HONR 302 Paper 1

Due Tuesday, February 1

The following passage is from the Timaeus – 50 a-c.

“But I must do my best to explain this thing once more in still clearer terms.

Suppose a man had molded figures of all sorts out of gold, and were unceasingly to remold each into all the rest: then, if you should point to one of them and ask what it was, much the safest answer in respect of truth would be to say “gold,” and never speak of a triangle or any of the other figures that were coming to be in it as things that have being, since they are changing even while one is asserting their existence. Rather one should be content if they so much as consent to accept the description “what is of such and such a quality” with any certainty. Now the same thing must be said of that nature which receives all bodies. It must be called always the same; for it never departs from at all from its own character; since it is always receiving all things, and never in any way whatsoever takes on any character that is like any of the things that enter it: by nature it is there as a matrix for everything, changed and diversified by the things that enter it, and on their account it appears to have different qualities at different times; while the things that pass in and out are to be called copies of the eternal things, impressions taken from them in a strange manner that is hard to express: we will follow it up on another occasion.”

In a short paper of at most two pages comment on this passage. Explain it as well as you can in terms of what has gone before in the Timaeus. You might imagine yourself given the task of explaining the passage in this class to your peers.