Plato's Timaeus was of enormous significance to Galen's thought on the body's structure and functioning and a key source of inspiration for his teleological world view. This is the first critical English translation of two previously inaccessible readings of the text which also shaped later Islamicate engagements with Plato's dialogue.
To Galen, Plato was the great authority in philosophy but also had important things to say on health, disease, and the human body. The Timaeus was of enormous significance to Galen's thought on the body's structure and functioning as well as being a key source of inspiration for his teleological world view, in which the idea of cosmic design by a personified creative Nature, the Craftsman, plays a fundamental role. This volume provides critical English translations of key readings of the Timaeus by Galen that were previously accessible only in fragmentary Greek and Arabic and Arabo-Latin versions. The introductions highlight Galen's creative interpretations of the dialogue, especially compared to other imperial explanations, and show how his works informed medieval Islamicate writers' understanding of it. The book should provoke fresh attention to texts that have been unjustly marginalized in the history of Platonism in both the west and Middle East.
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The first critical English translation of two previously inaccessible readings by Galen of Plato's highly important and influential Timaeus.
Introduction; Translation; List of departures from the editions of
Walzer/Kraus, Schröder et al; List of titles, abbreviations, editions and
online resources of Galenic works; Bibliography; English-Arabic glossary to
the compendium and the commentary; Arabic word index to the compendium; Greek
word index to the commentary; Arabic word index to the commentary; Index of
names; Index of texts and passages cited; General index.
AILEEN R. DAS is an Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is an intellectual historian interested in the disciplining of science from Greco-Roman antiquity and the Islamicate middle ages to modernity. Her first book, Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato's Timaeus (2020), won the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit in 2021 from the Society of Classical Studies. PAULINE KOETSCHET is a Researcher at the French Centre for National Research/French Institute for the Near East. A historian of philosophy trained in Arabic and Classics, she is interested in the formative period of Arabic philosophy and its relation to rational theology and medicine. More specifically, her research explores the reception of Galen in Arabic, as physician as well as a philosopher. In 2019 she published an edition, with a French translation and an introduction, of the Doubts About Galen by Ab Bakr al-Rz. MARK SCHIEFSKY is the C. Lois P. Grove Professor of the Classics at Harvard University and Director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies. His research focuses on the interaction of science and philosophy in the ancient world in various domains, including medicine, mechanics, mathematics, and astronomy. He has directed research projects supported by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is the author of Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine (2005) among other works on ancient philosophy and science.
