In the Timaeus Plato’s main speaker presents reality as comprised of two linked orders – that of eternal being, and that of temporal being. The latter is “being which is continually coming to be, but never really is.” Into this reality we are shown the soul as a strangely amphibious nature – in some way eternal, in other ways temporal. Plato suggests that the soul has a role to play in the beautification and ordering of the manifest cosmos precisely because of its intermediate state. We will read sections of the Timaeus and explore what this means for how we live. Please download the extracts here: Being becoming soul.
Admission is free, but we do encourage those who are able to donate £5 in order to cover our costs, either as cash on the day or donating through this website
Most of these evenings are self-contained and every effort is made to make them accessible to the newcomer, while allowing the great profundity of the Platonic tradition to step forward and speak to us at whatever level our present understanding sits. Some of these sessions are coupled together, in order to give us the space to examine more fully particular texts and themes, but even here we will ensure that if those attending have missed the first of the two sessions a recap of what has gone before will help all participants to pick up the main threads of the theme.
The Trust has run similar activities for some 18 years, and in our experience they allow the most profound questions concerning human life, the nature of reality, and our interactions, to be explored at once both seriously and with good cheer. Our aim is to provide a forum for honest and straight-forward enquiry, but which is unafraid to explore inward-moving paths too often neglected by modern schools of thought.
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