8 - God and nature

Summary

Plato's God

In many places in his work, Plato writes about a God who brings the world into being. He is often envisaged as the craftsman of the universe, and is therefore sometimes referred to by modern scholars as the Demiurge (from the Greek for “craftsman”). However, Plato often refers to him simply as “the God” (hotheos), and while, as we shall see, he is not exactly like the God of traditional theism, they are similar enough to make it reasonable to call them by the same name. Plato may well have played a major part in making belief in a single supreme God more widespread; philosophers after him, including Aristotle, the Stoics and later Platonists, took up the idea and developed it in various ways.

The idea of a creator God was not a widespread one in Greek thought in Plato's time. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that Socrates believed in such a God (see Xen. Mem. I.4, IV.3), and it is likely, therefore, that Plato had such a belief from the start of his career. Certainly the creator seems to be present in the Republic, although he makes only two brief appearances there, as “the craftsman of the senses” (Resp. 507c) and as “the craftsman of the heavens” (530a). However, it is in Plato's later works that God becomes a central figure.