Optical metaphors and Plato's natural philosophy

The article defends the thesis that interpreting Plato's natural philosophy it is useful to take the terms horatos and aoratos in two distinct meanings: “observable” and “unobservable” (i. e. “present” or “absent”, “assumed” or “not assumed” by the observer), and “visible” and “invisible” (i. e. “available” or “non-available” in the process of seeing). This approach helps to perceive new sides of Plato's ideas, implicitly present in the “Timaeus”, which allows interpreting it in both anthropomorphic and anti-anthropomorphic senses.