David L. Guetter

Plato seems to have taken the concept of appropriateness, as expressed by the two word-families to prepon and to prosekon, to be of considerable value in cosmological speculation, judging from a number of passages in the Timaeus. The same language was used by Xenophanes and possibly by Anaximander . A fresh examination of these words in their contexts shows that the accounts of prepein and prosekein in Liddell, Scott, and Jones' Greek-English Lexicon are incomplete. An epistemic interpretation of these verbs, when they are used impersonally, e.g. "it makes sense," "it is plausible," "it stands to reason," or "it is likely," is sometimes an important aspect of their composite sense and sometimes makes better sense of the text than does its main rivals. Those rivals are a moral one, on one hand, e.g. "it is right," "it is necessary," or "it is obligatory," and a generally normative or "quasi-moral" one, on the other, e.g. "it is fitting," "it is suitable," or "it is appropriate." ;In chapter one I present a case against the adequacy of moral or quasi-moral interpretations of this language in a sample of cosmological texts in the Timaeus. Chapter two illustrates, from a number of passages in non-Platonic authors, that the epistemic sense of this language was available to Plato. Chapter three shows that Plato himself used this language epistemically in a number of texts other than the Timaeus. In chapter four I make use of the results of chapters two and three to illuminate Plato's meaning in Timaeus 29b, and 29d, regarding methodological discourse; 38a, 38b, 48b, 50d, and 62d, regarding meta-cosmological discourse; and 33b, 35b, 51a, 52c, 54c, and 55d, regarding cosmological discourse. I conclude this chapter with an estimate of how this study affects our overall interpretation of the Timaeus. In chapter five I argue that since Plato stands in a tradition of using language of this kind in this way to speculate in matters strictly speaking beyond verification, there is good reason to interpret both Xenophanes B26 and Anaximander A26 epistemically as well

First, I establish on the basis of a few texts in the Timaeus the need for this type of semantic interpretation. These passages occur in three clearly identifiable contexts, each concerning how best to think and talk about various aspects of the universe. The first passage constitutes one of two premises in the argument concerning the relation between time and eternity; the second involves an analogy pertaining to the Receptacle; the third clarifies the language for spatial directions that can obtain in a spherical universe. Having thus shown that this sense of the language is indeed present in this dialogue, there follows an extended application to and discussion of three passages in which this language is also prominent, the first of which has commanded significantly more scholarly commentary than have the other two: (1) the other premise as well as the conclusion of the argument about the relation between time and eternity, (2) the analogy between the four primary natural bodies and the letters of a language, and (3) for the second time, the number of worlds that exist. The paper concludes with an argument against Vlastos’ notorious claim that Plato here amounted to a scientific Luddite who set Greek science back by crushing fact with value; Plato is, on the contrary, merely indicating the epistemological dependence of the whole of empirical science upon metaphysics.