Moral responsability in Plato’s philosophy. Commentary on “Timaeus” 86D-87B

This paper explores various interpretations of moral responsibility in Plato's Timaeus, addressing the puzzle posed by Taylor on the relationship between determinism and human agency. Four main solutions are analyzed: the denial of authorship, the pedagogical approach, the afterlife theory, and the nuanced causality interpretation; it is argued that all these ultimately fall into the same determinism they aim to resolve. Finally, a fifth interpretative approach, the narrative approach, is proposed, suggesting that the determinism in the Timaeus relates to the narrative aspects of the dialogue: Timaeus, as a politician, discusses human nature as something determinable by politics, not in an absolute sense.