Apeiron Volume 46 Issue 3 2013 [Doi 10.1515%2Fapeiron-2012-0068] Mason, Andrew -- The Nous Doctrine in Plato’s Thought

Andrew Mason

The Nous Doctrine in Platos ThoughtAbstract: The article argues that the doctrine that nous rules the world plays adecisive role in the development of Platos thought, despite the strong critiqueof Anaxagoras in the Phaedo and the absence of the doctrine in other middledialogues such as the Republic. It addresses the Timaeus as a transformativerehabilitation of the nous doctrine, through the world-soul, the demiurge, andthe class of other gods. It then considers the ways this schema is modified inlater dialogues (Statesman, Philebus, Laws) in light of the suppression of theproblem of natural disaster in the Timaeus.

Keywords: Nous, Plato, Anaxagoras, world-soul, demiurge

Andrew Mason: 1 Island Lane, Sapphire Beach 2450, Australia,E-mail: [email protected]

The doctrine that nous, intelligence, governs the world1 is arguably no less deci-sive than the many other (Socratic, Heraclitean, Parmenidean, Pythagorean)sources that led Plato to the thinking of his own thought. It is affirmed in theCratylus, and more famously in the Phaedo, though it is clear in both that Platodoes not yet see how to ground the doctrine in terms of the metaphysical posi-tion announced in these first two middle dialogues. It has a major role to playlater in the Timaeus, where Plato reinscribes Anaxagoras world-ruling nous asthe world-soul and underwrites this with the nous of the demiurge in an at-tempt to provide that grounding, and it is in play in a number of later dialo-gues, particularly the Philebus, Statesman and Laws. On the other hand, thedoctrine does not figure in the later middle dialogues in which Plato furtherdevelops his metaphysical position.

The purposes of this essay are to try to explain this trajectory, and in con-nection with that, to clarify the essential role of the nous doctrine in Platosthought. While a major motive for Platos Forms-based metaphysics is to groundthe possibility of knowledge,2 an ontology that makes knowledge possible is not

1 The doctrine for which Anaxagoras is famous, but which can be considered as implicit inmany earlier phusikoi, and quite explicit in the case of Heraclitus, albeit differently expressedand understood. That Plato saw it this way is indicated at Philebus 28c and 30d.2 As stated by Aristotle at Metaphysics 1078b 1318.

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enough. It also has to be moral, indeed the basis for morality in the humansphere. The belief in the essential orderedness and goodness of the world as awhole not only motivates but shapes Platos thought, including his thought ofForms. But Forms alone cannot satisfy this need, and insofar as the nous doc-trine is indispensible here it is not an optional accessory to Platos philosophyproper but belongs to its heart and soul.

As for why something so decisive for the elaboration of Platos metaphysicsdrops out of view in the dialogues after the Phaedo, the explanation runs, Ibelieve, broadly as follows. The Cratylus affirmed the doctrine in the context ofan investigation of flow as a principle underlying the (de facto) giving of names,on the thesis that things which go with the flow were given good names, andthings that impede it bad ones. But it also recoiled from this, resorting to a car-icature of mere flux which is a far cry from the regular, cyclical motion thatwas actually in question, and which masks a deeper ambivalence: a genuineattraction to the idea of a natural flow of life, but also an anxiety that it pro-vides no firm guarantee of a just cosmic order, and no firm ground of humanmorality if the passions no less than the virtues can be seen as going with it.It was to secure this guarantee, not just the possibility of knowledge, that Platorecoiled into the doctrine of unchanging Forms deemed incommensurable withflow. This is then developed in the middle period in lieu of the nous doctrine:the Republic even seeks to ground natural justice in the realm of Forms. But thisis because Plato does not yet see a way to reconcile the doctrine with his meta-physics, given the antithesis between flow and Forms. That this is provisional isclear from the fact that in the Timaeus Plato seeks that way,3 as he must, sinceeven if Forms furnish ultimate grounds of justice, they do not account for thejustness of a world in motion. Moreover, while Forms are intelligible they can-not yield the intelligence required by a metaphysics of the good, which wouldensure that whatever happens does so for the best. The nous doctrine is thus notrenounced but held in reserve until Plato can find a way to accommodate it.

Section 1 of this essay will examine the other appearance of the doctrineearly in the middle period, in the Phaedo. Understanding why Platos remarksthere about Anaxagoras doctrine are both affirmative and sharply critical willhelp to reinforce the view of Platos trajectory sketched out above and will cast

3 Regarding flow, it is arguable that an implicit positive rehabilitation is already in play in thespindle of necessity in Republic X, and an explicitly positive one is found in the Phaedrusapropos of love (251bd, 255cd). More to the point, the Phaedrus is moving towards the world-soul thesis (see 245ce, 246b), though its conception of soul as the prime origin of motionand as governing the whole cosmos stays at the level of soul as a class, without yet imputinga singular soul to the cosmos itself. As such it is closer to Platos position in the Laws.

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light on why Platos rehabilitation of the nous doctrine in the Timaeus takes theform it does. In the later sections we will address that rehabilitation and themodifications it undergoes in subsequent dialogues.

Beforehand a word is required about how the Greeks grasped nous in gener-al and apropos the nous doctrine. Three basic senses can be distinguished4:1) seeing with the minds eye, in particular grasping the implicit meaning of asituation; 2) logical reasoning; 3) cunning (metis) and practical reason as a capa-city to learn from the past, to devise plans to avoid trouble or realise a goal. Wefind Platonic versions of all three senses, but the first is fundamental. The see-ing of Forms, both in themselves and their own entailments and in their sensu-ous embodiments, underlies the second sense in Plato, since the two kinds ofreasoning distinguished in the Line simile (Republic 510d511c) involve seeingForms in just those two different ways. Note that the Form of the Good under-pins Platos inflections of both senses.5 This is also the case with the thirdsense: anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have seen [] the Good (517c), rather than simply discerning his own possible advan-tage at others expense. This distinguishes Platonic nous from Homeric metis.

These inflections Plato gives the three senses of nous inform his appropria-tion of the nous doctrine. Above all, nous looks essentially to the Good in estab-lishing or maintaining cosmic order. We will also see Plato draw on the Lineschema and impute both types of reasoning to the world-souls maintenance oforder. But care is needed in how we incorporate practical wisdom into thenous doctrine. Besides the fact that the context here is evidently not the tacticalad hockery of Homeric political machination, Platos craftsman god does notlearn from the past in forming his plans. Likewise, as Sedley argues, the cosmicfarmer that nous is for Anaxagoras plans and knows the outcomes of its actionsat the outset.6 In later Plato we will come across a sense in which the world-soul corrects its mistakes, although not strictly in the sense that it learns fromthem.

4 For the first two see Kurt von Fritz, Nous, Noein, and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philo-sophy (Excluding Anaxagoras), in Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics (Princeton: Princeton Uni-versity Press 1993), 236. For the third, which von Fritz misses, see See J. H. Lesher, MindsKnowledge and Powers of Control in Anaxagoras DK B12, Phronesis 40/2 (1995) 125142, at133 ff.5 The seeing of other Forms, like Justice, is of no real benefit unless supported by a vision ofthe Good (505ab), and the latter is also the first principle from which pure reasoning or dia-lectic thinks everything else (511b).6 David Sedley, Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press2007), 21.

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1 Platos critique of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo

In the Phaedo Socrates recalls first his delight upon first hearing of Anaxagorasclaim that it is nous which brings to order and causes all things ( : 97bc), and then his disappointment upon a close exam-ination of Anaxagoras book. The initially affirmative response is not mererhetorical posturing, a case of setting up an intellectual competitor for a fall. Itestablishes a position thought should return to after the critique, only one thatPlato does not see how to return to in the Phaedo or indeed until the Timaeus.The critique does not touch this position, but concerns Anaxagoras failure tohold fast to it. Socrates, and with him Plato, is sincere when he says that Ana-xagoras seemed a teacher of causation after my own mind (97d), that his doc-trine seemed somehow right or felicitous ( : 97c), that theworld as a whole is well off ( ) if it is true.

What pleased Socrates is the thought that, if nous is the cause of every-thing, it must order and dispose each thing [] in whichever way is best[] for it (97c). The great appeal of the doctrine is its promise of a caus-ality underwritten by the good not just in the sense of what is for the best over-all, but for each thing. It also promised an attractively simple approach to cau-sation, for it meant that when one wished to discover why something is as it isor came to be or ceased to be, the only thing one had to consider was the bestway for that thing to be or act or be acted on (97cd). Socrates makes his pointconcrete with some cosmological examples. He wants first of all to knowwhether the earth is flat or round and if it is at the centre of the cosmos, and tolearn the relative speeds and orbits of the sun, moon and stars. He assumesAnaxagoras will not only state all this but explain the reason and necessity( ) for it by saying how it is better that it be so andwhat better means ( : 97e). This is the only kind of cause Socrates wants to hear about, becauseit is the kind implicitly promised by the doctrine one that explains not justwhy it is best for each of these bodies to be just as it is, but also, as a causecommon to all ( ), what is good for all in common ( : 98b) and underwrites the goodness of the whole.

It is worth pausing to ask how well Anaxagoras is read here, and whetherPlato is right to have these expectations. The cause of everything is a verybroad phrase, and taken too literally it does not exactly reflect Anaxagorasview. However, the focus is on nous as a cause of order, and Platos reference toit at 97c as neatly summarises Anaxagorasview that the pre-eminent cosmic things like the sun, moon and earth are cre-ated through the ordering revolution which separates out the primordial com-

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mixture. But what about the promise Plato extrapolates? It is never expresslysaid by Anaxagoras, in the surviving fragments, that nous orders things for thebest overall and for each thing. Even so, why would he say the world is ruledby intelligence if not to affirm that it is well-ordered and good? Sedleys claimthat this is implicit seems correct, if as he argues (splendidly) nous in Anaxa-goras is a cosmic farmer concerned with creating the ideal hothouse conditionsfor life to flourish.7 Sedley also suggests that Anaxagoras can comfortably leaveit implicit that nous works for the best because, unlike Plato, he does not con-front an antiteleological intellectual climate that forces him to defend this view.That may be so, but there is more to it, as I think Sedley would agree. Plato, inshort, demands more of the nous doctrine than Anaxagoras. For Sedley, as anyfarmer is concerned with harvesting the best, the main purpose of Anaxagorasnous in creating worlds is to generate human beings as the best and most intel-ligent of living things, the best vehicles for nous itself to occupy. He admitsthat its ultimate why here may be pure self-interest, that nous does all itdoes because it wants more of itself.8 In contrast, what underlies Platos expec-tations of the doctrine is the demand of a fundamentally moral universe thatmay serve as a model and basis for human morality and moral betterment. Isuggest that this largely explains the severity of the critique that is to come.

When it came to the crunch, Socrates complains, Anaxagoras made no useof nous and imputed no causality to it for the ordering of things, but lapsedinto a banal and absurd material causality based on the so-called elements(98bc). This, he says, is like someone saying that everything Socrates does hedoes with intelligence (), only to default, when it comes to stating thecauses of these actions, to the mere mechanics involved, explaining the factthat he is sitting by recourse to the parts of his body (bones, sinews, etc.) andtheir characteristics, movements and relationships (98cd). Socrates, of course,is sitting in his prison cell. The true cause of this has nothing to do with hisbones and sinews, but is simply that he thought it better to do so, since theAthenians thought it better to condemn me and it is juster and nobler to stayand suffer any penalty the city may impose than to run away (98e99a). Atthis moment, when he might question whether there is any justice in the world,Socrates would exemplify the way that nous should be deemed responsible forthe disposition of matter. At the same time, we are tempted to ask whether Plato

7 Especially striking is Sedleys point that, as the sun and moon are much closer to earth thanthey would be if the centrifugal separation were left to play itself out naturally, nous must putthem where they are for the sake of agricultural societies reliant on the sun and the lunarcalendar: Creationism and its Critics, 21 ff.8 Ibid., 24.




is now proceeding, not from the macrocosm down as before, but from Socratesto the macrocosm, and expecting the latter perhaps to be like him.

However, Socrates proceeds to qualify his claim that it is absurd ()to call such things as bones and sinews causes. It is true, he says, that withoutsuch things I could not have acted as I saw fit (99a), yet it is careless to say itis because of them ( ) that I do what I do, if I do it with nous. They arenot in reality ( : 99b) causes, but conditions without which a cause cannever have efficacy ( ). Most peo-ple, he goes on to say, fail to observe this distinction and wrongly grasp what isauxiliary to the cause as the cause itself. Clearly he thinks Anaxagoras and thephusikoi more generally lazily (: 99b) acquiesce in this tendency andlikewise grope in the dark when it comes to stating reasons for the cosmosbeing as it is:

That is why one puts a vortex [] around the earth to make it stay put beneath theheavens, and another props it up on a pedestal of air, as if it were a flat trough. As for apower which disposes things such that the way they now stand is the best, they neitherlook for it nor believe it has any daimonic force [ ]. Rather, they thinksome day they will find a more powerful and immortal and all-embracing Atlas, and intruth they do not think that anything is bound together and embraced by the good andthe needful [ ]. (99bc)

There are a number of things to discuss here, although the essential point,neatly conveyed with the Atlas metaphor, is quite simple: the substitution,apropos cosmological causation, of physical might for greatness of purpose. Onthe question of which two phusikoi Plato singles out, it is usual to suppose Em-pedocles is meant in the first case, Anaximenes (and following him Anaxagoras)in the second. But Anaxagoras does think a vortex, and it seems reasonable tosuppose it has a centripetal aspect which keeps the earth in place as well as thecentrifugal one by which the heavenly bodies are thrown off from earth. It isalso significant that both theories had later atomistic adherents: Leucippus andDemocritus respectively. We can be sure that Plato has this in mind. Anaxa-goras et al. are implicitly being held responsible for paving the way for the full-blown antiteleological orientation of the atomists (as they will be explicitly inLaws X).

Another question is what consequences Platos teleological stipulationshave for the two physical theories themselves. Are they non-teleological andipso facto wrong, or plausible but inadequately (that is, non-teleologically)grounded? Plato certainly rejects the second theory. When he declares his ownview at 108e109a, he takes for granted that the earth is spherical and in thecentre of the cosmos, and argues that it does not need air or any other suchforce [] to prevent it falling. It is held in place () by the uniformity

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of the heaven on all sides and by its own equipoise, so that nothing inclines itmore or less in any direction. But what about the vortex theory? It seems in-cluded in any other such force, and that Plato rejects it too is supported notonly by Cratylus 439c, where the word was used in connection with thedismissal of flow as an ontological fantasy, but from the argument at Timaeus57e that motion cannot occur in conditions of uniformity. The inference mightbe drawn that there is no vortex motion around the earth, but this is not thepoint Plato is making in the Timaeus. Not that the Timaeus holds to a vortextheory; its theory is meant to account for complexities which a sheer vortex isunable to explain. But it does contain something akin to the earth being held inplace by a vortex: the claim that the revolution of the whole cosmos hems inthe four material bodies in their constant motion and change (58a), preventingthis from shaking the receptacle as had occurred in the primordial chaos. Notethat it is the world-souls ruling and most intelligent motion that is responsiblehere. A stable core of earth at the cosmic centre is not just a consequence of thework of nous but a reason for it.

Looked at in this way, Platos beef is not with the vortex as such. We haveto look past the Phaedo to see this clearly, for here Plato is still stuck on thedichotomy of flow and the stable and unchanging which we see at the end ofthe Cratylus, and not ready to think a stability in and through constant circularmotion. He is prepared to discuss cosmic shape and structure, but is unsurehow to bring in cosmic motion without spoiling everything. The issue with thevortex theory is rather that this mechanical how of the earths stability is offeredup instead of the why and as if it were the why. To the claim that Anaxagorastakes it as read that it is good the earth is stabilised and that nous acts for thisreason, the response, again, must be that Plato demands more than this.

In this connection the passage at 99bc makes two claims which should betreated as one, for the second claim, (), elaborates the first, that nous as a power disposing things for the besthas daimonic force, . Much hinges on how the words and are understood here. Firstly, must not be renderedsupernatural, for that tacitly assumes the very conception of nature, as in itselflacking a binding and ordering power of good, that Plato is castigating. Nous asa daimonic power is not beyond nature but in some way immanent in it, even ifnot mixed with anything else as Anaxagoras himself said. That cosmic nous isdaimonic principally means two things: that it sees or knows in an extraordinaryway, and that it advises, steers or persuades in a manner that is morally bindingand apt to elicit awed assent. Besides Socrates personal testimony to this effectwith regard to his or divine sign, Plato makes this point at Cratylus398bc. The spirits () are knowing (); knowing the good and




being good, they point it out to the mortals they guide through life. They aregiven this tutelary role later in the Phaedo itself (107e). Also relevant is the ne-gativity of Socrates . It only restrains him from doing something, andthereby signals that what he is thinking of doing is wrong. It is conceivable thatin substituting for at Phaedo 99c Plato is making a connectionwith , , restrain. The point is not just that physically restrainingthings is what cosmic nous must do in ordering them. For nous to have daimo-nic force it must restrain morally as well, for otherwise the cosmic order ismerely the chess-board on which the Alcibiadeses of the world conduct theirmachinations. This is why it matters more deeply to Plato why nous acts. ForPlatos nous it could never be enough that intelligent beings thrive and multi-ply. Cosmic order is not simply there for that purpose, but so that men may seeit and see themselves as part of it, and make this foundational for their ownactions, particularly in the sense of refraining from acts that are inimical to it.

This is exactly the tenor of the second claim, with its stress on the binding() and holding () of all in the togetherness (-, -) of what is goodand needful. The implied cosmological sense, for all Platos reluctance to speakopenly here of cosmic motion, is that for things in general to be disposed forthe best the motion of one celestial body must be held in check by the others,so that all of them are bound to each other and prevented from straying fromtheir respective courses. But again Plato means more than this. That the goodand the needful is the subject of the verbs and could lead usto think that things, starting with the celestial bodies, are simply passive recipi-ents of those actions, but this would be a mistake. Plato does not say it here,but the reason for his alacrity elsewhere in deeming the heavenly bodies intelli-gent divine agencies is that he needs them to actively take up the good andneedful as their own concern rather than just be subject to it as mindless lumpsof matter. Things are not just bound by the good but bound to it, whenever theyare such (i.e., ensouled) that this is possible. For this reason Tredinnicks ren-dering of as a binding moral obligation is by no means inapposite,since the word clearly answers to Platos demand for a moral universe. But is also cognate with , awe, and , extraordinary, uncanny, over-whelming in power. It therefore has an inner connection with , and ismeant to convey the same sense of a moral voice that shakes one up andsolicits a sense of what is for the best, what is needful, as the ultimate stan-dard of thought and action.

All these words are put in Socrates mouth, yet even if he did in fact comeacross someone reading Anaxagoras one day and respond in the way described,they clearly belong to Plato. For while the passage ends (99d) with a typicalSocratic disavowal of any knowledge of the daimonic power nous should be,

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the subsequent account of a makeshift approach9 to causation in the absenceof such knowledge is no less characteristically Platonic. It explains causationsolely on the basis of Forms, and makes no attempt to link their supposed cau-sal power back to nous, or even to the stipulation that a cause proper be apower which disposes things for the best. But that is because Plato cannot seeclearly how to make this connection, and it is for just this reason that his ap-proach is a makeshift one.10 In resorting to the makeshift Plato remains in muchthe same impasse that marked the end of the Cratylus, where he could see nolikeness between unchanging Forms and flow. Yet he has to pursue that like-ness if he is to tackle the question of causation in a more adequate way, for thetwin reasons adduced previously. Forms cannot account for a world in motion,and are not intelligent but rather that on the basis of which some intelligenceor other causes and orders things. That is essentially how Plato will try to recon-cile the nous doctrine with Forms in the Timaeus.11

2 The Timaeus as a rehabilitation of the nousdoctrine

Platos rehabilitation of the nous doctrine is threefold. It is the world-soul thatcorresponds most directly to the doctrine in Anaxagoras sense that the world is

9 (99d): literally second voyage, but proverbially next best way. Both theinferiority of this approach as a substitute for the teleological one Plato would take if he could,and its temporariness as an expedient to which he will not cleave forever, justify adoptingTredennicks rendering, makeshift approach. Considerable controversy surrounds whetherPlato is still talking about causal reasons (aitiai) or logical ones, as claimed by Vlastos, Rea-sons and Causes in the Phaedo, The Philosophical Review 78/3 (July, 1969). I am unable to gointo this in detail here, but it seems to me that while Plato is certainly speaking primarily ofForms as logical reasons in the Phaedo, he wants them to be causes too.10 The stipulation itself is not abandoned in the Phaedo. Implicit in its fable of rewards andpunishments after death is a belief in an intelligent power that oversees these things justly,however unclear it remains where this has its seat. This is made more or less explicit at 67b,where it is said that for someone who is not pure to attain to the realm of purity after death, , would presumably not be right, or, as Tredennick translates, drawing on as (goddess of) law and order, would no doubt be a breach of universal justice. Withoutdisputing the crux of Tredennicks translation, I take to have the much softer sense ofwhat Smyths Grammar (section 1801) calls a doubtful negation.11 After the Republic fudged around the problem. Already there Forms are no longer spoken ofas causes, with the exception of the Form of the Good, which is bizarrely held up as the causeof other Forms.




governed by nous from within, although Anaxagoras nous is not divinised orconceived as a soul of the world grasped as a living thing. But nous also figuresas the demiurge that ordered the world (on the basis of Forms) and implanted asoul in its body, and a class of other gods created by the demiurge are given arole as the intelligence responsible for populating the world with mortal livingthings after the demiurges model. The demiurge is the condition of Platos revi-val of the nous doctrine, inasmuch as it plays transcendental guarantor of thegoodness of the world-soul, of cosmic self-regulation.12 Nevertheless, it is notthe demiurge that rules the world, but a nous immanent in the world itself. Pla-to also needs this immanent nous, for his need of a moral universe is not satis-fied if the moral is only ever supplied by divine intervention from outside. Thecosmos is grasped as a living thing endowed with soul and intelligence in orderthat it take up the demiurges purposes as its own and serve as a visible modelfor us to do likewise. Why should I be moral and fulfil the demiurges purposesif the universe itself has no intrinsic desire or capacity to do so?

It is thus a mistake to collapse either of these into the other. Those whoreduce the world-soul to a mechanism13 need to reflect on why it is that Ti-maeus prays to the created god, the cosmos (Critias 106ab), but never to thedemiurge.14 But nor is the demiurge merely a symbol of the reason at work inthe world as it exists, as Cornford claimed.15 Of course the demiurge is symbolicin some sense; we need not be so literal as to believe he uses a mixing bowl(41d), that he has hands, etc. But it is the symbolic and exoteric presentation ofa transcendent world-creating nous,16 rather than that being a symbol for a nousimmanent in the cosmos.

12 At 29a the cosmos is declared the finest of all generated things because its producer is thebest of causes ( ), not only because he is good in himself and wantseverything else to be good too (29e), but because he looked to a good (i.e. eternal) model, aForm (30cd).13 For example, Richard D. Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1985), 4 f. Mohrscomparison of the world-soul to the governor of a steam-engine is fascinating but inadequate,for a governor is merely a part of the mechanism it controls. It does not know that or why it ismaintaining order, and certainly does not reason in any sense. Why would Plato ascribe soulto the world itself if he meant this?14 See Cornford, Platos Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (London: Routledge 1935), 35, and SarahBroadie,Nature and Divinity in Platos Timaeus (New York: Cambridge University Press 2012), 13 f.15 Platos Cosmology, 37 f. (my emphasis). See Gabriela Roxane Carone, Platos Cosmology andits Ethical Dimensions (New York: Cambridge University Press 2005), ch. 2, for a recent attemptto elaborate this view.16 As argued by Hackforth, Platos Theism, in Allen, ed., Studies in Platos Metaphysics (Lon-don: Routledge 1965) 439447, at 439. I cannot here go into his further claim, recently devel-oped by Stephen Menn, that the demiurge is a nous that transcends soul as well as body.

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Nor is the demiurge to be reduced to the Form of the Good, however remi-niscent its ineffable transcendence (Timaeus 28c) is of Platos remarks about theGood in Republic VI. Although it is specifically to the Form Living Thing thatthe demiurge looked in fashioning the cosmos (30cd), that he looked also tothe Form of the Good and held himself to what it demands is not only implicitin the claim that he was not jealous of his own goodness (just the kind of errorto which a god would be prone if he confused himself with the Good as such)but wanted all things to be good (29e). It is also twice expressly indicated. At46cd he is described as accomplishing the Form of the Best ( ) in the sensible domain as far as possible. The demiurge ofthe finest and best at 68e is meant in this sense, not in the sense that he de-vised () the Form of the Good itself.

It is also important to see that the Timaeus not only dispenses with thePhaedos makeshift but retrieves the distinction it had drawn before resorting toit, between a cause stricto senso (which disposes things for the best) and thematerial auxiliary to it, with the difference that now Plato is prepared to call thelatter a kind of cause.17 This wandering cause (48a) receives the name neces-sity, denoting the tendential but irregular, and strictly unpurposive, generativecapacity of matter, which the Timaeus strives to exhibit as complying for themost part with nous. What the Timaeus effectively does is retrieve the theme offlow from the Cratylus by bifurcating it into this twofold, placing all that is du-bious and unreliable about it on the side of necessity so as to isolate a goodcosmic motion brought about by nous. The question is whether Plato can bringthese together and still tell them apart. The problems implicit in the treatmentof the relation between demiurgic nous and necessity, which help shed light onthe modifications of the Timaeus schema in later dialogues, will be addressedafter we have examined the world-soul thesis.

The account of the world-soul is difficult. Besides the mathematics involvedand its translation into musical terminology, as if to realise the Pythagoreanharmony of the spheres, the discussion is extremely condensed and couchedin terms whose precise bearing could have been made a great deal clearer.Since the circular motions manifest in the sky are evidently the primary impetus

17 In this respect I depart somewhat from Sayre, Platos Late Ontology (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press 1983). The specific task of the Timaeus, for Sayre, is to elucidate the notion ofparticipation, which had been little more than a suggestive metaphor (203) in dialogues likethe Phaedo and the Republic (and remains so, he adds, in spite of Platos efforts here). WhileSayre is right to make this connection, the key problem the Timaeus takes up from the Phaedois in fact causation, which is reconceived in line with Platos original investment in the nousdoctrine.




of the nous doctrine, it is best to start with the cosmology developed later in theaccount to clarify its substantive orientation. This does not directly yield us theworld-soul, but it at least gives us some purchase on how Plato conceives it.18

The Timaeus cosmology is far more sophisticated than the spindle analogyin Republic X. One significant development is the attempt to deal with the axisof the ecliptic. The new model, which resembles an armillary sphere, would notonly account for the angle at which sun, moon and planets revolve, with respectto the fixed stars, but would explain their moving more slowly as the net effectof two contrary motions. As the entire cosmos spins on its axis, all the heavenlybodies follow its westward motion, but while the fixed stars do so purely, theothers also have their own eastward motion, each on its own orbit, which is notas strong as the ruling (: 35e) motion of the whole, so that their westwardcourse appears slower. Furthermore, there are differences within this group.While the sun, Venus and Mercury move at the same speed, the moons west-east motion is faster (hence its overall motion slower), and those of the outerplanets are slower, and also different from each other (39ab). An additionaldifference is the retrogradation of the planets, the contrary tendency (: 38d) whereby they periodically seem to go into reverse, or as Plato putsit, alike overtake and are overtaken by one another.

For these reasons Plato calls the ruling east-west motion shared by all themovement of the Same, and the one that is not only contrary to it but furtherdifferentiated in itself that of the Different (36c). This conceptual pair is setdown formally at the outset of the account of the world-soul (35ab), well be-fore the treatment of celestial motions which gives it a readily graspable con-tent. It is clearly intended as a master key to the whole discussion, the attemptto tie observed cosmological phenomena to a doctrine of a world-soul that oper-ates by making judgements of sameness and difference. But note that Plato isnot identifying the world-souls two circles with the motions of the fixed starsand the planets, respectively. The point is that the motion of the fixed starsvisibly reflects that of the world-souls circle of the Same, as the motions of theplanets reflect its circle of the Different which itself is subject to (:39a) the rule of the Same while also having its own contrary and oblique mo-tion. The planets move differently because they are set by the demiurge in theseven orbits into which the circle of the Different has been cut (38c, referringback to 36d). In short, both the world-souls circles have visible analogues in theheavens, to which they are irreducible. What we see in the heavens is not the

18 Cornford (Platos Cosmology, 136 f.) provides a useful synopsis of the various cosmic mo-tions addressed in the passage, which I will draw on freely in what follows.

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world-souls motions but its bodys obedience to them. As we will see, Plato isless than fully consistent on this point, and we will need to determine why.

The real bearing of the claim that the world-soul is made up of these twocircles emerges at 37ac, the one passage that dwells on what the world-soulactually does. But it is also where the obscurities of the initial discussion ofthe world-souls constitution from 35a develop into palpable ambiguities, evenantinomies. This passage also presupposes the statement at 34b that the de-miurge put the world-soul in the centre ( ) of the cosmos, ex-tended it throughout the whole body ( ), and wrapped itaround () that body. The upshot is that, although the world-soulis invisible (: 36e) and different in kind from the body, it is fully intouch with everything going on in that body. As it revolves, forever circlingback upon itself ( ), it touches () bothsensuous things (= dispersed, ) and indivisible ones (,= Forms), and in this way it is moved throughout itself, constantly roused tothe task of saying (), of telling itself, in what respects things are thesame and in what respects different: what any encountered thing is the sameas and what it is different from ( ).The rest of the sentence is too dense to be rendered clearly in as many words,and needs to be teased apart and reconstructed in view of what it is inwardlystriving for.

Three points in particular must be held in view. First, the thrust of the pas-sage is that the world-soul knows, is master of the myriad differences and simi-larities it encounters, able to discern the same in the different and the differentin the similar. Secondly, while it does this with regard to generated things () and Forms, the key point is that the former are seen in relation bothto Forms and to other generated things. It is a matter, in light of Forms, ofknowing everything that comes to pass () in its where () andwhen (), its in what way () and in relation to what ( ):under what conditions it comes about that a given thing is or is affected ( ) by something else in this or that way. The third point emergeswhen we relate this claim back to the first one, and recognise that both aregoverned by the prior statement that the world-soul constantly circles backupon itself. In this perpetual traversal, the world-soul sees specifically that andhow things are similar and different here in relation to there, and here now inrelation to here then, on its previous traversal. However, it cannot just be aquestion of whether and how things are different or the same, for the world-soul does not encounter anything that is not, in a sense, itself. It traverses itsown body to see whether and how it is different or the same. The world-soulsdiscourse is a constant self-monitoring.




This is a necessary consequence of the fact that Platos rehabilitation of thenous doctrine involves a unitary world-soul governing a unitary world-body. Itis also the only way to make sense of the interesting fact that the world-soulsactivity is wholly contained in the two verbs and , which mightseem by themselves not to entail that it actively maintains cosmic order, ratherthan just recognising it. One hesitates to attribute to Plato an exposure to Bud-dhist meditation practices, but one does not need to be a practising Buddhist tohave noticed how the sheer observation of a pain, for example, a simple atten-tion to what it is like and whether it stays the same or changes over time in anyway, can serve to subtly ameliorate it, whereas willing it away can make itworse. In a similar way Platos world-soul could maintain homeostatic balancesimply by self-monitoring and, when it notices that a given part of its body israther too hot or cold, turbulent or stagnant, paying attention to its characterand vicissitudes.

In the remainder of our passage Plato ties back the discourse of the world-soul not only to his earlier account of its two circles, but to the Republics epis-temological schema. Only when discourse concerns the intelligible (Forms) is itcharacterised by nous and knowledge, whereas discourse on the sensuous gen-erates opinions and beliefs which, in the world-souls case, are firm and true( ). With regard to cosmic self-regulation, the difference be-tween knowledge senso stricto and infallibly true belief does not seem terriblyserious. Yet this masks a problem. Can the account of the world-soul, and thusthe nous doctrine, be kept within the parameters of this schema, when it neces-sarily concerns motion and the sensuous? Can nous rule a world that is sensu-ous and in motion if it is still a nous that proceeds purely from Form to Form?

What is especially problematic is that the sensuous is linked with the circleof the Different (corresponding to its dispersed character), and the intelligible(indivisible Forms) with that of the Same. Granted that the latter best expressesthe uniform rotation on the same spot which Plato deems the movement thatmost befits nous (34a), it remains that both are circles of soul and nous, andboth have visible analogues. Indeed, since the demiurge composed the world-soul out of sameness, difference and being, and each of these is a blend of itsindivisible and divisible modes (35a), there must be an intelligible Different anda sensuous Same. Moreover, when Plato describes the world-souls division intoa mathematical series, he says that both circles are cut from this same cloth, orrather are formed by splitting it in two (36b). If this cloth is an immaterialone, made up purely of mathematical intervals, this applies to both circleswhich comprise the world-soul. Like the ratios imposed on the worlds body dis-cussed at 31c32c, this cloth is a system in which the different reflects the same(a is to b as b is to c). Whatever comes to pass in the circle of the Different must

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obey the same system, and must be covered by the same knowledge yielded bythe circle of the Same, regardless of how much more complicated and differen-tiated it is.19

Our attempt to elaborate this further is hamstrung by the fact that Platomakes very little concrete use of the mathematical series laid down at 35b36b,the skeleton of which is formed by the integer series 1, 2, 4, 8, and 1, 3, 9, 27,and which is fleshed out by inserting the arithmetic and harmonic means be-tween each pair of integers (in the case of 1 and 2, 3/2 and 4/3). In fact, its onlycosmological application is one brief statement that the seven basic integerscorrespond to the spacing of the seven orbits into which the circle of the Differ-ent is cut (36d).20 It is of course true, as Timaeus says, that the celestial motionsare bewildering in the multitude of their variations and their astonishing intri-cacy (39d, cf. 38e). Even so, we could have expected more: for example, thatthe suns net movement to the west can be computed as some fraction of that ofthe fixed stars if not exactly half, say, how about three-quarters (arithmeticmean), or two-thirds (harmonic)? Looked at in this way, the full series can seemdesigned to ensure that, as one gazes into the cosmological plethora, wheneversomething falls between the cracks, as it were, what is missed by one handmight be caught by the other.

It seems as if an originally more ambitious project has been toned downinto a general claim that the world-soul partakes in calculation and harmony

19 Plato avows this in a way. At 39b it is said we gain knowledge of number from the uniformmovement of the Same, yet the point being made here is more complex. By virtue of this singleand most intelligent of revolutions ( : 39c), we are ableto measure not only its periods but also, against this background, periods such as the monthand year which pertain to the moon and sun, thus to the circle of the Different. (This seems toexplain why it is the planets, sun and moon that are specified as the instruments of time(38c), even though it is the movement of the Same that provides the purest temporal image ofeternity.) It would even be possible to calculate the so-called Great Year of the cosmos, thetime it takes for all the heavenly bodies to return to the same positions relative to each other,since all of this can be measured by the uniform movement of the circle of the Same ( : 39d). The upshot is surely that the two circlescannot legitimately be regarded as falling into the two mutually exclusive ontological and epis-temological orders of Platos middle metaphysics.20 We are told at 38d that the moon and sun occupy the two orbits closest to earth, fromwhich we can infer that the sun is reckoned twice as far from the earth as the moon, but therest is left for us to guess. At no time is the series concretely applied in relation to the circle ofthe Same, nor apropos the speeds of the planets, sun and moon relative to each other or to thefixed stars. It is asserted that the speeds of Mercury, Venus and the Sun are (for the most part)similar, that the moon is faster and the outer planets slower, but still in ratio ( : 36d)with them, but nothing is said about which ratios hold.




( : 36e) and maintains order by ensuringthat the different relates proportionally to the same. It can only do this insofaras it is both circles, the Same and the Different, and both are cut from the samenumerological cloth. Not only is this clearly stated, it is an absolute require-ment, without which the world-soul could never have come to serve as Platosway of rehabilitating the nous doctrine. What, after all, would be the point ofclaiming that the nous which the whole cosmos has only governs half of thewhole?

I stress this because there is something in the Timaeus which, while notcontradicting it directly, leaves the door open for that possibility in other cir-cumstances. This is the assertion that the sun, moon and planets are living orensouled beings (: 38e) with specific duties assigned to them. Thestars too are living beings which, while they obey the movement of the Same,also have their own motion, an axial rotation which repeats that of the wholemicrocosmically, as does their spherical shape (40a). The point of this is notonly to account for their self-movement, which for Plato is the sign of soul, butto give them their own intelligence. The stars follow () the rulingintelligence ( ), the circle of the Same, so that theirrotation is a matter of forever thinking the same thoughts about the samethings (40b).21 But what about the sun, moon and planets, which are coveredwith the term , wanderers, since they diverge from the fixed stars?What is their relationship to the world-soul? Do they simply obey it, in whichcase we may as well regard their status as instruments of time passively? Or arecertain active cosmological duties delegated to them, so that the world-soulreceives reports from them about the state of play in the circle of the Different?If so, why? If the world-soul is both circles and holds sway throughout the cos-mos, why is there any need for the to serve as auxiliary intelligentagencies? Is there perhaps a temptation in Plato to identify the world-soul withthe circle of the Same (as the most intelligent motion), and to allot to the - control over the diverse movements of the Different?

Why? Let us consider it this way. If the cosmos is governed not by a singlenous but a kind of nous co-operative, can the possibility be discounted of thisspirit of co-operation degenerating into fractiousness? We might wish to saythat this is ruled out by the very nature of nous, since the world-soul, the starsand the would be directed to the self-same Forms, would all be think-ing the same about the same and thus be of one mind in their work. And yet it

21 In a note to his Loeb translation (84n), Bury rightly points out that this goes back to theCratylus derivation of from , the intelligent apprehension of(intelligent) motion or flow (411d).

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is at least considered in the Laws. Exactly what is said there demands scrutiny,but here let us simply use it to bring into view a double bind in the Timaeuscosmology. If the planets are given work to do which they perform indepen-dently, they may be exposed to the possibility of turning wilful and, at the ex-treme, diabolical. On the other hand, if the world-soul has ultimate control overboth circles, then if there turns out to be anything errant or wilful this cannotbe excluded from the world-soul itself. From that point of view, countenancingevil in the planets or stars would come down to quarantining it from the world-soul.

It is in the later account of necessity, , that what the Timaeus has tosuppress to achieve its grand synthesis comes closer to the surface. This ac-count is principally concerned with two things, the so-called primordial chaosand the way the divine craftsman took it in hand and fashioned it into an order,a cosmos, by making necessity yield () to the rule of nous and guidewhat is generated for the most part [ ]22 towards the best (48a). Thenatural thing to suppose is that the primordial chaos corresponds to necessityas such, and the cosmos to the rule of nous with necessitys compliance. How-ever, this simple picture is complicated in two different ways that we will needto think together.

The first complication concerns how the primordial chaos is understood.The account of this at 52d53e presupposes two things, one being the notion ofthe receptacle (), which is finally named space (). As that whichgrants a site for all that comes to be ( :52b), space, which is strictly non-sensuous, is only apprehended at all in itsdifference from what appears in its place, and is essentially free of the fleetingsensuous impressions it receives here and there (cf. 50e, 51a). The other thing isthe discussion of the four so-called elements (), the point of which isthat they do not have a stable enough being to count as true building blocks,since they are always changing into each other (49c). As such they do notstrictly designate things but eternally recurring, broadly similar qualities ( : 49e) such asfieriness which come and go in a given region of the receptacle (cf. 51b).

At 30a the primordial state had been briefly described as not at rest but injarring and disorderly [ ] motion, and the fuller account

22 The qualification is necessary because, while the demiurge makes use of the tendenciesinherent in his material to realise his plan, matter is bound to have something recalcitrantabout it just because it produces effects in a non-purposive way. As Lee says, it will havecertain properties of its own, irrelevant to his purpose, which may produce side-effects. Plato:Timaeus and Critias (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977), 11.




seems at first to conform to this. The receptacle was filled in a motley way() with the characters (or powers: ) of fieriness, wateri-ness, and so on, but because these were neither alike nor evenly balanced, ititself was without equipoise [] anywhere, so that it swayed irregu-larly throughout, shaken by their motions, and by its own motion [ ] shook them in turn (52e). However, the passage goes on to indicate thatthere is at least some degree of order here:

Being moved in this way, they were perpetually carried away to different places andseparated, as with the things shaken and winnowed by a winnowing basket or an instru-ment for cleaning grain, the dense and heavy things going one way, the light and insub-stantial being carried to another place and settling there. So, at that time, the four kindswere shaken by the receptacle, which was able to move itself [ -] like a shaking instrument: those most unlike, it bounded off [] from eachother, and those most alike it forced together []. Therefore they were restrained[] in different regions of space, even before the ordered whole arranged from themcame to be [ ]. (52e53a)

Thus even before the demiurge acts there is a kind of proto-ordering, which isstressed by the use of words like (bound off) and (restrain).Each of the four qualities has been shaken free of the others and concentratedsufficiently for the demiurge to confront a world already articulated into en-during airy, fiery, watery and earthy regions, arranged, as Bury surmises in anote to his Loeb translation, in concentric strata of space with earth at thecentre. It should be remarked that this goes against the fluxism of the prefatoryaccount, which had sought to convey that a fiery quality, say, has only the mostfleeting purchase on a given part of the receptacle each time it appears there(50b, 51b, 52c).23

The first complication, then, is that nous seems already to be there, at workin necessity, before it enters the fray to work on it. In fact Platos description ofthe primordial state of the All combines features of Anaxagoras account bothof that state and of how nous worked on it, and if anything bears more affinityto the latter.24 For Anaxagoras it is the revolutions brought about by nous that

23 The prevailing view is that Plato conceives the primordial chaos in fluxist terms. See e.g.Donald J. Zeyl, Plato: Timaeus (Indianapolis: Hackett 2000), xxxv; Mohr, The Platonic Cosmol-ogy, 86, and God and Forms in Plato (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing 2005), x. I would arguethat there are two necessary criteria for fluxism, fleetingness and haphazardness. The impor-tant point here is that fleetingness presupposes the ability of the elements to turn into eachother, but this, as we will see, presupposes the demiurges intervention. It neither does nor canform a part of Platos account of the state of things prior to that.24 The reference to the best (48a) refers the whole discussion back to the treatment of Anaxa-goras in the Phaedo. Specifically, it recalls Platos point that there is really no other reason to

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separate things out from the original commixture of all in all (B 12), and it isnot extravagant to suggest25 that, although the winnowing Plato refers to is notsaid to be circular, the side-to-side motion of a shaking instrument tends natu-rally to become more and more circular, and to move in wider and wider circlesas Anaxagoras also said.26 Yet could Plato not retort that there is nothingstrange in this correspondence between his account of necessity and Anaxa-goras of nous, that while Anaxagoras thinks he is describing the work of noushe is in truth defaulting to material causality, and it is just this that Plato isdescribing, imputing to it a degree of unintelligent order? Or do we have reasonto suspect that, in assigning a proto-ordering to necessity, Plato is effectivelyassigning to it a proto-nous? Notice that in the latter part of the passage thereceptacle is said to be able to move itself, rather than simply27 being moved bythe powers within it. Is self-movement not consistently grasped by Plato as themark of soul, and soul as the sine qua non of nous?

While the first complication concerns whether necessity already has some-thing of nous about it, the second is whether the motions of necessity are spin-offs of the demiurgic act, so that nous has something of necessity about it. Topursue this we need to distinguish from the winnowing just addressed anothermotion that Plato associates with necessity. This is the temporally cyclical pro-cess in which the so-called elements pass into each other, or seem to gift gen-eration to each other in a cycle ( , , : 49c), and which suggests, in another respect, a degree of

specify that what governs the world is nous, but that it does so for the best and in the bestpossible way.25 Pace Cornford, Platos Cosmology, 201, 203.26 Conversely, although there is something of the commixture of all in all in Platos descrip-tion (even in separation a fiery region will still have bits of airiness, etc.), in Anaxagoras it isfar more radical: we need only compare Platos motley appearance with Anaxagoras claim (B4b) that no colour was apparent.27 That the receptacle is also moved by what is in it is still implied by the winnowing ana-logy, for the moved contents in a winnowing basket also have their own momentum. However,it is hard to see how this is possible if the receptacle is of an entirely different order than whatit receives (i.e., non-sensuous and always the same, only seeming to change on account ofwhat it receives: cf. 50b52b). This is all the more puzzling given its identification with space.Nonetheless, Sayre (Platos Late Ontology, 254) is rash to assert that the notion of the contextof all motion itself being in motion is simply unintelligible. So much for modern physics, then.Without putting Einsteinian ideas into Platos head, we should at least point out that theGreeks did not grasp motion only as movement in space, and did not take space simply as astatic context of all motion. They named space with a word cognate with the verb , tomake way, and in this sense it may be said to move itself at the same time that somethingmoves within it.




regularity in the motions of necessity.28 This becoming has the general form ofconcentration and separation, but in a different way than the winnowing motionwhich separated the four bodies into concentrated masses. They are now op-posed motions relating to the density of the stuff that undergoes transforma-tions such as evaporation and condensation. However, Plato wants to regardthese two distinct motions as belonging and working together, and this is wherethe second complication kicks in. For just as the winnowing motion is in playprior to the demiurges intervention, it becomes clear that this other motion pre-supposes that intervention and cannot genuinely occur without it.

We can now resume Platos story. The four bodies have been moved intoseparate regions by necessity, but this is only a rough proto-order in which theyremain altogether disposed as one would expect anything to be that god has nottouched (53b): without proportion and measure ( : 53a). Ac-cordingly, the demiurge gave them distinct configurations by way of shapes andnumbers ( : 53b). While the dative isnot used in Platos special sense of Forms, it is used with that sense in view.What is meant is that the demiurge configured the bodies into numerically ra-tional elementary shapes that are proper sensuous instantiations of the FormsFire, Air, etc., whereas prior to this they merely had some traces of themselves( : 53b), of their respective Forms, their self-same essentialnature (cf. 51ab). Thus when Timaeus goes on to explain the formation (-: 53b) and origin (: 53c) of the four bodies from two different kindsof triangle, he is no longer describing what occurs by necessity, but the work ofthe demiurge with necessitys compliance.29 It is by virtue of the demiurge thatfire is configured into particles30 of a pyramidic shape, made up of 24 elementaltriangles of the half-equilateral kind. The same applies to air (octahedron, 48),water (icosahedron, 120), and earth (cube, composed of 24 isosceles triangles). Itis thus by virtue of the demiurge that fire, air and water can become each other,

28 This claim occurs in the passage where Plato denies that the elements are things, letalone the underlying things, since they have no stable being. That clearly takes aim at theattempts by the phusikoi to make this or that element an arche or principle. More specifically, itconjures up Platos customary parody of Heraclitus as a thinker of sheer flux. Yet we see thatthere is another side to this. In invoking the cyclical nature of material transformation, Plato isspeaking with the phusikoi more than against them, sharing in the fascination of a Heraclitusor Empedocles at this cyclical process. And what this conjures up is the other, quieter engage-ment with Heraclitus that a close reading can uncover in the Cratylus, for it recalls what hadoriginally attracted Plato to the notion of flow in that dialogue.29 This is only expressly indicated twice: at 55c (regarding the fifth shape, which the god usedfor the whole), and in the recapitulation at 56c.30 Or seeds (: 56c), a term Plato takes from Anaxagoras.

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since they all break down into the same basic element (so that, for example, twofire particles form one of air), and that earth cannot change into any of theothers, since its basic element is heterogeneous (53c55c, 55d56b).

Yet this cyclical transformation not only presupposes the demiurges act,but seems to unwork the original process of separation which the demiurgicordering had apparently been meant to reinforce. That could make us wonderif, in this respect, necessity is an aberrant or uncompliant spin off of the work ofnous. This even seems to be reinforced by the fact that Plato later addressesbecoming in terms of warlike contention () among the four bodies, in sharpcontrast to the amity () affirmed at 32c when the body of the cosmos wasbrought into being and made concordant by means of proportion ( - ) by the demiurge.

In fact, however, it is via this theme of contention that Plato will bridge thetwo motions and make them complementary. Plato describes two distinct modesof contention, each of which relies on features of the figures assigned to thebodies. On the one hand, the fewer faces a particle has, the sharper its anglesand edges are, and this allows the particles of fire, in particular, to cut up thelarger ones. This cutting up [] is the form contention takes when a massof one of the other bodies is enveloped () in fire (57a), so that aparticle of water, say, is broken up into two of air and one of fire (56d). On theother hand, when smaller particles are trapped () in the gapsin a mass of larger ones, they struggle () against this and are neces-sarily overcome () and broken down () into their compo-nent triangles (56e). These elements can either recombine in the form of thesurrounding mass and blend into it, or escape out to their kindred ( : 57b). This speaks to the other motion, the separation of thebodies into distinct regions, and Plato promptly makes the connection:

Moreover, in the course of these vicissitudes [] they all interchange their loca-tions. For while the bulk of each kind has been set apart in a place of its own throughthe motion of the receptacle, those parts of each which at a given time are changing intoone of the other kinds are carried by the shaking to the place of that kind. (57bc)

Hence the transformation of the bodies into each other does not simply undothe process of their separation, but serves and reinforces it, particularly byfurther purifying each mass from within. Moreover, as Plato adds later, evenwhen it does reverse or hinder that process, it does so for a good reason, inaccordance with the demiurges plan. It constitutes a safeguard ()against the separation of the bodies into regions coming to an end in a stagnantcosmos, thereby ensuring a cosmos in perpetual motion ( ), even ifthat means perpetual inequality or disequilibrium (: 58c).




Furthermore, as mentioned in section 1, this whole process is tightly cir-cumscribed, even driven on, by the revolution of the whole cosmos ( - : 58a), which in its natural inclination to return on itself exerts acentripetal force that proscribes any void and thus keeps pressing the smallerparticles into the gaps between the larger (58b), and presumably reins in theshaking of the receptacle. This makes explicit the specifically circular flow thatwe surmised was already there in the primordial chaos. This axial rotation ofthe cosmos, originally given by the demiurge (34a), is the form in which heactually takes up the proto-ordering of necessity and reinforces it. But it is thentaken over by the world-soul. Thus flow is not simply a feature of matter overagainst nous. We see it, rather, in the working together of nous and necessity, inthe fact that the rule of nous is reflected at the material level through necessityscompliance.

The cosmos of the Timaeus thus seems to resemble the Heraclitean one,which like the barley drink or kukeon falls apart if it is not stirred (B 125). Yet ifPlato seems to reconcile himself with the quintessentially Heraclitean thoughtof unity and harmony in and through opposition and conflict, is this not arather pale version of the Heraclitean cosmos? For presumably even the greatestcataclysm would be accommodated in the gods eye view Heraclitus envisages,for which all things are just (B 102). But where are cataclysms here? The ques-tion of natural disaster, though discussed in the preamble, is avoided through-out the Timaeus account of divinely designed cosmic order and left for laterdialogues to tackle.

If we ask how there can be earthquakes and the like in a world where ne-cessity complies with nous, one possible answer is that the cataclysmic is thenatural bent of matter, and as it is only prevented by the guiding hand of nousit must happen when, for some reason, nous drops the reins. A second is thatsome kind of divine punishment underlies these events. A third is that there areevil forces at work in the cosmos besides the good ones. In the following sec-tion we will see Plato pursue a version of the first alternative in the Statesmanand mention the third in the Laws, without working it through. The second,although briefly referred to at one point (22d) in the preamble to the Timaeus, isnot taken up again, notably in the Critias, where the punishment of the Atlan-tans consists in their being sent into an aggressive war they are destined to lose,not in the subsequent earthquake which destroyed not only them but the ex-emplary Athenians who overcame them.

But there are other possibilities. One, which it is possible to read betweenthe lines in the Philebus, is that what we take as disasters barely register on theworld-souls radar. Another is that such events are unintended spin-offs ofnous attempt to control necessity, spin-offs which make it difficult to tell the

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two apart because nous would itself be subject to a necessity about which it isin the dark. The various alternatives Plato subsequently tries out can be seen asso many ways around this trading of places, this coalescence of the two sidesback into flow apparently orderly, and yet ; apparently mad, and yet .

3 After the Timaeus31

Let us start with the Statesman myth, which repeats the Timaeus schema in cer-tain respects but also transforms it. Again there is recourse to a demiurge, yetnot just as the worlds creator but its governor. Moreover, the demiurge is iden-tified with Kronos, who (with all the gods of tradition) had only been begrud-gingly included in the category of other gods in the Timaeus along with theheavenly bodies. Even more remarkably, the demiurge does not hold the cosmicreins forever, but only during the cycle of Kronos. The other cycle or age thatalternates with this one, which is said to be the age of Zeus (272b), is preciselynot governed by a different god. Rather, when the god lets go (: 269c),the All is left to fend for itself, which it does with varying degrees of success.

Why this strange new story? The obvious reason is that Plato has to accountfor the occurrence of natural catastrophe, which the Timaeus avoided. It is situ-ated in the transitions between the cycles because, when Kronos relinquishescontrol, the entire cosmos reverses the direction of its rotation.32 Plato takespains to stress that it is not the god who spins the cosmos now this way, nowthat, which would contravene the law that the divine does not change (269e).He also rejects the quasi-Manichean idea that two gods antithetically mindedto each other turn it (270a). But as for why the demiurge lets go, nothing is saidbesides a vague reference to the fullness of time proper to his cycle at 269cd.If it can be said that the cataclysm occurs when but not because the demiurgelets go, this exculpation comes at the cost of a god-forsaken world, which seemscounter to the very purpose of the myth.

31 The question of the order of the late dialogues is a difficult one, yet there are good reasonsto reject the traditional view (still held by Cornford) that the Timaeus and Critias constitutePlatos last works before the Laws. While I cannot argue for this in detail here, I would say thatthe nous doctrine itself is a useful touchstone on this issue. In short, the Statesman and thePhilebus have to be regarded as later than Timaeus-Critias in that they modify the schemawhereby the Timaeus revived the doctrine, to address problems it was not yet ready to face.32 Contrast Timaeus 38c (cf. 36e), where perpetuity in time, if not eternal being, is imputed tothe worlds rotation.




The world-soul is nowhere named in the Statesman myth, yet certainlymeant. Not only does the cosmos move by itself ( : 270a)when let go by the god, which for Plato is the mark of soul, but it goes intoreverse (of its own accord: ) precisely by virtue of the purposive in-telligence () it received from its creator (269cd). Yet the account willqualify this intelligence quite heavily again, quite unlike the Timaeus. Closelylinked to this is the fact that desire (another mark of soul) is also imputed to theAll. At 272e Plato attributes its turning backwards to fate and innate desire (- ). This suggests the world always wanted toturn counter to the demiurges will, and that the demiurges guidance consistedin curbing its rebellious innate desire, which then breaks out with disastrousconsequences when that control is relinquished. It is true that, after the initialperiod of tumult, the world learns to regulate its course through its own intelli-gence: by calling to mind (: 273b) in reverse and to the extentof its power the way it had taken under the guidance of the demiurge. But asthat rule is gradually forgotten (273c) chaos ensues, to the point where god mustintervene and reverse the worlds course again (273de). Besides forgetfulness,Plato also explains the descent into chaos materially as a re-emergence of theworlds original state prior to the demiurges ordering, which obviously draws onthe Timaeus. But what is the relation between these two causes? Does the world-soul grow forgetful because its body falls into disorder? Is it not more likely, inthe terms of Platonic thought, which is nothing if not a thought of mind overmatter, that the world-soul lost control over its body because it grew forgetful?

In the previous section I argued that in the Timaeus flow emerges not sim-ply on the side of material necessity but in its compliance with nous qua theworld-soul, In my view the best way to understand this lapse of the world-soulin the Statesman is to recognise, along these lines, that the world-soul, in tra-versing its body essentially to ensure that all remains in order and nothingneeds to be understood any better than it already is, entrusts itself to this flow.Forgetfulness then has the form that the world-soul follows a simulacrum of thecosmic law. Flow, instead of a reflection of that law, a sign of matters compli-ance with mind, has surreptitiously become the law itself.

In short, the Statesman presents a world-soul that falls short of what, forPlato, the nous doctrine demands. In spite of Platos attempts to maintain hisfall-back position of blaming the worlds faults on recalcitrant matter, thisbreaks down here. Plato has had to make the world-soul, and indeed nous, bearthe brunt of responsibility for natural disaster. In the Philebus we can also find,if we know where to look, a similar vein of innuendo to the effect that theworld-soul and thus the rule of nous is somewhat less than exemplary, albeitnot in the context of natural disaster, which is not addressed.

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The Philebus is a puzzling work, and I will have to bypass many of its pro-blems and single out three strands that are especially germane to our theme.The first concerns the relation between the so-called methodological and meta-physical passages. The divine method introduced in the former is not onlybased on the new ontological principles of Limit and the Unlimited, which Platoadopts from Pythagoreanism and which form two of the four classes into whichhe divides everything that now exists in the All ( -: 23c) at the beginning of the metaphysical passage. It also, through the exam-ple of Thoths invention of the alphabet by deploying that method in reverse,33

prefigures what seems to be the intention of the later passage, that of graspingcosmic order as the result of a divine intelligence imposing Limit on the Unlim-ited. Yet it never actually carries through this intention, but rather plays with it.It does hold that the mixing of Limit and the Unlimited generates good thingsand a good order of things, and it does grasp this as the act of an excellentcause that has every right to be called wisdom and intelligence [ ] (30c). Yet although the discussion gestures towards a cause of all ( : 30e), throughout it we never actually meet a cause that is notalso caused. The demiurge is suggested by the claim that the world-soul wasbuilt () into the world-body (30b: cf. 30d, where the same claimis made of the soul of Zeus; here, as in the Statesman, Zeus and the world-soulare one and the same). But apart from a casual reference at 27b to the cause as it is conspicuously absent.

The second point concerns play itself, the loose, elliptical and ambiguouscharacter of the metaphysical passage, which Socrates describes as childsplay: ; sometimes childsplay occurs as an uplifting rest from seriousness (30e). Might this summary jud-gement of an argument that speaks so much in hints be itself a further hint? Notethat Plato does not say , which could suggest nothing more than a littletime out from serious philosophising, but -, an elevated repose. Thisassumes extra significance in light of 63e64a, where what is good both in manand in the All is linked to the most turmoil-free [] mixture. Ifthe rest that childs play can involve is uplifting, this is perhaps because it putsone in harmony with the repose (perhaps what Heraclitus calls the rest inchange) of the All. And if repose has a cosmological significance, why shouldntchilds play too? It certainly did for Heraclitus. If this seems out of place in Plato,we should consider why he refers himself to Heraclitus draughts-playing,world-ruling child in the Laws (903d). Within the Philebus itself, we should ask

33 As Sayre has argued persuasively: Platos Late Ontology, 132 f.




why he ends with a wink in the direction of a Dionysian cosmos by referring hisdelineation of the Good to the sixfold of Orphic cosmogony (the sixth stage ofwhich is Dionysus Zagreus), and by leaving his sixth stage blank (66c).

The third thread is buried even deeper. The metaphysical passage offers anargument that we get our bodies and souls by a kind of microcosmic participa-tion in the body and soul of the world. Since the Philebus presents itself as aninquiry into the claims of pleasure and nous to be the good, one question thisprompts is whether the world-soul is characterised not only by nous but by plea-sure. It also makes us ask whether the world-soul exemplifies the neutral statebetween pleasure and pain, and is characterised by the obliviousness to smallchanges which makes that state viable as a way of life (43bc). That could be aserious problem, for from the point of view of the world-soul tsunamis andearthquakes might well fall into the category of small changes. Plato says noth-ing to this effect, and in the Laws he asserts that the cosmic caretaker concernshimself with small details no less than the broad sweep of things. Nevertheless,a bridge is needed between the microcosmic participation argument at 29a30band the claim at 64a that the point of the whole analysis of pleasure and intelli-gence is to determine ,whatever is by nature good both in man and in the All. And when we followthis bridge past that point, we are perhaps in a better position to grasp thestrange fact that nous only comes in third in the final delineation of the Good at66ac. Measure tops it because what seems to matter most to nous itself is equa-nimity rather than truth, which it fell to Socrates to add to the mixture at 64abafter nous forgot to include it in putting its case against the pleasures, withoutaddressing their professed desire to understand themselves.

The Laws, of course, is altogether different in tenor as well as content.There is little play in this work, which famously seeks to tightly control chil-drens games, and there is no world-soul. In its place there is a default to anultra-conservative position on the traditional gods, who it seems are now ex-pected to carry the burden of the nous doctrine, although in Book X Plato oscil-lates between blanket references to the gods and a singular caretaker (-: 903b, 904a) god who, with the help of ruling powers (:903c), other souls/gods (the Laws very sloppily conflates these) delegated tospecific regions of the cosmos, would govern the whole and so take the place ofAnaxagoras nous.

Who this god is remains unclear, and certainly nothing is said explicitly toidentify it with the demiurge. Kronos is a possibility, given that in Book IV Platoreprises at least part of the story about the golden age of Kronos from the Sta-tesman. Indeed, Plato could hardly be more pointed in linking to Kronos thegod who really rules over those possessed of nous (

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: 713a), when it is the question Which god? thatlaunches the story. And yet Zeus is also possible. A little later, in the projectedaddress to the colonists of Magnesia, an ancient saying is affirmed about thegod who holds the beginning, the end and the middle of all that is in being( : 715e). This almostcertainly refers to the Orphic declaration: Zeus the beginning, Zeus the middle,from Zeus all things arise, Zeus the root of earth and the starry sky.34 Also rele-vant is the statement in Book VI that the equality that consists in giving eachwhat he deserves (the geometric equality invoked at Gorgias 508a as the prin-ciple of cosmic order) is the judgement of Zeus ( : 757b).

Be that as it may, the key point is that the schema offered up in the Laws toidentify natural and divine justice does not constitute a genuine resolution ofthe problems incurred by the rehabilitation of the nous doctrine in the Timaeus,so much as an attempt to make them go away. One symptom of this is that theLaws treats cosmology and natural disaster separately from each other and fromthe Kronos story, where the Statesman had discussed them together. Another isPlatos dodgy assimilation of the phusikoi (see 891c) to the softer target attackedin Book X, the view that nature is ruled merely by chance and laws are mereconventions. A significant development in the Statesman, and arguably in thePhilebus as well, was that the world-soul/nous was made to own its shortcom-ings apropos of cosmic order, rather than just foisting them onto material neces-sity. The Laws seems to take an interesting new step in this direction when itproposes that no fewer than two souls govern the universe: that which doesgood, and that which has the opposite power (896e). But while soul is made toown the possibility of evil, this too is essentially more of a disowning, becausethe hypostasisation of evil in one soul effectively quarantines it from the other,the one which is subsequently said to actually rule the world. The distinctionplays no further part in the discussion, which comes down to saying that cosmicdisorder is effectively denied and suppressed.35

34 , , , -, as quoted by the scholiast. Cf. E. B. England, The Laws of Plato; The Text Edited WithIntroduction, Notes, etc., Volume 1 (Manchester: University Press 1921), 447. Bury also cites thesaying in a note to his translation, but without the last phrase which is needed, I think, toclarify the sense in which Zeus is in the middle as well as the sense in which is used.Without it the third phrase could be taken to mean from Zeus all things are made. In line withthese senses I render root instead of the more common basis.35 It should be stressed that the cosmological theme traced here is only one side of the pro-blem, and needs to be complemented with a consideration of the problem of evil as it manifestsin the human sphere why do the wicked (seem to) prosper? and of the Janus-facedness ofnatural justice, its penchant for trading faces of harmonious order and might is right.




To conclude, let us extrapolate four different theses regarding the nous doc-trine and the relation between nous and the divine. The first (N1) is the oneproposed in the Timaeus, and played with rather than clearly adhered to in thePhilebus: the nous that rules the world is immanent in the world, grasped as asingle living being, and is thus the worlds self-rule, though underwritten by thenous of its divine creator. The second thesis (N2), that of the Statesman, is thesame except that this divine guarantee is circumscribed, allowing nous to strayin forgetfulness of the divine law. In the third thesis (N3), nous does withoutthis guarantee, for instead of it being traced back to a creator-god, the divine assuch is reduced to nous qua immanent world-ruling power. This is the thesisthat, in my view, Plato was testing out early on, in the Cratylus: that he was enroute to in the Statesman, albeit still with his ontotheological training-wheelson, so to speak; and that is in play in a concealed way in the Philebus. Thefourth thesis (N4), the one articulated in the Laws, dumps the basic premiseshared by the other three and regards the power ruling the world as the nous ofa god or some kind of god- or soul-collective, rather than a nous intrinsic to theworld as a whole.

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Documents

Apeiron Volume 46 Issue 3 2013 [Doi 10.1515%2Fapeiron-2012-0068] Mason, Andrew -- The Nous Doctrine in Plato’s Thought