Optical Metaphors and Plato’s Natural Philosophy

Abstract

The article defends the thesis that interpreting Plato’s natural philosophy it is useful to take the terms horatos and aoratos in two distinct meanings: “observable” and “unobservable” (i. e. “present” or “absent”, “assumed” or “not assumed” by the observer), and “visible” and “invisible” (i. e. “available” or “non-available” in the process of seeing). This approach helps to perceive new sides of Plato’s ideas, implicitly present in the “Timaeus”, which allows interpreting it in both anthropomorphic and anti-anthropomorphic senses

Keywords

• Plato
• Timaeus
• natural philosophy
• Demiurge
• Universe
• visible