Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus

Production of the Cosmos

46 CHOROLOGY 2 Production of the Cosmos P R E L U D E Socrates’ penultimate speech praises, as from the threshold, the reception he is to be given in return, the feast of discourses with which he is about to be, as he says, perfectly and brilliantly entertained. Addressing Timaeus by name, Socrates declares that it will be his turn to speak as soon as he has invoked the gods as prescribed by custom (katä nímon). As if a discourse on nature required that one ¤rst turn away, that one begin in the opposite direction, in accord with nímoV rather than j¿siV. As if one could only turn back to nature. As if the return to nature, the return of nature, could take place only after one had turned from it, only from out of that turn, that de¿teroV plo”V. As if discourse on nature were necessarily palintropic. Timaeus’ response con¤rms the appeal to custom: everyone with even the slightest prudence (swjros¿nh) invokes the gods, and so too must we, praying that what we say will be approved, above all, by them and, secondly, by us. Timaeus adds: so much, then, for invoking the gods; ourselves we must also invoke. The self-reference hints at a kind of impious piety in which referral to the gods would, even if aporetically, be paired with reliance on one’s own powers rather than precluding such reliance; thus is the bearing exempli¤ed in Socrates’ questioning response to what the god proclaimed, through the Delphic oracle, about his wisdom. The peculiar performative character of this invocation was marked already by Proclus.1 In effect, Timaeus declares the necessity (ånâgkh) of 1. “But why does Timaeus say that it is necessary to pray and magni¤cently proclaim that the gods and goddesses should be invoked, and yet does not pray, though the opportunity is there, but immediately turns to the proposed discussion? We reply that it is because some things have their end comprehended in the very will itself [ìn a‹t‡ t‡ boulæsei]” (Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, 1:221). Production of the Cosmos 47 invoking the gods (a necessity of custom, not of nature) and then immediately declares that the gods have been invoked, yet without ever in deed invoking them. As if merely declaring that they must be invoked and then declaring that they have been invoked were suf¤cient. As if these lígoi that might be expected to frame the invocation proper could instead replace it and constitute the invocation in deed. In the midst of this peculiar performative, Timaeus announces his intention: discourses are to be produced (poie¢sqai) about the all, the universe (perÜ to” pantíV), discourses telling how it was generated or else is ungenerated. It will turn out that these discourses on how the universe was made—for its generation proves to have been fabrication—will also analyze making as such (poÖhsiV). Thus, the discourses on making, on production , will recoil upon themselves as produced, as made. Timaeus’ discourses on the universe will also incorporate discourse on discourse. Even when it is a question of the limits of production and of discourse. Even when it is a question of the limits beyond which discourse can no longer be produced, can no longer be something simply made. Timaeus speaks: “In my opinion there is ¤rst to be distinguished the following. What is that which is always being [tÖ t¬ ºn åeÖ], having no genesis , and what is that which is [always]2 generated, but never being? On the one hand, that which is comprehended by intellection with discourse [noæsei metä lígou], being always according to the same [åeÜ katä ta‹tä ªn]; on the other hand, the opinable grasped by opinion with nondiscursive sense [díx„ met4 a¥sqæsewV ålígou], being generated and perishing , never being in the manner appropriate to being [ªntwV d´ o‹dèpoteªn]” (27d–28a). On one side, then, Timaeus sets t¬ ºn åeÖ: that which is always being, that which always is (which does not come to be) and which is always being, which is in the manner appropriate to being (ªntwV ªn). Such always being, perpetual being, is always according to the same (åeÜ katä ta‹tä ªn): it remains in oneness with itself (see 37d), is always one with itself, always the same as itself, selfsame. Timaeus declares that such perpetual being...