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Chapter 5 - Begotten and Made

Creation as Cosmogony in Middle Platonism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2021

By
George Boys-Stones
Edited by
Ricardo Salles
Ricardo Salles
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
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Summary

Emphasis on the ‘craftsmanlike’ character of creation in the Timaeus can give the impression that the cosmos is no more an ‘animal’ than Dr Frankenstein’s monster. But Middle Platonists took more seriously the biological implications of the claim that the god is the world’s father as well as its maker, implanting a soul in matter which (as in all animals) brings the cosmos to maturity through its own creative agency. Entailments of the view are that the world soul is first and foremost the ‘nutritive’ soul of the cosmos and that the soul must be a structural feature of the cosmic body rather than a distinct substance.

Keywords

PlatoTimaeusdemiurgecreated godsworld soulAristotlemetaphysicsGodcausalitymotion
Type
Chapter
Information
Cosmology and Biology in Ancient Philosophy
From Thales to Avicenna
 , pp. 85 - 100
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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