Ancient Philosophy 18 (1998)

©Mathesis Publications 81

The Demiurge and the Forms:

A Return to the Ancient Interpretation of Plato's Timaeus

Eric D. Perl

The standard ancient reading of the Timaeus, according to which the forms are
the ideas of, or more correctly simply are, the Demiurge or God, is currently out
of scholarly favor. Although this reading has been defended in the twentieth cen-
tury,1 it is now widely rejected and indeed ridiculed. 2 Yet there are powerful rea-
sons, both philosophical and exegetical, for regarding the Demiurge and the
forms as identical. The principal arguments against this interpretation are that it
is a vestige of Middle Platonic, Neoplatonic, or Hegelian misreadings of Plato;
that it depends on a forced reading of a few isolated passages from the Timaeus
and the Republic; that it renders the forms subordinate to the Demiurge; and
above all that it contradicts the immediate 'plain sense' of the Timaeus, which
portrays the Demiurge as looking to a paradigm outside himself. All of these
objections, however, may be countered, and a reflective reading of the Timaeus
and the Sophist together reveals that the identification of the Demiurge and the
forms provides the most coherent account of the relation between the intellect
and its objects as Plato presents it in these closely connected dialogues. The cen-
tral meaning of the Timaeus is that the principal explanation (ai'ria) of the sensi-
ble world is intelligence, which, regarded as the act of thinking, is called the
Demiurge or vou<;, and, regarded as the content of thought, is called the paradigm
or the forms.
The discourse of Timaeus is an account of the origin and nature of the sensible
cosmos. In interpreting what Plato says here about the Demiurge and the
paradigm, therefore, the question we must ask is, 'What is he telling us about the
sensible cosmos?' when he argues,

I Dies 1972, 549-551; Pepin 1956, 3~-44; and esp. Vogel 1970, 194-209. See also Vogel 1986,
73. De Vogel's insightful arguments, which I have used extensively, have been largely ignored but
never to my knowledge refuted by later scholarship, and deserve to be revived.
2 Taylor 1928, 81; Jones 1926,317-326; Brisson 1974, 151-160. The currently prevailing view is
summed up by Rich 1954, 123: 'It is generally agreed at the present day that the version of the Ideal
Theory transmitted by the majority of the ancient doxographers is a complete misrepresentation of
Plato's thought. Though Plato speaks of the transcendent Idea as existing "alone and by itself' and
never "in anything else," the tendency among many of his interpreters seems to have been to make
the Idea dependent upon God as a thought resident in his mind ... To disprove it is, however, a com-
paratively simple matter, for reference to the Platonic Dialogues makes it immediately clear that any
concrete evidence in favour of this interpretation is completely lacking. Plato never describes the
Ideas either as the thoughts of God or as the content of God's mind.'
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If this world is beautiful and its Demiurge good, it is clear that

he looked toward the eternal [paradigm]; but if what is not
right for anyone to say [is true], toward that which is generated.
Now it is clear to all that [he looked] toward the eternal; for it
is the most beautiful of generated things, and he is the best of
causes. Having, then, been generated thus, it was crafted
according to what is apprehended by reason and thought and
remains the same; and these things being so, there is every
necessity that this world is an image of something (29ab).
That the world is beautiful and the Demiurge good mean that the world is ratio-
nally structured, a cosmos rather than a chaos. As Plato explains later in the
Timaeus, beauty or goodness in the making or ordering of things coincides with
intelligence. What distinguishes intelligent activity from other modes of produc-
tion is purposiveness. An intelligent maker is one who produces teleologically,
aiming at what is best, rather than merely randomly or mechanically: 'Both kinds
of causes should be recognized, but those which, with intellect, make
(oTU.Ltoupyoi) beautiful and good things, are separate from those which, deprived
of thought, produce whatever happens without order' (46e},3 To call the maker
'aplCJ'to<; ,mv UitiOlV', the best of causes or of explanatory factors, is thus equiv-
alent to calling him intellect (vou<;), as Plato does later (3ge, 47e-48a). This is
also the meaning of calling him a Demiurge or craftsman, since the distinctive
feature of craftsmanship, which differentiates it from other modes of production,
is that a craftsman produces intelligently, in accordance with thoughts or ideas
(cf. Brisson 1974, 109). Plato's point, therefore, is that since the world is rational,
it is made according to a design, of which it is the image. This is the same point
that he makes in the Laws when he argues that art, i.e., the work of intellect, is
prior to chance and to nature understood in mechanistic terms: 'Judgment and
care and intellect and art and law are prior to hard and soft, heavy and light
things, and the great and first works and acts belong to art, since they are among
the first; but nature and the things which are by nature, which is not rightly called
this, are posterior and arise from art and intellect' (892b). By saying that the sen-
sible cosmos is made by an intellect or a good craftsmari and that it is an 'image
of something' , specifically of 'that which is apprehended by reason and thought',
Plato is simply pointing out that the world, in its rational, teleological structure,
has a design, that it reflects and displays intelligence, just as a work of art, as dis-
tinct from an accidental or natural product, displays the thought of the artist.
What Plato means, then, is that the world is comparable to a house, as opposed
to a mere pile of stones. He is using a version of the 'argument from design' (evi-
dent in the beauty and goodness of the world) to show that intelligence underlies
it. In observing a house, we infer from its rational structure that it did not take
shape without intelligence, but rather was built in accordance with a design, of

3 This is an abbreviated version of Plato's critique of Anaxagoras in Phaedo 97c-98b, where he

argues that if all things are ordered by mind, then they are ordered toward the best.
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which it is the image. For it is as a design to be followed, rather than as a model

to be copied, that we must understand the 1tapaOEtYlla of the Timaeus. The sen-
sible cosmos is an image, not a replica or copy, of the paradigm, for the world is
sensible, moving, and temporally extended, while the paradigm is intelligible,
changeless, and eternal. Indeed, the mere fact that the paradigm is that which is
'apprehended by reason and thought' shows that it is to be conceived not as an
'original' to be copied but as a plan, a design, what in human craftsmanship is
represented by a diagram or blueprint. Such a diagram itself, of course, is simply
a representation of the craftsman's idea. The sensible cosmos, then, is an image
of the intelligible paradigm as a house is an image of the architect's design, not as
a sculpture or painting is an image of a model.
This presentation of the world as a work of craft is often taken to imply that the
Demiurge and the forms are two distinct, irreducible, and equally necessary fac-
tors in explaining the rationality of the world (e.g., Taylor 1928, 76-77, 81; Bris-
son 1974, 31, 106). On this interpretation, the Demiurge is an efficient cause who
'bridges the gap' between the sensible and the intelligible by giving order to the
visible sphere which he finds in a state of disorderly motion. 4 If the world is a
work of craft, must we not posit both a ·craftsman and his plan, distinct from each
other? A house is an image of the architect's design, not of the architect himself.
According to this argument, the Derniurge is a necessary complement to the the-
ory of forms, required to explain how the sensible world comes to reflect intelli-
gibility, just as a builder is necessary to explain how a collection of stones comes
to follow a design. In this reading the Demiurge exercises the efficient causality
which, according to Aristotle's notorious complaint, the forms themselves lack.
Since this is in fact the most straightforward reading of the Timaeus, why should
we regard the Demiurge and the paradigm as identical?
The answer is that the comparison of the Demiurge to a human craftsman can-
not be maintained in every detail. Unlike a human craftsman, the Demiurge is not
a being who has a mind (vouv £xov), but rather is mind, vou~ itself (cf. Philebus
28cd, 30d; see Hackforth 1965,439; Brisson 1974, 76, 84, 106). Hence he can
only metaphorically, within the mythic aspect of Timaeus' speech, be called an
intelligent being or a thinker, whereas properly understood, he is rather intelli-
gence or thought (v6T\<H~) itself. A man may be said to 'have' or 'lack' vou~,
according to whether he exercises or fails to exercise v6T\<H~ (see, e.g., Phaedrus
241 b, 257a, 276b, 276c; Epistle vii 343a). But since the Demiurge, the cause or
explanation of the rationally structured world, is vou~ and nothing else, he is

4 Brisson 1974,55 and esp. 85: 'Mais comme la separation est complete entre Ie monde intelligi-

ble et Ie monde sensible doue d'un corps et d'une arne, Platon doit faire l'hypothese du derniurge que
apparait alors comme Ie trait d'union entre ces deux ordres de realite. C'est Ie derniurge qui, meme
s'il ne I'inaugure pas, parfait la participation des choses sensibles aux formes intelligibles ... On com-
prend alors mieux pourquoi cet etre, apparaissant comme Ie lien entre Ie sensible et I'intelligible, se
presente sous les traits d'un artisan. En effet, comme un artisan, il est un producteur oeuvrant dans Ie
monde des apparences d'apres un modele ... II ne peut faire aucun doute que, pour Platon, Ie demi-
urge est un producteur exactement [!!J, toutes proportions gardees, comme I' artisan humain. '
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vOll<nr;. He cannot be distinguished from his act of thinking, for a pure mind is
nothing but this activity. In attributing the construction of the world to a crafts-
man who is intellect, then, Plato means that intellection, or thought, is the princi-
pal explanation of the world.
But from this it follows that the Demiurge can be nothing other than the forms.
For the doctrine that pure intellection is its own content, that vOll<nr; and its
object are one and the same, is not an extraneous Aristotelian or Neoplatonic
imposition on Plato, but the outcome of a philosophical consideration of the
nature of thought. 5 If we distinguish the Demiurge from the forms, we are forced
to imagine him as a mind, or act-of-thinking, distinct and apart from that which it
thinks. But such an empty thought would be no thought at all. A mind is the com-
plex of interconnected ideas which constitutes its thinking. The objects of
thought, the intelligibles, cannot be outside of intellect, not because they are
'made up' by it, but because intellect, apart from its objects, would be devoid of
content and hence would not be intellect. The forms or ideas, intelligible reality,
are the constitutive content of thought. Indeed, the fundamental reason for posit-
ing forms underlying and appearing in sensibles is that thought must have some
content: 'If anyone will not admit that there are forms of beings ... and will not
define a certain form of each one, neither will he have anywhere to turn his
thought, not allowing an idea of each of beings which is always the same, and
thus he will altogether destroy the power of discourse' (Parmenides 135b-c).
Since a mind is nothing but its thought, and its thought is nothing but its ideas,
mind not only contains but consists of its ideas. An act of thinking is the ideas
which it thinks. And since the Demiurge, as pure intellect, is pure and perfect
thinking, it follows that he is the intelligibles, that they are the content of the
thought which the Demiurge is.
If the theory of the Demiurge as a mind apart from the forms is untenable, so
too is the notion of the forms apart from the mind. The very terms door; and iSEa
indicate the intentionality of the forms: a form is a 'look', a 'vision', that which is
seen by intellect. The forms make thought possible by providing it with content,
or rather by being its content. 'That which is apprehended (m:plA:Tl1rrov) by rea-
son and thought' is, more literally, that which is contained in it. 6 If intellection is

5 Some have argued that since this is a manifestly Aristotelian doctrine, when it is found in Mid-
dle Platonic or Neoplatonic philosophers it must be derived not from Plato but from Aristotle (e.g.,
Jones 1926,323-326; Rich 1954, 126; Brisson 1974, 159). But the mere fact that it is in Aristotle does
not prove that it is not in Plato, or that later thinkers could not have derived it from a purely philo-
sophical reflection on Plato's work. Cf. Vogel 1970, 208-209: '[T]here is the point that Aristotle, and
not Plato, is to be credited with the concept of "God as a Mind that thinks on itself'. This is a strange
argument indeed. As if, because Aristotle describes his Prime Mover as v6T\ut~ VOfJ(JEOl~, Plato could
not have conceived of his perfect Being as living, and "moving" with the motion of a thinking mind.'
6 Elsewhere in the Timaeus Plato uses forms of 1tEptA.a~~O:vOl to mean 'contain': the paradigm
contains all intelligible living things in itself~1;i{la1tO:vm ... Ev Ea\l'ti{l1tEptA.a~6v EXEt) (30c8), and the
sensible cosmos, prior to the production of animals, did not yet contain all generated living things
(~i)1t0l 'tel 1to:v'ta 1;cpa EV'tO~ a{nou YEYEVT\~£Va1tEptEtA.T\q>£vat, 3ge5). If the word has the same
meaning at 29a, then Plato expressly says that the paradigm is 'contained in reason and thought'.
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nothing but the apprehension of the interconnected forms, equally the forms are
nothing but what is grasped by, and hence contained in, intellection, and so are
intellection itself. If an act of thinking is a complex of ideas, a complex of ideas
is an act of thinking. Thus there is no difference between forms and the thought
which grasps them. A form is a thought, not in the sense of vonlla., a concept (a
suggestion which Plato rejects at Parmenides 132b-c), but in the sense of VOn(n~,
the act-of-thinking. Nou~ and the VOn1:0V meet and are one in v6nO't~.
The idea of the Demiurge, separate from the paradigm, as an efficient cause
makes him too much like a human craftsman, ordering raw material in accor-
dance with a plan. The major weakness of this interpretation is that it can provide
no explanation of how the Demiurge gives rational structure to the cosmos. A
human craftsman is able to exert efficient causality because he has not only a
mind, but also hands, tools, etc. In the Aristotelian model of craftsmanship, the
craftsman is an efficient cause with respect to his hands, but a formal cause with
respect to the idea in his mind. It has indeed been argued that this Aristotelian
model may have been what led the ancient interpreters to conclude that the forms
are ideas in the mind of God (Rich 1954, 131-133; Brisson 1974, 159). But this
again is not an extraneous imposition of Aristotelian theory onto Plato's thought,
but the best way of making sense of what Plato says in the Timaeus. Mind, with
its idea or paradigm, is the formal, not the efficient, aspect of a craftsman's
causality. Since mind as such has a purely formal role in production, and the
Demiurge is nothing but mind, his causality must belong entirely to the formal
dimension. The interpretation of the Demiurge as an efficient cause takes the par-
allel with human craftsmanship too far, and can provide no answer to the Epi-
curean objections: 'What were the construction, the levers, the machines which
served such a great function? How were air, fire, water, earth able to obey and
fulfil the will of the architect?' (Cicero 1968, i 8.19, 8). When Plato calls the
cause of the world a Demiurge, then, he means not that the world is like a product
of human craft in every respect, but only that it is like such a product in that it
reflects an intelligible paradigm.
Thus Plato's presentation of the making of the world in terms of human crafts-
manship, although it seems at first to tell against the identity of the Demiurge and
the forms, in fact strongly supports it. For the plan according to which a crafts-
man works is not an external object, but the idea in his mind. An architect does
not stumble across a separately existing blueprint and then build according to it;
rather, he has a plan in his mind, of which an external diagram is itself only a rep-
resentation. 7 The work of art which reflects that plan is an image of the artist's
thought or idea. And since the Demiurge is nothing but thought, he himself is the
idea of which the world is an image. Thus, if we work out the full implications of

7 Grube 1980, 168, remarks, 'When a carpenter makes a bed he has before his mind the Idea of
bed, an objective reality which exists not only in his mind.' This is an odd tum of phrase. The idea is
obviously not 'before' but 'in' his mind. This is not to say that he has invented the idea, that it has no
objective or independent existence, but rather that the man, qua bed-maker, has identified his mind
with that form.
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Plato's use of the model of craftsmanship or art to express the rationality of the
world, the identity of the Demiurge and his paradigm imposes itself upon us. The
meaning of the model is that the world reflects v61lcrt<;, which is at once the act of
thinking, the Demiurge, and the content of thought, the paradigm.
These speculative arguments have obviously taken us far beyond the text of the
Timaeus,8 and one might well argue that even if this is the logical outcome of
what Plato says, it does not follow that Plato himself knew and intended it. The
Timaeus, however, especially when considered in conjunction with the Sophist,9
provides strong textual support for this interpretation by presenting the forms not
as a series of inert objects for thought but as a single living and thinking being,
and hence as a mind. According to the Timaeus, the paradigm of the cosmos is
the complete (n<xv'tEAEt, 31b) and eternal «Whov, 37d) intelligible living thing
containing all other intelligible living things. But this intelligible organism lO can
be none other than the totality of the forms.11 Plato argues thus:
In the likeness of which of living things did he who established
[the cosmos] establish it? We must not think that it was any of
those which are by nature in the form of parts, for nothing like
what is imperfect could ever be beautiful; but let us assert that
[the cosmos] is most like of all to that of which the other living
things, individually and generically, are parts. For that has,
contained in itself, all intelligible living things, just as this cos-
mos [has] us and as many other animals as are visible ... For
that which embraces all intelligible living things could never
be second with another; for then there would have to be
another embracing the two, of which the two would be parts,
and we would more correctly say that [the cosmos] was made
like that which embraces the two. (30c-31a)
If the paradigm were only a part of the total system of intelligible reality, it would
lack the perfection or completeness that Plato ascribes to it, and would be part of
a greater whole, which Plato here expressly denies. Moreover, if the sensible cos-
mos as one whole is a living thing, then all the things in it, including those which
we usually call 'inanimate', are in some sense living, just as all the parts of an
animal are living even if they are not independent animals in their own right. All

8 These arguments are, of course, found in Plotinus, from whom they are in large part derived.
See esp. Enneads v 3.5, 5.1-2, 9.5-8.
9 The conjoint reading of the Timaeus and the Sophist is justified not only because both are gen-
erally regarded as 'late' dialogues, but more specifically because the Sophist's ascription of the natu-
ral world to 'a demiurgic god' (Swu IhHiIO'lJPYouvtO~) and to 'divine art' (Sd<;t n'xvtl) (265c-e)
points directly to the Timaeus.
10 The term 'organism' best conveys the sense in which both the sensible cosmos and the forms
are siPu, for it implies an integrated whole in which each part has its essential place, such that each
part both conditions and is conditioned by the whole.
11 Taylor 1928, 80, Grube 1980, 167, and Vogel 1970, 181, 199-201, agree that the paradigm
consists of all the forms. Comford 1957, 40-41, and Brisson 1974,277-280, however, argue that the
paradigm is only the form of 'living thing', not all the forms.
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things, according to the Timaeus and the Laws, are in some sense ensouled. 12
And since the entire sensible world is living, the intelligible living thing which is
its paradigm must include the fonns of all things, not only those of what we ordi-
narily call living. Thus Plato introduces the account of the making of animals by
saying,
All else, up till the origin of time, was made in the likeness of
that of which it is the image, but in that all living things were
not yet contained within it, it was still unlike. In what
remained, then, [the Demiurge] made it marked according to
the nature of its paradigm. As intellect, then, sees ideas present
in that which is the living thing ['til> 0 Eon ~il>ov, i.e., the intel-
ligible living thing] he judged that this [i.e., the sensible living
thing, the cosmos] ought to have such and so many as are there.
These are fourfold: one the heavenly race of gods, another the
winged and airborne, third the aquatic form, and fourth, that
which goes on land. (3ge-40a)
Although the last sentences of this passage might be taken to mean that only the
fonns of animals are included in the paradigm (so Brisson 1974, 279), Plato has
in fact just said that the sensible world, prior to the introduction of animals, is
made in the likeness of this paradigm. By adding the animals the Demiurge sim-
ply completes the agreement of the world with the paradigm. This clearly implies
that the paradigm includes the fonns of all things. But since the paradigm is an
intelligible living thing, this is to say that the fonns as a whole constitute a living
organism.
Plato explains this seemingly strange idea of the fonns as a living thing more
fully in the Sophist, where we are expressly told that motion, life, and thought
belong to that which perfectly is, i.e., the fonns:
Stranger: 'Shall we easily be persuaded that motion and life
and soul and thought are not present in that which perfectly
is ('til> 1tUvn:A&<; ovn),13 that it neither lives nor thinks, but
that, solemn and holy, not having intellect, it is standing
unmoved?
Theaetetus: That would be a terrible theory ... to accept.
Stranger: But shall we say it has intellect, but not life?
Theaetetus: How indeed? (249a)
In the account of the 'interweaving of forms', which follows (250a-260a), we
learn that intelligible reality is not merely a collection of atomic entities, but
rather a complex structure of intrinsically interrelated fonns. Hence no fonn can

12 Cf. Laws 899b: 'Shall we say that, since soul or souls, good in all virtue, prove to be the
causes of all things, these are gods, whether being in bodies, as living things, they order all the
heaven, or wherever and however? And will anyone who acknowledges this accept that all things are
not "full of gods?'"
13 For the arguments demonstrating that this phrase refers to the forms, see Vogel 1970, 176-
182, 194-198.
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be isolated and thought by itself, apart from the others:

To try to separate everything from everything .. .is not suitable,
and altogether proper to one who is uneducated and unphilo-
sophical ... To break off each from all is the total disappearance
of all discourse; for through the interweaving of the forms with
one another discourse comes to be for us. (259d-e)
This is why the dialectician, who by means of collection and division grasps real-
ity in terms of its structural samenesses and differences (Phaedrus 265d-266b),
must be 'synoptic' (& lLEV yap OUV01t'tU(O~ OW.AEK'tU(6~, Republic 537c), seeing
the intelligible as one whole. Intelligible reality is therefore an organic unity in
that each form has its proper place in relation to the others and to the whole, and
is what it is only by having that place. No form can be isolated or excised without
not only that form, but the whole, being destroyed. And in this sense intelligible
reality is an organism, a living thing. 14
But if the forms are a living complex of ideas, then they must be the act of
thinking. And indeed we have been told at Sophist 249a that the altogether real is
not only living, but moving and thinking. This can only mean that the forms are,
as we have argued, the whole content of the activity of thought. Intellection,
according to the Sophist (253b-254b), consists in the apprehension of the forms
in connection with one another. 15 Hence the forms, referring to and sustaining
each other within the network (oUlL1tAoKl) of the whole, constitute the totality of
thought. The motion of 'knowing or being known' (Sophist 248d) which Plato
ascribes to the forms can only be the 'motion of intellect' (Laws 897d), thought
itself, which as we have seen cannot rest in anyone form, but must always be
moving from one to the others in its very apprehension of each one. 16 The fonns,
therefore, are Thinking itself, the V6T]0l~ which underlies and appears in the sen-
sible cosmos. But this is just what we found the Demiurge to be. In short, if the
forms are living intelligence, then they are the Demiurge himself.17 In Plato's
account of intelligible reality as living and thinking, we can clearly see that for
him there is no distinction between eternal, absolute Mind and eternal, absolute

14 Cf. Plato's description of a living thing at Phaedrus 264c: 'Every discourse must be consti-
tuted like a living thing, having its own body, so that it is neither headless nor footless, but has a mid-
dle and ends, written appropriate to one another and to the whole.' See also Vogel 1970, 198: 'To
Plato this totality [of the formsl appeared as an articulate unity, as is brought out by his method of
diaeresis. But does not this presuppose an organic unity? And is not this precisely what the Greeks
called a ~i!IOV?'
15 Vogel 1970, 197-198: 'Individual Ideas are identic [sic] with themselves and different the one
from the other. But they can be inter-connected ... some of them with certain others, and in a certain
way. This is what is done by the act of thinking. And with reference to this operation of connecting
and separating, applied by the intellect to intelligible Being, it is said that Perfect Being "undergoes
something" and thus, in a sense, "moves".'
16 Cf. Republic 511c: Intellection proceeds 'using ... forms themselves, through them, to them,
and ends in forms'.
17 This is also why the figure of the Derniurge is not merely a mythical device to depict graphi-
cally the rationality of the world: the forms genuinely are a living intelligence.
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Ideas. 'The Demiurge' and 'the paradigm' are thus two ways of referring to the
same reality, VOTlot<; itself, at once the act of thinking and the content of thought.
This explains Plato's remark at 2ge, where, having just said that the sensible
cosmos is the image of 'what is apprehended by reason and thought', he now
says of the Demiurge, 'He was good, and no jealousy about anything can ever
arise in what is good. And being free from this, he wished all things to be as like
himself (7tapa7tA1]Oux ea'\Ytip) as possible.' 18 The manifest meaning of this state-
ment is that the Demiurge is himself the paradigm of the cosmos, and it cannot
easily be dismissed as part of Timaeus' 'mythic' mode of discourse. The mythic
element in Timaeus' story is the apparent distinction, based on the analogy with
human craftsmanship, between the Demiurge and the paradigm, and this passage
is a hint that it is precisely that feature of the story which should not be taken lit-
erally. Since a work of art is the image of the artist's thought, it follows that when
the artist is nothing but thought, the work is an image of the artist himself. Nor
may we attribute a merely negative significance to this passage, taking it to mean
only that since the Demiurge is not jealous, he does not withhold anything from
the world for fear of its becoming a rival to himself (this is how Brisson 1974,
l55nl, explains the passage). Although this is true as far as it goes, Plato here
says, not merely that the world is not kept unlike the Demiurge, but that it is to
resemble him as closely as possible, by being made as good as possible. But this
means that the world is to be as rational, as reflective of vou<;, as possible, which
is to say that its archetype is vou<;, the Demiurge himself.
At the conclusion of the Timaeus Plato says, 'For this world, having received
and been filled with mortal and immortal living things, is a visible living thing
containing what is visible, a sensible god, the image ofthe intelligible (Eilewv 'tOu
VOTl'tou 8£0<; aio8Tl'to<;) ... ' (92c). Although we must (regretfully) dismiss the
alternative manuscript reading of 7tOtTl'tou for vOTl'tou on the ground that the
antithesis with aio8Tl't6<; requires the latter (Dies 1972, 550; Taylor 1928, 646-
648), the false reading is, as Dies remarks, 'une faute intelligente' .19 For this sen-
tence clearly indicates that the paradigm of which the sensible cosmos is an
image, is God. Since the sensible cosmos is an image-god, the intelligible living
thing of which it is the image (whether or not we understand an implied 8£OU
with VOTl'tOu) must be the true God. Just as, since the cosmos is a sensible organ-
ism, its paradigm is the intelligible organism, so too, since the cosmos is a sensi-

18 Cf. Dies 1972, 550: 'Le Demiurge, qui fait Ie monde a son propre image, ne fait-il pas ce
meme monde a I'image du Vivant Intelligible?' Pepin 1956,43, likewise cites this passage in support
of his thesis. Vogel 1970,205, uses it more tentatively: 'Is the Demiurge to be identified with the
intelligible World? We can find an argument in the fact that, in the Timaeus, where the Demiurge
makes the visible world resemble as much as possible the eternal pattern, he is also said to make it as
much as possible like himself. Yet, let us not dogmatize on this point and not yield to the temptation
of urging the logical consequences of a way of speaking which, at least in part, was mythologiz-
ing .. .'.
19 Dies 1972, 550. He adds, 'Que cette correction 1tOH110U ait eu ou non pour but conscient
d'identifier Ie Deroiurge et Ie Vivant Intelligible, elle pouvait, en tout cas, se justifier au seul point de
vue logique.'
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ble god, its paradigm is the intelligible God, the Demiurge.

Most of the modern objections to the identification of the Demiurge and the
forms are in fact valid only against the quite different theory, held apparently by
some Middle Platonists (but not by Plotinus), that the forms are 'thoughts of
God' in the sense that the Demiurge or mind first 'thinks up' the forms and then
makes the world accordingly.2o The unfortunate use of Republic 597b-d, where
we are told that God makes the form of bed, to support the thesis that the forms
are God's ideas, has contributed to this confusion. 21 To be sure, the forms cannot
in any sense be subordinate or posterior to the Demiurge. Such a theory would
lead to the voluntarist position that the forms are contingent upon the thought or
decision of a prior God. 22 Nothing could be less Platonic. The forms are not
'thoughts of God' in this sense, but rather simply are God, the eternal intelligible
content which is vou<; or the Demiurge. As we have seen, this God, properly
speaking, does not have thoughts, but rather is thought itself. It would perhaps be
less misleading to say that God or the Demiurge is nothing but the forms taken as
living whole, than to say that the forms are nothing but 'ideas in God's mind', if
the latter is taken to mean that they are dependent on or made by a God prior to
themselves. The forms are 'thoughts of God' only in the sense that they are the
thoughts which God is, and hence are as eternal and absolute as God himself, or
rather simply are God. They are not produced by or contained in the demiurgic:
mind like objects in a box, as though the mind had some being of its own prior to
and distinct from or beyond these ideas. Rather, the Demiurge simply is the
forms, and the forms, as an organic whole, are the Demiurge. 23 By understanding
both the forms and the Demiurge as vOll<n<; itself, this interpretation avoids the
error of subordinating the forms to the Demiurge as well as that of separating
them from him, which leads to the absurdities of a separate, empty mind on the
one hand and a series of inert, lifeless forms on the other.
If Plato means that the Demiurge and the paradigm are one and the same, that
the forms are the thinking mind and the mind is the forms which it thinks, why

20 Virtually all the proponents of the separation of the Demiurge and the forms erroneously
assume that if the forms are in any sense 'in' the Demiurge, then they are posterior to and dependent
on him: Taylor 1928, 81-82; Rich 1954, 123; Brisson 1974, 157.
21 See Rich 1954, 123-124; Brisson 1974, 157-158. Pepin 1956,42-43, regrettably cites this pas-
sage in support of his thesis, and confuses the issue by saying that 'Ie demiurge ... apparait ... comme
l'auteur d'un systeme d'idees constituant sa pensee'. Ifthe forms constitute the thought of (or better,
the thought which is) the Demiurge, then he cannot be the 'author' or maker of them. In the end, how-
ever, Pepin rightly concludes that 'l'identite fonciere chez Platon de I'intelligence et de I'intelligible
n'est pas douteuse' (44).
22 Taylor 1928, 82: '[T]o call the vOTl'tov ~ijiov a "thought" of God ... would mean in effect that
scientific truths, e.g. those of geometry, are only true because God thinks they are true.' Cf. Grube
1980,168: 'Nowhere does [Plato] say anything that would justify us in regarding [the Ideas] as con-
cepts of the divine mind ... [Tlhe god thinks the Ideas because they exist, they do not exist because he
thinks them ... [Tlhe fundamental values and laws in accordance with which the world is made and
governed are ultimate and absolute; they are not at the mercy of any person's will, be it the will of the
god or gods.'
23 Cf. Vogel 1986, 73: 'The thinking Mind is the Eide, the Eide are the thinking mind.'
 91

does he not simply say this, instead of composing a story which suggests that the
Demiurge looks to a model distinct from himself? The answer lies in Plato's use
of dialogue and of mythic discourse. A Platonic myth, like the sensible world
itself, contains and reveals truth, but must be considered intellectually for this
truth to be discovered. This is why Plato uses myth so extensively: like dialogue,
and unlike straightforward discourse, myth does not claim to be the truth (which,
according to Plato, no verbal composition, and especially no written one, can be:
Phaedrus 275c-278b; Epistle vii 343a), and thus to be a substitute for the reader's
own thinking, but rather forces the reader to think for himself, to engage in phi-
losophy, in order to understand it. The myth of the Timaeus, by describing the
world as a work of craftsmanship, provides an exceptionally vivid affirmation of
its rationality. But when we read this myth with philosophical reflection, we per-
ceive that since the Demiurge is intelligence or thought itself, and the forms are .
the content of thought, the Demiurge and the forms come together. Since the
truth expressed in the myth is simply the rationality of the world, the craftsman
and his design converge. Their apparent separation comes to be seen as a mythic
element, required, like the equally mythic temporal sequence of the Demiurge's
works, by the presentation of metaphysical truth in the form of a story. The state-
ments that the world is made like the Demiurge, that the world is the image of the
intelligible God, and that the forms are living and thinking, are sufficient indica-
tions of the true meaning of the myth.
It is a striking fact that few philosophers in antiquity regarded the Demiurge
and the forms as separate. This alone should suffice to show that the 'straightfor-
ward' reading of the Timaeus, which according to the prevailing modern view
separates them, is not as straightforward as it seems. On the contrary, the doctrine
of the identity of intelligence and the intelligible has its foundation in Plato's
own thought (cf. Pepin 1956, 39), Plotinus is said to have remarked, with regard
to Longinus' insistence that the intelligibles are outside of intellect, that 'Longi-
nus is a scholar, but by no means a philosopher.'24 The same might be said of
many contemporary interpreters of Plato. In modern as in ancient times, a strictly
'scholarly' reading of the Timaeus, confining itself narrowly to what Plato
expressly says, may well fail to perceive the identity of the Demiurge and the
forms. But a more philosophical reading, recognizing Plato's fundamental point
that vOll(nc; underlies and appears in the cosmos, inevitably discovers that the
demiurgic intelligence and the intelligible paradigm are one and the same.
School of Philosophy
The Catholic University of America
Washington DC 20064

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24 Porphyry 1978, ch. 14,40. On this remark see Armstrong 1960,393-394.

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