Plato's account of universals in the Timaeus
What is it about?
This paper tries to clarify how the metaphor of the image and its original resolves the tension between Being and Becoming and therefore also each of the difficulties that were present in the Parmenides. Thus, the Timaeus offers a more coherent alternative to the Presocratics’ mechanistic and the Sophists’ relativist accounts and hence can be read as Plato’s final answer to the problem of universals.
Why is it important?
By elucidating Plato's pragmatist stance regarding the relation of epistemology and ontology, or so the interpretation of Tim. 52c2–d1offered in this paper, rationalist and empiricist positions of his time are taken into account, many of which continue to be evoked in recent discussions too. Thus, the topicality of Plato's solution remains unabated.