Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus: Volume 4, Book 3, Part 2, Proclus on the World Soul by Proclus

Author:Proclus
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780511705090
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

d. Aristotle

Having touched on these matters for the sake of history [in order that our account may be a complete one],25 the thing that follows naturally is to give the exegesis of the doctrines of Plato that are at hand. And since I know what has been written in the Aristotelian objections to the generation of the soul and the alleged solutions600 of Platonists in response to them, I don't think it is necessary to expend much effort [over them].30 In any case, refutation would be totally superfluous,601 for the soul is not a circle like an extended [circle is a circle]. Neither is it necessary when this279 supposition has been refuted to think that you have thereby accepted the theory of Plato. For this reason, it seems to me that it is surely acceptable to pass over these matters, for I know that an investigation of them has been undertaken in the book I published specifically on this, An Examination of Aristotle's Objections to the Timaeus.602 In it I have dealt with these issues at length and shown that5 magnitude is not correctly ascribed in the case of the soul according to the Timaeus. As a result of this, I also show that it is no more possible that the soul should cognise the indivisible intelligibles by means of divisible magnitude than that one should make the indivisible fit over the top of the divisible.603 In addition I show that the movements of the heaven are not identical to the movements of the soul,10 but rather, according to the teachings of the Timaeus, the former have been made to exist as a result of the latter. Neither is it impossible that the soul should often cognise the same object by means of the same thing, but it is even necessary in the case of discursive thought – if it is indeed the case both that the intelligibles have been limited and also that cognition takes place by means of a circle. So therefore it seems to me that these matters can be set aside at present because I have dealt with them at greater length in the book just mentioned.15 Let us turn to the next passage of Plato, sticking to the precise words of the philosopher which seem to me to indicate what Plato transmits concerning these things.

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