ABSTRACT

This is, I suppose, a deliberately provocative title for what is, indeed, intended as a controversial, rather than an authoritative, essay, on a subject that has been gone over many times before, but not, so far as I know, from quite this angle. 1 Specifically, what I would like to explore on this occasion is whether what one may term the ‘central myth’ of Plato’s Timaeus, the account of the creation of the physical world by the Demiurge at a point in time, on the model of a 26Paradigm external (and logically prior) to himself, is intended by Plato to be taken by his readers (or hearers) au pied de la lettre or not; and whether, furthermore, Plato himself has left us, in the course of the narrative, with certain deliberate incoherences which are intended to alert us to his intentions.