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3 results

  • Chapter 2 - The Ensouled Cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus

  • Edited by Ricardo Salles, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
  • Book:
    Cosmology and Biology in Ancient Philosophy
    Published online:
    21 May 2021
    Print publication:
    10 June 2021, pp 29-45

  • Summary

    Plato’s cosmology in the Timaeus can be seen as being framed in biological terms, since it claims the universe as a whole to be a living being, more specifically, a created god. In this chapter, I show that the central assumption that leads Plato to understand the created cosmos as a living being is the idea that the world is as good as possible. In a second step, I want to show that this assumption of the world’s bestness is also responsible for two important twists to the biological framing Plato uses. First, being as good as possible also implies that the world is self-sufficient, which means that many of our common biological notions are of no relevance for an account of the cosmos as a living being. Secondly, I show that while Plato gives an account of all kinds of living beings, his assumption of the bestness of the world leads him to be ultimately interested only in rational living beings. Accordingly, what starts out in biological terms turns into a form of rational psychology and rational theology. This will finally lead to a discussion whether Plato works with a consistent notion of life in the Timaeus.

  • Kant’s Critical Theory of the Best Possible World

  • Maya Krishnan
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 26 / Issue 1 / March 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 October 2020, pp. 27-51
    Print publication:
    March 2021

  • In this article I argue that the Critical Kant endorses the claim that God creates the best possible world, and that this claim is best understood as committing him to the view that God creates an infinitely valuable world. Kant’s understudied Critical theory of the best possible world differs significantly from his better-known quasi-Leibnizian pre-Critical account insofar as it uses an axiological rather than ontological metric for the goodness of worlds. The axiological metric introduces unique challenges for a Kantian account of the best possible world. These challenges are in turn resolved via an infinite value interpretation.

  • Aquinas and the Problem of No Best World

  • B. Kyle Keltz
  • Journal:
    New Blackfriars / Volume 99 / Issue 1082 / July 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2024, pp. 503-519
    Print publication:
    July 2018
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  • Thomas Aquinas is often mentioned in the debate regarding whether God must create a best possible world. Contemporary philosophers usually place Aquinas alongside philosophers who also believe that there can be no best possible world. However, contemporary philosophers have been inconsistent in their understanding of Aquinas’ position. Some have placed him in the same category as Gottfried Leibniz, agreeing that God must create one best possible world.