Chapter 4 Galen’s Timaeus

In: The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus
Author:
Robert Vinkesteijn
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Chapter
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106–133
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004705838_005

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Abstract

A renowned synthesizer of the previous medical and philosophical tradition, Galen of Pergamum (129–c.215 CE) paints a picture of his own work as having a twofold philosophical-medical pedigree, of which Hippocrates embodies the medical and Plato the philosophical component. He engages extensively with Plato’s Timaeus, which must have been one of his favourite texts, in various works including a (fragmentarily preserved) commentary. Several themes stand out in Galen’s dealings with the Timaeus: he appeals to it as a predecessor of his theory of the tripartition-cum-trilocation of the soul; he develops a remarkably somatizing (in fact, hylomorphic) interpretation of the Platonic soul, through a rather idiosyncratic reading of the metaphor of the river in Timaeus 43a; he emphasizes the tentative nature of Timaeus’ narrative and repeatedly invokes the difference between scientific knowledge and more speculative positions; distancing himself from such speculative positions, he cultivates a strongly teleological view of the cosmos that is obviously inspired by the Timaeus and its demiurge, but remains more or less agnostic about the cause of the observable teleological order.

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The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus

Cosmology, Music, Medicine, and Architecture from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century

Series:  Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 353
Cover The Legacy of Plato's <i>Timaeus</i>
E-Book ISBN:
9789004705838
Publisher:
Brill
Print Publication Date:
16 Dec 2024
Front Matter
Chapter 1 Introduction: from Plato’s Text to the Beginnings of Modern Science – towards a New Understanding of the Disciplinary Inheritance of Plato’s Timaeus
Part 1 The Timaeus and its Reception in Late Antiquity
Part 2 The Medieval Timaeus
Part 3 The Timaeus in the Renaissance
Back Matter

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