Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus

Abstract

Proclus' Commentary on Plato's dialogue Timaeus is arguably the most important commentary on a text of Plato, offering unparalleled insights into eight centuries of Platonic interpretation. This edition offers the first new English translation of the work for nearly two centuries, building on significant recent advances in scholarship on Neoplatonic commentators. It provides an invaluable record of early interpretations of Plato's dialogue, while also presenting Proclus' own views on the meaning and significance of Platonic philosophy. The present volume, the first in the edition, deals with what may be seen as the prefatory material of the Timaeus. In it Socrates gives a summary of the political arrangements favoured in the Republic, and Critias tells the story of how news of the defeat of Atlantis by ancient Athens had been brought back to Greece from Egypt by the poet and politician Solon.

The Material World as an Aid for Proclus’ Imagination

“…Furthermore, the subordinate sciences are unquestionably considered fields of mathematics, despite not being studies of mathematical understandables: Euclid's works on optics, catoptrics, and music are all labeled as such, as are the perceptible fields of math in Geminus' classification. 68 Proclus' description of the practice of these lower sciences is presented as a geometrical and truth-generating activity:…”