8 2 The Philosophical Myth of Creat

8 2 The Philosophical Myth of Creation

In the Timaeus, Plato put the question:

Do all those things which we call self-existent exist? Or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?2

For Plato explicitly formulated one of the most important dilemmas of phi- losophy: essentialism—essences exist and knowledge of them is possible, vs. nominalism—any kind of general knowledge, distinct from that which is perceived by the senses, is nothing more than words (names). The debate between those two views—in various forms—appears on nearly every page of the history of philoso- phy. In the Middle Ages, it took the form of the famous debate about universals (whether there exists something which corresponds to general concepts); in our times it has made itself known in the radical statements of the neo-positivists (nominalism) and the later reaction to them (not necessarily in the form of essential- ism). Essentialism usually opens the road to metaphysics, nominalism is very often associated with extreme empiricism.
Platonic essentialism has two aspects:

1. The Metaphysical Aspect: the world of ideas exists (is), but it never becomes, while the world accessible to the senses becomes, but never is.3 The following text from the Timaeus provides a commentary on that formulation:

Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only. And there is another nature of the same name with it,4 and like to it, perceived by sense, created, always in motion, becoming in place and again vanishing out of place, which is apprehended by opinion and sense.5

2. The Epistemological Aspect, which was already hinted at in the quotations above—knowledge about ideas is certain, knowledge about things accessible to the senses—only probable.

The one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men.6

The necessity of existence and the certainty of knowledge—these are the attributes of the world of ideas; contingency and probability—these are the traits


2 Plato, Timaeus 51c, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds. The
Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).
3 See ibid., 28a.
4 This is about things which have the names of their ideas.
5 Ibid., 51e–52a.
6 Ibid., 51e.