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PLATO'S DEMIURGE AS PRECURSOR TO THE

STOIC PROVIDENTIAL GOD

Nathan Powers

The Classical Quarterly / Volume 63 / Issue 02 / December 2013, pp 713 - 722

DOI: 10.1017/S0009838813000190, Published online: 08 November 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009838813000190

How to cite this article:

Nathan Powers (2013). PLATO'S DEMIURGE AS PRECURSOR TO THE STOIC
PROVIDENTIAL GOD. The Classical Quarterly, 63, pp 713-722 doi:10.1017/
S0009838813000190

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Classical Quarterly 63.2 713–722 © The Classical Association (2013) 713
doi:10.1017/S0009838813000190

PLATO’S DEMIURGE AS PRECURSOR TO THE STOIC

PROVIDENTIAL GOD

There is a striking resemblance between the physical theory of Plato’s Timaeus and that
of the Stoics; striking enough, indeed, to warrant the supposition that the latter was sub-
stantially influenced by the former. In attempting to trace the main lines of this influ-
ence, scholars have tended to focus attention almost exclusively on the Stoics’ choice
and characterization of the world’s ultimate constituents: a rational principle (strongly
reminiscent of Plato’s World Soul) that pervades and controls a material principle (remi-
niscent of Plato’s Receptacle).1 In this paper, I offer some suggestions about how the
early Stoics may have reacted as readers to Plato’s literary presentation of the dialogue’s
cosmogonic myth. On this basis I consider the proposal that the crucial philosophical
appeal of the Timaeus for the Stoics – and perhaps the reason it attracted their interest
in the first place – lay not in its claims about the Receptacle and World Soul, but rather
in its portrayal of the Demiurge who designed the cosmos.

1. TIMAEUS AND ZENO ON WORLD PRINCIPLES

It will be helpful to begin by briefly reviewing the salient similarities and dissimilarities
between the physical theory of the early Stoics (as first articulated by the school’s foun-
der, Zeno of Citium) and the account of the generation of the physical cosmos offered in
the dialogue by Plato’s character Timaeus.
The Stoics posit two fundamental principles or ἀρχαί of the cosmos, an active one
identified with ‘god’ and a passive one identified with ‘matter’. The Stoic active prin-
ciple or god bears a significant resemblance to the World Soul as described in the
Timaeus (see especially 36d–7c). Both the Stoic god and Plato’s World Soul are held
to extend throughout the body of the cosmos, and to encompass it all around. Both pos-
sess reason, and both govern the circular motions of the heavens by virtue of this reason.
Both are said to cognize in a reliable way the things that they come into contact with. In
sum, the two entities clearly resemble each other in so far as both are immanent ordering
principles thoroughly pervading the body of the cosmos.

1
See e.g. H.J. Krämer, Platonismus und hellenistische Philosophie (Berlin, 1971), 108–31; more
recently: D. Sedley, ‘The origins of Stoic god’, in D. Frede and A. Laks (edd.), Traditions of Theology
(Leiden, 2002), 41–83; J.-B. Gourinat, ‘La théorie stoïcienne de la matière: entre le matérialisme et
une relecture « corporaliste » du Timée’, in C. Viano (ed.), L’Alchimie et ses racines philosophiques:
la tradition grecque et la tradition arabe (Paris, 2005), 37–62; and M. Frede, ‘Sur la théologie
stoïcienne’, in G. Romeyer Dherbey and J.-B. Gourinat (edd.), Les stoïciens (Paris, 2006), 212–32.
For discussion of the dialogue’s influence on Stoic ethical theory, see G. Betegh, ‘Cosmological ethics
in the Timaeus and early Stoicism’, OSAPh 24 (2003), 273–302.
714 N AT H A N POW E R S

The Stoic passive principle resembles the Receptacle of the Timaeus, in particular as
it is discussed at Tim. 52a–d. Here the Receptacle is characterized as a ‘room’ or ‘space’
(χώρα) on which physical qualities come to be imposed. This characterization is
reinforced by analogies to gold, to liquid bases for perfume and to wax, all of which
take on various imposed shapes and qualities.2 The similarity of this notion to the
Stoic conception of matter is clear: on both accounts there is a pliable and controllable
passive or ‘material’ component to physical objects.3
The analogy between the roles played by god and matter in Stoic physics and those
played by the World Soul and the Receptacle (respectively) in Timaeus’ account is, how-
ever, imperfect; notably, Timaeus sees the need to appeal to further fundamental prin-
ciples beyond these two in order to explain the physical universe. Although the World
Soul perpetuates the grand order of the cosmos, that order is designed and established
in the first place by the Demiurge, who is represented as existing separately from (and
prior to) the cosmos.4 The Stoics instead ascribe both functions to their active principle
or god, although it is immanent within the cosmos; the early Stoics indeed appear to have
used the term δημιουργεῖν to specify the activity of their active principle (Diog. Laert.
7.134). They see no need to separate the two spheres of responsibility as Plato does.
An even more pressing difference is the absence from the Stoic picture of any entities
that correspond to the Platonic Forms. In the Timaeus the Forms constitute the unchan-
ging incorporeal model that the Demiurge consults in his construction of the physical
world, and so they are (it seems) crucial to the dialogue’s account of the character of
physical reality. The Stoics do not think there are such things as Forms, and their active
principle exercises control over the various parts of the world not by shaping them to
conform to a model that is ontologically privileged, but rather through application of
its own inherent standards of rational order. And so the question of how Plato influenced
Stoic physics turns, in large part, on the question of how Zeno and other early Stoics
could appropriate the physics of the Timaeus while regarding the Forms as an inessential
(or at any rate disposable and replaceable) aspect of that physics.
There are, I suggest, two distinct (but compatible) sorts of answers to this question
that are both worth canvassing. The first takes its start from the exegetical practices of
Zeno’s contemporaries. We know that there was a great deal of interest in the Timaeus
among the philosophical schools of Athens in the late fourth/early third century B.C.,5
when Zeno would have become acquainted with the work. As a number of scholars
have recently shown, a prominent line of interpretation of the dialogue that emerged
during this period aggressively de-emphasized (and perhaps even elided altogether)
the role played by Forms as causal principles in Plato’s physics.6 It is within this con-
text, for example, that Theophrastus is able to report:

2
There are apparent verbal echoes of the Timaeus at H. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta
(Leipzig, 3 vols., 1903–5; henceforth SVF), 1.88 (matter is like wax) and 2.318 (matter is the ‘receiver
of all’, cf. Tim. 50b5–c2). On the debt of the Stoic theory of matter to the Timaeus, cf. Gourinat (n. 1),
40–51 and Frede (n. 1), 219–22.
3
For what it is worth, later Platonic commentators imply that Zeno did in fact derive his theory of
matter from the Timaeus: cf. Calcidius in Tim. 292 (SVF 1.88).
4
For a recent discussion of Plato’s possible motivations in positing a divine craftsman separate
from the cosmos and so distinct from the World Soul, see S. Broadie, Nature and Divinity in
Plato’s Timaeus (Cambridge, 2012), 7–26.
5
See J. Dillon, ‘The Timaeus in the Old Academy’, in G. Reydam-Schils (ed.), Plato’s Timaeus as
Cultural Icon (Notre Dame, 2003), 80–94.
6
See R. Sharples, ‘Counting Plato’s principles’, in L. Ayres (ed.), The Passionate Intellect: Essays
on the Transformation of Classical Traditions Presented to Professor I.G. Kidd (New Brunswick,
 P L ATO ’ S D E M I U R G E A N D T H E S TO I C P RO V I D E N T I A L G O D 715

[Plato] wants to make the principles two in number: one which underlies, in the role of matter,
which he calls ‘all-receiving’ [cf. Tim. 51a7], the other in the role of cause and mover, which he
connects with the power of god and the good.7

It is quite possible that Zeno was influenced by some such contemporary interpretations
of the Timaeus.8
The second sort of answer, which has received very little direct attention from scho-
lars, looks to Zeno’s own core philosophical commitments as forming an interpretive
context for the Timaeus. It is plausible to believe that Zeno’s thinking about principles
or ἀρχαί developed closely in tandem with his basic ontological views. In adopting as
the criterion of ‘being’ the ability to act or to be acted upon,9 and in positing that only
bodies meet this criterion, Zeno already lays much of the groundwork for – and signifi-
cant constraints on – his doctrine of the principles of the cosmos. That is, if the only
mode of being is being a body, for the reason that only bodies can act or be acted
upon, then what is wanted from a theory of physical principles is precisely an account
of what fundamental bodies can be held causally responsible for all physical
phenomena.
There might be a variety of accounts that could be given along those lines, but it must
be admitted that Zeno’s account fits his ontology with an unmistakable straightforward-
ness and economy: he analyses physical bodies into two distinct but inseparable prin-
ciples, both bodies themselves, one of which does all the acting and the other of
which undergoes all of the being acted upon. The states that all physical items are in,
and the changes that they undergo, are ultimately referable to these two principles, active
and passive.
If this suggestion is plausible, then we may suspect that for Zeno the immediate inter-
est of the Timaeus did not lie in its account of the ἀρχαί of the cosmos (including the
Forms); for the general contours, at least, of Zeno’s account of ἀρχαί were laid down by
his own ontological views. Rather, he may have been primarily interested in the model
that the dialogue offers of how his own two principles could be related to each other. For
the Stoics, what ultimately explains how the active principle disposes the passive prin-
ciple that it pervades – much as the World Soul pervades and controls the Receptacle –
is the active principle’s ‘demiurgic’ plan for how best to order the cosmos.
In sum, it seems that both contemporary interpretations of Plato and Zeno’s own
background philosophical commitments could well have led him to focus attention on
the portrayal of the role played by the Demiurge – what Theophrastus above calls
‘the power of god and the good’ – in the cosmogony of the Timaeus.

1995), 67–82, at 70–3; H. Baltussen, ‘Early reactions to Plato’s Timaeus: polemic and exegesis in
Theophrastus and Epicurus’, in R. Sharples and A. Sheppard (edd.), Ancient Approaches to Plato’s
Timaeus (London, 2003), 49–71, at 59–60; Sedley (n. 1), passim, esp. 45–6 and 60–5, and id.,
‘Theophrastus and Epicurean physics’, in J.M. van Ophuijsen and M. van Raalte (edd.),
Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources (New Brunswick and London, 1998), 331–54, at 349; A.
A. Long, ‘Theophrastus and the Stoa’, ibid. 355–83, at 377; and cf. G. Reydam-Schils, Demiurge
and Providence: Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato’s Timaeus (Turnhout, 1999), 52–6.
7
… δύο τὰς ἀρχὰς βούλεται ποιεῖν τὸ μὲν ὑποκείμενον ὡς ὕλην ὃ προσαγορεύει ‘πανδεχές’, τὸ
δὲ ὡς αἴτιον καὶ κινοῦν ὃ περιάπτει τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τῇ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ δυνάμει (text and translation: fr.
230 Fortenbaugh et al.).
8
This line of speculation has been pressed especially by Sedley (n. 1).
9
Of course, this view itself may owe something to Zeno’s reflection on Plato; for an influential
account of Zeno’s debt to the ontology of the Sophist in particular, see J. Brunchwig, ‘The Stoic the-
ory of the supreme genus and Stoic ontology’, in id., Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge,
1994), 92–157, esp. 118–23.
716 N AT H A N POW E R S

2. TIMAEUS ON THE CHARACTER OF THE DEMIURGE

In the opening section of his speech (27d–29d), Timaeus places the physical universe
into an explanatory relationship with an unchanging model via a divine craftsman
who replicates that model to the extent possible in the changing medium of perceptible
objects. What will explain the features of the perceptible, physical world are facts about
how the craftsman – the Demiurge – caused it to be arranged so as to resemble (so far as
possible) its model. Timaeus famously claims that by searching for this sort of expla-
nation for the physical cosmos, we can construct a ‘likely story’ (εἰκὼς μῦθος) about
it (a story that will make the cosmos intelligible to the extent possible, precisely because
of its likeness to an essentially intelligible model).10
What I would like to draw attention to is that Timaeus offers his audience only a
minimal characterization of the cosmic craftsman. In fact, just two attributes are
accorded to the Demiurge, attributes which are presented as jointly sufficient for him
to do his work of producing the cosmos that we live in. First, he possesses reason
(νοῦς),11 which gives him cognitive access to the realm of unchanging being. And
second, the Demiurge is good, which motivates him to introduce beautiful order –
such as belongs intrinsically to unchanging being – to the realm of changing and per-
ceptible being.12
These two attributes are left curiously unconnected with one another in Timaeus’
speech. We might well imagine that the divine craftsman’s goodness depends upon
his apprehension of unchanging being via reason, but Timaeus offers no definite
claim to that effect. Without making some further supposition about the relationship
between the Demiurge’s reason on the one hand and his goodness on the other, it is
not possible to have a precise picture of the role that νοῦς plays in causing the cosmos
to come into being. It is on the question of what such supposition to make, I suggest,
that the Stoics are likely to have parted ways with other ancient readers of the Timaeus.
On the one hand, one might suppose that Timaeus takes the Demiurge’s cognitive
relationship to the realm of unchanging being – the Forms – to be precisely what
makes the Demiurge good. The prologue of Timaeus’ speech might be thought to
offer some support for this view: the sign of the Demiurge’s goodness is said to be
his selection of the best model, the Forms, for the physical world (29a2–3). (A bad
craftsman, it is implied, might well have forged a world too, but using some other
and inferior model as a standard; and the world would consequently not be the beautiful
cosmos that we live in.) On this view, our world is assumed to be the product of some
creative impetus; but what is in fact good about this impetus (and what makes its pro-
duct good or beautiful) is that it is directed by apprehension of the Forms.
Later Platonists, pressing this line of interpretation, would identify the Demiurge
fully with νοῦς understood as cognition of the Forms,13 and would go so far as to

10
For recent discussion of this claim see see T. Johansen, Plato’s Natural Philosophy (Cambridge,
2004), 48–68; M. Burnyeat, ‘Eikos Muthos’, in C. Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths (Cambridge, 2009),
167–86; and Broadie (n. 4), 27–59.
11
This is clearly implied at 29a6–b1, and stated explicitly at 46e.
12
The goodness of the Demiurge is first mentioned at 29a and is elaborated upon at 30a.
13
Cf. Procl. In Ti. 1.299–319. A further likely motivation for this identification is the Aristotelian
claim (argued in Metaphysics Λ) that the only activity appropriate for a god is the best activity, i.e.
theoretical contemplation, together with the Platonic assumption that the Forms are the proper objects
of theoretical contemplation. Cf. D. O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford,
1995), 70–5.
 P L ATO ’ S D E M I U R G E A N D T H E S TO I C P RO V I D E N T I A L G O D 717

deny that the Demiurge can have any thoughts about the physical world as such. On this
sort of account, the Demiurge is taken to be an intellect engaged wholly in contempla-
tion of the unchanging Forms – or perhaps, rather, simply to be the living Forms’ self-
contemplation – and the material cosmos comes into being by emanation, as the necess-
ary concomitant of such potent intellectual activity. The Demiurge so conceived cannot
even think about the material and sensible realm, much less make plans regarding its
disposition.14 His goodness consists in his cognition of the Forms; that such cognition
causes a well-ordered sensible cosmos to exist is a metaphysical fact, but not a fact that
indicates any intent or concern on the part of the Demiurge.15
The Stoics, on the other hand, conceive quite differently of divine reason and its
relationship to the cosmos. They take god’s reason to consist in deliberation about the
material of the cosmos, and to yield explicit determinations of the best way for this material
to be disposed. The formation and arrangement of the physical world is precisely god’s
practical implementation of his thoughts about the best order for matter to be in. His good-
ness on this view consists in his rational agency, as exhibited in beautiful cosmic order.
My suggestion is that this second conception of divine reason, even though it makes
no reference to the Forms, can also be extracted from the Timaeus – and indeed, it can
be extracted with surprisingly little difficulty. To do so, all that is required is to take
Timaeus’ account to have its proper beginning at 29d7, where he makes a fresh state-
ment of the explanation (αἰτία) of the generation of the cosmos. Socrates himself expli-
citly marks this new beginning, interrupting Timaeus at 29d4–6. He thanks Timaeus for
offering a fine ‘prelude’, and encourages him to commence what Socrates calls ‘the
work itself’.16 In rhapsodic and citharodic performances, the prelude or προοίμιον typi-
cally included an invocation and praise of gods; the presence of both elements at the
beginning of Timaeus’ speech (27c–d) may guide Socrates’ choice of metaphor.
What I want to draw attention to is the fact that the Stoics may have picked up on
another implication of the same metaphor: that a performer’s main song or νόμος is a
semantically complete work, assessable quite separably from its prelude.17
Accordingly, I propose to examine the following section of the speech in light of the
hypothesis that early Stoic readers of the dialogue focussed on what they (perhaps fol-
lowing Socrates’ cue) considered to be the proper beginning of Timaeus’ main ‘work’:
29d–34b, where Timaeus represents the Demiurge as making and implementing
reasoned determinations about the best way for the cosmos to be.

3. DIVINE PLANNING AS A CAUSE IN THE TIMAEUS

Timaeus begins his ‘work’ with the claim that the Demiurge’s goodness is the key
explanatory factor in the coming-to-be of the cosmos. The Demiurge is good, and so

14
See e.g. Plotinus, Enn. 3.2.2, 5.8.7 and 6.7.1–15 (on which, see N. Thaler, ‘Traces of good in
Plotinus’s philosophy of nature’, JHPh 49 [2011], 161–80, at 162–7).
15
This is not to deny that the Demiurge, in thinking about (say) the Forms that correspond to natu-
ral kinds, is in some sense thinking about what a well-ordered cosmos would be like. The important
point for my purposes is that on the Neoplatonist account he is not – and indeed cannot be – thinking
about the well-ordered sensible object that is our cosmos, or about its sensible components; for this
would be a failure of his goodness.
16
29d5–6: τὸ μὲν οὖν προοίμιον θαυμασίως ἀπεδεξάμεθά σου, τὸν δὲ δὴ νόμον ἡμῖν ἐφεξῆς
πέραινε.
17
See T. Power, The Culture of Kitharôidia (Washington DC, 2010), 187–200.
718 N AT H A N POW E R S

without jealousy, and so wishes all things to be ‘as like himself’ (i.e. good) as possible;
this, we are told at 29e4, is the fundamental ἀρχή of the cosmos. The general conse-
quence of this wish is that he takes charge of the perceptible realm and makes it orderly
rather than disorderly, order being (he thinks) altogether better than disorder (30a2–6).
It is immediately after this point that the Demiurge is first represented as engaged in
deliberative reasoning about the cosmos (30a6–c1). It is not permitted, we are told, for
one who is supremely excellent (ἄριστος) to do other than what is best (κάλλιστον). So
the Demiurge – being of such an excellent character – reasons that, in the realm of vis-
ible things with which he is dealing, what possesses νοῦς as a whole is better than what
does not possess νοῦς; and further, that nothing (in this realm, at any rate) can possess
νοῦς without possessing a soul. Having reasoned this out (λογισάμενος), he implements
his reasoning (λογισμός) accordingly, forming the cosmos by investing it with a soul
that possesses νοῦς. In this way, he produces a work that is best and finest.
Therefore, concludes Timaeus, the likely account (which a physicist must affirm) is
that the cosmos came-to-be as an intelligent animal διὰ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ … πρόνοιαν.
πρόνοια (‘forethought’ or ‘providence’) here evidently names the Demiurge’s reasoned
arranging of the cosmos.
Now, the relationship between this passage and that which immediately precedes it
(30a2–6), where the craftsman’s general preference for order over disorder is stated, is
not entirely clear. Are bringing order to the visible realm and investing the cosmos with
a soul two separate tasks for the Demiurge? Surely not entirely so; when the Demiurge
acts on his plan of giving the world a reasoning soul, he is thereby imposing a certain
sort of order on it. But we might think that the task of giving the cosmos a soul is in
some way subordinate to the project of bringing order to it, perhaps merely one
among many tasks involved in the Demiurge’s overall project of introducing maximal
order into the cosmos.
It is at least tempting, however, to go further than this and to read 30a6–c1 as spe-
cifying what the Demiurge does when he sets out to introduce order into the visible
realm, i.e. how he goes about ensuring that the order he establishes is, indeed, the finest
order. On this reading, what the Demiurge does, because he is good, is to reason about
the best way for the cosmos to be, and to act accordingly. He reasons that the best way
for the cosmos to be is to be an intelligent animal, and so he brings this about. In this
case, Timaeus is telling us that divine craftsmanship is a matter of acting on reason’s
determinations about the best way for the world to be – that is what divine goodness
amounts to. It is easy to see how, on this understanding, the Stoics would find this pas-
sage quite attractive. Indeed, it is surely not fanciful to suggest that the Stoics, taking the
passage this way, adopted the term ‘providence’ (πρόνοια) directly from the Timaeus to
designate their own active principle considered as the beneficent orderer of material in
the cosmos.18

4. THE CONTENT OF THE DEMIURGE’S PLAN

To recapitulate: on the basis of Timaeus’ proem, we might have expected the divine
‘craftsman’ to be defined entirely by his relationship to his primary object of cognition,
the unchanging model of the world. However, as soon as Timaeus begins to describe the

18
e.g. SVF 1.172; 2.528, 1108.
 P L ATO ’ S D E M I U R G E A N D T H E S TO I C P RO V I D E N T I A L G O D 719

actual formation of the cosmos, we find the explanatory emphasis of the account shifting
to the craftsman as an agent who is providential in that he plans out how to make the
best product (in this case, a world) that he is able to make.
As we have seen, the fundamental feature of the Demiurge’s providential plan is that
the world will be a living creature. In the passage which immediately follows Timaeus
describes the formation of the world’s body, to which its soul is joined to form a living
whole (31b–34a). This passage describes the Demiurge as holding beliefs about how
best to design this world body, and as engaging in διάνοια/διανοεῖσθαι and
λογισμός/λογίζεσθαι about it, terms which typically (in Plato and elsewhere) indicate
explicit or discursive reasoning. In the present context, they seem to designate what I
have above called deliberating or the reasoning out of a plan.19
Timaeus claims that the body of the world must be composed of four primary bodies
(the elements), in quantities exhibiting a special proportion to one another, in order to be
knit together in a suitably unified way (31b–32c).20 It is part of the plan that there
should exist no amount of any element outside the cosmos – that is, the Demiurge
plans to use up each element in its entirety in forming the world’s body. In doing so,
we are told, he has three intentions regarding this body (τάδε διανοηθείς, 32c8):

(1) that as an animal it should be whole and complete as possible and made up of complete parts;
(2) that it should be just one cosmos, in that nothing would be left over from which another such
thing could come into being; (3) that it should not get old and diseased (32d1–3a3).21

Summing up, Timaeus tells us that ‘on account of this cause and this piece of reasoning
(διὰ δὴ τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ τὸν λογισμὸν τόνδε), he built it [sc. the cosmos] one and whole
and complete, composed out of all wholes, free from old age and illness’ (33a6–b1).
I will not discuss the specific cosmological implications of each of these divine
intentions towards the cosmos; I will note, however, that (1) and (2) are both somewhat
puzzling. In (1), it is not clear in what sense an element (say, earth) is ‘whole’ just in
virtue of being present in its total amount; neither is it clear how Timaeus thinks that
wholeness or completeness applies to parts as distinct from wholes, in such a way
that a whole can fail to be complete in virtue of one of its parts being incomplete. In
regard to (2), surely we are not to entertain the prospect of a second (third, etc.) cosmic
animal, such as is being described by Timaeus, coming to be outside of the cosmos
without the Demiurge forming it. But in that case, what is the worry about leaving
some elemental stuff outside the cosmos? Perhaps (2) is simply to be read as consequent

19
S. Menn, Plato on God as Nous (Carbondale, 1995), 14 comments that διάνοια and λογισμός
denote ‘primarily the act of reasoning from premises to conclusions’, but he intends thereby to dis-
tinguish the sense of these terms from that of νοεῖν (the intuitive grasp of an intelligible object)
and of νοῦς (the virtue associated with reason). According to Menn (7–10), the craftsman of the
Timaeus is to be identified wholly and exclusively with νοῦς; and he takes νοῦς to be the Form of
the virtue of good reasoning (19–24). He does not discuss how (or whether) the dialogue’s numerous
attributions of διάνοια and λογισμός to the Demiurge fit with this view. Johansen (n. 10), 84–6 offers
what he calls a ‘non-psychological reading of these terms’, seeing them as dramatic descriptions of
craft itself, that is, as expressing in explicit form the means–end structure implicit in every craft. I
agree that such a reading is possible; my point is that it is possible only despite the usual connotations
of such language.
20
See F.M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato Translated with a Running
Commentary (London, 1937), ad loc. for discussion of Timaeus’ theory of proportionality.
21
πρῶτον μὲν (1) ἵνα ὅλον ὅτι μάλιστα ζῷον τέλεον ἐκ τελέων τῶν μερῶν εἴη, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις
(2) ἕν, ἅτε οὐχ ὑπολελειμμένων ἐξ ὧν ἄλλο τοιοῦτον γένοιτ’ ἄν, ἔτι δὲ (3) ἵν’ ἀγήρων καὶ ἄνοσον
ᾖ. (Translations of the Timaeus, here and below, are adapted from Zeyl.)
720 N AT H A N POW E R S

to the requirement, stated earlier (31a–b), that the cosmos made by the Demiurge must
be a unique copy of its unique model. Alternatively, it might be thought that (2) and (3)
are intended to be taken together. Timaeus expands a bit upon the reasoning behind (3)
as follows: in every animal, old age and disease are caused by the harmful influence of
factors outside the organism. Removing all such external factors will render the cosmic
animal immune to those conditions (33a3–6). So the thought behind (2) could be that
(3), in specifying why it is best that there be nothing left over outside of the cosmos,
explains why it is best that there be only one cosmos.22
A difficulty remains: neither of these interpretations explains why (2) expresses a
worry about another cosmos arising, and not just a general worry about extra-cosmic
stuff. I would suggest, as a plausible way of accommodating this as one of the
Demiurge’s distinct concerns, that Timaeus takes it that bodies left outside the cosmos
by the Demiurge might well come to constitute another world. However, that new world
would presumably be an inferior and less orderly cosmos, of the sort that the good
craftsman would disdain to produce. So the Demiurge is motivated to include in his cos-
mos as much body stuff as possible – that is, all of it – so as to save what would remain
from disorder, or at least from the relative disorder of an inferior cosmos. After all, we
were told that the Demiurge’s fundamental λογισμός about perceptible being is that
order is better than disorder, tout court.
We are given further examples of divine reasoning in the passage immediately fol-
lowing this, where the cosmic body is given spherical form. This is the shape most
appropriate to an all-comprehensive and everlasting animal, we are told, for two reasons.
First, of all shapes the sphere is ‘most complete’ (τελεώτατος) and ‘most similar’
(ὁμοιότατος) to itself; and the Demiurge ‘considered that (νομίσας) the similar is
immensely finer than the dissimilar’ (33b6–7). Second, the sphere is smooth all around.
This is suitable for the cosmic animal because the animal is all-inclusive, so that it
requires neither exterior organs to perceive what is outside of it nor orifices through
which to breathe, take in food or discharge waste; its own waste is its nourishment.
The animal was built ‘by design’ (ἐκ τέχνης, 33d1) to act and undergo all of its experi-
ences itself within itself (33d1–3): ‘for its builder considered that if it were
self-sufficient, it would be better than if it needed other things’.23 The Demiurge has
a preference about the way the cosmos should be (self-sufficient), and he reasons out
what shape will best implement this preference: one smooth all around.
As it happens, we know that the early Stoics were closely familiar with this section
of the Timaeus, because we find Chrysippus drawing on it in a fragment from Book 1 of
his On Providence preserved by Plutarch at Mor. 1052d (SVF 2.604): ‘The cosmos
alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has within itself all it needs, and it
gets nourishment and growth from itself through the interchange of its parts with one
another.’24

22
This seems to be how A.E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), ad loc.
and Cornford (n. 20), ad loc. interpret (2); cf. D. Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity
(Berkeley, 2007), 112 and 117.
23
ἡγήσατο γὰρ αὐτὸ ὁ συνθεὶς αὔταρκες ὂν ἄμεινον ἔσεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ προσδεὲς ἄλλων.
24
αὐτάρκης δ’ εἶναι λέγεται μόνος ὁ κόσμος, διὰ τὸ μόνος ἐν αὑτῷ πάντα ἔχειν ὧν δεῖται· καὶ
τρέφεται ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ αὔξεται, τῶν ἄλλων μορίων εἰς ἄλληλα καταλλαττομένων. Plutarch con-
trasts this passage with another from the same book at 1052c (SVF 2.604) about the gradual growth
of the soul of the cosmos, which suggests that it was part of a discussion about the life cycle of the
cosmos (another extant fragment of On Providence, Book 1 describes the state of the world during the
conflagration in terms of being all soul and no body: SVF 2.605). In any case, Plutarch manages to
 P L ATO ’ S D E M I U R G E A N D T H E S TO I C P RO V I D E N T I A L G O D 721

5. CONCLUSION: THE FURTHER PROVIDENCE OF THE WORLD SOUL AND

OF THE YOUNGER GODS

Timaeus makes the transition from his discussion of the world’s body to his discussion
of the formation of the World Soul by summarizing the Demiurge’s design of a body
suitable for that soul (34a8–b2): this was the god’s plan (λογισμός θεοῦ), reasoned
out (λογισθείς) concerning the god-to-be – that is, the ensouled cosmos. In what follows
(34b–37c), the emphasis is no longer on the Demiurge’s planning, but on how the cos-
mos itself possesses and exercises reason. The World Soul is given an elaborate struc-
ture and a set of innate movements that make it perfectly suited to be the soul of a
reasoning animal; the result, we are told, is that it shares fully in λογισμός (36e6)
and νοῦς (37c2).
For later Platonists, this characterization of World Soul left behind some complicated
questions: if the cosmos itself possesses the cognitive abilities and virtues of the
Demiurge, what role is left for the latter? Is the Demiurge to be identified with the
reason of the World Soul? If so, what sense can be made of Timaeus’ elaborate account
of how the Demiurge fashions the World Soul? And if not, what exactly is the relation-
ship between the two? The point I want to make is that the text does offer a clear temp-
tation to identify the Demiurge with the νοῦς of the World Soul. This temptation is
strengthened by statements, both in the Timaeus and elsewhere in the Platonic corpus,
that seem to indicate that νοῦς cannot in Plato’s view exist apart from soul.25 Whether or
not one is motivated to resist this temptation, I would suggest, depends chiefly on
whether one thinks it necessary to align the Demiurge with the ontological category
of unchanging being in order for it (together with the Forms) to stand in the appropriate
explanatory relationship to things in the category of what comes-to-be (including the
World Soul). If one emphasizes that alignment, as well as the fact that the World
Soul’s function is to inhabit the world’s body and thereby to keep the cosmos and its
motions organized, one will presumably think it important to keep Demiurge and
World Soul separate.
The Stoics, however, have no use for a realm of Forms, so they have no motivation
of that sort to keep the νοῦς of World Soul and the νοῦς that is the Demiurge separate.
And they do have a motivation for thinking of the two as substantially identical, in so far
as both describe divine providence, i.e. reason’s implementation of its determinations of
the best way for the cosmos to be. The same goes for the younger cosmic gods, to whom
the Demiurge, in a famous speech (41a–d), entrusts the creation and safeguarding of liv-
ing creatures within the cosmos. Timaeus himself indicates that to understand how the
bodies of humans and other animals came to possess their forms, and how their souls are
fitted to those bodies, will require no more and no less than a detailed consideration of

find, among other putative contradictions, a contradiction in the notion that the cosmos ‘grows’
through being nourished by itself. He then attempts to turn the Timaeus against Chrysippus by assert-
ing, in a close paraphrase of 33c7–8, that the cosmos cannot grow, since has its own waste (φθίσις) for
nourishment; however, this is probably exactly what Chrysippus has in mind in speaking of cosmic
nourishment through ‘rearrangement’. Interestingly for our purposes, Plutarch’s point, however frivo-
lous it may be, confirms that he too takes Chrysippus to be drawing upon Timaeus 33c for his argu-
ment. Cf. E. Bréhier, Chrysippe et l’ancien stoïcisme (rev. edition, Paris, 1951), 148.
25
Tim. 30b1–3; Phlb. 30c9–10; Soph. 248e–9d. For contrasting views of these passages, see H.
Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy, vol. 1 (New York, 1962), 606–7 and
Menn (n. 19), ch. 4.
722 N AT H A N POW E R S

the younger gods’ reasoning (44c): ‘Through what causes (αἰτίαι) did these things come
to be, through what plans (προνοίαι) of the gods?’
Timaeus explains the organization of the cosmos, at every level, by appeal to rational
planning: that of the Demiurge, and that of the Demiurge’s divine instruments (the
World Soul, and finally the younger gods). The Stoics were, I have proposed, deeply
inspired by this consistent appeal to divine, providential reason as what is explanatory
of the disposition of the natural world. Absent Plato’s metaphysical reasons to treat the
Demiurge as an entity separate from the cosmos – and absent later Platonists’ qualms
about ascribing to the Demiurge the power to deliberate about the cosmos – the
Stoics were free to construe their active principle, present throughout the world, on
the model of Plato’s Demiurge: as a providential god, acting on its plans for the
good ordering of the world.26

University at Albany (SUNY) NATHAN POWERS

npowers@albany.edu

26
An earlier version of this paper was presented in October 2011 at the annual meeting of the
Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy in New York City, where it received a number of helpful com-
ments from the audience.