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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
The questions of divinity and of ultimate causation are not really separable in considering Plato. He did, of course, criticize prevailing conceptions of deity and showed himself, like Socrates in the Apology, as no atheist but a believer in the gods ‘in a way none of his accusers believed in them’ (35d). In his τύποì περὶϑεoλoγίaς in Republic 2 379a he challenges the legends and demands a reformed theology for educational purposes. There has been a tendency to ignore the more simply religious belief in a personal providential power which Plato seems to have inherited from Socrates (for one may at least trust Xenophon here as supporting evidence).
1. See Politicus 269d5 ff. and my remarks in the introduction to Plato’s Statesman, 103—8; also Laws 903d6 and the whole passage surrounding this phrase.
2. The reader should turn to the volume on Later Greek and Earlier Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1967).
3. Plato, the Written and Unwritten Doctrines, 350—412.
4. An important but controversial article is Morrow, Glenn, ‘Necessity and Persuasion in Plato’s Timaeus’ PhR 59 (1950), 147 Google Scholar-63.
5. His chapter (pp. 59—110) occupies a quarter of his book, and perhaps offers the best résume of the present state of the question in English.
6. I take ‘life and being’ in the previous sentence to mean no more than this. I do not think we are to infer that the Forms are alive.
7. The attempt to avoid such a conclusion leads to turning Life and Soul into Forms, as Findlay would do. See the second paragraph on p. 459 of his book.
8. I have also written on ‘Plato’s Account of Divinity’ in Durham University Journal 41 (1967—8), 26—73 Google Scholar, and, in a more formal way, on ‘Plato’s Concept of Deity’ in Zetesis (Antwerp and Utrecht, 1973), 115–123 Google Scholar, the Festschrift for E. de Strycker.