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PLATO'S DEMIURGE AS PRECURSOR TO THE STOIC PROVIDENTIAL GOD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Nathan Powers
Nathan Powers*
Affiliation:
University at Albany (SUNY)
*
[email protected]
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Extract

There is a striking resemblance between the physical theory of Plato's Timaeus and that of the Stoics; striking enough, indeed, to warrant the supposition that the latter was substantially influenced by the former. In attempting to trace the main lines of this influence, scholars have tended to focus attention almost exclusively on the Stoics' choice and characterization of the world's ultimate constituents: a rational principle (strongly reminiscent of Plato's World Soul) that pervades and controls a material principle (reminiscent of Plato's Receptacle). In this paper, I offer some suggestions about how the early Stoics may have reacted as readers to Plato's literary presentation of the dialogue's cosmogonic myth. On this basis I consider the proposal that the crucial philosophical appeal of the Timaeus for the Stoics – and perhaps the reason it attracted their interest in the first place – lay not in its claims about the Receptacle and World Soul, but rather in its portrayal of the Demiurge who designed the cosmos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 713 - 722
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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References

1 See e.g. Krämer, H.J., Platonismus und hellenistische Philosophie (Berlin, 1971), 108–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more recently: Sedley, D., ‘The origins of Stoic god’, in Frede, D. and Laks, A. (edd.), Traditions of Theology (Leiden, 2002), 41–83Google Scholar; Gourinat, J.-B., ‘La théorie stoïcienne de la matière: entre le matérialisme et une relecture « corporaliste » du Timée’, in Viano, C. (ed.), L'Alchimie et ses racines philosophiques: la tradition grecque et la tradition arabe (Paris, 2005), 37–62Google Scholar; and Frede, M., ‘Sur la théologie stoïcienne’, in Romeyer Dherbey, G. and Gourinat, J.-B. (edd.), Les stoïciens (Paris, 2006), 212–32.Google Scholar For discussion of the dialogue's influence on Stoic ethical theory, see Betegh, G., ‘Cosmological ethics in the Timaeus and early Stoicism’, OSAPh 24 (2003), 273–302.Google Scholar

2 There are apparent verbal echoes of the Timaeus at von Arnim, H., Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (Leipzig, 3 vols., 1903–5Google Scholar; henceforth SVF), 1.88 (matter is like wax) and 2.318 (matter is the ‘receiver of all’, cf. Tim. 50b5–c2). On the debt of the Stoic theory of matter to the Timaeus, cf. Gourinat (n. 1), 40–51 and Frede (n. 1), 219–22.

3 For what it is worth, later Platonic commentators imply that Zeno did in fact derive his theory of matter from the Timaeus: cf. Calcidius in Tim. 292 (SVF 1.88).

4 For a recent discussion of Plato's possible motivations in positing a divine craftsman separate from the cosmos and so distinct from the World Soul, see Broadie, S., Nature and Divinity in Plato's Timaeus (Cambridge, 2012), 7–26.Google Scholar

5 See Dillon, J., ‘The Timaeus in the Old Academy’, in Reydam-Schils, G. (ed.), Plato's Timaeus as Cultural Icon (Notre Dame, 2003), 80–94.Google Scholar

6 See Sharples, R., ‘Counting Plato's principles’, in Ayres, L. (ed.), The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Traditions Presented to Professor I.G. Kidd (New Brunswick, 1995), 67–82Google Scholar, at 70–3; Baltussen, H., ‘Early reactions to Plato's Timaeus: polemic and exegesis in Theophrastus and Epicurus’, in Sharples, R. and Sheppard, A. (edd.), Ancient Approaches to Plato's Timaeus (London, 2003), 49–71Google Scholar, at 59–60; Sedley (n. 1), passim, esp. 45–6 and 60–5, and id., ‘Theophrastus and Epicurean physics’, in van Ophuijsen, J.M. and van Raalte, M. (edd.), Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources (New Brunswick and London, 1998), 331–54Google Scholar, at 349; A.A. Long, ‘Theophrastus and the Stoa’, ibid. 355–83, at 377; and cf. Reydam-Schils, G., Demiurge and Providence: Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato's Timaeus (Turnhout, 1999), 52–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 … δύο τὰς ἀρχὰς βούλεται ποιεῖν τὸ μὲν ὑποκείμενον ὡς ὕλην ὃ προσαγορεύει ‘πανδεχές’, τὸ δὲ ὡς αἴτιον καὶ κινοῦν ὃ περιάπτει τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τῇ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ δυνάμει (text and translation: fr. 230 Fortenbaugh et al.).

8 This line of speculation has been pressed especially by Sedley (n. 1).

9 Of course, this view itself may owe something to Zeno's reflection on Plato; for an influential account of Zeno's debt to the ontology of the Sophist in particular, see Brunchwig, J., ‘The Stoic theory of the supreme genus and Stoic ontology’, in id., Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1994), 92–157CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 118–23.

10 For recent discussion of this claim see see Johansen, T., Plato's Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 2004), 48–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burnyeat, M., ‘Eikos Muthos’, in Partenie, C. (ed.), Plato's Myths (Cambridge, 2009), 167–86Google Scholar; and Broadie (n. 4), 27–59.

11 This is clearly implied at 29a6–b1, and stated explicitly at 46e.

12 The goodness of the Demiurge is first mentioned at 29a and is elaborated upon at 30a.

13 Cf. Procl. In Ti. 1.299–319. A further likely motivation for this identification is the Aristotelian claim (argued in Metaphysics Λ) that the only activity appropriate for a god is the best activity, i.e. theoretical contemplation, together with the Platonic assumption that the Forms are the proper objects of theoretical contemplation. Cf. O'Meara, D., Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford, 1995), 70–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See e.g. Plotinus, Enn. 3.2.2, 5.8.7 and 6.7.1–15 (on which, see Thaler, N., ‘Traces of good in Plotinus's philosophy of nature’, JHPh 49 [2011], 161–80Google Scholar, at 162–7).

15 This is not to deny that the Demiurge, in thinking about (say) the Forms that correspond to natural kinds, is in some sense thinking about what a well-ordered cosmos would be like. The important point for my purposes is that on the Neoplatonist account he is not – and indeed cannot be – thinking about the well-ordered sensible object that is our cosmos, or about its sensible components; for this would be a failure of his goodness.

16 29d5–6: τὸ μὲν οὖν προοίμιον θαυμασίως ἀπεδεξάμεθά σου, τὸν δὲ δὴ νόμον ἡμῖν ἐϕεξῆς πέραινε.

17 See Power, T., The Culture of Kitharôidia (Washington DC, 2010), 187–200.Google Scholar

18 e.g. SVF 1.172; 2.528, 1108.

19 Menn, S., Plato on God as Nous (Carbondale, 1995)Google Scholar, 14 comments that διάνοια and λογισμός denote ‘primarily the act of reasoning from premises to conclusions’, but he intends thereby to distinguish the sense of these terms from that of νοεῖν (the intuitive grasp of an intelligible object) and of νοῦς (the virtue associated with reason). According to Menn (7–10), the craftsman of the Timaeus is to be identified wholly and exclusively with νοῦς; and he takes νοῦς to be the Form of the virtue of good reasoning (19–24). He does not discuss how (or whether) the dialogue's numerous attributions of διάνοια and λογισμός to the Demiurge fit with this view. Johansen (n. 10), 84–6 offers what he calls a ‘non-psychological reading of these terms’, seeing them as dramatic descriptions of craft itself, that is, as expressing in explicit form the means–end structure implicit in every craft. I agree that such a reading is possible; my point is that it is possible only despite the usual connotations of such language.

20 See Cornford, F.M., Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato Translated with a Running Commentary (London, 1937)Google Scholar, ad loc. for discussion of Timaeus' theory of proportionality.

21 πρῶτον μὲν (1) ἵνα ὅλον ὅτι μάλιστα ζῷον τέλεον ἐκ τελέων τῶν μερῶν εἴη, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις (2) ἕν, ἅτε οὐχ ὑπολελειμμένων ἐξ ὧν ἄλλο τοιοῦτον γένοιτ' ἄν, ἔτι δὲ (3) ἵν' ἀγήρων καὶ ἄνοσον ᾖ. (Translations of the Timaeus, here and below, are adapted from Zeyl.)

22 This seems to be how Taylor, A.E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928)Google Scholar, ad loc. and Cornford (n. 20), ad loc. interpret (2); cf. Sedley, D., Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley, 2007)Google Scholar, 112 and 117.

23 ἡγήσατο γὰρ αὐτὸ ὁ συνθεὶς αὔταρκες ὂν ἄμεινον ἔσεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ προσδεὲς ἄλλων.

24 αὐτάρκης δ' εἶναι λέγεται μόνος ὁ κόσμος, διὰ τὸ μόνος ἐν αὑτῷ πάντα ἔχειν ὧν δεῖται· καὶ τρέϕεται ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ αὔξεται, τῶν ἄλλων μορίων εἰς ἄλληλα καταλλαττομένων. Plutarch contrasts this passage with another from the same book at 1052c (SVF 2.604) about the gradual growth of the soul of the cosmos, which suggests that it was part of a discussion about the life cycle of the cosmos (another extant fragment of On Providence, Book 1 describes the state of the world during the conflagration in terms of being all soul and no body: SVF 2.605). In any case, Plutarch manages to find, among other putative contradictions, a contradiction in the notion that the cosmos ‘grows’ through being nourished by itself. He then attempts to turn the Timaeus against Chrysippus by asserting, in a close paraphrase of 33c7–8, that the cosmos cannot grow, since has its own waste (ϕθίσις) for nourishment; however, this is probably exactly what Chrysippus has in mind in speaking of cosmic nourishment through ‘rearrangement’. Interestingly for our purposes, Plutarch's point, however frivolous it may be, confirms that he too takes Chrysippus to be drawing upon Timaeus 33c for his argument. Cf. Bréhier, E., Chrysippe et l'ancien stoïcisme (rev. edition, Paris, 1951)Google Scholar, 148.

25 Tim. 30b1–3; Phlb. 30c9–10; Soph. 248e–9d. For contrasting views of these passages, see Cherniss, H., Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy, vol. 1 (New York, 1962), 606–7Google Scholar and Menn (n. 19), ch. 4.

26 An earlier version of this paper was presented in October 2011 at the annual meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy in New York City, where it received a number of helpful comments from the audience.