Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus

PROLOGUE

Prologue Chorology. One ¤nds it, ¤rst of all, in a single text signed by Plato. Even though within an extended narrative for which Plato forged the signature of Timaeus. Hence, this chorology—and there is perhaps no other—bears two signatures . As does every other discourse in this text and in all those that, at the risk of reduction, one calls Platonic dialogues. For the double signature is irreducible: what is said in these texts, what is said to be said, is always signed by—that is, said to be said by—someone other than Plato. The double signature thus marks the reserve of the writer, the practice of a certain graphic ventriloquy. In the doubling Plato’s signature is yoked to a manifold of others. This manifold, too, is irreducible, primarily (though not solely) because of the irreducibility of the double signature as such: because no one voice in a dialogue can be identi¤ed with Plato’s own, no one voice can be accorded absolute authority so as then to be essentially separable from the others and assimilable to Plato’s own. Not only is nothing said to be said by Plato himself, but also nothing is said to be said in his name, by one who would be his dialogical surrogate. The voices remain multiple, at best echoing one another, generating a play of echoes through which the dialogue, in the end, makes something manifest, yet without producing simple univocity. In their multiplicity the voices are interactive, peculiarly performative, producing speeches that are also deeds on the part of those who (are said to) voice them. This is why, most directly, one must always be attentive to the dramatic character of a dialogue. In its polyphony a dialogue deploys discourses, stories, and deeds (lígoi, m”qoi, Årga), 2 CHOROLOGY which in their multiplicity release a mirror-play illuminating that which the dialogue as a whole would render manifest. One will always need to read a dialogue in such a way as to let its distinctive manifestation occur, listening as its manifold voices resound, hovering within the space of their resonance. Even if, as in the Timaeus, the dialogue undergoes a transmutation into monologue. Even if, as in the Timaeus, that which a certain discourse would say proves to withdraw from discourse, to retreat by its very nature, as the very nature of nature. Even if, as in the Timaeus, a manifold silence prevails—¤rst of all, that of Socrates himself, who shortly after the opening of the dialogue falls into silence and from that point on listens silently to Timaeus’ long monologue on the cosmos. In any case one cannot but approach the Timaeus with a certain reticence . Of all the dialogues it is the one that has been most continuously and directly effective. Ever since the early Academy it has been the subject of commentary and debate. Aristotle’s extensive discussions and critiques of the Timaeus are well-known, and through Plutarch some indications remain concerning the debate over it that took place in the early Academy between Xenocrates and his pupil Crantor. Indeed, up through the ¤fth century a.d. there was a continuous tradition of commentary on the Timaeus, a tradition that included, in addition to Plutarch, also Plotinus, Proclus, and Chalcidius. Through Chalcidius’ Latin translation, the dialogue was transmitted to the Middle Ages, and as such it served as one of the chief sources of medieval Platonism, indeed as the primary genuinely Platonic source. Its in¶uence showed little decline with the advent of the Renaissance (Ficino wrote a commentary on it) and of modernity (Kepler greatly admired it for its mathematical approach to nature). The dialogue gained enormous signi¤cance during the era of German Idealism, especially for Schelling, who wrote a recently discovered commentary on the Timaeus; indeed it can be shown by reference to this commentary, composed at the very outset of Schelling’s career, that the Timaeus was to remain decisive even in Schelling’s great work on the essence of human freedom. If it can be said that, following the era of German Idealism, the Timaeus underwent a certain eclipse, attention focusing instead on the more explicitly ontological and dialectical dialogues, it appears that the very strangeness that set this dialogue apart from those others has recently come to provoke a renewed engagement with it. Yet it is not only because of this history that one is compelled to approach the Timaeus with reticence, not only because...