Images of Plato in Late Antiquity
1991; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/978-94-011-3342-5_1
ISSN2214-7942
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Philosophy and Thought
ResumoI have chosen my title quite deliberately, for reasons both subjective and objective. Not 'The Image of Plato in Late Antiquity', since it is now a commonplace that at no time has there been anything like one and only kind of Platonism.1 Various interpretations of the dialogues existed even among Plato's own pupils. Aristotle, his pupil for the best part of twenty years, took the creation-myth of the Timaeus quite literally as an event in time. Aristotle's friend Xenocrates — a pupil of Plato 'from his youth', who even 'accompanied him on his trip to Sicily' (Diog. Laert. IV, 6) and was his successor's successor as head of the Academy — believed that the myth was merely an 'analysis for the sake of examination' (what one could call geometrical construction), and that the world of the Timaeus was eternal. So, for that matter, did Xenocrates' pupil Crantor — but Crantor disagreed with him on the meaning of the creation of the soul in the Timaeus.2 We shall soon see that in late Antiquity there were at least two main 'images' of Plato which, even though not mutually exclusive, were not quite the same — and there were also relics, at least, of another image, rejected by the upholders of both, but known to be of an ancient and honourable ancestry.
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