Plato in Theophrastus' De Sensibus

Abstract

T HE De Sensibus of Theophrastus is our chief authority for the physiological psycholog) of the Presocratics and our only authority for many details that throw light on other aspects of their tlheories. Its value is impaired by numerous difficulties in the text. Some of these are clearly due to danmage suffered in transmission, and they may be solved by further study of the manuscripts. From the common errors of the fourteenth century P and F, for example, it is possible to reconstruct some of the characteristics of earlier manuscripts that caused the errors, and thereby to recover the earlier readings. But at best such reconstructions take us back only to an earlier minuscule form of the text, and there remain many problems for which no palaeographical solution seems likely. If these are to be solved, it must be on evidence from other sources. The best evidence would, of course, be the original writings of the philosophers whose theories are discussed and the references to these theories by Theophrastus in his other works. However, few of the fragments of the Presocratics have a direct hearing on the more troublesome passages, and, aside from the account of Democritus' theory of the savors in Book VI of the Dc Causis Planta:um, there is little in Theophrastus that helps. For this purpose what is otherwise the least useful part of the De Sensibus nmay be the most useful, namely, the discussion of Plato's theory. This is based on the Timaeus. If Theophrastus' treatment of the Timaeus may be assumed to be typical of his treatment of the writings of all his predecessors, then a compari,on of the parallel passages of the Timaeus and the De Sensibus may give a general indication of what is to be expected in the De Sensibus as a whole and may suggest methods of interpretation or restoration that may be applied to parts of the work in whiclh no primary evidence for the doctrines has been preserved. That Theophrastus did use the Timaeus, and no other work of Plato, cannot be doubted. He follows the order of Plato's presentation so exactly and with so many verbal similarities that, as Stratton has observed, one mav almost see him at work with his Timaeus spread out before him. These similarities have already been put to use in removing several errors from the De Sensibus. At the other extreme, sometimes the De Sensibus is directly opposed to the Timaeus, and the difference can hardly be due to scribal error as when Theophrastus says that Plato gave no