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On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Andrew J. Mason
Saera Omiya Koen B-305, Bonsai Cho 2-32 Kita Ku, Saitama City,
Saitama Prefecture 331-0805. Japan.
andrew1211m@hotmail.com
Abstract
Hackforth and Menn make a strong case for the identity of nous and the demiurge in
Plato, but I argue that it does not hold in the case of the Philebus, where the demiurge
is kept in the background, and the world-soul is in fact the referent in the passage
assigning nous to the class of cause as governor of the universe. In the Statesman, the
world-soul had had to own the problem of natural catastrophe, and I suggest that in
the Philebus the role and functions of the world-soul are enhanced in an attempt to
make it the basis for a solution to that problem.
Keywords
Plato Philebus nous world-soul demiurge
1 Introduction
According to the thesis proposed by Hackforth and developed by Menn,
nous (which both translate reason)1 is not just a pre-eminent characteris-
tic of Platos craftsman god but his true identity. The demiurge is a mythical
1 I prefer intelligence. Accepting broadly Menns arguments in Plato on God as Nous ch. 3 that
nous in Plato does not mean mind but a virtue which exists independently and in which
ensouled things can participate, doubtless this virtue hinges largely on a capacity for logical
reasoning from Form to Form. But even more fundamental is the capacity to see Forms in the
first place, be it in themselves or in their sensuous instantiations. It is particularly in the latter
respect that Plato makes his own what von Fritz identified as the original sense of noein, that
of discerning the true nature of a situation, person or action (1974, 23-5). Reason does not
cover this aspect, whereas intelligence covers both.
144 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
equivalent (Hackforth 1936, 4) of a god that is nous pure and simple, tran-
scending not only the visible and bodily but soul as well. This now influen-
tial thesis, I think, has much to recommend it. It meets the objection that
Plato seems to say (e.g. Philebus 30c, Timaeus 30b) that there can only be nous
in soul, by showing that what he claims is only that nous cannot come to be
in any generated thing unless it has soul (Hackforth 1936, 7; Menn 1995, 19-20);
an ungenerated demiurge who just is nous does not need this prerequisite for
acquiring it. It also seems to clarify the nature and necessity, for Plato, of the
distinction between demiurge and world-soul, between a transcendent nous
that establishes cosmic order and an immanent one that maintains it. We need
not fight with Platos text to reduce the one to the other, like Cornford (1935,
37-8) or Carone (2005, ch. 2). Plato evidently feels he needs botha gener-
ated exemplar we can model ourselves on, and a transcendent guarantor of
its exemplarityand that the world-soul partakes of the nous the demiurge is
seems a convincingly Platonic way of meeting this need.
However, both Hackforth and Menn draw on the Philebus in support of their
thesis, and in doing so, I will argue, they misconstrue what Plato is doing in
this work, particularly in the argument at 30a-e. This argument culminates a
long discussion (conventionally known as the metaphysical passage) of the
four basic classes comprising everything that now exists in the All (23c): the
unlimited, limit, the mixed class of things generated by the imposition of limit
on the unlimited, and the cause responsible for this. The purpose of the dis-
cussion is to show that intelligence belongs in the class of cause (and thus
has a greater kinship to the Good than does pleasure, which will be located
in the first class), and at 30e Socrates proclaims that the argument has proven
this. Earlier (28a) he had suggested that deciding which class nous belongs to
runs the risk of impiety. This obviously implies its divinity, but the question
is at what level this applies, given the three tiers of divinity of the Timaeus:
the demiurge, the world-soul, and the celestial bodies. As I will seek to show,
although the demiurge is twice alluded to at 30a-e, the nous actually at issue
there, and (less obviously) in the metaphysical passage overall, is that of the
world-soul, which has a much greater scope of responsibility in the Philebus
than in the Timaeus.2 Plato is here reallocating to it several of the demiurges
functions. This goes unrecognised by Hackforth and Menn, who overplay the
parallels between the two works, and also, I think, tend to overstate the unity
2 My approach is close to McCabes view that the Philebus explains cosmic order by the intel-
ligence of the cosmos itself, rather than by a god external to it (2000, 175), but differs from it
on many other counts, most basically in holding that the demiurge remains in the wings as
the transcendent cause of this immanent one.
145 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
of Platos late-period theology more generally. In the last section I will address
where the direction taken in the Philebus fits in the development of Platos
late-period cosmotheology.
By way of opening up the issue, let us return to the gambit at 23c. If the
whole passage concerns the four classes which make up everything present
, in the All, this must apply to the cause under discussion. This seems
in principle to rule out the demiurge, who is necessarily separate from the cos-
mos he produces as from the materials from which he does so.3 This separa-
tion is not just a consequence of the craftsman analogy but explains Platos
recourse to it; the demiurges proper abode (Timaeus 42e) is beyond the physi-
cal cosmos from which he withdraws once his work is done (Statesman 272e).
Admittedly, at 23c Socrates refers only to the first three classes (the need for
a fourth is first mentioned at 23d). This might suggest that the cause is to be
differentiated from them as transcending the cosmos. But if the text leaves
room for that here, in other places it directly rules it out. The phrase
echoes through the Philebus, particularly at 30a-e and in the final part of the
work, where it has significant work to do. But its recurrence at 30c is especially
important. The nous named here as the cause of temporal order is expressly
referred to as . Similarly at 30b the cause is specified as ,
existing in everything taken as a whole. This passage needs detailed analysis,
but in advance of that it may be said that a nous in the All is more plausibly
linked with Platos world-soul than his demiurge.
2 The Expanded Role of the World-Soul in the Argument at 30a-e
This argument comprises eight steps, which I here paraphrase in simple terms
and break down where necessary to delineate its logic and direction:
3 Cf. Broadie 2012, 9-10. Menn (1995, 7, 11) and Hackforth agree that the demiurge is separate,
but for Hackforth he is also immanent in the sense that the life of the universe is his life just
because his activity is necessarily...one that goes outside himself...a projection of himself
(1936, 8-9). The latter point is fair enough, given that the demiurge wanted his creation to
be good like himself (Timaeus 29e). But it does not follow that he is immanent in the cos-
mos or that its life is his. Were the demiurge not absolutely separate, when Plato finds (as in
the Statesman) that the occurrence of disorder in a world governed by nous cannot just be
ascribed to vicissitudes of matter, he would not have the option of ascribing this to defects in
the world-soul without at the same time implying a faulty demiurge or nous as such.
146 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
1. Our bodies have a soul (30a3).
2(a) The body of the world has a soul; 2(b) we get our souls from the
world-soul (just as our bodies are derived from the world-body) (30a5-8).
3(a) (implied:) In relation to body, soul is a cause, a wisely ordering and
healing power, both in us and the cosmos; 3(b) our souls are provided by
the world-soul, but the world-soul in turn is provided by an unnamed,
still higher cause which may be presumed to be the demiurge. Both our
souls and the worlds are thus caused causes (30b1-9).
4. (with reference to 3(a):) Therefore, by virtue of its being responsible
for such things as the ordering and co-ordinating of years, seasons and
months, the cause that exists in the universe warrants being called wis-
dom and nous (30c4-7).
5. Wisdom and nous can never come into being without soul (30c9-10).
6(a) (implied:) Zeus = the cosmos; 6(b) (tying 6(a) with steps 3-5:) there-
fore, in being supplied with a kingly nous by the unnamed higher cause
implied in 3(b), Zeus was at the same time supplied with a kingly soul
(30d1-3).
7. In saying this we fight side by side with the wise men of old who
declared that nous forever rules the universe (30d6-8).
8. Thus nous belongs to that class which was called the cause of all things
(30d10-e3).
This breakdown diverges from the interpretations of Hackforth and Menn at
steps 3 and 4. As what is actually said at step 3 is particularly contentious, it will
be useful first to establish how much I think no one would contest.
The task of step 3 is to vindicate the double proposal at step 2: that the world
has a soul and that this is the condition of our having souls. Thus this long
and complex sentence is structured by a men...de construction playing off
the presence of soul in our bodies ( : 30b2) and in the four great
masses constituting the world-body ( : 30b8). The minimal gist is that
it is perverse to suppose that, while our bodies have souls which regulate them,
this does not apply also to the cosmic body, in which the same bodily elements
are present but much more fine and pure (30b7-8, cf. 29c, 30a). But the sen-
tence has more to say than this, chiefly because it is also concerned to aver a
causal sequence between (and beyond) these terms. In the Timaeus the demi-
urge was the cause of both the worlds soul and ours, and Hackforth and many
others take this to hold here as well. He translates the core message of 30b thus:
we cannot imagine that the cause, while it provides our human bodies with a
soul, does not devise that which is fairest and most precious in the body of the
universe, namely, its soul (1936, 4).
147 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
There are two serious problems with this reading. The first goes back to my
point that the cause in question is (30b1). That is not to say the
demiurge is altogether absent, but he is not the cause referred to at b1, and at
b2 with . Rather, he is implied at b8-9 as the cause of this cause, i.e. of
the world-soul.4 To clarify this, let me turn to the second point, which con-
cerns the medio-passive perfect infinitive at b8. This has the pas-
sive sense that soul has been built into () the cosmic body. The unnamed
agent is the demiurge, who in the Timaeus constructed (: 30b)
soul in the cosmic body. The metaphor is the same demiurgic one: the dif-
ference in voice is due to the fact that the demiurge took centre-stage there,
whereas in the Philebus he is kept in the background. But Hackforth reads
as middle-voiced with an active sense (devise),5 with ...
(i.e. soul) at b9 as its direct object and (= the fourth class, the cause)
at b2 as its subject. Textually I do not think this stands up, however well it
coheres with the Timaeus. In the men clause, is the subject of four active
participles and a passive main verb, . It seems natural, at least
prima facie, that the main verb in - in the de clause should mirror this pas-
sive sense. Admittedly, according to LSJ the active perfect is not
found after Homer, so even if Plato intended an active sense he would presum-
ably have had to use the sthai form. On the other hand, according to Smyth
(1956, 813d), is among the words that buck the trend of deponent
verbs and use the perfect middle in the middle or passive rather than active
sense. Since a middle sense is out of the question here (Plato would of course
never say that soul has built itself into the cosmos), that leaves the passive.
Moreover, as we will see, a passive infinitive is used at 30d to make what will
turn out to be exactly the same point Plato is intimating here. For there Zeus
4 As remarked by the Andrew (S.) Mason with whom Plato scholars will be more familiar (2010,
285, 287), there is disagreement over whether the world-soul at 30b is cause or effect. My
interpretation seeks to explain why it is both. Masons own approach is that the Philebus sup-
ports the view of the demiurge as a transcendent soul as well as nous. I do not have room to
discuss this here, but I argue for a reading of both 30b and 30d which does not entail it.
5 As does McCabe (2000, 171), but in service to a very different interpretative strategy. For her
aitia at 30b is a generic term, which seems supported by the reference of touto back to the
class of cause. However, if the subject of the men and de clauses is a generic aitia, such that
our own nous provides our soul and a cosmic nous contrives soul in the cosmos, I cannot
see either how that squares with step 5 or which part of the sentence at step 2 is left over to
say that the cosmic nous is responsible for ours, not just analogous to it. At 30c it is a specific
cause that is at issue, and since this phrase is intended synonymously with
, we are entitled, I think, to see with a shift from the class to a specific imma-
nent cause, the world-soul.
148 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
signifies the cosmos itself, in whose nature a kingly soul-nous is implanted
by a cause that transcends it. If is passive, and if here the general
rule applies that the subject of an infinitive takes the accusative, ...
is a passive subject of this verb with the same referent as . While is
the active subject of the participles of its clause, in the last clause, after all the
intervening complications of the sentence, it has had to be restated in the form
... as the passive subject of .6
These considerations support the following translation of the sentence
(underlining the main verbs in the men and de clauses and italicising the vari-
ous expressions of their subject):
For surely we do not suppose, Protarchus, that of those four classesthe
unlimited, limit, their combination, and the class of cause which is pres-
ent in everything taken as a wholethis fourth one, which provides our
bodies with souls, inspires us with bodily exercises and arts of healing
when the body is out of sorts, and composes and heals in all other ways,
is called the sum of all wisdom, and yet even though these same things
[which make up our bodies]7 are present in the whole cosmos in great
magnitude and are moreover fine and pure, the finest and most valuable
nature of all [soul]8 has not been built into them.
6 I cannot agree with Rudebusch ( forthcoming, 275) that all four classes form the subject of
this verb and that it is anacoluthic to change the subject to just the fourth one. There is no
such change; the fourth is the subject of the whole men...de conjunction, and all four are
only named at the start of the sentence so as to focus attention on it. Rudebuschs rendering
have achieved also overlooks the parallel with Timaeus 30b.
7 refers to the four elements making up our bodies and the worlds
(discussed at 29a-e and referred back to at 30a7), not to the four classes mentioned at the
start of this sentence.
8 . Hackforth 1972, 56 explains the use of the plural
to qualify on the basis that Plato wavers between a sin-
gle world-soul and a plurality of souls. Like Rudebusch ( forthcoming, 275) I do not find this
convincing, but for different reasons. Plato wavers on this between dialogues, not within the
Philebus itself. I am unconvinced by Rudebuschs own view that the argument requires that
the finest and most precious refers to three things: soul, mind, and wisdom. While the argu-
ment will go on to link these three, this sentence does not provide a context in which it
would make sense for to have that reference. For it to establish
its essential point, has to denote the world-soul, which is finer still than any of the
physical natures whose fineness in the cosmos has just been reaffirmed. The plural genitives
may be (idiomatically?) partitive, as per Fowlers translation: that nature which is the fairest
and most precious of all.
149 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
In brief, the world-soul introduced at step 2 is the cause present in everything
taken as a whole, and it is what provides our bodies with souls, but it in turn
is built into the cosmic body by an unnamed higher cause who can only be
the demiurge. It may seem bizarre to say that Plato now makes the world-soul
the cause of our souls, in dramatic departure from the Timaeus, but it coheres
with the actual argument. Step 2(b) says that we can have received () our
souls from nowhere else ( ) but the world-soul. In isola-
tion, this might be taken to mean only that the demiurge formed our souls
from the same ingredients he used for the world-soul (cf. Timaeus 41d). But it
is not only what is said at step 3 that speaks against this. Step 2 is ventured as
an analogue to the prior argument at 29a-e that we get our bodily constituents
from the world-body, and it was said that these derive not only nourishment
and growth but generation (: 29c) from their cosmic counterparts. This
argument, as McCabe says (2000, 169), establishes both a symmetry between
fire (etc.) in our bodies and in the cosmic body, and an order of dependence;
but the latter, pace McCabe, is causal, not just explanatory. Step 2(b) is meant
in the same way where soul is concerned.9 Plato may be less clear here than
elsewhere about the relation between intelligent and material causes, but he
intends the dependence causally in each case. As the fire in us is generated
from the cosmic fire, so the souls we receive from the world-soul the latter
gives. Step 3 confirms this; the cause in the All provides () our bodies
with souls.
That the Philebus departs from the Timaeus in this respect may seem less
strange once we recognise that this is not the only function it transfers from
the demiurge to the world-soul. In the concern to map out a causal sequence
at 30b (our souls the world-soul [the demiurge])what gets somewhat
lost is the tenet that soul is a cause of order in the body it inhabits. Plato does
not say expressly that the world-soul organises the world-body, just as he
does not say that our own soul, while inspired () by it with techniques
to train or heal our body, is the cause that carries this out. But he means it.
Besides helping us heal ourselves, the cause present throughout the cosmos is
described as composing and healing in all other ways. This points to an exten-
sion of its powers to the creative ordering or composing () of the great
parts of the cosmic body, as well as the recovery of its own bodily health. In
the Timaeus the world-soul did no more than maintain order. Besides its rota-
tional self-motion, its activity was contained in two verbs, and :
9 Pace McCabe 2000, 170 n. 20, I do not think this causal cast of 30a is misleading. Note further
that McCabe has to suppress at 29c to hold that the responsibility of the world-body
for the constituents of our bodies is not causal.
150 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
coming into contact with things in traversing its body, and telling itself how its
body is the same or different here in comparison with there, or here now with
here then, and how it is that whatever is going on here and there occurs (37a-b).
Note also, however, that the expansion of its role in the Philebus responds to
a tension latent in the Timaeus. When Timaeus says, regarding the winnow-
ing motion of necessity whereby the four bodies were already separated into
regions prior to the demiurges ordering, that the receptacle was able to move
itself ( : 53a), this implies the presence of soul,
the sine qua non of self-motion for Plato. The point is not of course that the
world-soul pre-exists the demiurges intervention. It is simply that Plato pre-
sumably saw the contradiction, wanted to hold on to the idea of an inherent
cosmic proclivity to order-production, and made good on this by attributing it
to the world-soul.
At step 4 this expansion of the world-souls role becomes fully explicit. Here
the focus shifts from the physical aspect of cosmic order to the ordering of
years, seasons and months. Again, in the Timaeus the demiurge was the cause
of this, but now, as previously mentioned, this cause which warrants being
called wisdom and intelligence ( ) is stated to be in
addition to () the unlimited and limit.10 Yet Hackforth assumes that
here signifies the demiurge or transcendent cause. Menn, at one
point, seems to concede that what is said here is that sophia and nous are pres-
ent in the cosmos (1995, 19), yet he adduces 30c as evidence for the identity of
nous and the demiurge (8), and is generally intent on upholding Hackforths
view that the phrase refers to the demiurge. This is the purpose of his elabo-
rate argument (16-17) that, since nous is doubletted with the virtue of sophia
here, as with others like phronsis elsewhere, it is a virtue too; and because the
Platonic virtues exist themselves by themselves nous qua virtue must be tran-
scendent. Whatever its merit in connection with other dialogues, this argu-
ment does not overrule what is said in situ in the text to which it responds.
I can only assume that Menn believes that the sense of the text, that it is a
cosmic intelligence that orders and co-ordinates temporal periods, does not
override the fact that in the Timaeus the demiurge performs this role. Yet why
should it not, if the Philebus is seeking to enhance the world-souls functions
and responsibilities?
It is not just what is plainly said at step 4 that entitles us to take the
world-soul as the referent of , but the way this step connects with
10 This sense is textually reinforced by at 30c5. At 29c the fire in us was called
feeble in comparison with that in the All, and likewise here the implicit point is to
distinguish the by no means feeble cause in the All from that in ourselves.
151 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
the preceding one and those that follow. The sentence begins with therefore
(). Given what is said at step 3, the inference seems to be this: since the
soul built into the world-body is a wise cause of order that organises and heals
that body, this same cause is responsible for the temporal measures which
reflect and ensure the diachronic maintenance of such order (climatic balance
over the yearly cycle being grasped as the macrocosmic analogue of health),
for which reason it may most justly be called wisdom and intelligence. There
is no place for here unless the cause named has the same referent at
both places.
This also makes sense of the following steps. Soul is not specified at step 4,
and it is the task of step 5 to reinforce this connection explicitly: where there
is nous in a generated thing, there must be soul. From there we can expect a
straightforward conclusion of the syllogism: the cosmos, insofar as it has nous,
must have a soul. From the fact that this is just what is concluded at step 6 it
is clear that what step 4 is concerned with is establishing that the universe
has nous.11 Hackforth rightly insists that this is the point at step 5, but there is
no basis for his claim that, whereas refers to the cosmos here,
at step 4 it refers to its creator (1936, 7; 1972, 56-7). Plato has been speaking
of the Universe all along. The world that has nous and soul at step 6 is the
one that has an intelligence as cause at step 4, and a soul as cause at step 3. The
fact that this is a caused cause, and that the demiurge underlies it, changes
none of this. It does not mean the demiurge is the cause actually discussed at
step 3 or the nous actually referred to at step 4.
I said that step 6 completes the syllogism, but that is not all it does. It also
implies that Zeus is in truth nothing but the cosmos:12 Therefore you would
say that a kingly soul and a kingly nous are implanted in the nature of Zeus
through the power of the cause (
11 That the cause is described here as being (rather than having) nous need not greatly
concern us. Plato is not using sophia and nous in the terminologically precise way
demanded by a strict distinction between being intelligent and being intelligence; the
argument, as he admits at 30e, is rather more playful.
12 Hackforth 1972, 56 endorses Zellers reading along these lines, but does not seem to me
to grasp its implications, in particular for Philebus 30b. With some exceptions, such as
Carone (2005, 232 n. 64 and 256 n. 28), the point often goes unrecognised; for example,
Rudebusch 2009, 216 and Waterfield 1982, 84 n. 1 take Zeus in his customary role as
supreme god or ruler of the cosmos, rather than as the ensouled cosmos itself, which as
Ficino said (1985, 18) is repeatedly claimed by Platos followers. A. S. Mason (2010, 290)
reads Zeus as the cause as a soul distinct from and prior to the world-soul. Yet both the
evidence of the Statesman and the logic of the Philebus passage point, I will argue, to an
identification of Zeus with the ensouled cosmos rather than the demiurge.
152 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
, ).13 That the soul
of Zeus and the world-soul are the same is suggested, first, by the way passive
infinitives are used for each; as the world-soul was built into the cosmic body,
so Zeus soul was implanted () in his nature by a higher cause that
is now, if not identified, at least referred to explicitly, not just implied by the
passive as at 30b.14 And that Zeus soul-nous, like the worlds, is a caused cause
is clear from the description kingly; Plato more or less equates causing with
ruling at 27a (I will return to this point in Section 3 below).
Yet why does this parallel between 30b and 30d not just mean that the
world-soul and the soul of Zeus are two distinct causes caused by the demi-
urge? That Plato is in fact still talking about the same, functionally souped-up
world-soul is signposted by the which again introduces step 6. This
therefore does not just relate to step 5 and sanction a claim that if Zeus has
nous he must have soul. It has to carry a sense of why Zeus is being mentioned.
Evidently the link is world-rule, but does merely allow us to slide from
the world-soul to the customary view of Zeus as ruler of the universe, without
any indication of how they might be related? Hardly. We are being invited to
see these two as one and the same. Step 6, however allusively, ties the whole
argument together. The syllogism it completes, strictly speaking, is:
The All has an intelligence built into it (by the demiurge) whereby it
self-orders;
but any generated thing that has intelligence must have a soul;
therefore the All has a soul.
The form in which the conclusion is actually statedtherefore a kingly soul
and intelligence were implanted in the nature of Zeus (by the demiurge)
simply does not follow unless Zeus just is the All.
13 Cf. Fowlers translation. Here as at 30b Waterfields translation distorts the sense of the
text in suppressing the passives in both places, in keeping with his view that at
30b just means that the class of cause engenders soul in a logical sense, thus simply
that soul is a cause (1982, 83). At 30d he renders because of his
function as a cause, but to do so he has to extract from the phrase and force it
to mean attribute, thus to qualify , you would say.
14 McCabe 2000, 172 says rightly that Zeus is not the demiurge, but seems averse to
acknowledging that the cause that implanted soul and nous in Zeus cannot be anything
else. Hackforth is right that step 6 draws a distinction between a transcendent cause or
nous and an immanent one (1972, 56-7); his error lies in parcelling these out at steps 4 and
5, when in both cases refers to the world-soul.
153 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
This identification is not just a curiosity, added only as a mythical way of
expressing his point at step 6. It is also insinuated in the Statesman,15 and it has
work to do here. Step 6 above all has to justify the conclusion reached at step 7.
Clearly 6(b) (that the cosmos has a kingly soul-nous) enables Socrates to say
that his account fights side by side [] with the wise men of old who
declared that nous forever rules [] the All. But it is important to recognise
the extent to which 6(a) (that Zeus = the cosmos) is also conducive to step 7. Of
all the wise men who can be said to have held some version of this doctrine,16
I cannot but think that the remark at step 7 is made with Heraclitus foremost
in mind. For Heraclitus allegorises Zeus in a way that speaks to the very step
Plato has just taken: The One, the alone wise, is unwilling and yet willing to
be called by the name Zeus [] (22 B32 DK). What this means, in light of
the impersonal nature of the One (Heraclitus pointedly uses the neuter form
) and the ambiguity of Zn (meaning both Zeus in the Ionic dialect and
to live, or life as a nominal infinitive), is that the One is unwilling to be called
Zeus qua personal god, but willing if Zeus is conceived otherwise. The other
sense of Zn is an important pointer here, since life (: B48), life-force (:
B52), and everliving fire ( , identified with in B30) are all used
to denote the One in other fragments. Plato, I suggest, is here allying himself
above all with Heraclitus, and taking up his reinscription of Zeus in the way
his own thought makes available, by grasping Zeus as the ensouled cosmos.
For all the differences in their conceptions of the cosmos (starting from the
absence of cosmogony in Heraclitus), their agreement established on the basis
of step 6 only makes sense if the intelligence that rules the cosmos is that of the
cosmos itself.
15 Of the two alternating ages or cycles the Statesman posits, the one in which the cosmos
is steered by its creator is called the age of Kronos, who is identified with the demiurge
(comparing 269c, 270a and 271d-e). The other, which begins when the god lets go (269c)
and the cosmos moves by itself (270a), reversing the direction of its rotation of its own
accord (269c-d), is said to be the age of Zeus ( : 272b). If it is
the age of Zeus, then Zeus just is the cosmos. Plato emphatically denies that the cosmos
is turned contrariwise by a different god in this other cycle; that contravenes the principle
that the gods are not antithetically minded to each other (270a). The reversal is put down
to the worlds own volition, be this phronsis (269d) or innate desire (272e).
16 Lesher 1995, 133 ff. proposes six besides Anaxagoras himself: Heraclitus, Xenophanes,
Diogenes of Apollonia, Parmenides, Anaximander and Thales. The wise men may also
cover Orphic thought, whether it be in the pantheistic form that Zeus is all things or the
version Plato will slightly misquote at Laws 715e: that Zeus is the middle, the shared root
of earth and sky and thence of all things.
154 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
We come then to step 8, the final conclusion that nous is of the class that
is the cause of all things ( not of the
All, ). Note first that this implies that other things belong in this class
besides nous. The Philebus does not spell this out: it may be leaving room for
material causes auxiliary to intelligent ones ( la Timaeus), or for various other
motions of soul which do not run in league with nous (Laws 897b). If the latter,
it may be leaning towards the Laws tenet that soul is the cause of all things,
both good and bad (896d). If so, inasmuch as the concept of the unlimited in
the Philebus takes up the necessity of the Timaeus, the tension between this
metaphysical tenet that soul is the ultimate source of all motion and Platos
physics apropos the pre-existing motion of necessity, which Vlastos (1965,
390 ff.) finds between the Timaeus and the Laws, would be present within the
Philebus. The most this physics could justify here is a claim that nous belongs to
the class that is the cause of all the things in the mixed class, which are gener-
ated through the imposition of limit on the (uncaused) unlimited.
The second and more important point for us here is that, whatever else
may belong in the class of cause, nous itselfhas to be a class concept at step 8
for the preceding argument to support the conclusion. It has to include at
least two members:17 the demiurge twice hinted at, and the nous actually
specified, that of the world-soul. The latter has been deemed the cause of sev-
eral things in the Philebus, beyond its remit in the Timaeus, but it is not the
cause of itself, and is no more the cause of all things than is the demiurge
who is its cause. The two points seem blurred together in the formulation of
step 8. The implication that other things belong in the class of cause besides
nous and the kind of soul that has nous seems to me a kind of Ersatz for a
more painstaking exposition of the members of the class of nous itself than
the argument has offered. In any case, since this class is not exhausted by the
demiurge, a straightforward identification of nous with the demiurge is not
supported by step 8 any more than by the preceding steps.
When Protarchus says the argument has proven which class nous belongs
to without him realising it, Socrates agrees and curiously adds: for sometimes
childs play is an uplifting rest from seriousness (
: 30e). I agree with Rudebusch (against Delcomminette)
that this remark does not entitle us to dismiss the whole argument as unseri-
ous, and that, excepting the identification of bodily unity with the order of the
four elements, the rest of the arguments premises and inferences are plau-
sible (Rudebusch 2009, 215). But it is not true that Socrates play pertains only
to his unargued suggestion at 28a-b that nous is divine, not his rigorous proof
17 The celestial bodies, the third tier in the Timaeus, play no role in the Philebus.
155 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
at 30a-e. If it was by dint of an uplifting rest from painstaking philosophical
discussion that the proof came behind Protarchus back, since it did so through
the argument at 30a-e, the play necessarily relates to that argument. It does
so in at least two ways. The contrast with seriousness speaks to the mythical
rather than strictly dialectical dimension of the argument, the allegorisation
of Zeus. The latter is not playful in itselfPlato is quite serious about itbut
there is play in the coyness with which it is intimated by the parallel with 30b
and the underlying logic of the passage. Secondly, the argument is playful in
that its ultimate conclusion hinges on a factor it has only alluded to in the
barest possible way. It has focussed on the world-soul as cause, but the claim
at step 8, to be complete, requires emphasis on the demiurge as its cause, and
a more serious philosophical discussion would surely have had a great deal
more to say about this terminus a quo where the proverbial buck of caused
causes stops.
But beyond these points the reference to childs play has more to say. Let
us ask why play can involve, not just a little time out from serious philoso-
phy, but an elevated repose, -, in which insights come unexpectedly.
A plausible answer is that we get weighed down when we pursue philosophy
in disconnection from the world, a disconnection we reinforce when we curse
it for constantly intruding on our thought process. A more playful mode of
thought may involve an uplifting rest because it puts us in touch with, or lets
us inhabit, the relative repose of the All itself. The Heraclitean cosmos rests
in changing (B84a), and the Philebus connects what is good both in man
and in the All with the most turmoil-free [] mixture (63e-
64a). This diverges from Heraclitus in that for him such turmoil, the strife of
warring contraries (which is the sense of ), is indispensible for the
rest; without it there would just be stagnation and disintegration. Yet Plato
accepts all of this at Timaeus 57a-58c, and in the Philebus we see him, I think,
at his most Heraclitean, his closest to Heraclitus actual thought of unity in
change.18 Moreover, let us not forget that for Heraclitus not only repose but
18 One important instance of this, which I cannot develop here, relates to what Sayre has
argued (mostly convincingly) is Platos changed theory of Forms in the Philebus. What
I have in mind is his claim (1983, 181), extrapolated from Goslings interpretation of the
conception of health at 25e, that the complex Form Man is constituted by a set of
proportions relating to such things as heat, solidity and size which change as a person
ages, so that it is precisely by changing that one continues to embody that Form, which
itself has those changes encoded in itself. A rapprochement between the theory of Forms
and Heraclitus thought of unity in and through change seems implicit here. I will touch
later on the way Plato takes up the theme of flow at 43a.
156 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
childs play itself has a cosmological significance: his all-ruling One is a child
playing, moving around the pieces on the cosmic draughtsboard (B52). Plato
refers himself to this remark at Laws 903d, and he may be tacitly doing so here.
Describing as childs play an argument that, among other things, intimates a
Heraclitus-inspired identification of Zeus with the world-soul, seems to be a
further wink in Heraclitus direction.
3 The Non-appearance of the Demiurge in the Metaphysical Passage
The intention of the metaphysical passage is to hold up cosmic order as the
result of a divine intelligence imposing limit on the unlimited, and we natu-
rally expect this to be carried out with reference to the demiurge. Yet the argu-
ment at 30a-e, as we have seen, does not strictly do this. The demiurge does
not really appear here, as Mohr claims (1985, 3, 10);19 a place is certainly left
for him to appear, but it is left conspicuously unfilled. The same applies in the
earlier stretches of the discussion of cause. Those who assert the identity of
nous and the demiurge in the Philebus too hastily jump on the description of
the cause at 27b as (not, let me stress, ), and at 26e
as , maker (used for the demiurge at Timaeus 28c). At this stage of
the discussion Plato is detailing a formal argument about the relation between
cause and caused. Its basic claims are: (i) that the producing cause by nature
always leads [] while the produced follows and is enthralled to it for
its generation; and (ii) that the two are different in kind (27a). The subtext here
is evidently the rule of mind over matter. But these claims apply to any causal
intelligence and entail no special reference to the demiurge. At 59e Socrates
refers to himself and his partners in the dialogue as of the mixture
that is to constitute the good life. We are similarly makers of our own health.
We may not create it in the first place, but we do maintain and recover it, and
inasmuch as our recovery follows the steps we take to that end, our intelligence
leads the way as cause. Note that the argument at 26e-27b associates causing
with ruling through the word , which combines the senses of preceding,
leading, guiding and ruling. I will return to this shortly.
19 And he is certainly not extensively described at Philebus 26e-30e, as Mohr says (1985,
178). Later I will also put an alternative view to Mohrs claim (176) that in this dialogue
we never hear...of the World-Soul deliberating or making decisions. Making choices
actually goes hand in hand with the fact that the world-souls role shifts here from
maintaining order to initiating ita shift Mohr also does not recognise.
157 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
It is similarly overhasty to see in the affirmation that nous rules the world at
28c-e an unequivocal reference to the demiurge. For Menn (1995, 8) it is appar-
ently enough to recognise that the attributes and functions of the demiurge
in the Timaeus and Statesman are the same as those ascribed to nous in the
Philebus, Phaedo and Laws. But neither of the two basic functions of nous at
Philebus 28c-e, ruling and ordering, suffice to establish this if we take what is
said in context.
At 28c nous is called king of heaven and earth, and at 28d its rule is described
in terms of steering () the cosmos. Menn points to parallels for both
motifs in the demiurge of the Statesman (at 274e-275a, 272e and 273c), but he is
quite cavalier in the way he draws on the Statesmans testimony and airbrushes
the fact that it differs from the Timaeus in just these respects. To address what
Plato is doing here against the background of these dialogues, it is necessary
first to expose the latent ambiguity in the association of causing with ruling at
26e-27b; clearly one can cause something without ruling it, and rule it without
having caused it. Importantly, this distinction corresponds to the one between
demiurge and world-soul in the Timaeus. The demiurge causes the cosmos to
be so ordered that necessity complies for the most part with the rule of nous
(48a), but he leaves the actual regulation of the cosmos to its own soul. Thus
here nous as cause of the cosmos and as its ruler and pilot do not coincide in a
single figure.20 In the Statesman the situation is different. The demiurge does
directly rule (: 271d) and pilot the world during one of its two alternating
cycles, leaving the world to steer itself in the other.21 But all this really shows
is that the evidence of the Statesman is inconclusive. The fact that nous in the
Philebus is king and pilot of the universe in no way entails, on the basis of that
evidence, that it denotes the demiurge rather than the world-soul. It could in
principle be either, and I suggest that at 27a Plato glossed over the difference
between causing and ruling in order to remain non-committal at 28c-e about
this, at least at the level of explicit statements. But beyond this, we may already
suspect that, since there is nothing in the Philebus to suggest it maintains the
Statesmans thesis of two cycles, and since it is only there that Plato speaks of
20 We should not be misled by the word at Timaeus 34a. The demiurge led
around the cosmos for the purpose of initiating the rotation that the cosmos will
henceforth take over as its own proper motion, qua intelligent creature, in constantly
circling back upon itself ( : 37a).
21 Menns point that at 274e-275a the demiurge is called king relies on the identification
of king with shepherd later in the sentence when the demiurge is in question. This is
challenged at 275c but reaffirmed from 276a.
158 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
the demiurge ruling and steering the world, it is the world-soul that has these
functions in the Philebus.
There are several further reasons to think that the nous said to rule and steer
the world at 28c-d is the world-soul. A first point is that king, in relation to the
divine, is a term of worship. Cornford (1935, 35) rightly pointed out that the
demiurge is never singled out as an object of worship in Plato (even if he drew
the wrong conclusion from this). In contrast, as Broadie (2012, 13-14) observes,
Timaeus prays to the cosmic god (Critias 106a-b), uses decidedly hymnic lan-
guage in its regard (Timaeus 92c), and adapts a classic ritual phrase to it: the
heaven, or cosmos, or whatever other name is most acceptable to it (Timaeus
28b). Secondly, and decisively in my view, there is the testimony of Philebus
30d. There the kingly nous is that of Zeus qua the cosmos, not the transcendent
cause that implanted it. Plato may not at 28c expressly equate the nous that
is king of heaven and earth with the world-soul, but he could hardly give us a
clearer clue that it is not the demiurge.
Thirdly, it is crucial that, as at 30d, Socrates is affirming the nous doctrine
in accord with his philosophical forebears (all the wise: 28c; our forefathers:
28d).22 None of these can be said to have posited something akin to Platos
demiurge, which has hitherto been his way of distinguishing his own ver-
sion of the doctrine from those of the phusikoi, most notably Anaxagoras. For
Anaxagoras nous, while not mixed with anything and different in kind from
what it arranges (59 B12), is nowhere other than where all the other things
also are (B14). Unlike the demiurge, it rules the cosmos from within, where it
initiates and sustains the revolution that separates things out from the original
commixture of all in all.23 Again, as at 30d, of the other phusikoi Plato takes to
affirm the doctrine the one that looms largest here is Heraclitus, who uses both
the word king (: B53) and verbs of steering (: B41; :
22 At 28c Socrates remarks that the wise men vaunt themselves in proclaiming that nous
rules the world. While this may give us pause, it is not enough, in light of his unqualified
willingness to fight side by side with them at 30d, to argue against broadly identifying
Socrates view with theirs (McCabe 2000, 167-8). For McCabe (2000, 178) the difference is
that the wise men hold that a transcendent god rules the universe, rather than explaining
the cosmos on its own terms. This seems rather outr. Was not the latter the point of being
a phusikos? And when they appealed to gods, were they not incorporated into their all-
encompassing, self-regulating nature, as Vlastos says (1991, 159), rather than intervening
from without? It is rather Platos Socrates who is keeping a transcendent god up his sleeve
in case he is neededa kind of Mr Wizard to the world-souls Touch Turtle.
23 That Plato knows this is clear from the way, at Timaeus 52d-53a, in line with his critique of
Anaxagoras in the Phaedo, he treats this immanent motion that Anaxagoras says is due to
nous as occurring through mere material necessity, prior to the real work of nous.
159 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
B64) with reference to his One or cosmic god. Whatever the differences, this
resonates with Platos world-soul a great deal more than it ever could with his
demiurge. It is true, as Hackforth says (1936, 7), that at 28d both all things and
the cosmos as a whole are distinguished from the nous which steers its course.
Even if we accept that only the first distinction applies in Heraclitus,24 this
does not mean that nous must be beyond the cosmos, as the case of Anaxagoras
shows. It only means that the doctrine is expressed at 28d in a deliberately
broad way to cover the diversity of forms in which different phusikoi affirm it as
well as the radically new one elaborated in the Timaeus. In the Philebus Platos
tone towards the phusikoi is far more conciliatory than, say, in the Phaedo and
Laws 10. He is at pains to stress what they share in common in the fight against
those who hold that the world is ruled by chance (28d).25 A natural conse-
quence of his resolve to accentuate what they share will be to foreground his
world-soul and keep his demiurge in the background, which is just what he
does at 30a-e.
A fourth argument relates to Menns claim that the nous that is king of heaven
and earth is the virtue of nous (1995, 16). While I am persuaded by his general
argument that nous for Plato is a virtue, this claim is problematic as a reading
of 28c, which speaks of what all the wise agree about. How can the phusikoi,
who are not instructed in the doctrine that Forms exist in their own right apart
from their instantiations, be said to agree that the nous that rules the world is
a universal principle or virtue rather than a divine individual soul (1995, 17)?
And are these the only alternatives? It is not clear why Anaxagoras must have
regarded nous in this way. What is certain is that what rules Heraclitus world
is not Wisdom as such, existing itself by itself, but that which has this virtue
as nothing else does; the One is that which is wise ( : B108), the
alone wise ( : B32), and being impersonal it is not an individual
soul either. Heraclitus may affirm a common nous in which men can partake,
but that is hardly to say that he shares the metaphysical principles of the the-
ory of Forms. His common nous is the nous of the cosmic god.
24 This is not necessarily the case, if Heraclitus One is not just the cosmos but at the
same time the unifying force holding sway throughout it. From that point of view it
can be distinguished not only from all things (as Heraclitus frequently says) but at least
analytically from the cosmos, and Heraclitus himself seems to do this in B52, where the
cosmos is evidently the kingdom of the One qua life-force (ain).
25 Thus at 28c he is willing to go along with a claim that nous is king of heaven and earth,
even though this is a rather un-Platonic formulation if it implies that the universe is
divided into two mutually exclusive regions (this view is dismissed at Timaeus 62c). Since
for Plato heaven () is synonymous with and includes earth at its centre, it
suffices that nous be called king of the whole heaven.
160 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
Menns other reason for equating the nous of 28c-e with the demiurge, that
it orders the cosmos, is no more convincing. While the demiurge has this role in
the Timaeus and Statesman, we have seen it pass to the world-soul at Philebus
30a-e in at least two respects: the ordering of the world-body, and of temporal
periods. Since the orderliness of years, seasons and months is indissociable
from the orderly motions of the heavenly bodies and the cosmos, we might
even wonder whether the world-soul is meant when these motions are said to
be ordered by nous at 28e. Be that as it may, these later arguments suggest that
the ordering function of nous at 28c-e, like its ruling and steering one, pertains
to the world-soul.
It should be added that, as at 30a-e, nous ordering has a creative sense in
the earlier passage, not just the sense of maintaining order. This is especially
the case at 28d, where ordering () relates both to the cosmic whole
( ) and all things taken together ( ); this naturally suggests
that things are actively brought to order and hence that order itself is cre-
ated. This is not always the case in Plato. At Phaedrus 246e, Zeus is called the
who orders and takes care of everything (
).26 But Zeus ordering and his rule within the heaven pre-
supposes the cosmic rotation: when he and the other gods proceed outside
the heaven for a refresher course on the Forms, they stand on its back and are
passively carried around with its rotation (247c). He is in effect an intracosmic
housekeeper. This is suggested not only by , which has a different sig-
nification once an outside is posited, but by the remark at 246b-c that, in its
perfect or divine form, soul . By using the verb
(from , house), Plato suggests a specific kind of governing, a managing of
the cosmic household. Thus at 246e Plato uses Anaxagoras verb in
a way that need not entail anything more than ensuring that the cosmic house
remains in order. Returning to Philebus 28c-e, the creativeness of nous ordering
would suggest the demiurge, if the Timaeus were our guide, whereas the later
remarks in the Philebus entail the world-soul. As I see it, it is integral to Platos
strategy at 28c-e to remain non-committal about the identity of nous while
inviting us to infer that he is leaning more towards the world-soul.
26 Zeus is still Olympian here; Plato has not yet arrived at his world-soul thesis, nor his
recasting of Zeus as the world-soul. In connection with this, in this passage
does not mean the same as the that features in the Philebus. Zeus and the
other Olympians have their own house within the cosmos (247a), perhaps in the form of
a central fire within the central earth (I cannot go into this here). The world-soul is
in a different sense. It is extended throughout the cosmos from the centre and made
to envelop it (Timaeus 34b), so that it at once houses and is housed by it.
161 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
There is one further remark in the metaphysical passage that warrants
attention here: the cryptic reference at 26b to a goddess who established law
and order ( ). Waterfields view (1982, 76; cf. 53) that she is
Aphrodite, while plausible prima facie (Aphrodite is the only goddess previ-
ously mentioned, and Socrates is speaking here to Philebus, whose personal
deity Aphrodite is), is based on a claim that Socrates makes a sharp distinc-
tion between Aphrodite (as a deity on the side of order) and Pleasure which
is not borne out by the text.27 Alternative suggestions as to her identity have
been tendered, for example, by Fowler (Mousike) and Hackforth (Harmonia),28
both of whom add that a goddess is only specified in counterpoint to Philebus.
What is overlooked is that she may be the grammatically feminine soul of the
All ( : cf. Timaeus 41a). This depends on law and order having
a cosmic sense here, which at first seems ruled out by the ethical context; she
intervened because there was no limit of pleasures or of indulgence in them.
But both the surrounding context (the talk has just been of the creation of the
seasons and the various fine things of our world: 26a-b), and the fact that the
Statesman refers to the original condition of the world not just as disorder but
harshness and injustice ( : 273b), point to a cosmic reference
for the thoroughgoing wickedness ( ) prevailing hic et ubique
before her act (26b). While it was the demiurge who corrected this situation
in the Statesman and the Timaeus, this goddess cannot be the demiurge, who
is not only grammatically masculine but referred to as Father (Timaeus 28b,
Statesman 273b) and always as he. The world-soul, however, is quite plausible,
especially given the way 26a-b presages the claim at 30c that the world-soul
orders seasons.
In summary, then, neither the word at 27b, nor nous ruling and
ordering functions at 28c-e, allow us unequivocally to identify nous with the
demiurge, and there are sufficient clues at 28c-e for us to infer that already
there Plato is speaking with the world-soul in mind. For the sake of complete-
ness I should add that Menns last two parallels with the demiurge (1995, 8)
27 Socrates remarks at 12b-c leave no doubt that he identifies the two. So too his statement
at 22c that (since pleasure is not the good) Philebus deity must not be considered the
same as the good. While it might be possible to read Philebus interpretation of his deity
here, this way out is closed by the comment at 28b that Philebus overestimates his
goddess. How can an overestimated goddess be the saviour referred to at 26b-c? Outside
of Orphism, where it can denote Dionysus, the of the Greeks is of course Zeus (as
in the third libation, deployed rhetorically at Philebus 66d), and in the Philebus Zeus = the
world-soul.
28 Fowler 1925, 252-3.; Hackforth 1972, 48.
162 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
are also inconclusive. First, although the Philebus does not say explicitly that
nous acts for the best, I agree that this is implicit; the things adduced as created
through the proper combination (25e) of limit and the unlimited are gener-
ally good things characterised by due measure and proportion (26a), such as
health and a regulated climate. But acting for the best is characteristic of nous
tout court for Plato, which is why in the Phaedo Socrates can support his claim
that the nous doctrine entails this by analogy with his own doing what his nous
deems is best. The same applies to the world-soul. It may apply most purely
to him who is nothing but nous (our nous can be overridden by deficiencies
of a physical or psychical nature, and in the Statesman this holds also for the
world-soul), but while these deficiencies may stifle or cloud our nous, they do
not change it. Nous is never, and never becomes, base or disgraceful (Philebus
65e). Inasmuch as we or the world-soul do what we do guided by it, we too
necessarily act for the best.
Similarly, imposing limit on the unlimited is what any creative nous does.
Thus in the earlier methodological passage Socrates ascribes the invention
of the alphabet, through the delimitation of the unlimited of vocal sound,
to some god, or god-like man (18b), and that of the musical system to our
predecessors, the Pythagoreans (17d). Such imposition of limit is evidently
integral to cosmic order for Plato, and in the Timaeus, again, the demiurge is
responsible for it, for example when he makes the four bodies better instan-
tiate their Forms by establishing geometrically rational kinds of particles for
each. But in the Philebus, since it is the world-soul that imposes at least the
temporal limits mentioned at 30c, this function too does not entail that nous =
the demiurge here.
4 Volition in the World-Soul. The Place of the Philebus in Platos
Late Period
The remaining question is why the Philebus expands the role of the world-soul.
To answer this we must consider the place of the Philebus among the late dia-
logues, and the underlying philosophical dramas that drive Plato first to mod-
ify the Timaeus scheme in different ways in the Statesman and Philebus, and
then to replace it with the vaguer cosmotheology of Laws 10. There is, I think, a
likely tale to be told here, but it cannot be told if we assume the identification
of nous with the demiurge holds across all the late dialogues as the cornerstone
of a unified late-Platonic theology. Menn (1995, 8-9) avers that Plato cannot
believe both the Timaeus myth and the Statesman myth, since they are not con-
sistent, and adds that to understand Platos philosophical teaching we do not
163 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
have to know which of the different likely stories Plato believed to be true, but
only why he thought they were likely. Such an approach tends to factor devel-
opment over time out of Platos later thought. It is important to understand
why he believes now this, now that story, and to try to discern the background
problems such changes respond to and how they respond, which is to say, to dis-
cern which stories or arguments tackle those problems and which avoid them.
The driving force behind these changes, in my view, is largely the problem
of natural catastrophe. While this theme was broached in the preamble of the
Timaeus, it was avoided in its cosmology, which did no more than imply that
what disorder there is in the world is to be imputed to the residual recalci-
trance of matter: necessity only complies with nous for the most part (48a).
Although the Statesman adopts this fallback position at 273b, it does not take
much scratching at the surface to see that Plato has grown dissatisfied with
it. In two distinct ways the Statesman imputes cosmic disorder to defects in
the world-soul. First, the reversal of the cosmic rotation which inaugurates
the Zeus-cycle, producing widespread upheaval and destruction, is put
down to the world-creatures innate desire ( : 272e).29 In the
Phaedrus innate desire, qua irrational (: 238a), is opposed to acquired
conviction which strives for the best (237d). It must also be deemed irrational
in the Statesman, not only in view of its consequences but because it turns
counter to the motion given the world by him who is nous pure and simple.
We see the acquired conviction when the world regains order by recalling
the demiurges teachings (273b). But after that, secondly, it becomes increas-
ingly forgetful ( : 273c) and loses control to the point where
the demiurge must intervene to prevent the cosmos breaking apart. Plato is
less than clear about the relation between this shortcoming in the worlds
soul and those pertaining to its material constitution. At first (273b) he makes
the latter the reason for the world-souls increasing dullness or carelessness
(), but at 273c the sense is that the ancient condition of disorder
inherent in the world-body came increasingly to prevail when and because the
world-soul which had hitherto kept it in check through its god-given intelli-
gence grew forgetful.
29 More precisely, fate [] and innate desire. Plato presumably means that it is fated
that the world-creatures quest for autonomy (it is enjoined by the demiurge to be master
of its own course: 274a) must come at a tremendous initial cost. In Hegelian terms we
might say that the cosmos has to make its law a for itself rather than an in itself, but
to do that it first has to rebel against the law imposed on it, to become for-itself in the
incipient form of desire.
164 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
The Philebus does not impute such flaws to the world-soul, and does not
address the issue of natural disaster, but in a way it can be seen as respond-
ing to it. What it shares with the Statesman myth is a greater (if differently
loaded) emphasis on volition in the world-soul. In the Timaeus the world-soul
had no real choices to make; it simply monitored the goings-on within its body,
and in its incessant discourse with itself there was about as much in the way
of personality as there is in an instruction manual for a household appliance.
The world-soul of the Statesman is more recognisably creaturely, and to this
is added, in the Philebus, a direct relationship to us, when it implants into our
souls, as if in a breathless whisper, just what the doctor ordered when our bod-
ies are out of sorts (30b). But whereas in the Statesman the world-souls voli-
tion served the purpose of accounting for natural disaster (qua desire), for the
re-establishment of order (as a will to recollect the teachings), and for its sub-
sequent loss (in the absence of such will through forgetfulness), the Philebus
seeks to develop this in a positive way. It is as if Plato is saying to himself here:
Well then, if the world-soul must bear responsibility for the problem of natu-
ral disaster, let us see if we can make it the linchpin of a cosmology which at
least limits that problem. Let us keep the demiurge in the wings as much as
possible and see if the world-soul does not have in itself the resources needed
to surmount the defects avowed in the Statesman.
There are intimations of this decision-making world-soul in the metaphysi-
cal passage: the goddess who chooses to intervene at 26b (if I am right to see
her as the world-soul), and the Zeus reference at 30d. It is perhaps no accident
that its volitional character is developed in the two dialogues which identify
it with Zeus. This is no longer the Zeus of tradition, but if there is a feature of
the latter that can explain why it is Zeus that is recast as the world-soul, it is
not just that he is the chief god but that he is such because his will is binding
and dictates the course of the world; as we know from Homer, once Zeus nods
his decision cannot be undone. But it is not until the end of the work that the
world-souls volition is expressly articulated. Where the metaphysical passage
tells us that the world-soul orders its own body and temporality, 66a effectively
tells us why: because it has chosen measure, moderation and timeliness (
: 66a) above all other things for itself.
This interpretation relies first on reading (with Bury, Fowler and Hackforth)
in the long-disputed text at 66a,30 and secondly (with
Fowler) on taking as middle rather than passive-voiced and as mean-
30 Hackforth 1939, 28 rejects as an addition by someone who thought
required a substantive, and that [in ms. T] is a corruption of it. I am not so sure. If
the world is the intended referent, this is more securely denominated by ,
165 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
ing that the eternal (nature) has chosen for itself..., not has been captured
by .... To justify the first point we need to trace the argument leading up to the
ranking of goods at 66a-c. At 63e-64a Socrates defined the aim of the discus-
sion as that of learning whatever is by nature good both in man and in the
All. The argument at 29a-30e gives this the sense that what is good in the All
grounds the good in man, and this seems implicit in the description of the
mix constituting the good life at 64b as a kind of incorporeal order []
nobly ruling a living [ensouled: ] body. At 64c Socrates proposes that
after the most valuable element of the mixture has been determined, they
can ask whether it is more bound up with pleasure or intelligence .
Having established the Form of the Good as the unity of fineness, proportion
and truth, Socrates proceeds at 65b-66a to secure Protarchus agreement that
all three are more akin to nous in us. As there has been no reference to the All
here, there is nowhere else for this to come but in the final ranking. For it to
do so we must read ... at 66a, and we must take the eternal
nature as the ensouled cosmos which is everlasting once created (Timaeus
36e),31 being Platos word to denote the immortality of the soul (e.g.
Phaedo 106d, Republic 611b). Admittedly, at Timaeus 29a it is reserved for the
Form Living Thing, which is eternal in a way the generated cosmos is not. The
latters everlastingness in time imitates the true eternity of the model, which
is referred to at 39e as the eternal nature: . But in the
Philebus, where this framework is kept in the background, the world-soul steps
forth into this mantle.
On the sense of (), it is true that capture corresponds to the
verbs of hunting and catching used in relation to the good at 65a and 20d. But
it is also true, as Bury recognises (1897, 173), that has been used through-
out the Philebus (18e, 22a-b, 33b, 55a) in the sense of what kind of life one
chooses, and that is the issue at 66a, only not primarily in relation to us. There
is a natural fit between the world-soul choosing measure before all else and the
enhancement of its role in the Philebus to take in the creation of cosmic order.
particularly recalling that denoted the world-soul at 30b and Zeus qua the ensouled
cosmos at 30d.
31 For Bury 1897, 174 the eternal nature is the good, not purely qua Form but as the cosmic
whole that receives it into itself. I agree, except that the world does not receive this
passively but actively chooses it. There is no room for this in Hackforths interpretation,
according to which is neither the subject nor object of but a cognate
accusative (1939, 28-9). If 66a says only that the first ranked good has been secured for
everlasting tenure in the region of measure, without any cosmic reference, Plato has
simply failed to do what he promised at 64c.
166 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
There would be something superfluous about its choice of measure if it did not
create cosmic order to realise that choice, and equally the transfer of causal
responsibility to it would just be a gesture without it making that choice.
Conversely, we are bound to be surprised by the fact that nous only comes
in third in the world-souls list, especially since we have been told in the meta-
physical passage that an intelligent cause is the sine qua non of measure and
moderation (and of its second choice, fineness and proportion). Yet there may
be a simple explanation. If the world-soul chose nous first and foremost, its
overriding concern would be to know absolutely everything that occurs at all
times within the cosmic body. That is how Timaeus 37a-c presents it, but in the
Philebus Plato has, it seems, thought better of this. The notion of a neutral state
between pleasure and pain is crucial for his attempt here to determine the
good life. For such a state to be possible as an abiding way of life, it is necessary
that we be oblivious () to the myriad small changes constantly going on
in our bodies (43b-c), and if oversensitivity to the small stuff is unconducive
to this state, so too is a hunger for knowledge (52a). Now the analyses of plea-
sure and intelligence do not admittedly address the world-soul, but both the
preceding argument at 29a-30b deriving our bodies and souls from the worlds,
and the subsequent remarks regarding the good in the All (starting with its
linkage to the most turmoil-free mixture at 63e-64a) necessarily provoke the
question as to whether the cosmic good life similarly hinges on the neutral state
and the obliviousness to small changes necessary to sustain it. Plato effectively
answers this at 66a-c when he has the world-soul choose measure above what
makes it possible. Its choices are geared to the maintenance of its equanimity,
which thinking too much no less than feeling too much can disturb. It chooses
nous insofar as it is conducive to what it cares most about.
The very different scheme sketched out in the Laws, which above all quietly
gets rid of the world-soul in favour of a league of divine souls headed by the
caretaker of the cosmos (903b), who may or may not be the demiurge,32 indi-
32 This is not made clear, but there is more in favour of it than against it. The caretaker is
compared with a craftsman (among other human analogues) at 902e and 903c, and it
is notable that when such comparisons are roundly rejected at 906e demiurge is not
mentioned. The essential demiurgic activity of fashioning the cosmos is apparent in the
remark at 903b that the caretaker set everything in order with a view to the preservation
and excellence of the whole. And his relationship to the ruling powers to whom he
delegates control of the parts (903b) mirrors that between the demiurge and lesser gods
during the age of Kronos at Statesman 272e. The main argument against identifying the
two (see Mohr 1985, 185) is that the demiurge ordered the world in the best possible way
given the constraints of his material, whereas the caretaker is omnipotent and arranges
everything down to the finest detail (903a-b). But this is best seen, I think, as a change in
167 On the Status of Nous in the Philebus
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
cates that Plato was ultimately dissatisfied by the direction in which he had
modified the Timaeus scheme in the Philebus. The reason, I suggest, is that
the problem of natural disaster still lurks unresolved in the background there.33
The obliviousness appealed to at 43b-c recalls the world-souls forgetfulness at
Statesman 273c (it is the same word, , in each case). How might we unfold
this with regard to the world-soul? One way is to suppose that from its point of
view such things as earthquakes are too small to register on its radar. Another,
more in keeping with the Statesman, I think, is that in its obliviousness to small
changes the world-soul fails to deal with a thing while it is still nothing (to
quote Dao De Ching 2.64), before it snowballs.
It is notable that the remark at 43b-c comes directly after a reference to the
supposed Heraclitean doctrine that everything flows (43a). This notion can,
and for Plato often does, mean that things are without any stability or order,
are unwholesome and like leaky pots (Cratylus 440d). But flow can also sig-
nify in Plato the regular motion of matter in conformity with nous and soul,
as for example at Laws 966e. The ever-flowing being that soul is here said to
bring about in taking charge of becoming undoubtedly refers to the cosmic
rotation and the orbits of the heavenly bodies, in conformity with the motion
of nous, as affirmed in Laws 10. However, flow has an ineradicable errant face
alongside this one, and the world-souls forgetfulness may be understood in
terms of a sliding from the regular to the errant one. For a world-soul that cares
most about its equanimity, it would be the easy thing to entrust itself to the
flow that has come about by its bringing the cosmic body into compliance with
the rule of nous. That flow may reflect the law it recollected and made its own,
but insofar as the world-soul entrusts itself to it, rather than keeping its focus
on the law it reflects, it would end up following a simulacrum of the law, and in
this flow state it may be oblivious to small changes that are the first stirrings
of much bigger ones.
I suggest that Plato came to the conclusion that his approach in the Philebus
did not offer an adequate way of containing the problem of natural disaster,
Platos conception of the demiurge, arrived at in reaction, perhaps overreaction, to the
upshot of his previous dialogues. Mohrs other argument, that the demiurge works for
an epistemological end rather than that of cosmic order, disregards the passage in the
Timaeus (29e-30b) that declares what that end is. He wanted the world to be good, and
therefore brought it to order and gave it intelligence.
33 In this regard I depart from my earlier view (A. J. Mason 2013) that the problem, and
more broadly the deficiency of the world-soul, is deliberately insinuated by Plato in
the Philebus. The problem is there, but I think Plato more probably came to see it there
retrospectively.
168 Mason
Phronesis 59 (2014) 143-169
and that in the Laws he reacted against it with a classic case of overkill, doing
away with the world-soul in order, effectively, to do away with the problem,
and placing the cosmos in the care of a god who, unlike that of the Timaeus,
is omnipotent. The problem of natural disaster is thereby avoided, not merely
in a passive but an active way; it is sequestered into the category of evil soul,
outside of the divine confederacy, so as not to be dealt with again. The previous
approach, in which a singular world-soul had to own both the exemplary and
errant motions hypostasised as good and bad kinds of soul in the Laws, seems
to me the more philosophically interesting.
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