Goodbye to the Demiurge? Timaeus’ Discourse as a Thought Experiment

Abstract

I aim to suggest in this chapter that it is possible to understand Timaeus’ whole discourse as a kind of thought experiment placing the audience (and the reader) in the footsteps of a diving craftsman. In other words, Timaeus is presenting to us the great experiment of fashioning the whole of the universe , an experiment which needs to be done not only by (deductive and non-deductive) reasoning, but also with the use our imagination. In consequence, the Demiurge will appear to be an epistemological tool allowing this experience to take place in our own minds, which will imply two important claims allowing to understand the originality of the present interpretation in relation to others: 1) it does not seem necessary to attribute to the Demiurge an ontological role and 2) Timaeus’ experiment cannot be “translated” into a purely argumentative account. In other words, and to the contrary to most didactic approaches, Timaeus’s discourse could not be expressed in an abstract treatise of cosmology for experts based on empirical observation and deductive a priori arguments, for the use of imagination is an essential part of the process.