"The Ingredients of the Soul According to Plato’s Timaeus"
Abstract: Plato in the Timaeus offers teleological explanations of various phenomena of the physical world. In this context, we also learn that the divine craftsman created the soul out of two types of being, sameness and difference. Yet, in this case, Timaeus apparently fails to explain what these ingredients are, and why it is good that the soul contains precisely these ingredients. Given the importance of the soul in Platonic philosophy in general, and in the Timaeus in particular, this is a striking omission. In this talk, I try to supply the missing explanation.