Apeiron Volume 46 Issue 3 2013 (Doi 10.1515/apeiron-2012-0068) Mason, Andrew - The Nous Doctrine in Plato's Thought

DOI 10.
1515/apeiron-2012-0068 apeiron 2013; 46(3): 201228
Andrew Mason
The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought

Abstract: The article argues that the doctrine that nous rules the world plays a
decisive role in the development of Platos thought, despite the strong critique
of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo and the absence of the doctrine in other middle
dialogues such as the Republic. It addresses the Timaeus as a transformative
rehabilitation of the nous doctrine, through the world-soul, the demiurge, and
the class of other gods. It then considers the ways this schema is modified in
later dialogues (Statesman, Philebus, Laws) in light of the suppression of the
problem of natural disaster in the Timaeus.
Keywords: Nous, Plato, Anaxagoras, world-soul, demiurge
Andrew Mason: 1 Island Lane, Sapphire Beach 2450, Australia,
E-mail: andrew1211m@hotmail.com
The doctrine that nous, intelligence, governs the world1 is arguably no less decisive than the many other (Socratic, Heraclitean, Parmenidean, Pythagorean)
sources that led Plato to the thinking of his own thought. It is affirmed in the
Cratylus, and more famously in the Phaedo, though it is clear in both that Plato
does not yet see how to ground the doctrine in terms of the metaphysical position announced in these first two middle dialogues. It has a major role to play
later in the Timaeus, where Plato reinscribes Anaxagoras world-ruling nous as
the world-soul and underwrites this with the nous of the demiurge in an attempt to provide that grounding, and it is in play in a number of later dialogues, particularly the Philebus, Statesman and Laws. On the other hand, the
doctrine does not figure in the later middle dialogues in which Plato further
develops his metaphysical position.
The purposes of this essay are to try to explain this trajectory, and in connection with that, to clarify the essential role of the nous doctrine in Platos
thought. While a major motive for Platos Forms-based metaphysics is to ground
the 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 in
many earlier phusikoi, and quite explicit in the case of Heraclitus, albeit differently expressed
and 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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202 Andrew Mason
enough. It also has to be moral, indeed the basis for morality in the human
sphere. The belief in the essential orderedness and goodness of the world as a
whole not only motivates but shapes Platos thought, including his thought of
Forms. But Forms alone cannot satisfy this need, and insofar as the nous doctrine is indispensible here it is not an optional accessory to Platos philosophy
proper but belongs to its heart and soul.
As for why something so decisive for the elaboration of Platos metaphysics
drops out of view in the dialogues after the Phaedo, the explanation runs, I
believe, broadly as follows. The Cratylus affirmed the doctrine in the context of
an 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, and
things that impede it bad ones. But it also recoiled from this, resorting to a caricature of mere flux which is a far cry from the regular, cyclical motion that
was actually in question, and which masks a deeper ambivalence: a genuine
attraction to the idea of a natural flow of life, but also an anxiety that it provides no firm guarantee of a just cosmic order, and no firm ground of human
morality 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 Plato
recoiled into the doctrine of unchanging Forms deemed incommensurable with
flow. 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 this
is because Plato does not yet see a way to reconcile the doctrine with his metaphysics, given the antithesis between flow and Forms. That this is provisional is
clear from the fact that in the Timaeus Plato seeks that way,3 as he must, since
even if Forms furnish ultimate grounds of justice, they do not account for the
justness of a world in motion. Moreover, while Forms are intelligible they cannot yield the intelligence required by a metaphysics of the good, which would
ensure that whatever happens does so for the best. The nous doctrine is thus not
renounced 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 doctrine
early in the middle period, in the Phaedo. Understanding why Platos remarks
there about Anaxagoras doctrine are both affirmative and sharply critical will
help 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 the
spindle of necessity in Republic X, and an explicitly positive one is found in the Phaedrus
apropos of love (251bd, 255cd). More to the point, the Phaedrus is moving towards the worldsoul thesis (see 245ce, 246b), though its conception of soul as the prime origin of motion
and as governing the whole cosmos stays at the level of soul as a class, without yet imputing
a singular soul to the cosmos itself. As such it is closer to Platos position in the Laws.

203
light on why Platos rehabilitation of the nous doctrine in the Timaeus takes the
form it does. In the later sections we will address that rehabilitation and the
modifications it undergoes in subsequent dialogues.
Beforehand a word is required about how the Greeks grasped nous in general and apropos the nous doctrine. Three basic senses can be distinguished4:
1) seeing with the minds eye, in particular grasping the implicit meaning of a
situation; 2) logical reasoning; 3) cunning (metis) and practical reason as a capacity to learn from the past, to devise plans to avoid trouble or realise a goal. We
find Platonic versions of all three senses, but the first is fundamental. The seeing of Forms, both in themselves and their own entailments and in their sensuous embodiments, underlies the second sense in Plato, since the two kinds of
reasoning distinguished in the Line simile (Republic 510d511c) involve seeing
Forms in just those two different ways. Note that the Form of the Good underpins Platos inflections of both senses.5 This is also the case with the third
sense: anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have seen [
] the Good (517c), rather than simply discerning his own possible advantage at others expense. This distinguishes Platonic nous from Homeric metis.
These inflections Plato gives the three senses of nous inform his appropriation of the nous doctrine. Above all, nous looks essentially to the Good in establishing or maintaining cosmic order. We will also see Plato draw on the Line
schema and impute both types of reasoning to the world-souls maintenance of
order. But care is needed in how we incorporate practical wisdom into the
nous doctrine. Besides the fact that the context here is evidently not the tactical
ad hockery of Homeric political machination, Platos craftsman god does not
learn from the past in forming his plans. Likewise, as Sedley argues, the cosmic
farmer that nous is for Anaxagoras plans and knows the outcomes of its actions
at the outset.6 In later Plato we will come across a sense in which the worldsoul corrects its mistakes, although not strictly in the sense that it learns from
them.
4 For the first two see Kurt von Fritz, Nous, Noein, and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras), in Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993), 236. For the third, which von Fritz misses, see See J. H. Lesher, Minds
Knowledge and Powers of Control in Anaxagoras DK B12, Phronesis 40/2 (1995) 125142, at
133 ff.
5 The seeing of other Forms, like Justice, is of no real benefit unless supported by a vision of
the Good (505ab), and the latter is also the first principle from which pure reasoning or dialectic thinks everything else (511b).
6 David Sedley, Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press
2007), 21.

204 Andrew Mason
1 Platos critique of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo

In the Phaedo Socrates recalls first his delight upon first hearing of Anaxagoras
claim that it is nous which brings to order and causes all things (
: 97bc), and then his disappointment upon a close examination of Anaxagoras book. The initially affirmative response is not mere
rhetorical posturing, a case of setting up an intellectual competitor for a fall. It
establishes a position thought should return to after the critique, only one that
Plato 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 to
hold fast to it. Socrates, and with him Plato, is sincere when he says that Anaxagoras seemed a teacher of causation after my own mind (97d), that his doctrine seemed somehow right or felicitous ( : 97c), that the
world as a whole is well off ( ) if it is true.
What pleased Socrates is the thought that, if nous is the cause of everything, 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 causality underwritten by the good not just in the sense of what is for the best overall, but for each thing. It also promised an attractively simple approach to causation, for it meant that when one wished to discover why something is as it is
or came to be or ceased to be, the only thing one had to consider was the best
way for that thing to be or act or be acted on (97cd). Socrates makes his point
concrete with some cosmological examples. He wants first of all to know
whether the earth is flat or round and if it is at the centre of the cosmos, and to
learn the relative speeds and orbits of the sun, moon and stars. He assumes
Anaxagoras will not only state all this but explain the reason and necessity
( ) for it by saying how it is better that it be so and
what better means (
: 97e). This is the only kind of cause Socrates wants to hear about, because
it is the kind implicitly promised by the doctrine one that explains not just
why it is best for each of these bodies to be just as it is, but also, as a cause
common 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 whether
Plato is right to have these expectations. The cause of everything is a very
broad phrase, and taken too literally it does not exactly reflect Anaxagoras
view. However, the focus is on nous as a cause of order, and Platos reference to
it at 97c as neatly summarises Anaxagoras
view that the pre-eminent cosmic things like the sun, moon and earth are created through the ordering revolution which separates out the primordial com-

The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 205
mixture. But what about the promise Plato extrapolates? It is never expressly
said by Anaxagoras, in the surviving fragments, that nous orders things for the
best overall and for each thing. Even so, why would he say the world is ruled
by intelligence if not to affirm that it is well-ordered and good? Sedleys claim
that this is implicit seems correct, if as he argues (splendidly) nous in Anaxagoras is a cosmic farmer concerned with creating the ideal hothouse conditions
for life to flourish.7 Sedley also suggests that Anaxagoras can comfortably leave
it implicit that nous works for the best because, unlike Plato, he does not confront 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, in
short, demands more of the nous doctrine than Anaxagoras. For Sedley, as any
farmer is concerned with harvesting the best, the main purpose of Anaxagoras
nous in creating worlds is to generate human beings as the best and most intelligent of living things, the best vehicles for nous itself to occupy. He admits
that its ultimate why here may be pure self-interest, that nous does all it
does because it wants more of itself.8 In contrast, what underlies Platos expectations of the doctrine is the demand of a fundamentally moral universe that
may serve as a model and basis for human morality and moral betterment. I
suggest that this largely explains the severity of the critique that is to come.
When it came to the crunch, Socrates complains, Anaxagoras made no use
of nous and imputed no causality to it for the ordering of things, but lapsed
into a banal and absurd material causality based on the so-called elements
(98bc). This, he says, is like someone saying that everything Socrates does he
does with intelligence (), only to default, when it comes to stating the
causes of these actions, to the mere mechanics involved, explaining the fact
that he is sitting by recourse to the parts of his body (bones, sinews, etc.) and
their characteristics, movements and relationships (98cd). Socrates, of course,
is sitting in his prison cell. The true cause of this has nothing to do with his
bones and sinews, but is simply that he thought it better to do so, since the
Athenians thought it better to condemn me and it is juster and nobler to stay
and suffer any penalty the city may impose than to run away (98e99a). At
this moment, when he might question whether there is any justice in the world,
Socrates would exemplify the way that nous should be deemed responsible for
the 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 than
they would be if the centrifugal separation were left to play itself out naturally, nous must put
them where they are for the sake of agricultural societies reliant on the sun and the lunar
calendar: Creationism and its Critics, 21 ff.
8 Ibid., 24.

206 Andrew Mason
is now proceeding, not from the macrocosm down as before, but from Socrates
to 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 without
such things I could not have acted as I saw fit (99a), yet it is careless to say it
is because of them ( ) that I do what I do, if I do it with nous. They are
not in reality ( : 99b) causes, but conditions without which a cause can
never have efficacy ( ). Most people, he goes on to say, fail to observe this distinction and wrongly grasp what is
auxiliary to the cause as the cause itself. Clearly he thinks Anaxagoras and the
phusikoi more generally lazily (: 99b) acquiesce in this tendency and
likewise grope in the dark when it comes to stating reasons for the cosmos
being as it is:
That is why one puts a vortex [] around the earth to make it stay put beneath the
heavens, and another props it up on a pedestal of air, as if it were a flat trough. As for a
power which disposes things such that the way they now stand is the best, they neither
look for it nor believe it has any daimonic force [ ]. Rather, they think
some day they will find a more powerful and immortal and all-embracing Atlas, and in
truth they do not think that anything is bound together and embraced by the good and
the 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. On
the question of which two phusikoi Plato singles out, it is usual to suppose Empedocles is meant in the first case, Anaximenes (and following him Anaxagoras)
in the second. But Anaxagoras does think a vortex, and it seems reasonable to
suppose it has a centripetal aspect which keeps the earth in place as well as the
centrifugal one by which the heavenly bodies are thrown off from earth. It is
also significant that both theories had later atomistic adherents: Leucippus and
Democritus respectively. We can be sure that Plato has this in mind. Anaxagoras et al. are implicitly being held responsible for paving the way for the fullblown antiteleological orientation of the atomists (as they will be explicitly in
Laws X).
Another question is what consequences Platos teleological stipulations
have for the two physical theories themselves. Are they non-teleological and
ipso facto wrong, or plausible but inadequately (that is, non-teleologically)
grounded? Plato certainly rejects the second theory. When he declares his own
view at 108e109a, he takes for granted that the earth is spherical and in the
centre of the cosmos, and argues that it does not need air or any other such
force [] to prevent it falling. It is held in place () by the uniformity

of the heaven on all sides and by its own equipoise, so that nothing inclines it
more or less in any direction. But what about the vortex theory? It seems included in any other such force, and that Plato rejects it too is supported not
only by Cratylus 439c, where the word was used in connection with the
dismissal of flow as an ontological fantasy, but from the argument at Timaeus
57e that motion cannot occur in conditions of uniformity. The inference might
be drawn that there is no vortex motion around the earth, but this is not the
point Plato is making in the Timaeus. Not that the Timaeus holds to a vortex
theory; its theory is meant to account for complexities which a sheer vortex is
unable to explain. But it does contain something akin to the earth being held in
place by a vortex: the claim that the revolution of the whole cosmos hems in
the four material bodies in their constant motion and change (58a), preventing
this from shaking the receptacle as had occurred in the primordial chaos. Note
that it is the world-souls ruling and most intelligent motion that is responsible
here. A stable core of earth at the cosmic centre is not just a consequence of the
work of nous but a reason for it.
Looked at in this way, Platos beef is not with the vortex as such. We have
to look past the Phaedo to see this clearly, for here Plato is still stuck on the
dichotomy of flow and the stable and unchanging which we see at the end of
the Cratylus, and not ready to think a stability in and through constant circular
motion. He is prepared to discuss cosmic shape and structure, but is unsure
how to bring in cosmic motion without spoiling everything. The issue with the
vortex theory is rather that this mechanical how of the earths stability is offered
up instead of the why and as if it were the why. To the claim that Anaxagoras
takes it as read that it is good the earth is stabilised and that nous acts for this
reason, the response, again, must be that Plato demands more than this.
In this connection the passage at 99bc makes two claims which should be
treated as one, for the second claim,
(), elaborates the first, that nous as a power disposing things for the best
has daimonic force, . Much hinges on how the words
and are understood here. Firstly, must not be rendered
supernatural, for that tacitly assumes the very conception of nature, as in itself
lacking a binding and ordering power of good, that Plato is castigating. Nous as
a daimonic power is not beyond nature but in some way immanent in it, even if
not mixed with anything else as Anaxagoras himself said. That cosmic nous is
daimonic principally means two things: that it sees or knows in an extraordinary
way, and that it advises, steers or persuades in a manner that is morally binding
and apt to elicit awed assent. Besides Socrates personal testimony to this effect
with regard to his or divine sign, Plato makes this point at Cratylus
398bc. The spirits () are knowing (); knowing the good and

208 Andrew Mason
being good, they point it out to the mortals they guide through life. They are
given this tutelary role later in the Phaedo itself (107e). Also relevant is the negativity of Socrates . It only restrains him from doing something, and
thereby signals that what he is thinking of doing is wrong. It is conceivable that
in substituting for at Phaedo 99c Plato is making a connection
with , , restrain. The point is not just that physically restraining
things is what cosmic nous must do in ordering them. For nous to have daimonic force it must restrain morally as well, for otherwise the cosmic order is
merely the chess-board on which the Alcibiadeses of the world conduct their
machinations. This is why it matters more deeply to Plato why nous acts. For
Platos nous it could never be enough that intelligent beings thrive and multiply. Cosmic order is not simply there for that purpose, but so that men may see
it and see themselves as part of it, and make this foundational for their own
actions, 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 good
and needful. The implied cosmological sense, for all Platos reluctance to speak
openly here of cosmic motion, is that for things in general to be disposed for
the 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 from
their respective courses. But again Plato means more than this. That the good
and the needful is the subject of the verbs and could lead us
to think that things, starting with the celestial bodies, are simply passive recipients 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 intelligent divine agencies is that he needs them to actively take up the good and
needful as their own concern rather than just be subject to it as mindless lumps
of matter. Things are not just bound by the good but bound to it, whenever they
are such (i.e., ensouled) that this is possible. For this reason Tredinnicks rendering 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, overwhelming in power. It therefore has an inner connection with , and is
meant to convey the same sense of a moral voice that shakes one up and
solicits a sense of what is for the best, what is needful, as the ultimate standard of thought and action.
All these words are put in Socrates mouth, yet even if he did in fact come
across someone reading Anaxagoras one day and respond in the way described,
they clearly belong to Plato. For while the passage ends (99d) with a typical
Socratic disavowal of any knowledge of the daimonic power nous should be,

the subsequent account of a makeshift approach9 to causation in the absence

of such knowledge is no less characteristically Platonic. It explains causation
solely on the basis of Forms, and makes no attempt to link their supposed causal power back to nous, or even to the stipulation that a cause proper be a
power which disposes things for the best. But that is because Plato cannot see
clearly how to make this connection, and it is for just this reason that his approach is a makeshift one.10 In resorting to the makeshift Plato remains in much
the same impasse that marked the end of the Cratylus, where he could see no
likeness between unchanging Forms and flow. Yet he has to pursue that likeness if he is to tackle the question of causation in a more adequate way, for the
twin reasons adduced previously. Forms cannot account for a world in motion,
and are not intelligent but rather that on the basis of which some intelligence
or other causes and orders things. That is essentially how Plato will try to reconcile the nous doctrine with Forms in the Timaeus.11
2 The Timaeus as a rehabilitation of the nous

doctrine
Platos rehabilitation of the nous doctrine is threefold. It is the world-soul that
corresponds most directly to the doctrine in Anaxagoras sense that the world is
9 (99d): literally second voyage, but proverbially next best way. Both the
inferiority 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 adopting
Tredennicks rendering, makeshift approach. Considerable controversy surrounds whether
Plato is still talking about causal reasons (aitiai) or logical ones, as claimed by Vlastos, Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo, The Philosophical Review 78/3 (July, 1969). I am unable to go
into this in detail here, but it seems to me that while Plato is certainly speaking primarily of
Forms 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 and
punishments 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. Without
disputing the crux of Tredennicks translation, I take to have the much softer sense of
what Smyths Grammar (section 1801) calls a doubtful negation.
11 After the Republic fudged around the problem. Already there Forms are no longer spoken of
as causes, with the exception of the Form of the Good, which is bizarrely held up as the cause
of other Forms.

210 Andrew Mason
governed by nous from within, although Anaxagoras nous is not divinised or

conceived as a soul of the world grasped as a living thing. But nous also figures
as the demiurge that ordered the world (on the basis of Forms) and implanted a
soul in its body, and a class of other gods created by the demiurge are given a
role as the intelligence responsible for populating the world with mortal living
things after the demiurges model. The demiurge is the condition of Platos revival of the nous doctrine, inasmuch as it plays transcendental guarantor of the
goodness of the world-soul, of cosmic self-regulation.12 Nevertheless, it is not
the demiurge that rules the world, but a nous immanent in the world itself. Plato also needs this immanent nous, for his need of a moral universe is not satisfied if the moral is only ever supplied by divine intervention from outside. The
cosmos is grasped as a living thing endowed with soul and intelligence in order
that it take up the demiurges purposes as its own and serve as a visible model
for us to do likewise. Why should I be moral and fulfil the demiurges purposes
if 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 who
reduce the world-soul to a mechanism13 need to reflect on why it is that Timaeus prays to the created god, the cosmos (Critias 106ab), but never to the
demiurge.14 But nor is the demiurge merely a symbol of the reason at work in
the world as it exists, as Cornford claimed.15 Of course the demiurge is symbolic
in 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 of
a transcendent world-creating nous,16 rather than that being a symbol for a nous
immanent in the cosmos.
12 At 29a the cosmos is declared the finest of all generated things because its producer is the
best of causes ( ), not only because he is good in himself and wants
everything else to be good too (29e), but because he looked to a good (i.e. eternal) model, a
Form (30cd).
13 For example, Richard D. Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1985), 4 f. Mohrs
comparison 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 is
maintaining order, and certainly does not reason in any sense. Why would Plato ascribe soul
to the world itself if he meant this?
14 See Cornford, Platos Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (London: Routledge 1935), 35, and Sarah
Broadie, 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 and
its Ethical Dimensions (New York: Cambridge University Press 2005), ch. 2, for a recent attempt
to elaborate this view.
16 As argued by Hackforth, Platos Theism, in Allen, ed., Studies in Platos Metaphysics (London: Routledge 1965) 439447, at 439. I cannot here go into his further claim, recently developed by Stephen Menn, that the demiurge is a nous that transcends soul as well as body.

Nor is the demiurge to be reduced to the Form of the Good, however reminiscent its ineffable transcendence (Timaeus 28c) is of Platos remarks about the
Good in Republic VI. Although it is specifically to the Form Living Thing that
the demiurge looked in fashioning the cosmos (30cd), that he looked also to
the Form of the Good and held himself to what it demands is not only implicit
in the claim that he was not jealous of his own goodness (just the kind of error
to 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. At
46cd he is described as accomplishing the Form of the Best (
) in the sensible domain as far as possible. The demiurge of
the finest and best at 68e is meant in this sense, not in the sense that he devised () the Form of the Good itself.
It is also important to see that the Timaeus not only dispenses with the
Phaedos makeshift but retrieves the distinction it had drawn before resorting to
it, between a cause stricto senso (which disposes things for the best) and the
material auxiliary to it, with the difference that now Plato is prepared to call the
latter a kind of cause.17 This wandering cause (48a) receives the name necessity, denoting the tendential but irregular, and strictly unpurposive, generative
capacity of matter, which the Timaeus strives to exhibit as complying for the
most part with nous. What the Timaeus effectively does is retrieve the theme of
flow from the Cratylus by bifurcating it into this twofold, placing all that is dubious and unreliable about it on the side of necessity so as to isolate a good
cosmic motion brought about by nous. The question is whether Plato can bring
these together and still tell them apart. The problems implicit in the treatment
of the relation between demiurgic nous and necessity, which help shed light on
the modifications of the Timaeus schema in later dialogues, will be addressed
after we have examined the world-soul thesis.
The account of the world-soul is difficult. Besides the mathematics involved
and its translation into musical terminology, as if to realise the Pythagorean
harmony of the spheres, the discussion is extremely condensed and couched
in 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: Princeton
University Press 1983). The specific task of the Timaeus, for Sayre, is to elucidate the notion of
participation, which had been little more than a suggestive metaphor (203) in dialogues like
the Phaedo and the Republic (and remains so, he adds, in spite of Platos efforts here). While
Sayre is right to make this connection, the key problem the Timaeus takes up from the Phaedo
is in fact causation, which is reconceived in line with Platos original investment in the nous
doctrine.

212 Andrew Mason
of the nous doctrine, it is best to start with the cosmology developed later in the
account to clarify its substantive orientation. This does not directly yield us the
world-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 analogy
in Republic X. One significant development is the attempt to deal with the axis
of the ecliptic. The new model, which resembles an armillary sphere, would not
only account for the angle at which sun, moon and planets revolve, with respect
to the fixed stars, but would explain their moving more slowly as the net effect
of two contrary motions. As the entire cosmos spins on its axis, all the heavenly
bodies follow its westward motion, but while the fixed stars do so purely, the
others also have their own eastward motion, each on its own orbit, which is not
as strong as the ruling (: 35e) motion of the whole, so that their westward
course appears slower. Furthermore, there are differences within this group.
While the sun, Venus and Mercury move at the same speed, the moons westeast motion is faster (hence its overall motion slower), and those of the outer
planets are slower, and also different from each other (39ab). An additional
difference is the retrogradation of the planets, the contrary tendency (
: 38d) whereby they periodically seem to go into reverse, or as Plato puts
it, alike overtake and are overtaken by one another.
For these reasons Plato calls the ruling east-west motion shared by all the
movement of the Same, and the one that is not only contrary to it but further
differentiated in itself that of the Different (36c). This conceptual pair is set
down formally at the outset of the account of the world-soul (35ab), well before the treatment of celestial motions which gives it a readily graspable content. It is clearly intended as a master key to the whole discussion, the attempt
to tie observed cosmological phenomena to a doctrine of a world-soul that operates by making judgements of sameness and difference. But note that Plato is
not identifying the world-souls two circles with the motions of the fixed stars
and the planets, respectively. The point is that the motion of the fixed stars
visibly reflects that of the world-souls circle of the Same, as the motions of the
planets 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 motion. The planets move differently because they are set by the demiurge in the
seven orbits into which the circle of the Different has been cut (38c, referring
back to 36d). In short, both the world-souls circles have visible analogues in the
heavens, 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 motions addressed in the passage, which I will draw on freely in what follows.

world-souls motions but its bodys obedience to them. As we will see, Plato is
less 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 two
circles emerges at 37ac, the one passage that dwells on what the world-soul
actually does. But it is also where the obscurities of the initial discussion of
the world-souls constitution from 35a develop into palpable ambiguities, even
antinomies. This passage also presupposes the statement at 34b that the demiurge put the world-soul in the centre ( ) of the cosmos, extended it throughout the whole body ( ), and wrapped it
around () that body. The upshot is that, although the world-soul
is invisible (: 36e) and different in kind from the body, it is fully in
touch with everything going on in that body. As it revolves, forever circling
back upon itself ( ), it touches () both
sensuous things (= dispersed, ) and indivisible ones (,
= Forms), and in this way it is moved throughout itself, constantly roused to
the task of saying (), of telling itself, in what respects things are the
same and in what respects different: what any encountered thing is the same
as 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 inwardly
striving for.
Three points in particular must be held in view. First, the thrust of the passage is that the world-soul knows, is master of the myriad differences and similarities it encounters, able to discern the same in the different and the different
in 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 both
to Forms and to other generated things. It is a matter, in light of Forms, of
knowing everything that comes to pass () in its where () and
when (), 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 emerges
when we relate this claim back to the first one, and recognise that both are
governed by the prior statement that the world-soul constantly circles back
upon itself. In this perpetual traversal, the world-soul sees specifically that and
how things are similar and different here in relation to there, and here now in
relation to here then, on its previous traversal. However, it cannot just be a
question of whether and how things are different or the same, for the worldsoul does not encounter anything that is not, in a sense, itself. It traverses its
own body to see whether and how it is different or the same. The world-souls
discourse is a constant self-monitoring.

214 Andrew Mason
This is a necessary consequence of the fact that Platos rehabilitation of the

nous doctrine involves a unitary world-soul governing a unitary world-body. It
is also the only way to make sense of the interesting fact that the world-souls
activity is wholly contained in the two verbs and , which might
seem by themselves not to entail that it actively maintains cosmic order, rather
than just recognising it. One hesitates to attribute to Plato an exposure to Buddhist meditation practices, but one does not need to be a practising Buddhist to
have noticed how the sheer observation of a pain, for example, a simple attention to what it is like and whether it stays the same or changes over time in any
way, can serve to subtly ameliorate it, whereas willing it away can make it
worse. In a similar way Platos world-soul could maintain homeostatic balance
simply by self-monitoring and, when it notices that a given part of its body is
rather too hot or cold, turbulent or stagnant, paying attention to its character
and vicissitudes.
In the remainder of our passage Plato ties back the discourse of the worldsoul not only to his earlier account of its two circles, but to the Republics epistemological schema. Only when discourse concerns the intelligible (Forms) is it
characterised by nous and knowledge, whereas discourse on the sensuous generates opinions and beliefs which, in the world-souls case, are firm and true
( ). With regard to cosmic self-regulation, the difference between knowledge senso stricto and infallibly true belief does not seem terribly
serious. Yet this masks a problem. Can the account of the world-soul, and thus
the nous doctrine, be kept within the parameters of this schema, when it necessarily concerns motion and the sensuous? Can nous rule a world that is sensuous 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 circle
of the Different (corresponding to its dispersed character), and the intelligible
(indivisible Forms) with that of the Same. Granted that the latter best expresses
the uniform rotation on the same spot which Plato deems the movement that
most befits nous (34a), it remains that both are circles of soul and nous, and
both have visible analogues. Indeed, since the demiurge composed the worldsoul out of sameness, difference and being, and each of these is a blend of its
indivisible and divisible modes (35a), there must be an intelligible Different and
a sensuous Same. Moreover, when Plato describes the world-souls division into
a mathematical series, he says that both circles are cut from this same cloth, or
rather are formed by splitting it in two (36b). If this cloth is an immaterial
one, made up purely of mathematical intervals, this applies to both circles
which comprise the world-soul. Like the ratios imposed on the worlds body discussed 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

obey the same system, and must be covered by the same knowledge yielded by
the circle of the Same, regardless of how much more complicated and differentiated it is.19
Our attempt to elaborate this further is hamstrung by the fact that Plato
makes 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 between each pair of integers (in the case of 1 and 2, 3/2 and 4/3). In fact, its only
cosmological application is one brief statement that the seven basic integers
correspond to the spacing of the seven orbits into which the circle of the Different is cut (36d).20 It is of course true, as Timaeus says, that the celestial motions
are bewildering in the multitude of their variations and their astonishing intricacy (39d, cf. 38e). Even so, we could have expected more: for example, that
the suns net movement to the west can be computed as some fraction of that of
the fixed stars if not exactly half, say, how about three-quarters (arithmetic
mean), or two-thirds (harmonic)? Looked at in this way, the full series can seem
designed to ensure that, as one gazes into the cosmological plethora, whenever
something falls between the cracks, as it were, what is missed by one hand
might be caught by the other.
It seems as if an originally more ambitious project has been toned down
into 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 uniform
movement of the Same, yet the point being made here is more complex. By virtue of this single
and most intelligent of revolutions ( : 39c), we are able
to measure not only its periods but also, against this background, periods such as the month
and year which pertain to the moon and sun, thus to the circle of the Different. (This seems to
explain 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 of
eternity.) It would even be possible to calculate the so-called Great Year of the cosmos, the
time 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 circles
cannot legitimately be regarded as falling into the two mutually exclusive ontological and epistemological orders of Platos middle metaphysics.
20 We are told at 38d that the moon and sun occupy the two orbits closest to earth, from
which we can infer that the sun is reckoned twice as far from the earth as the moon, but the
rest is left for us to guess. At no time is the series concretely applied in relation to the circle of
the Same, nor apropos the speeds of the planets, sun and moon relative to each other or to the
fixed 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.

216 Andrew Mason

( : 36e) and maintains order by ensuring
that the different relates proportionally to the same. It can only do this insofar
as it is both circles, the Same and the Different, and both are cut from the same
numerological cloth. Not only is this clearly stated, it is an absolute requirement, without which the world-soul could never have come to serve as Platos
way of rehabilitating the nous doctrine. What, after all, would be the point of
claiming that the nous which the whole cosmos has only governs half of the
whole?
I stress this because there is something in the Timaeus which, while not
contradicting it directly, leaves the door open for that possibility in other circumstances. This is the assertion that the sun, moon and planets are living or
ensouled beings (: 38e) with specific duties assigned to them. The
stars 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 whole
microcosmically, as does their spherical shape (40a). The point of this is not
only to account for their self-movement, which for Plato is the sign of soul, but
to give them their own intelligence. The stars follow () the ruling
intelligence ( ), the circle of the Same, so that their
rotation is a matter of forever thinking the same thoughts about the same
things (40b).21 But what about the sun, moon and planets, which are covered
with the term , wanderers, since they diverge from the fixed stars?
What is their relationship to the world-soul? Do they simply obey it, in which
case we may as well regard their status as instruments of time passively? Or are
certain active cosmological duties delegated to them, so that the world-soul
receives 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 cosmos, why is there any need for the to serve as auxiliary intelligent
agencies? Is there perhaps a temptation in Plato to identify the world-soul with
the 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 single
nous but a kind of nous co-operative, can the possibility be discounted of this
spirit of co-operation degenerating into fractiousness? We might wish to say
that this is ruled out by the very nature of nous, since the world-soul, the stars
and the would be directed to the self-same Forms, would all be thinking 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 the
Cratylus derivation of from , the intelligent apprehension of
(intelligent) motion or flow (411d).

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 Timaeus
cosmology. If the planets are given work to do which they perform independently, they may be exposed to the possibility of turning wilful and, at the extreme, diabolical. On the other hand, if the world-soul has ultimate control over
both circles, then if there turns out to be anything errant or wilful this cannot
be excluded from the world-soul itself. From that point of view, countenancing
evil in the planets or stars would come down to quarantining it from the worldsoul.
It is in the later account of necessity, , that what the Timaeus has to
suppress to achieve its grand synthesis comes closer to the surface. This account is principally concerned with two things, the so-called primordial chaos
and 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 guide
what is generated for the most part [ ]22 towards the best (48a). The
natural thing to suppose is that the primordial chaos corresponds to necessity
as such, and the cosmos to the rule of nous with necessitys compliance. However, this simple picture is complicated in two different ways that we will need
to 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 of
the receptacle (), which is finally named space (). As that which
grants a site for all that comes to be ( :
52b), space, which is strictly non-sensuous, is only apprehended at all in its
difference from what appears in its place, and is essentially free of the fleeting
sensuous impressions it receives here and there (cf. 50e, 51a). The other thing is
the discussion of the four so-called elements (), the point of which is
that 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 not
strictly designate things but eternally recurring, broadly similar qualities (
: 49e) such as
fieriness 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 in
jarring and disorderly [ ] motion, and the fuller account
22 The qualification is necessary because, while the demiurge makes use of the tendencies
inherent in his material to realise his plan, matter is bound to have something recalcitrant
about it just because it produces effects in a non-purposive way. As Lee says, it will have
certain properties of its own, irrelevant to his purpose, which may produce side-effects. Plato:
Timaeus and Critias (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977), 11.

218 Andrew Mason

seems at first to conform to this. The receptacle was filled in a motley way
() with the characters (or powers: ) of fieriness, wateriness, and so on, but because these were neither alike nor evenly balanced, it
itself was without equipoise [] anywhere, so that it swayed irregularly throughout, shaken by their motions, and by its own motion [
] shook them in turn (52e). However, the passage goes on to indicate that
there is at least some degree of order here:
Being moved in this way, they were perpetually carried away to different places and
separated, as with the things shaken and winnowed by a winnowing basket or an instrument for cleaning grain, the dense and heavy things going one way, the light and insubstantial being carried to another place and settling there. So, at that time, the four kinds
were shaken by the receptacle, which was able to move itself [ ] like a shaking instrument: those most unlike, it bounded off [] from each
other, and those most alike it forced together []. Therefore they were restrained
[] in different regions of space, even before the ordered whole arranged from them
came to be [ ]. (52e53a)
Thus even before the demiurge acts there is a kind of proto-ordering, which is
stressed by the use of words like (bound off) and (restrain).
Each of the four qualities has been shaken free of the others and concentrated
sufficiently for the demiurge to confront a world already articulated into enduring airy, fiery, watery and earthy regions, arranged, as Bury surmises in a
note to his Loeb translation, in concentric strata of space with earth at the
centre. It should be remarked that this goes against the fluxism of the prefatory
account, which had sought to convey that a fiery quality, say, has only the most
fleeting 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 work
in necessity, before it enters the fray to work on it. In fact Platos description of
the primordial state of the All combines features of Anaxagoras account both
of that state and of how nous worked on it, and if anything bears more affinity
to 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 Cosmology, 86, and God and Forms in Plato (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing 2005), x. I would argue
that there are two necessary criteria for fluxism, fleetingness and haphazardness. The important point here is that fleetingness presupposes the ability of the elements to turn into each
other, but this, as we will see, presupposes the demiurges intervention. It neither does nor can
form 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 Anaxagoras in the Phaedo. Specifically, it recalls Platos point that there is really no other reason to

219
separate things out from the original commixture of all in all (B 12), and it is
not extravagant to suggest25 that, although the winnowing Plato refers to is not
said to be circular, the side-to-side motion of a shaking instrument tends naturally to become more and more circular, and to move in wider and wider circles
as Anaxagoras also said.26 Yet could Plato not retort that there is nothing
strange in this correspondence between his account of necessity and Anaxagoras of nous, that while Anaxagoras thinks he is describing the work of nous
he is in truth defaulting to material causality, and it is just this that Plato is
describing, imputing to it a degree of unintelligent order? Or do we have reason
to suspect that, in assigning a proto-ordering to necessity, Plato is effectively
assigning to it a proto-nous? Notice that in the latter part of the passage the
receptacle is said to be able to move itself, rather than simply27 being moved by
the powers within it. Is self-movement not consistently grasped by Plato as the
mark of soul, and soul as the sine qua non of nous?
While the first complication concerns whether necessity already has something of nous about it, the second is whether the motions of necessity are spinoffs of the demiurgic act, so that nous has something of necessity about it. To
pursue this we need to distinguish from the winnowing just addressed another
motion that Plato associates with necessity. This is the temporally cyclical process in which the so-called elements pass into each other, or seem to gift generation 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 best
possible way.
25 Pace Cornford, Platos Cosmology, 201, 203.
26 Conversely, although there is something of the commixture of all in all in Platos description (even in separation a fiery region will still have bits of airiness, etc.), in Anaxagoras it is
far more radical: we need only compare Platos motley appearance with Anaxagoras claim (B
4b) that no colour was apparent.
27 That the receptacle is also moved by what is in it is still implied by the winnowing analogy, 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 what
it receives (i.e., non-sensuous and always the same, only seeming to change on account of
what 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 context
of 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 the
Greeks did not grasp motion only as movement in space, and did not take space simply as a
static context of all motion. They named space with a word cognate with the verb , to
make way, and in this sense it may be said to move itself at the same time that something
moves within it.

220 Andrew Mason

regularity in the motions of necessity.28 This becoming has the general form of
concentration and separation, but in a different way than the winnowing motion
which separated the four bodies into concentrated masses. They are now opposed motions relating to the density of the stuff that undergoes transformations such as evaporation and condensation. However, Plato wants to regard
these two distinct motions as belonging and working together, and this is where
the second complication kicks in. For just as the winnowing motion is in play
prior to the demiurges intervention, it becomes clear that this other motion presupposes that intervention and cannot genuinely occur without it.
We can now resume Platos story. The four bodies have been moved into
separate regions by necessity, but this is only a rough proto-order in which they
remain altogether disposed as one would expect anything to be that god has not
touched (53b): without proportion and measure ( : 53a). Accordingly, the demiurge gave them distinct configurations by way of shapes and
numbers ( : 53b). While the dative is
not 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 rational elementary shapes that are proper sensuous instantiations of the Forms
Fire, Air, etc., whereas prior to this they merely had some traces of themselves
( : 53b), of their respective Forms, their self-same essential
nature (cf. 51ab). Thus when Timaeus goes on to explain the formation (: 53b) and origin (: 53c) of the four bodies from two different kinds
of triangle, he is no longer describing what occurs by necessity, but the work of
the demiurge with necessitys compliance.29 It is by virtue of the demiurge that
fire is configured into particles30 of a pyramidic shape, made up of 24 elemental
triangles of the half-equilateral kind. The same applies to air (octahedron, 48),
water (icosahedron, 120), and earth (cube, composed of 24 isosceles triangles). It
is 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, let
alone the underlying things, since they have no stable being. That clearly takes aim at the
attempts by the phusikoi to make this or that element an arche or principle. More specifically, it
conjures up Platos customary parody of Heraclitus as a thinker of sheer flux. Yet we see that
there is another side to this. In invoking the cyclical nature of material transformation, Plato is
speaking with the phusikoi more than against them, sharing in the fascination of a Heraclitus
or Empedocles at this cyclical process. And what this conjures up is the other, quieter engagement with Heraclitus that a close reading can uncover in the Cratylus, for it recalls what had
originally 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 used
for the whole), and in the recapitulation at 56c.
30 Or seeds (: 56c), a term Plato takes from Anaxagoras.

221
since they all break down into the same basic element (so that, for example, two
fire particles form one of air), and that earth cannot change into any of the
others, 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 demiurgic
ordering had apparently been meant to reinforce. That could make us wonder
if, in this respect, necessity is an aberrant or uncompliant spin off of the work of
nous. This even seems to be reinforced by the fact that Plato later addresses
becoming in terms of warlike contention () among the four bodies, in sharp
contrast to the amity () affirmed at 32c when the body of the cosmos was
brought 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 the
two motions and make them complementary. Plato describes two distinct modes
of contention, each of which relies on features of the figures assigned to the
bodies. On the one hand, the fewer faces a particle has, the sharper its angles
and edges are, and this allows the particles of fire, in particular, to cut up the
larger ones. This cutting up [] is the form contention takes when a mass
of one of the other bodies is enveloped () in fire (57a), so that a
particle of water, say, is broken up into two of air and one of fire (56d). On the
other hand, when smaller particles are trapped () in the gaps
in a mass of larger ones, they struggle () against this and are necessarily overcome () and broken down () into their component triangles (56e). These elements can either recombine in the form of the
surrounding mass and blend into it, or escape out to their kindred (
: 57b). This speaks to the other motion, the separation of the
bodies into distinct regions, and Plato promptly makes the connection:
Moreover, in the course of these vicissitudes [] they all interchange their locations. For while the bulk of each kind has been set apart in a place of its own through
the motion of the receptacle, those parts of each which at a given time are changing into
one 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 undo
the process of their separation, but serves and reinforces it, particularly by
further purifying each mass from within. Moreover, as Plato adds later, even
when it does reverse or hinder that process, it does so for a good reason, in
accordance with the demiurges plan. It constitutes a safeguard ()
against the separation of the bodies into regions coming to an end in a stagnant
cosmos, thereby ensuring a cosmos in perpetual motion ( ), even if
that means perpetual inequality or disequilibrium (: 58c).

222 Andrew Mason
Furthermore, as mentioned in section 1, this whole process is tightly circumscribed, even driven on, by the revolution of the whole cosmos ( : 58a), which in its natural inclination to return on itself exerts a
centripetal force that proscribes any void and thus keeps pressing the smaller
particles into the gaps between the larger (58b), and presumably reins in the
shaking of the receptacle. This makes explicit the specifically circular flow that
we surmised was already there in the primordial chaos. This axial rotation of
the cosmos, originally given by the demiurge (34a), is the form in which he
actually takes up the proto-ordering of necessity and reinforces it. But it is then
taken over by the world-soul. Thus flow is not simply a feature of matter over
against nous. We see it, rather, in the working together of nous and necessity, in
the fact that the rule of nous is reflected at the material level through necessitys
compliance.
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 if
Plato seems to reconcile himself with the quintessentially Heraclitean thought
of unity and harmony in and through opposition and conflict, is this not a
rather pale version of the Heraclitean cosmos? For presumably even the greatest
cataclysm would be accommodated in the gods eye view Heraclitus envisages,
for which all things are just (B 102). But where are cataclysms here? The question of natural disaster, though discussed in the preamble, is avoided throughout the Timaeus account of divinely designed cosmic order and left for later
dialogues to tackle.
If we ask how there can be earthquakes and the like in a world where necessity complies with nous, one possible answer is that the cataclysmic is the
natural bent of matter, and as it is only prevented by the guiding hand of nous
it must happen when, for some reason, nous drops the reins. A second is that
some kind of divine punishment underlies these events. A third is that there are
evil forces at work in the cosmos besides the good ones. In the following section we will see Plato pursue a version of the first alternative in the Statesman
and 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, is
not taken up again, notably in the Critias, where the punishment of the Atlantans 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 exemplary Athenians who overcame them.
But there are other possibilities. One, which it is possible to read between
the lines in the Philebus, is that what we take as disasters barely register on the
world-souls radar. Another is that such events are unintended spin-offs of
nous attempt to control necessity, spin-offs which make it difficult to tell the

223
two apart because nous would itself be subject to a necessity about which it is
in the dark. The various alternatives Plato subsequently tries out can be seen as
so many ways around this trading of places, this coalescence of the two sides
back 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 certain respects but also transforms it. Again there is recourse to a demiurge, yet
not just as the worlds creator but its governor. Moreover, the demiurge is identified with Kronos, who (with all the gods of tradition) had only been begrudgingly included in the category of other gods in the Timaeus along with the
heavenly bodies. Even more remarkably, the demiurge does not hold the cosmic
reins forever, but only during the cycle of Kronos. The other cycle or age that
alternates with this one, which is said to be the age of Zeus (272b), is precisely
not 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 account
for the occurrence of natural catastrophe, which the Timaeus avoided. It is situated in the transitions between the cycles because, when Kronos relinquishes
control, the entire cosmos reverses the direction of its rotation.32 Plato takes
pains to stress that it is not the god who spins the cosmos now this way, now
that, which would contravene the law that the divine does not change (269e).
He also rejects the quasi-Manichean idea that two gods antithetically minded
to each other turn it (270a). But as for why the demiurge lets go, nothing is said
besides 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 demiurge
lets go, this exculpation comes at the cost of a god-forsaken world, which seems
counter 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 reasons
to reject the traditional view (still held by Cornford) that the Timaeus and Critias constitute
Platos last works before the Laws. While I cannot argue for this in detail here, I would say that
the nous doctrine itself is a useful touchstone on this issue. In short, the Statesman and the
Philebus have to be regarded as later than Timaeus-Critias in that they modify the schema
whereby 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 to
the worlds rotation.

224 Andrew Mason
The world-soul is nowhere named in the Statesman myth, yet certainly

meant. 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 into
reverse (of its own accord: ) precisely by virtue of the purposive intelligence () it received from its creator (269cd). Yet the account will
qualify this intelligence quite heavily again, quite unlike the Timaeus. Closely
linked to this is the fact that desire (another mark of soul) is also imputed to the
All. At 272e Plato attributes its turning backwards to fate and innate desire ( ). This suggests the world always wanted to
turn counter to the demiurges will, and that the demiurges guidance consisted
in curbing its rebellious innate desire, which then breaks out with disastrous
consequences when that control is relinquished. It is true that, after the initial
period of tumult, the world learns to regulate its course through its own intelligence: by calling to mind (: 273b) in reverse and to the extent
of its power the way it had taken under the guidance of the demiurge. But as
that rule is gradually forgotten (273c) chaos ensues, to the point where god must
intervene and reverse the worlds course again (273de). Besides forgetfulness,
Plato also explains the descent into chaos materially as a re-emergence of the
worlds original state prior to the demiurges ordering, which obviously draws on
the Timaeus. But what is the relation between these two causes? Does the worldsoul grow forgetful because its body falls into disorder? Is it not more likely, in
the terms of Platonic thought, which is nothing if not a thought of mind over
matter, 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 simply on the side of material necessity but in its compliance with nous qua the
world-soul, In my view the best way to understand this lapse of the world-soul
in the Statesman is to recognise, along these lines, that the world-soul, in traversing its body essentially to ensure that all remains in order and nothing
needs 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 the
cosmic law. Flow, instead of a reflection of that law, a sign of matters compliance with mind, has surreptitiously become the law itself.
In short, the Statesman presents a world-soul that falls short of what, for
Plato, the nous doctrine demands. In spite of Platos attempts to maintain his
fall-back position of blaming the worlds faults on recalcitrant matter, this
breaks down here. Plato has had to make the world-soul, and indeed nous, bear
the 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 the
world-soul and thus the rule of nous is somewhat less than exemplary, albeit
not in the context of natural disaster, which is not addressed.

The Philebus is a puzzling work, and I will have to bypass many of its problems and single out three strands that are especially germane to our theme.
The first concerns the relation between the so-called methodological and metaphysical passages. The divine method introduced in the former is not only
based on the new ontological principles of Limit and the Unlimited, which Plato
adopts from Pythagoreanism and which form two of the four classes into which
he divides everything that now exists in the All ( : 23c) at the beginning of the metaphysical passage. It also, through the example 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 grasping
cosmic order as the result of a divine intelligence imposing Limit on the Unlimited. 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 things
and a good order of things, and it does grasp this as the act of an excellent
cause 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 not
also caused. The demiurge is suggested by the claim that the world-soul was
built () into the world-body (30b: cf. 30d, where the same claim
is made of the soul of Zeus; here, as in the Statesman, Zeus and the world-soul
are 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 ambiguous
character of the metaphysical passage, which Socrates describes as childs
play: ; sometimes childs
play occurs as an uplifting rest from seriousness (30e). Might this summary judgement of an argument that speaks so much in hints be itself a further hint? Note
that Plato does not say , which could suggest nothing more than a little
time out from serious philosophising, but -, an elevated repose. This
assumes extra significance in light of 63e64a, where what is good both in man
and in the All is linked to the most turmoil-free [] mixture. If
the rest that childs play can involve is uplifting, this is perhaps because it puts
one in harmony with the repose (perhaps what Heraclitus calls the rest in
change) of the All. And if repose has a cosmological significance, why shouldnt
childs 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.

226 Andrew Mason
why he ends with a wink in the direction of a Dionysian cosmos by referring his
delineation of the Good to the sixfold of Orphic cosmogony (the sixth stage of
which is Dionysus Zagreus), and by leaving his sixth stage blank (66c).
The third thread is buried even deeper. The metaphysical passage offers an
argument that we get our bodies and souls by a kind of microcosmic participation in the body and soul of the world. Since the Philebus presents itself as an
inquiry into the claims of pleasure and nous to be the good, one question this
prompts is whether the world-soul is characterised not only by nous but by pleasure. It also makes us ask whether the world-soul exemplifies the neutral state
between pleasure and pain, and is characterised by the obliviousness to small
changes which makes that state viable as a way of life (43bc). That could be a
serious problem, for from the point of view of the world-soul tsunamis and
earthquakes might well fall into the category of small changes. Plato says nothing to this effect, and in the Laws he asserts that the cosmic caretaker concerns
himself with small details no less than the broad sweep of things. Nevertheless,
a bridge is needed between the microcosmic participation argument at 29a30b
and the claim at 64a that the point of the whole analysis of pleasure and intelligence is to determine ,
whatever is by nature good both in man and in the All. And when we follow
this bridge past that point, we are perhaps in a better position to grasp the
strange fact that nous only comes in third in the final delineation of the Good at
66ac. Measure tops it because what seems to matter most to nous itself is equanimity rather than truth, which it fell to Socrates to add to the mixture at 64ab
after nous forgot to include it in putting its case against the pleasures, without
addressing 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 childrens games, and there is no world-soul. In its place there is a default to an
ultra-conservative position on the traditional gods, who it seems are now expected to carry the burden of the nous doctrine, although in Book X Plato oscillates 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 to
specific regions of the cosmos, would govern the whole and so take the place of
Anaxagoras nous.
Who this god is remains unclear, and certainly nothing is said explicitly to
identify it with the demiurge. Kronos is a possibility, given that in Book IV Plato
reprises at least part of the story about the golden age of Kronos from the Statesman. Indeed, Plato could hardly be more pointed in linking to Kronos the
god who really rules over those possessed of nous (

: 713a), when it is the question Which god? that

launches the story. And yet Zeus is also possible. A little later, in the projected
address to the colonists of Magnesia, an ancient saying is affirmed about the
god who holds the beginning, the end and the middle of all that is in being
( : 715e). This almost
certainly 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 relevant is the statement in Book VI that the equality that consists in giving each
what he deserves (the geometric equality invoked at Gorgias 508a as the principle 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 to
identify natural and divine justice does not constitute a genuine resolution of
the 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 the
Laws treats cosmology and natural disaster separately from each other and from
the Kronos story, where the Statesman had discussed them together. Another is
Platos dodgy assimilation of the phusikoi (see 891c) to the softer target attacked
in Book X, the view that nature is ruled merely by chance and laws are mere
conventions. A significant development in the Statesman, and arguably in the
Philebus as well, was that the world-soul/nous was made to own its shortcomings apropos of cosmic order, rather than just foisting them onto material necessity. The Laws seems to take an interesting new step in this direction when it
proposes that no fewer than two souls govern the universe: that which does
good, and that which has the opposite power (896e). But while soul is made to
own the possibility of evil, this too is essentially more of a disowning, because
the hypostasisation of evil in one soul effectively quarantines it from the other,
the one which is subsequently said to actually rule the world. The distinction
plays no further part in the discussion, which comes down to saying that cosmic
disorder is effectively denied and suppressed.35
34 , , , , as quoted by the scholiast. Cf. E. B. England, The Laws of Plato; The Text Edited With
Introduction, Notes, etc., Volume 1 (Manchester: University Press 1921), 447. Bury also cites the
saying in a note to his translation, but without the last phrase which is needed, I think, to
clarify 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 with
these 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 problem, and needs to be complemented with a consideration of the problem of evil as it manifests
in the human sphere why do the wicked (seem to) prosper? and of the Janus-facedness of
natural justice, its penchant for trading faces of harmonious order and might is right.

228 Andrew Mason
To conclude, let us extrapolate four different theses regarding the nous doctrine and the relation between nous and the divine. The first (N1) is the one
proposed in the Timaeus, and played with rather than clearly adhered to in the
Philebus: the nous that rules the world is immanent in the world, grasped as a
single living being, and is thus the worlds self-rule, though underwritten by the
nous of its divine creator. The second thesis (N2), that of the Statesman, is the
same except that this divine guarantee is circumscribed, allowing nous to stray
in forgetfulness of the divine law. In the third thesis (N3), nous does without
this guarantee, for instead of it being traced back to a creator-god, the divine as
such is reduced to nous qua immanent world-ruling power. This is the thesis
that, in my view, Plato was testing out early on, in the Cratylus: that he was en
route to in the Statesman, albeit still with his ontotheological training-wheels
on, so to speak; and that is in play in a concealed way in the Philebus. The
fourth thesis (N4), the one articulated in the Laws, dumps the basic premise
shared by the other three and regards the power ruling the world as the nous of
a god or some kind of god- or soul-collective, rather than a nous intrinsic to the
world as a whole.


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DOI 10.

1515/apeiron-2012-0068 apeiron 2013; 46(3): 201228

The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought

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202 Andrew Mason

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought

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1 Platos critique of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 207

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the subsequent account of a makeshift approach9 to causation in the absence

2 The Timaeus as a rehabilitation of the nous

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governed by nous from within, although Anaxagoras nous is not divinised or

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 211

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212 Andrew Mason

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 213

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This is a necessary consequence of the fact that Platos rehabilitation of the

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 215

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216 Andrew Mason

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 217

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought

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222 Andrew Mason

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought

3 After the Timaeus31

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The world-soul is nowhere named in the Statesman myth, yet certainly

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 225

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

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226 Andrew Mason

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The Nous Doctrine in Platos Thought 227