Abstract

The paper offers an interpretation of Plato’s Necessity in the Timaeus according to which Necessity is an entity which manifests itself in different ways at different stages of the creation of the Universe. The main argument aims to show that Necessity gains at least two different meanings in the course of the creation as described by Plato – that of limiting consequences and that of purposeless motion ; that despite the fact that Necessity is not a self-sustained principle, it has its origin in chōra which is a condition of limiting material spatiality; that the important question what the effects of Necessity in the already created world are should be asked but cannot be easily answered on the basis of what Plato explicitly says