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A far-reaching reinterpretation of Plato'sTimaeusand its engagement with time, eternity, body, and soul that in its original French edition profoundly influenced Derrida The Tomb of the Artisan Godprovides a radical rereading of Timaeus, Plato's metaphysical text on time, eternity, and the relationship between soul and body. First published in French in 1995, the original edition of Serge Margel's book included an extensive introductory essay by Jacques Derrida, who drew on Margel's insights in developing his own concepts of time, the promise, the world, andkhōra. Now available in English with a new preface by Margel, this engagement with Platonic thought proceeds from two questions that span the history of philosophy: What is time? What is the body? Margel's twinned interrogation centers around Plato's concept of the demiurge (divine artisan or craftsman): its body, its anthropomorphic attributes, its productive capacities and regulatory functions in the ordering/organization/assembling of the world. He posits that this paradoxical figure is not merely a cosmological metaphor for the living body but also the site of its destruction, dissolution, and disappearance. Torn between the finite and the infinite, being and becoming, the concept of demiurge also poses metaphysical questions about time, time before time, and the end of time. The ontological status of the demiurge's body, Margel argues, would become increasingly decisive in the history of philosophy, particularly in Christianity and the dogma of incarnation.

In The Textual Tradition of Plato's Timaeus and Critias, Gijsbert Jonkers presents a new examination of the medieval manuscripts of both Platonic dialogues, an overview of the ancient tradition and a vast collection of ancient testimonia.

This books delves into the major tenets of Syrianus' philosophical teachings on the Timaeus and Parmenides based on the testimonia of Proclus, as found in Proclus' commentaries on Plato's Timaeus and Parmenides, and Damascius, as reported in his On First Principles and commentary on Plato's Parmenides.

This study presents a revision of Proclus' natural philosophy, starting from the Commentary on Plato's Timaeus. It provides new insight into Proclus' metaphysics of nature, his surprisingly peripatetic philosophy of science, the role of mathematics, and the nature of discourse.

In Plato's Timaeus and the Missing Fourth Guest, Donna M. Altimari Adler offers an original account of Plato's Timaeus from 35a-36d, yielding a new interpretation of the Timaeus scale and cosmic harmony imbedded in the text.

The work De spiritu is an important but neglected work by Aristotle. It clearly shows for the first time that Aristotle assumed a special body (pneuma) as the 'instrument' of the soul. By means of this soul/body the soul forms the visible body of plants, animals and human beings.

To this day, Plato's 'Timaeus' grounds the form of ethical and political thinking called 'Natural Law' - the view that there are norms in nature that provide the patterns for our actions and ground the objectivity of human values. This book presents a scholarship on Plato's 'Timeaus' by some of the greatest minds alive today.

Marsilio Ficino, aleading scholar of the Italian Renaissance who translated all the works of Plato into Latin, examines Plato's Timaeus, the most widely influential and hotly debated of the Platonic writings. Offering a probable account of the creation and nature of the cosmos, the discussion incorporates such questions as What is the function of arithmetic and geometry in the design of creation? What is the nature of mind, soul, matter, and time? and What is our place in the universe? To his main commentary Ficino adds an appendix, which amplifies and elucidates Plato's meanings andreveals fascinating details about Ficino himself.

This essay explores the way in which early Christian writers held an eschatological understanding of what it is to be human, something that is to be attained, through the transformation of death and resurrection, and something that requires our assent. In this context, the article offers a new reading of the late fourth‐century work entitled On the Human Image of God (otherwise known in English as On the Making of Man) by Gregory of Nyssa. It argues that Gregory structured his text in parallel to the three parts of Timaeus’ speech in Plato's dialogue. The resulting picture sees creation as a dynamic ascent from the lower forms of life to the higher, a growth which is recapitulated in the life‐span of each human being, and also the growth of the human race into the totality of human beings that together constitute the human being in the image of God, the body of Christ.