What is the Matter with Necessity and Space? Some Reflections on the Timaeus

Abstract

The main objectives that this chapter aims to accomplish are to demonstrate, as clearly and conclusively as possible, that Plato in the Timaeus posited Necessity, or ἀνάγκη, as the component which contributed the physical aspect of the creation, and that the Timaean Space, or χώρα, was not conceived of as some kind of Aristotelian ποκείμενον, but solely as a neutral spatial recipient of the world of Becoming. The chapter aspires to provide a consistent account that will unproblematically accommodate both above cosmogonic factors. While pursuing these principal bjectives, it will also be argued that Plato envisioned what we would call “matter” through the notion of corporeality—constituted of the four elements and nondifferent from Necessity; that Necessity proper, in its causally potent state, arose only after the demiurgic ordering of the primordial traces; that the Platonic Space is not sheer expanse, but a full-fledged entity in the form of a plastic medium in which the creation takes place.

The authors