Klaus Corcilius

University of Tübingen

Klaus Corcilius is Professor at the University of Tübingen. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California (2011-2016) and Junior professor für Antike Philosophie at the University of Hamburg (2009-2011). He has published Streben Und Bewegen: Aristoteles' Theorie der Animalischen Ortsbewegung (De Gruyter, 2008), co-authored Aristotle on the Essence of Human Thought (OUP, 2024), translated with introduction and notes Aristoteles: De motu animalium (Felix Meiner, 2018) and Aristoteles. De anima (2017), co-edited Aristoteles-Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (J.B. Metzler, 2021), Partitioning the soul: debates from Plato to Leibniz (De Gruyter, 2014) and published numerous book chapters and articles on ancient metaphysics, epistemology and logic in CUP, OUP, Brill, De Gruyter and elsewhere.

Abstract

Participation and Practical Reasoning in Plato’s Timaeus

This paper offers a critical reassessment of Myles Burnyeat’s claim that the Demiurge’s reasoning in the first part of Plato’s Timaeus is some kind of practical reasoning. I will offer a novel account of the structure of the Demiurge’s reasoning and then suggest that the Demiurge's reasoning is the viable candidate we possess for understanding how Plato might have conceived for the participation of physical entities in intelligible being.