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Plato’s Philebus on the Immanence of Intelligence in Soul. Towards an Interpretation of Plato’s Theology1 §0 - Abstract In this paper I argue that Plato believed that intellect/intelligence (νοῦς)2 is in every case immanent in some soul (ψυχή) and that there is no compelling reason to interpret him either as positing a kind of Intellect that transcends the soul or as regarding Intellect as the cause of all things that come-to-be (γιγνόμενα), including soul. To do so, I present a new reading of a critically important but obscure and contested passage in the Philebus whose misconstrual has bulwarked a false alternative within which the dominant exegetical positions have been framed. I first explain the central problem of interpretation in Plato’s theology: whether he has one or two basic deities and whether either or both exists as a soul or as an intelligible being (i.e. a Form). I then describe how all three of the most important modern interpretations can be understood as rejecting one of three different, jointly incompatible premises while retaining the other two. These premises are all textually well supported, so none of these options is ultimately viable. However, these premises are only mutually incompatible on the assumption that the Divine Craftsman or Demiurge (δημιουργός) of the Timaeus is to be identified with Intellect. Interpreters have mistakenly made this assumption on the grounds that the Demiurge is called the best of causes in the Timaeus, while Intellect seems to be the cause of all good and generated things in the Philebus.3 The latter part of that claim is doubly mistaken; intellect is neither presented as the maker of soul (which Plato came to regard as a generated thing in his late 1

Originally presented as “Getting Straight Plato’s Gods: The Philebus on Nous and the World-soul” on July 24, 2007 to the IPS at its VIII triennial symposium; Trinity College, Dublin. It has been substantially edited and expanded, but my main points and arguments have not changed. I have expanded §§1 and 2.2 and added §§2.1 and 3.2. 2 I use intellect, intelligence, nous almost completely interchangeably here. All correspond to the Greek “νοῦς”. When νοῦς is putatively some distinct metaphysical principle I write “Intellect”, capitalized. In §3, I leave the term transliterated but untranslated as ‘nous’, so as not to prejudice our understanding of it. Thereafter, I tend to refer to it as “intelligence”, as I think this is the preferable translation in this context. 3 Tim. 29a5-6. “ὁ δ’ ἄριστος τῶν αἰτίων.” 1 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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dialogues), nor as the cause of all things that come to be.4 It is only identified as belonging to and being an exemplar of the class of things that are causes/makers of things that come-to-be. Although there are other, less driving reasons for identifying the Demiurge with Intellect or the intellect of the World-soul, which I have space only to mention and rebut in passing at the end of my paper, the inability of Intellect to be the cause of souls is decisive for showing that the Demiurge who makes the World-soul can neither be a soul nor its intellect. If that is the case, and if there can never be an intellect that is not in a soul, then the Demiurge cannot be a transcendent Intellect either. Therefore, none of the three main positions: that Demiurge is World-soul (Cornford, Cherniss, Carone), that he is an even earlier soul (Vlastos, Mason), or that he is Intellect (Hackforth, Mohr, Menn, and Bordt†) can be correct.5 §1 – Introduction: The Problem of Plato’s Theology The matter of Plato’s theology, to the extent that it has been discussed at all, remains much disputed. Indeed it is at something of a “dead-end” where “the positions still dominating [the] field were mostly framed before the second half of the 20th century and [sic] it is indeed an area that seems to lack a basic consensus.”6 This interpretive quagmire seems to confirm the age-

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If it is not the cause/maker of soul, and soul has come-to-be, then it obviously follows that it cannot be the cause/maker of all things that come to be. I am making the further point that Plato does not even imply that intellect is the cause/maker of all things that come-to-be. For souls as generated Tim. 34c4-5, at 36d7-8 the Demiurge is its creator.; 37a1-2. Laws 892a4-5; 967d5-7 where the temporal epithet of “eldest” is given to it. (Temporal epithets are not to be applied to things with timeless being: Tim. 37e-38a). Cf. Hackforth [1936] 441-3, Menn [1995] 11-13; Johansen [2004] 80-1. 5 Cornford [1935] 38-9, 94n.2, 99 361; Cherniss [1944] 425-6, 603-10; Carone [2005] 42-52; Vlastos [1965] 269-70, 276-7; Mason [2007] “Plato’s God in the Philebus”, VIII Symposium of the International Plato Society; Hackforth [1936] 439-40, 444-7. Mohr [2005] 194-5; Menn [1995] 10-13. † Bordt is only partially a partner to the HackforthMohr-Menn, line, for he views the Demiurge as being both Intellect and the Form of the Good. Bordt [2006] chs 56. In this paper I do not discuss other views, such as Johansen’s that the Demiurge symbolizes Craft (τέχνη), [2004] 83-6, which is a claim as to what he represents but not what ontological category he belongs to. Nor can I discuss the positive though somewhat marginalized views that I find more acceptable, e.g. Perl [1998]. 6 Barbara Sattler [2007], describing (and basically concurring with) the view of Michael Bordt in her review of his Platons Theologie. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.07.42. I agree with this assessment, but I doubt that it is the main reason that scholars have avoided this topic. 2 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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old complaint of Cicero, Bayle, and many others that Plato’s theology is simply incoherent and thus unrewarding to study.7 Above all, there is this unresolved question: how many gods does Plato have and who or what is the primary one? By ‘how many gods’ I do not mean which of the twelve Olympians did he believe in; what I really mean is how many hypostases did he have? Likewise, we do not want an answer such as Cronos or Zeus for ‘who is the chief god’; we want to know what sort of entity or entities stand at the top of his hierarchy of divinities. Imagine that we lay out the various ancient philosophical schools with some Socratic pedigree on an axis. At one end we might have the Stoics, who have one God: the active principle of the cosmos’ determination, who is both a body and an imminent, world-pervading, and providential intelligence. At the other extreme we might place the Neo-Platonists, for whom, if we take Plotinus as their spokesman, there were three levels of divinity: the One, Intellect/Being, and the World-Soul, none of which (or at most only a part of the lowest of which) “descend” all the way down to and are imminent in ‘nature’. At any rate only the lowest, (World)-soul, is temporal, and the former two are, in varying degrees, atemporal and superlogical. The variables determining position on this axis are these philosophers’ answers to the question ‘one ontological level of divinity or many?’ and its corollary ‘is this or are these

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“Iam de Platonis inconstantia longum est dicere, qui in Timaeo patrem huius mundi nominari neget posse, in Legum autem libris, quid sit omnino dues anquiri oportere non censeat. Quod vero sine corpore ullo deum vult esse…Idem et in Timaeo dicet et in Legibus et mundum deum esse et caelum et astra et terram et animos et eos quos maiorum institutes accepimus; quae et per se sunt falsa perspicue et inter se vehementer repugnantia.” M. Tullius Cicero. De Natura Deorum I.30. “La doctrine platonique touchant la Divinité n’est pas uniformed an les oeuvres de Platon; on y trouve tant de choses qui se combattent les unes les autres, qu’on ne sait à quoi s’en tenir. Ce n’est qu’un tissue de suppositions arbitraries qu’il débite magistralement sans les prouver; il est si obscure, qu’il rebute tous les esprits qui cherchent la lumière. Cicéron, qui l’admire par tant d’autres endroits, ne voulut pas seulement lui faire l’honneur d’examiner son hypothèse sur la nature divine.” Pierre Bayle Continuation des pensées diverses, Ch. CVI, in Oeuvres diverses de Mr. Pierre Bayle, III: 334-5**. Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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divinities “imminent”, meaning temporal, local, natural, and embodied (if not themselves bodies), or are they transcendent in any or all of those various senses?’ This paper hopes to make progress towards answering the question: ‘where would Plato fall on this axis?’ As I understand them, the strenuous debates on this subject have primarily revolved around scholars’ interpretations of the natures of three key terms or entities in Plato’s system, especially as they are presented in his late dialogues: the World-soul, Intellect (νοῦς), and the Demiurge. I want to distinguish here the issue of the relation of World-soul and intellect, on the one hand, from the relation of either or both to the Demiurge. The former issue can be dealt with largely by considering the Philebus in its own terms, while the latter requires a more thoroughgoing comparison to the Timaeus and passages in the Sophist and Laws. Here I will deal with both issues, but my focus will mainly be on the first. §2 – The Demiurge understood as Intellect §2.1 – Major Modern Positions Modern scholarship on Plato’s theism has widely assumed that the Demiurge is or represents Intellect. Debates then turn on accepting or rejecting one or more of three jointly incompatible premises: 1. For Plato intellect always is immanent in a soul. (Immanence of intellect) 2. The Timaeus shows us that the World-soul and the Demiurge are separate, in as much as the Demiurge creates the World-soul. (Distinctness of Demiurge and soul) 3. The World-soul is the eldest or most prior of all things that come-to-be, thus there is no other soul before it. (Venerability of the World-soul) There have been three main positions in this debate, each of which has rejected one of the premises above. Seeking to streamline Plato’s theology and metaphysics into the smallest number of (transcendent) hypostases possible, Cherniss and Cornford identified the Demiurge as the World-soul or the personification of its intellect. Assuming that the Demiurge represents Intellect, and accepting that intellect must be in a soul but that there is no soul prior to the WorldJason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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soul, they (i.e. 1 and 3), they rejected the ‘Distinctness of the Demiurge and Soul’, claiming that his separateness is only the result of allegorical figurativeness of the Timaeus’ myth.8 Recently this interpretation has been taken up by Carone.9 The problem with this view is that the Demiurge is an intelligible, while the World-soul has come-to-be,10 and the Being-Becoming dichotomy is not a mythical element of the creation story, but a foundational distinction which Timaeus introduces beforehand.11 Vlastos, who rightly was far less inclined to read away any unfashionable parts of the myth as allegorical fictions, interpreted the distinctness of the World-soul and the Demiurge literally. However, he too thought that the Demiurge was Intellect, and, in conjunction with the Immanence of intellect premise, he concluded that the Demiurge must be some other soul, prior to World-soul.12 This view is currently endorsed by Andrew Mason.13 The problems with this view are even more serious. First, there is no direct textual evidence for this Ur-soul. Second, it contradicts the no less literal claim that the World-soul is the oldest of things that have come-tobe. Lastly, like the Cornford-Cherniss-Carone view, it cannot deal adequately the textual evidence that the Demiurge is of a different ontological category than souls. On the opposing side, arguing against the ‘Demiurge as soul’ camps, stood Hackforth. Hackforth fundamentally agreed with Cornford and Cherniss’ thought that the Demiurge represents Intellect, but he denied that the Inherence of intellect claim ruled out the possibility of a transcendental Intellect. That is to say he thought it did not restrict the Demiurge qua Intellect to being a World-soul or the rational aspect of that soul. Rather, Hackforth argued that Plato 8

Cornford [1935] 38-9, 94n.2, 99 361; Cherniss [1944] 425-6, 603-10. Carone [2005] 42-52. 10 That the Demiurge is Intelligible: Timaeus 34b, 37a.; that (World)-soul is generated, see note 4 above. Cf. Menn [1995], 10-12; Johannsen [2004], 80. 11 Cf. Hackforth [1959] 17-22. Vlastos [1965] 266. 12 Vlastos [1965] as in [1995] 269-70, 276-7. 13 Mason [2007]. 5 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected] 9

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distinguished between two senses of “intellect”, a transcendent, divine one and a created one. The Immanence principle would apply only to the latter. The fully divine and transcendent one, beyond soul, he identified with the Demiurge and as Plato’s god.14 This was Mohr’s line, and recently, S. Menn defended Hackforth’s general line of interpretation, adding the important distinction between becoming or having νοῦς, on the one hand, and being νοῦς on the other. 15 Only souls have intellect, and intellect only comes to be – i.e. manifests itself in the temporal world – in souls. But the Demiurge simply is νοῦς itself. He exists in the full Platonic sense at the level of Forms. 16 §2.2 – Challenging the Assumption that the Demiurge Represents Intellect The real heart of the debate is about intellect in general; or rather the debate proceeds from the common assumption regarding intellect made on all sides: all agree that the Demiurge or Plato’s Deity in the fullest sense is or represents Intellect. They then differ as to whether this is a transcendent Intellect among the Forms or if the Inherence of intellect claim limits the Deity to being (that part of) the World-soul or some other divine soul. What I will argue is that the choice between God as transcendent Intellect and God as World-soul (or Ur-soul) is a false alternative, for it is a mistake in the first place to identify νοῦς with the Demiurge or Plato’s supreme god. Hackforth and Menn are at least half-right; they think Plato’s Deity par excellence, the Demiurge, is not the imminent World-soul, but something at the level of Forms (or above). However, they must bend over backwards to make this compatible with Plato’s Inherence of intellect claim, since they think the Demiurge is Intellect. But why think that he is (an) Intellect? (Seriously, why think that?) I ask this as an exHackforthian apostate, who once identified the Demiurge with capital nu “Nous”; but I can no 14

Hackforth [1936] 439-40, 444-7. Mohr [2005] 194-5; Menn [1995] 10-13. 16 Menn [1995] 19-24 15

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longer find a single place where Plato makes such a claim. The passage which is the best candidate for the Nous is God hypothesis is in the cosmological passage in the Philebus that concerns intellect and the World-soul. However, it does not show that Intellect is the cause of soul. Neither does it show that Intellect is the cause of all things that come-to-be, nor that there is a transcendent Intellect. For although intellect/intelligence is discussed there, intelligence is absent in some of the places that scholars have pointed to it, and this has had consequences both for the issues I am concerned with and for our understanding of the dialogue as a whole. This passage is an example of scholars seeing where it isn’t and thereby misunderstanding Plato’s psychology and theology. For the remainder of the paper I will be arguing for the following two claims: 1. Plato really means the Inherence of intellect claim. He has no transcendent Intellect. (An) intelligence is always found in a soul, and the intelligence that is said to order the cosmos in the Philebus is the intelligence of the World-soul. 2. Specifically in the case of the Philebus, interpreters have misconstrued a key passage as saying that intellect “furnishes” (παρέχον) us with our souls. As a result scholars have either called foul on the text or else drawn the wrong ontological conclusions. Construing it properly resolves these problems. Let us proceed by establishing the first thesis by understanding the Inherence claim and the ways that Plato actually uses the term “νοῦς”. Then we can sort out that treacherous passage in the Philebus that has been the bane of so many interpreters. §3 – Intelligence and its Inherence §3.1 - Plato’s Usage of “Nous”17 If we are going to discuss the relationship of νοῦς to anything else in the Philebus, then we have to place it in the broader context of the dialogue, the contest between Philebus’ and Socrates’ “goddesses”, pleasure and knowledge. One way Plato frequently uses the term “νοῦς” is to denote an extremely high form of knowledge or cognition, on par if not superior to the other 17

Cp. Menn [1995] who regards νοῦς as a virtue term (14-18). Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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types of cognition or cognitive terms with which he commonly associates it or puts it in parallel with: “science” or “knowledge” (ἐπιστήμη), “reason” (φρόνησις), and “wisdom” (σοφία) in the Philebus, but elsewhere “expertise” or “skill” (τεχνή) and “philosophy” (φιλοσοφία). 18 Plato’s choices of terms associated with νοῦς are closely tied to their dramatic contexts. It makes sense that in the Phaedo it is the frequently used term “philosophy”, the wisdom that can purify the soul, that should be the term of choice to relate with “νοῦς”.19 Likewise in a discussion of what a true statesman must know and be able to do in the Statesman, “τέχνη” of a political sort is the appropriate term to compare to νοῦς. So “νοῦς” can be used honorifically and generically as some very worthy kind of knowledge.20 Hence it is frequently and rightly given the translation of “understanding” or “comprehension”. The association of “νοῦς” with “ἐπιστήμη”, “φρόνησις”, and “σοφία” and in the Philebus is also deliberate. These terms refer to what is sought after in the life of knowledge that Socrates is endorsing. And, in fact, when Socrates shifts to a more cosmological sense of “νοῦς” when he assigns it to one of is four ontological kinds, Philebus objects that he is begging the question in favor of his own “goddess”, knowledge.21 Because it has such strong associations with “mind”, a faculty or even mental entity, it is essential that we emphasize this ontologically less substantial sense: that is, νοῦς as comprehension or understanding. It is this sense that we should use to orient ourselves at least initially in making sense of how νοῦς relates to the Worldsoul in the Philebus’ cosmological passage. To capture that sense, I will tend henceforth to translate “νοῦς” as “intelligence”.

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Key terms bundled together or treated equivalently with νοῦς in the Philebus: ἐπιστήμη: 21d10, 28a4, 28c3, 55c5, 60d4; φρόνησις: 21d9, 22a3, 27c5, 27d2, 28a4, 28d8, (60b4, 60c8, 60d4, 60e), 63b4, 63c5; σοφία: 30b4, 30c6, 30c9. 19 Phaedo 82b3. 20 Statesman 297a7-b1. 21 Philebus 28b1. 8 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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§3.2 – The Inherence of intellect Principle Inherence is a loaded philosophical term, therefore, I want to clarify the precise meaning that I am giving it here. When I say that Plato is claiming that intelligence always inheres in (a) soul, I mean this: that intelligence always and only exists together with a soul as a part of a soul. By ‘a part of’ I mean either (1) a mereological portion, which when separated from the other mereological portions of the substance would then itself be a substance (and in this case still a soul22), or (2) an attribute or property of a substance which is inseparable from said substance. I think Plato speaks of “intelligence” in both ways, and this could perhaps be indicative of the lack of the aforementioned Aristotelian category distinctions. It just as well might be informal usage, and for our purposes it is largely irrelevant, for in neither sense is there ever intelligence without soul. Let us now begin our analysis of the relationship between intelligence and souls by briefly looking at the texts where Plato asserts what I am calling the “Inherence of intellect” claim. We’ll start with what is arguably its first occurrence in the Sophist. Its context is this: having used the example of the soul to force a revision in the ontology of the gentler, corporealist “Giants” to a more generically dynamic viewpoint, the Eleatic Visitor is now raising problems for the changeless Parmenidean ontology of intelligible being advocated by “the Gods” or “Friends of Forms”. The visitor has two lines of argument for showing that Being-Changed and Change respectively must be admitted as part of being. The Inherence of intellect claim is crucial to the latter. That argument is introduced by appealing to the repulsiveness of the idea that, lacking motion, what is most real of all lacks intelligence and life too. “For God’s sake, will we really be so easily convinced,” the Visitor asks Theaetetus, “of the truth that motion (κίνησιν), life, soul, and reason (φρόνησιν) are not present in what totally is, and neither does it live nor 22

I allude here to the view in the Timaeus that reason/intellect is the true, immortal part of the soul. (69cff.) Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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reason, but that silent and august, having no intelligence, it stands motionless?”23 Theaetetus is appropriately concerned, answering “We would be agreeing to a dangerous statement, Stranger.”24 So the argument starts by accepting that what is totally real has intelligence and it ends with the conclusion that without motion there will never be any kind of intelligence.25 What’s in the middle? One by one, life, soul, and finally motion are also shown to belong to being through a series of necessary connections. Thus, the Visitor asks Theaetetus if they would say that has intelligence (νοῦν) but lacks life (ζωὴν), and Theaetetus does not see how that could be.26 Next, the Visitor brings in soul: “If we say that both of these are in it, then won’t we say that it has these in a soul?”, and Theaetetus knows no other way that it could.27 Finally, it is concluded that being must be moving as well. “What then, intelligence, and life, and soul, but being alive it stands totally motionless?” asks the Visitor, and it seems to Theaetetus that all this is absurd.28 Motion is implicated with Being because it has been shown to coincide with soul and life. If being alive did not already imply that Being was in motion, then the fact that it has soul, i.e. the principle of self-motion, should settle the matter. But why must it have soul? Because the only thing in which and by which something can have both life and mind is a soul. Strictly speaking, at 249a4 the connection between Intelligence and Soul is mediated by Life. Intelligence cannot exist without life and it is the soul that makes something alive. However, rather than reading the next point at 249a6-7 as saying that only the conjunction of life and

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248e7-249a2. 249a3. 25 249b5-6. 26 249a4-5. 27 249a6-8. 28 249a9-b1. 24

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intelligence must be in a soul, we should probably understand it in a logically looser way such that it claims that life and intelligence are each, individually, only ever held in a soul. With the conclusion at 249b5-6, that without motion no one anywhere will have any intelligence about anything, the ties between Intelligence and Soul are drawn taut. Where there is no motion there are no souls and thus, perforce, there is no intelligence. If no nous is good news, then no soul is welcome tidings. Forgive the pun, it is only to say that we’ve arrived at the Inherence of intellect principle.29 As in the Sophist, the Timaeus states the Inherence of intellect claim in a chain of reasoning which starts from the assumption of the value of intelligence. Specifically, this claim is used to characterize the best possible world that the Demiurge could have and did create. Thence it is used to infer the nature of the model that he used to make such a world. Of things that are sensible (literally “by nature visible”), all that on the whole possess intelligence are better than all those that on the whole are lacking in intelligence. The Demiurge “reasoned and concluded that among things naturally visible no unintelligent thing could as a whole be better than a work which does possess intelligence as a whole”.30 However, the Demiurge cannot simply put intelligence into the created world by itself, for “he further concluded that it is impossible for anything to come to possess intelligence apart from soul”. Thus, “Guided by this reasoning he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, and so he constructed the universe.”31

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The fact that soul, life, and intelligence are argued to be parts of what altogether is might suggest that it is the Forms of soul, intelligence, and life that are under discussion, cf. Menn [1995] 23-4. This would nullify any attempt to use the Inherence claim to restrict Intelligence from the realm of Forms to the level of embodied or embodiable souls. It would also smash the hopes of the Cherniss and Vlastos camps. However, I do not think that this is the sense of “Being” which we should take away from the passage, i.e. I do not take it to speak of Intelligence and Soul as among the Forms, or, at the very least, I do not think that that is the only reasonable way to interpret this passage. Rather, I would suggest that the point is that the ontology of the pure Formalists, just like that of the Corporealists, founders when it comes to soul. Each must be willing to add something to their ontology. 30 30b1-2. 31 30b3-5. 11 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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Now, it is not explained here why the world should have a physical body at all rather than simply being a soul; it is assumed already when the Demiurge is considering things that are by nature visible. Yet there is an argument for why the cosmos as a whole must have a soul, which is that nothing that comes to have intelligence can do so without having it in a soul. In other words, anything having intelligence has it in a soul. Menn points out that it could still be possible for the Being that is Intelligence itself (i.e. the Form of Intelligence rather than a participant in it) to lack a soul; the claim only covers things that come-to-have intelligence. While that is a valid point and an ingenious defense for his and Hackforth’s position, there simply are no cases where Plato directly speaks of ‘Intelligence itself’ or treats Intellect as a Form; one must presuppose that the Demiurge is Intellect to achieve such results, and that is question-begging. For now though, my point stands – the Timaeus does endorse the Inherence of intellect claim. In addition to this direct statement of the inherence claim, there is another statement amounting to the same thing, which has generally been overlooked. At 37aff Timaeus discusses the cognitive operations of the World-soul, i.e. the motions of the orbits of the Same and the Different when encountering divisible, changing (sensible) objects and indivisible, eternal (intelligible) objects. Encounters with eternal objects yield it knowledge and “comprehension” (ἐπιστήμη and νοῦς), and those with changing things yield stable and true opinions and beliefs (δόξαι καὶ πίστεις…βέβαιοι καὶ ἀληθεῖς).32 But, less anyone give a material account of cognition, he then insists that there is no truth in any account which locates these forms of cognition in anything but a soul. We are reminded by the parallel between ἐπιστήμη and νοῦς at 37b8 what we saw in the previous section: that Plato uses the term “νοῦς” as a type of knowledge, perhaps the best kind 32

37b8-c3. Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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of knowledge. As such, that is insofar as it is a type of knowledge, it too must be in a soul. So the Timaeus not only furnishes us with one of our three statements that intelligence must inhere in souls, it also tells us that scientific-knowledge, opinion, and any other kind of knowledge must be in a soul and nothing else. This is a more generic inherence of knowledge claim, which implies the Inherence of intellect doctrine as a specific case, insofar as νοῦς is a species of knowledge. The Philebus’ statement of the Inherence claim is the most direct of the four. At the point that it occurs in the dialogue’s “cosmological passage” intelligence has been recognized to be the source of order in the cosmos (30c2-7), and the World-soul has been shown to furnish us with our souls and to rule over the body of the whole cosmos (30a5-b7). The Inherence claim is formulated as “But wisdom and intelligence could never come to be without soul”33. As we will presently see, this is used to connect the two concepts of intelligence and World-soul together into one cosmological picture: intelligence in the World-soul rules, moves, and orders the cosmos just as our souls do in our bodies. §4 - The Relationship between Intellect and the World-soul in the Philebus In the case of the Philebus, people have misconstrued a key passage as saying that Intellect furnishes soul. As a result scholars have either called foul on the text or else drawn the wrong ontological conclusions. Correcting that misinterpretation will be the final part of my defense of the Inherence claim and it will lay the ground for my critique of the identification of the Demiurge with Intellect or with a divine soul. Keeping mind what we have said about Plato’s usage of “νοῦς”, let us now turn to what I have been referring to as the “cosmological passage” of the Philebus, i.e. 28c6-31a10. The lives of unmixed pleasure and unmixed knowledge have both been denied first place. By categorizing 33

30c9-10. Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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the “goddesses” of Pleasure and Knowledge in a four-fold scheme of ontological categories (limits, the unlimited, orderly mixtures of the first two, and causes of these mixtures) laid out in 23c-27c, Socrates hopes to gain traction on which life associated therewith deserves second place. Pleasures and pains are very quickly shown to belong to the kind of the unlimited at 27e128a4. The much longer argument that follows is the “cosmological passage”, where it will be argued that “reason” (φρόνησις), “knowledge” (ἐπιστήμη), and “intelligence” (νοῦς) belong to the fourth kind – the cause responsible for orderly mixtures of the unlimited with limits.34 Among those three terms, “νοῦς” quickly becomes dominant, both because of the pun on “King Zeus”/ “King Nous” (Νοῦς / Ζεῦς βασιλεύς), but also because it probably would seem the least out of place in a discussion of cosmic principles (ἀρχαί). “Νοῦς” was a term that was familiar in such cosmological roles from at least as far back as Anaxagoras, and it also has such associations in earlier Platonic dialogues.35 It is familiar even to us, unfortunately, to hear the claim that the universe is ordered or run intelligently or by (an) Intelligence. Yet it would be quite odd to hear that “Science” or even “Knowledge” directed the world. Again, given the point of the broader debate between Socrates and Philebus, I think we should understand the goal of this argument to be the categorization of νοῦς as well as ἐπιστήμη and φρόνησις. But to make the case that νοῦς is a cause of order we will have to show that there is a World-soul guiding the cosmos. Why? Why can’t νοῦς just be shown to run things? After all, it is claimed to be a cause at the end of this argument. Just before the argument proper we are said to have nous as our king of heaven and earth (νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς).36 Then, at the very outset of

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28a3-5. Phaedo 97c1ff. cf. Sophist 265c8-10 where the closely related terms of διανοίας and λόγου are used and Cratylus 416c10-11 with νοῦς as the cause of beauty. 36 28c6-7. Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected] 35

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the argument we learn that intelligence (νοῦς) or some wonderful arranging reason (φρόνησιν τινα θυαμαστὴν συντάττουσαν) rules the universe (τὰ σύμπαντα) rather than chance.37 From those two passages we know that Socrates is saying that intelligence is responsible in an authoritative way for what happens in the cosmos, and that it arranges and gives order to a world that, without it, would be left in whatever state chance disposed it. However, at this point we do not yet know how reified an understanding of “Intelligence” we are meant to have, i.e. we do have not yet been told the ontological status of νοῦς. It could be an entity, and a very agentlike entity who literally is, like Zeus, king of the world, or νοῦς could be an attribute of the world or of some craftsman who arranges the world. I submit that “νοῦς” has just the same sort of ambiguity that “intelligence” has in English in this respect. I mean that when a creationist says that the world is designed by “intelligence” or is the product of “intelligence”, he may be speaking of the pattern in nature which suggests to him an intentional creator who is intelligent, and thus intelligence is attributive, or he may be referring metonymously to that creator as ‘The Intelligence’ or the ‘Intelligent Thing’ who is responsible for the world and its systematic order. We eventually do learn that there can be no νοῦς without soul (ψυχή). If that is so, then νοῦς is a cognitive excellence of some sort that inheres in souls or is possessed by them. A parallel claim would be that one cannot have strength without a body. Here, then, is what I take to be the general strategy of the cosmological passage: A. Grant that the universe is ruled by order and intelligence rather than disorder and chance. [28d5-e6]. B. Strengthen this position against possible arguments by arguing that there is a cosmological or ontological structure that allows for intelligence to rule the cosmos. i.e. the World-soul [29a6-30d8] C. Conclude that intelligence belongs to the kind of causes, since the intelligent World-soul is responsible for all the order in the cosmos. [30d10-e3]

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28d8-9. Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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Now, most of the argument of the cosmological passage is part of step B. That procedure can be further broken down into the following stages: 1. Argue that the elements of our bodies are furnished by the elements of the entire cosmos of which they are a small portion. [29a9-d5] 2. Infer that the elements of the cosmos as a whole also constitute a body against which our bodies stand in part-to-whole and dependent-to-provider relationships. [29d7-e9] 3. Recognize that our bodies have souls. [30a3-4] 4. Infer that our souls could only come from a greater soul, i.e. the soul of the whole world’s body, i.e. the World-soul. [30a5-8] 5. Infer that from the facts that this World-soul maintains us and gives soul to us, that it must maintain or order the world at large. [30a9-b7] 6. So grant that there must be a cause of this order that deserves to be called “intelligence” or “reason”. [30c2-7] 7. But recognize that intelligence can only be in that soul. [30c9-10] 8. Surmise that order in the cosmos comes from the intelligence of the World-soul, i.e. from an intelligent World-soul. [30d1-4] 9. (Understand that we have thus defended the position that intelligence is the ruler of the cosmos) –[30d6-8] The argument for a World-soul from individual soul by analogy to the ‘World-body from individual bodies’ inference is also found in Xenophon, and it persisted in early Stoicism.38 We can leave it aside after making only a few points, for it is from steps 4-9 of B that we will have to arrive at an understanding of the relationship between νοῦς and the World-soul. The existence of the World-soul is argued for by analogy from the relationship between our bodies and their constitutive elements and the body of the world and its constitutive elements. That relationship, fleshed out in steps 1-3 of B, has three key features which, by extension, will be concluded to be the relationship between human souls and the World-soul: i. Our elements/bodies are generated from, nourished with, and ruled by the corresponding elements/body of the cosmos; they do not generate or nourish it. ii. The body of the universe has all the same attributes as ours. iii. However, the elements of the cosmos are far purer, larger, stronger, etc. than ours, and the world’s body has the same things that ours do but those which it has are all more beautiful.

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The inference that establishes the existence of a World-soul corresponding to the World-body is made at 30a3-8. It is granted that our bodies have souls, but if our bodies come from nowhere else than from the body of the cosmos, which is far superior to ours in all respects, then it would seem that our souls must come from the soul that the body of the world has. A conception of our bodies as microcosms, which are like (but inferior to) their macrocosmic source, is obviously at work here. It is tricky to determine with precision how the inference should be parsed. We might try to understand this as a case of the fallacy of composition – if our bodies have souls and they are merely parts of the world’s body, then the world must also have a soul. However that strikes me as subtly missing the sense of 30a5-7. “Whence, dear Protarchus, does [the body] get [the soul], unless the body of the universe just happens to be ensouled, in fact having the same things [as ours] yet finer.”39 If we ask ‘why couldn’t a human body have a soul even though the World-body lacked one?’ or ‘why couldn’t the human soul come from somewhere besides the soul of the Worldbody?’, then the final clause, which I cautiously translated as “having the same things [as ours] yet finer”, would afford an answer.40 The World-body has everything that the human body has, but better. It is whence the human body gets whatever qualities it has. Thus if the human body has a soul it comes from the World-body which also has a soul, indeed a far better soul. We must understand as a premise that whatever our bodies “have” they get from the World-body, which has those things, but better. So, since our bodies have souls, the World-body must have a soul which is far better than ours. If we understand the existence of the World-soul 39

Πόθεν, ὦ φίλε Πρώταρχε, λαβόν, εἴπερ μὴ τό γε τοῦ παντὸς σῶμα ἔμψυχον ὂν ἐτύγχανε, ταὐτά γε ἔχον τούτῳ καὶ ἔτι πάντῃ καλλίονα. Manuscripts B and T omit “πάντῃ”, and without it I think the final clause is a little clearer, but on either reading the sense is the same. 40 A bolder, but no less grammatically appropriate translation would take the participle as having explanatory or causative force, i.e. “since it has everything…”. 17 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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and its basic relationship to individual souls to have been established at 30a5-7, as well we should, then we can understand the challenging sentence that follows at 30a9-b7 as a further inference about the characteristics of the intelligent World-soul, specifically its role in the cosmos as a whole, considered as a body. This tells us more about how the World-soul is to be understood, and hopefully it will lay to rest the worries and confusions that “ἐν μὲν τοῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν ψυχήν τε παρέχον” (“and among us furnishes soul”) has occasioned. The worry is that we are being told that Intelligence is furnishing soul, and that seems impossible if intelligence requires a soul as we are told a few lines later. In her translation and commentary, Dorothea Frede suggests that we can’t make sense of it as “furnishing” or “giving” (παρέχον) and that maybe it should be “master” or “possess” (κατέχον).41 Striker had suggested striking out “ψυχὴν τε παρέχον” altogether, and Gosling stood for either excising it or else giving it a very weak and (to my mind) convoluted meaning.42 This is all on philosophical, not philological, grounds. “παρέχον” is not ungrammatical here, and it is not contradicted by any of the manuscripts. It’s a confusion because the passage reasons that if we think that the World-soul is responsible for giving souls to our bodies and for the upkeep and well being of our bodies, then we cannot but also think that it does likewise on the cosmic level, especially since the physical cosmos is far more beautiful and well-ordered than we are. Intellect isn’t being spoken about at all. It is a difficult passage, and on its own it is ambiguous. I think our gloss of it must be set by our understanding of the argument preceding it, and that is the macrocosm-microcosm argument that had established that the World-soul exists and is the source of our souls in Socrates’ immediately preceding sentence.

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Frede [1993] 28 n.1. Striker [1970] Peras und Apeiron. Gosling [1975] 98-9. Bury [1897] 55-6n.13 had offered the possibility that there was a corruption from ψυχῆς τ‘ ἐπάρχον or ψυχῇ τε τέχνην. Although these are linguistically more suitable emendations, they too were made in response to an interpretive debate that Badham had introduced. 18 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected] 42

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ΣΩ: “Οὐ γάρ που δοκοῦμεν γε, ὦ Πρώταρχε, τὰ τέτταρα ἐκεῖνα, πέρας καὶ ἄπειρον καὶ κοινὸν καὶ τὸ τῆς αἰτίας γένος ἐν ἅπασι τέταρτον ἐνόν, τοῦτο ἐν μὲν τοῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν ψυχήν τε παρέχον καὶ σωμασκίαν ἐμποιοῦν καὶ πταίσαντος σώματος ἰατρικὴν καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις ἄλλα συντιθὲν καὶ ἀκούμενον πᾶσαν καὶ παντοίαν σοφίαν ἐπικαλεῖσθαι, τῶν δ’ αὐτῶν τούτων ὄντων ἐν ὅλῳ τε οὐρανῷ καὶ κατὰ μεγάλα μέρη, καὶ προσέτι καλῶν καὶ εἰλικρινῶν, ἐν τούτοις δ’ οὐκ ἄρα μεμηχανῆσθαι τὴν τῶν καλλίστων καὶ τιμιωτάτων φύσιν.” ΠΡΩ: “ ’Αλλ οὐδαμῶς τοῦτό γ’ ἂν λόγον ἔχοι.”43 SO: “With respect to those four, limit and unlimited and their mixture and the fourth class of cause present in everything, we don’t really believe this, Protarchus, that while for us [it] furnishes the soul in these (bodies) and engenders fitness and curing of the body’s faults, and in other (bodies) by ordering and mending them gets called all-encompassing wisdom; yet of the very same things in the whole heavens, on a large scale –of things, furthermore, that are beautiful and pure- that in these it does not devise the nature of the most beautiful and glorious things?!” PRO: “It can’t be that way at all.” This passage takes for granted that the World-soul (the unnamed subject in the indirect statement) is responsible for giving our bodies their souls and for maintaining them, and, assuming that, it rejects the possibility that the World-soul is then not responsible for the corresponding body of the heavens. This is especially implausible because the body of the heavens is so vastly superior to our own; how should it be so without a soul, when our own bodies require souls to keep them alive and intact? In other words, what is argued for here is that the World-soul is responsible for the care of the entire cosmos. It truly is a World-soul.44 We come to point 6. Now, even though I have been saying that the unnamed subject of 30a9-b7 is the World-soul, in a sense we have to learn a little more before Socrates explicitly names it. Once we have granted that there is this thing responsible for ordering everything in the physical cosmos, we apply the fourfold ontology and recognize that harmonious order in things that come-to-be is the combination of unlimited with limit brought about by some cause. This

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Text of Burnet. This point is more significant than it might initially seem. For instance, it is a serious matter for Xenophon, and it seems to have been key for the early Socratics establishing that the gods can and will hold human beings responsible for all their actions; god is in charge of the whole world and sees all that transpires within it. Memorabilia I.iv.1718, cp. IV.iii. 19 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected] 44

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cause, since it orders and coordinates the cycles of celestial phenomena (years, seasons, months), i.e. it orders those things which in the created world display that greatest and most beautiful invariant order, is “most justly called σοφία and νοῦς”. That it is most justly called these given epithets suggests that they are honorific. The thought seems to be this: what better deserves to be called intelligence than the intelligent order found in living beings and celestial cycles or their intelligent designer? Now comes the Inherence of intellect principle to help make an ontological point: σοφία and νοῦς are states of soul – they are either the excellent cognitions that some being has or else they are the faculties or states of having those cognitions.45 We have a substance/affect relationship of metaphysical dependence. Thus if we can say that the cosmos has intelligence we must suppose it to have a soul, just as if we said that the world had strength we would have to posit to it a body. If the significance of the line with “παρέχον” were that Intelligence furnishes soul, then this really would be in conflict with the dependence relationship that we find here between intelligence and soul. However, it is not intelligence that furnishes our souls, it is an intelligent World-soul that does so. We can take παρέχον at face value and still retain the dependency point a few lines later without any conflict. So, we know what the function of the World-soul is and how it relates to the defense of the doctrine-of-old that intelligence rules the heavens and the earth. The World-soul makes intelligence in the universe ontologically feasible. It is the entity that can function as the cause of the orderly mixture(s) that is (are) the cosmos. Furthermore, by macrocosm-microcosm

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The same ambiguity for νοῦς as product or faculty of cognition (but not as a process of cognition) is in Aristotle as well. 20 Jason G. Rheins 631-889-5276 [email protected]

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reasoning it is the plausible source of our souls and the general maintainer of our physical constitutions. §5 - Conclusion I have shown that the cosmological passage of the Philebus, especially the notorious sentence at 30a9-b7, does not present intellect producing soul. It therefore does not demand that we posit a transcendent Intellect. It does show us that there is at least one thing in the created world, indeed the best thing in the created world, that intellect cannot cause: souls. This nullifies the strongest reasons for associating Demiurge with Intellect. Moreover, intellect in the World-soul is shown in the Philebus to be the chief moving and sustaining cause of the world’s body, and it is the only such cause that is mentioned, but that does not imply that it is an exclusive cause or even a universal one; to solely discuss the Worldsoul as cause is not to discuss the World-soul as the sole cause. Understanding the Demiurge as the best cause (αἴτιος) is compatible with the Philebus’ treatment only of the intelligent Worldsoul as the cause of orderly mixture and with the Demiurge being distinct from the World-soul and intellect. My own view, that the Demiurge is the Form of the Good, cannot be defended here, so the question of who or what the Demiurge actually is will have to be discussed another time. However, that discussion will have the benefit of being freed from several misconceptions about his alleged relationship to the World-soul and Intellect; and that, I think, is progress.

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Works Cited Bordt, M.[2006] Platons Theologie. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber. Burnet, J. [1901] ed. Plato. Opera (Tom. I-V). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bury, R.G. [1897] The Philebus of Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (CUP). Carone, G.R. [2005] Plato’s Cosmology and its Ethical Dimensions. Cambridge: CUP. Cherniss, H. [1944] Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy vol. I. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Cornford, F.M. Plato’s [1935] Plato’s Cosmology. London: Routledge. Reprinted by Hackett: Indianapolis, 1997. Frede, D. [1997] tr. and ed. Plato. Philebus. Indianapolis: Hackett. Gosling, J.C.B. [1975] tr. and ed. Plato. Philebus. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hackforth, R. [1936] “Plato’s Theism”, The Classical Quarterly 30:1, 4-9. Reprinted in Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics. R.E. Allen ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965. 439-447. . [1959] “Plato’s Cosmogony (Timaeus 27d ff.)”, The Classical Quarterly (New Series) 9:1, 17-22. Johansen, T.K. [2004] Plato’s Natural Philosophy: A study of the Timaeus-Critias. Cambridge: CUP. Mason, A. [2007] “Plato’s God in the Philebus”, VIII Triennial Symposium of the International Plato Society, Dublin. Menn, S. [1995] Plato on God as Nous. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Mohr, R.D. [2005] God and Forms in Plato. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing. Revised ed. of The Platonic Cosmology. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985. Perl, E.D. [1998] “The Demiurge and the Forms: A Return to an Ancient Interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus”, Ancient Philosophy 18, 81-92. Sattler, B. [2007] “Review of [Bordt 2006]” Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews 2007.07.42. Sedley, D. [2005] “Les origines des preuves stoïciennes de l’existence de dieu”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 4, 461-87. Striker, G. [1970]. Peras und Apeiron. Das Problem der Formen in Platons Philebos. Hypomnemata. Göttingen: Vandenboeck & Ruprecht. Vlastos, G. [1965] “Creation in the Timaeus: Is it a Fiction?” in R.E. Allen: Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 401-19. Reprinted in Vlastos [1995] Studies in Greek Philosophy vol. 2. ed. D.W. Graham. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 265-79.

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