This article examines the problem of the status of the different degrees of being that Plato, in the Timaeus, seems to attribute to the different kinds of reality that he distinguishes. In what sense and under what conditions is it possible to state that the intelligible forms, the sensible things and the spatial and material substratum of the chora “are” and “exist” ?
In this article, I try to propose some reflections about the nature and status of the intelligible
in the Timaeus, particularly with respect to its features of a properly being and
above all vital reality. The attribution of “life” and “vitality” to the intelligible certainly
has an analogical character, that is, it depends on the consideration of the sensible:
since the cosmos is a sensible living being and is a copy of an intelligible model, then
the intelligible model must be configured as an intelligible living being. Now, to be
In this paper I examine Plato’s conception of the relation between soul and body in the Timaeus.
In this paper I propose a reconstruction of the onto-cosmological perspective of
Plato’s Timaeus and suggest an interpretation of it in the light of some contemporary
approaches to ontology and logic, i.e. “ontological sequentialism” and “fuzzy logic”,
attempting to use the categories and language of present-day ontology and logic to examine
from a different point of view some aspects of the Timaeus onto-cosmology and
of its logical scaffolding.
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