pythagorean thinkers of southern Italy and Sicily, which he is said to have visited when he was about 40. Some time after returning to Athens, he founded the Academy, an early ancestor of the modern university, devoted to philosophical and mathematical enquiry, and to the education of future rulers or philosopher-kings. The Academys most celebrated member was the young Aristotle (384322), who studied there for the last twenty years of Platos life. Their works mark the highest peak of philosophical achievement in antiquity, and both continue to rank among the greatest philosophers of all time.

Plato is the earliest Western philosopher from whose output complete works have been preserved. At least twenty-five of his dialogues are extant, ranging from fewer than twenty to more than three hundred pages in length. For their combination of dramatic realism, poetic beauty, intellectual vitality, and emotional power they are unique in Western literature.

ROBIN WATERFIELD is a writer, living in Greece. He has previously translated, for Oxford Worlds Classics, Platos Republic, Symposium, Gorgias, and Phaedrus, and Meno and Other Dialogues, Aristotles Physics, Herodotus Histories, Plutarchs Greek Lives and Roman Lives, Euripides Orestes and Other Plays and Heracles and Other Plays, Xenophons The Expedition of Cyrus, and The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists.

ANDREW GREGORY is Reader in History of Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London. His books include Platos Philosophy of Science, Eureka! The Birth of Science, and Ancient Greek Cosmogony.

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

PLATO

Translated by
ROBIN WATERFIELD

With an Introduction and Notes by
ANDREW GREGORY

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Translation Robin Waterfield 2008
Editorial material Andrew Gregory 2008

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2008

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Plato.

[Timaeus. English]
Timaeus and Critias / Plato; translated by Robin Waterfield;
with an introduction and notes by Andrew Gregory.
p.cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 9780192807359
1. CosmologyEarly works to 1800. 2. Atlantis. I. Waterfield, Robin.
II. Gregory, Andrew. III. Plato. Critias. English. IV. Title.
B387.A5W37 2008
113dc22
2008027751

Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India
Printed in Great Britain
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ISBN 9780192807359

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Keith Critchlow, contemporary Platonist,
and in memory of W.G.D.

Platos Timaeus and Critias are works of perennial philosophical and historical interest. Timaeus gives us an account of how the cosmos and everything in itstars, earth, and living creaturescame into existence. It also gives an account of the origin of human beings, their place in the cosmos, and what they should aspire to. It is a complex and multifaceted work, offering important ideas in philosophy, theology, and the study of the natural world. The unfinished Critias gives us the beginnings of a fascinating account of the supposed ancient city of Atlantis.

Timaeus offers a pattern of explanation for all natural phenomena: they are to be explained teleologically, in terms of why it is best that they occur in the way that they do. Teleological explanation itself was not original to Timaeus, nor indeed to Plato. Anaxagoras (c. 500c.428 B C) had previously proposed that a cosmic intelligence brought order to the universe. In his earlier work, Phaedo, Plato had criticized Anaxagoras for not employing this type of explanation fully enough. What Timaeus