11 Chaos corrected: Hesiod in Plato's creation myth

Abstract

This chapter explores in detail how Plato's creation narrative in the Timaeus is presented as a ‘scientific’ reworking of the Theogony, taking up and transforming the primal figures from that work, and central polarities embodied by them (especially male/female).

Chaos: the unspeakable other to origins and organizing

“…For the Sumerians, the beginning of the World is both materially resplendent and organized, and is orderly from the outset, yet it tends towards collapse. It would be foolish of us, therefore, to think that Hesiod's Theogony is the source of all these ideas of how creation comes about and what happens to Chaos (Pender 2009). Weingart and Maasen (1997: 479-80) are aware that Hesiod's conception of Chaos as 'not-form' and as always in the realm of the 'un- ' (e.g., unformed, unthought, unfilled, unordered) does not produce every variant of Chaos.…”

Nature and the Divine

“…Since the Timaeus is devoted to physics, Plato is more confident in describing how the Demiurge first makes, "mostly out of fire," the visible gods (the fixed stars) among whom Earth "ranks as the foremost, the one with greatest seniority" (40b8-c3). But he is less certain about the Demiurge's second divine creation: the invisible gods-for which Plato resorts to the account in hesiod's Theogony (Pender 2010;Sedley 2010):…”

Traditional and Cosmic Gods in Later Plato and the Early Academy

“…Both ancient and modern authors debate as to when exactly kosmos was conflated with ouranos and began to mean the 'world', with possible options ranging from Pythagoras assumptions. But Timaeus also mimics the poetic tradition, especially Hesiod, for which see Pender (2010) 222. 15 The variety of meanings of the term ouranos is also confirmed by Aristotle in his review of the three leading usages among his contemporaries: (1) ouranos can have a very limited meaning of the extreme circumference of the universe, that is, the sphere of the fixed stars;…”

“…983b20-984a5. For divergences from Hesiod, see Sedley (2010) 248n3;Pender (2010) 225. 72 The absence of conflict between Ouranos and Kronos may explain Timaeus' surprising choice of making Kronos the son of Ocean rather than the son of Ouranos.…”