Plato’s Imaging of Man, City and God: The Timaeus in Context

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the question of how Plato conceived of the relationship between theology, political theory, and human transformation by examining the previously underappreciated concept of the theoeikelon andreikelon ("god-like image of man") in Republic 6.501b as the unifying framework connecting the Republic's political philosophy with the Timaeus's cosmogony. Through close textual analysis of the Greek combined with cultural contextualization—particularly regarding the Panathenaic festival setting and fourth-century sculptural revolution—this dissertation argues that eikonopoiia provides the ontological, epistemological, and soteriological framework unifying macrocosmic cosmogony, mesocosmic political life and microcosmic human psychology. The study demonstrates three interconnected theses: first, that Timaeus functions simultaneously as rhapsodic poet and lawgiver, composing a new theological nomos (strain/law) modelled on the musicomathematical ratios of the World Soul that replaces traditional Homeric-Hesiodic poetry; second, that the Timaean discourse itself embodies an "agalmatic" (statue-like) structure simultaneously depicting the Divine Macrocosm, the tripartite ideal constitution, and the properly ordered human body-soul compound; and third—most innovatively—that the entire cosmogonic discourse operates through the dynamics of oneiromantic image-making described in Timaeus's account of hepatic divination (70d ff), where rational nous guides sub-rational mortal elements of the soul through dream-imagery. This oneiromantic hermeneutic reveals previously unrecognized connections between the Myth of Metals, the Allegory of the Cave, and Timaeus's account of Chora as “cosmic mould." Ultimately the main claim of this dissertation is that Plato's political theory cannot be separated from his theology because his conception of the ideal polity is centred on the philosopher-kings acting as microcosmic ‘demiurges’ imitating the Demiurge's eikonopoiia.