Schelling’s Reading of Plato’s “Timaeus”

In this dialogue, Tim Jackson and I return almost to the beginning of philosophy–“almost” in the sense that Plato himself was already responding to a few centuries of philosophizing by the physiologoi. His dialogue Timaeus represents a synthesis rather than a pure start in the evolution of philosophy. He attempted to reconcile different positions and perspectives into a comprehensive vision. He brought his theory of forms into relation with necessity—ananke. This necessity isn’t deterministic in today’s sense; it’s closer to chance, representing the indefinite multiplicity and resistance to intellect. The illness that causes the fourth dialogue partner’s absence, for example (see the first couple lines of Timaeus), embodies this perfectly, as sickness disrupts the integrity of our organism. Those first few lines of the dialogue (and the ensuing discussion of the Receptacle) also resonate with Jung’s notion of the missing fourth, the numinous and unconscious aspect of nature, that which can’t be subdued intellectually due to its irreducibly chaotic generativity.

Tim and I plan to devote an entire session to Plato’s Timaeus itself at some point, but in this dialogue we focused on Schelling’s 1794 Timaeus essay and a contemporary article by Tyler Tritten titled “On Matter: Schelling’s Anti-Platonic Reading of the Timaeus.”

Schelling emphasizes an inversion of Neoplatonism, giving priority to matter’s generative capacity. Instead of passive matter shaped by forms, Schelling sees the Chora or Receptacle as actively self-organizing and self-generating. Schelling reframes Plato’s metaphysics in light of Kant’s critical philosophy, highlighting an implicit transcendental insight: ideas alone can’t master materiality fully. There’s always a remainder, an irreducible unruly becoming that resists intellectual reduction.

This is where theory and myth intersect. Plato offers us a “likely story,” acknowledging the inherent difficulty in providing absolute certainty about ultimate origins. Schelling even prioritizes soul over intellect, suggesting that life or soul precedes intellect. This reverses traditional emanationist hierarchies, placing organic self-movement at the center of cosmology.

But Plato posited an eternal, complete cosmic soul that contrasts sharply with incomplete organisms like ourselves. That tension—between completeness and incompleteness—highlights Plato’s ambivalence about novelty. His ideal cosmos risks becoming a closed circle, a “moving image of eternity,” akin to the later deterministic views of Newton and Laplace. Schelling and Whitehead go beyond Plato by affirming ongoing cosmogenesis and perpetual incompleteness.