Abstract

This excellent work on Platos most influential dialogue deserves the serious consideration of all who are interested in contemporary philosophy as well as those who concern themselves with ancient philosophy, especially Plato. Philo and Augustine, creators of medieval thought could engage Scripture in a dialogue with the first part of Timaeus speech; Kepler and Galileo, who helped to bring about modern thought, worked at perfecting the use of mathematics for the study of physical nature, inspired by the second beginning of Timaeus speech, but a contemporary philosophical reflection similar to these has been unavailable. That desideratum has now been met with the publication of John Salliss book, appearing at the crossing of the old millennium with that of the new. His work continues the process of revisiting the past and heralding the future. It achieves this double goal by showing how Platos Timaeus displaces an account of the universe modeled on technical production with that of natural procreation and displaces the tentative distinction between the intelligible and the sensible by that of the chora, which both determines and limits that distinction and escapes being defined by either pole. The originary locus of the so-called Platonism of the West is revealed as the source of its most trenchant critique.