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NATURE AND DIVINITY IN PLATO'S TIMAEUS. By Sarah Broadie. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press. 2012. Pp. viii, 305.
In order for there to be a real distinction between the intelligible realm and the structure of nature in Plato's Timaeus, or to avoid a conflation between these two spheres as had happened in the theories of Empedocles and Diogenes of Apollonia, the Demiurge as cause needs to be truly separate from the cosmos. So argues Sarah Broadie in this impressive study. This separateness of the Demiurge is also needed, she claims, to assure that reason in human beings is an individualized source of responsibility and autonomy. In order for there to be a real connection between intelligent cause and nature, on the other hand, it is also crucial that the four elements, as the basic building blocks of the world, do not have a self-sufficient identity so that (a) they cannot by themselves account for the order of nature and (b) they are amenable to being harnessed to this order. These two theses, of a separate Demiurge and the relation between the elements and the Receptacle, direct Broadie's inquiry. We can add a third cluster of core ideas (Chapter Five), about the modes of discourse represented by Plato in this work: Plato wants to create room for the value of inquiries into history and nature as distinct yet complementary to Socrates' mode of inquiry. Yet in playing out the reality for the characters in the work-who seem to be operating in a world in which, for instance, the battle of Marathon never occurred-against the reality of his readers, Plato also creates a cautionary tale about accounts that pretend to be rooted in actual history by depicting his character Critias as an anti-Socrates.
In what follows I will engage in greater detail with a set of claims that pertain to the second thesis mentioned above, about the elements' lack of self-sufficiency. Against the grain of most interpretations of Plato's Timaeus, Broadie boldly and with great acumen asserts that the function of the Receptacle is not primarily an ontological,...