Notes from the Timaeus

Four Elements and Intersubjective Demiurgy

Demiurgus, from “Overlord”

There is of course no way I understood or can interpret everything I have read in the Timaeus in one (slightly rushed) reading session, so this is a necessarily incomplete account. But I think, based on certain ways I have come to understand the concepts in this milieu, I have come away with a better understanding of the concepts elaborated in the Timaeus, beginning with the elements.

I

Initially, it is very bewildering as a modern person to attempt to take the idea of the “four elements” seriously. It must seem to us like an outdated physical theory, just like how Einstein supersedes Newton. But the thing with ancient accounts of these “elements” is that we are not just dealing with “mundane” fire, water, earth, and air, but with the “metaphysical” sense of these terms. Ironically, an example of a way similar to how Timaeus would have understood the concept is found in contemporary animated series like Avatar: The Last Airbender:

“we see numerous references in the show that tell us what the four elements are isn't so much to find on this atomic level but on a philosophical/spiritual/conceptual level”[1]

I highly suggest watching the video after this for an example of ancient metaphysics in modern glory. To distil this insight, we might say that, for instance, “fire” names the quality of the “fiery” in all things, the principle of that quality. We can understand this by looking at what mundane fire does. Fire is an agent of transformation, things change form with heat. It is an agent of visibility, since fire is a pre-eminent source of light. These two things are tied, as change must be perceptible, in principle at least. Things are “fiery” insofar as they are visible and/or change. In comparison, Earth is (usually) stable, thus things are of “earth” insofar as they are stable. Water “flows”, and is unstable. But rather than the visibility and change that is fire, it is a specifically dissolutive agent. Air is correspondingly constitutive since it is the agent of life/breath in beings and fills places where even water cannot. Air is free, establishing a link between its constitutive activity, a particularly mediative constitutive activity, and freedom. The “purest” of “fire” is in the heavens, with the heavenly bodies that shine, with fiery bodies. Given that “fire” is the power of change as such, it isn’t surprising that “time really is the wanderings of these bodies” (Tim. 39 d-e)[2]. Air, and water, being mediators (Tim. 32 b), are constantly shuffling things between the sky and earth, air being the most mobile of the two, a fact that is obviously influential to the idea of daimones having bodies of “aether”.

Similarly, “The Earth [heavenly body, not element] he devised to be our nurturer, and, because it winds around the axis that stretches throughout the universe, also to be the maker and guardian of day and night. Of the gods that have come to be within the universe, Earth ranks as the foremost, the one with greatest seniority.” (Tim. 40 c). I perceive here a relationship between the Earth’s “seniority” and the importance of the “centre” in Timaean cosmology. The earth is at the centre, so is the world soul (Tim. 34 b). I’m not sure I can say what exactly this relationship is, but I will take up the notion of the “centre” and how I would understand the demiurge’s place in it.

II

The mistake that comes with seeing Timaean cosmology as an outdated physical theory, or worse, a theory of “intelligent design” in the contemporary sense is that we fail to see that it doesn’t describe physical process qua physics in our modern sense. Things that anticipate physics, in our sense, are present, but it makes a lot more sense to see it as psychic constitution of a kosmos. After all, what the Demiurge is making is a living being, a psychic whole uniting many bodies and holding together one cosmic body. Against Plutarch then, I would read it as an eternal constitution, such that the account about bodies, particular and cosmic, are about the same complex activity of constitution as the account about souls. But even more importantly, it is a philosophical account of something very general. The Gods in question are not named, and there isn’t a hint of “creation ex nihilo”, popularly understood. Indeed, this is not a deficiency, but a strength. The Demiurge is a God among many, and each God is “the most beautiful and best possible” (Rep. II 381 c).

This brings up a possible problem. Each God is the best, bringing up the question of their comparison. Then there is the eternal Living thing, “of which all other living things are parts” (Tim. 30 c). The Gods are living things, so are they parts too?

Personally, this is where I see the value of polycentricity as elaborated by the Neoplatonists. As Proclus said, “each of the Gods is the universe, but after a different manner” (IT I, 308)[3]. Given the generality of the term “Living thing” as applied to the Paradigm, there is good reason to believe that any God can occupy the position of Paradigm, and indeed, for Proclus, he did believe that a God was paradigm for Greek polytheist theology[4], leaving the possibility of other paradigms and theologies positively open.

Accordingly, the question of “many universes” in the Timaeus can then be understood as a question of henology vis a vis the universe as a totality. Would it still be a universe if it were part of a multitude you could count? i.e. if it was an example of a “comparable” or “conventional” unit[5]?

The answer is, definitely, no. If however, it is a polycentric multiplicity, then we can consider a “multiverse”. This argument for a “multiverse” is not made in the Timaeus, but it is one we can extrapolate from a later Platonism that has received and interpreted the Timaeus as an essential frame for cosmology.

This polycentric view of multiplicity, when applied to the Timaeus, gives an interesting interpretation of the emergence of an objective arrangement of units, a kosmos. This Kosmos has no “outside”, and thus the transcendence of the Demiurge cannot be a spatial transcendence. It instead seems as though the Demiurge is at the center, that is, as the Source of this activity. Given that each God is all things peculiarly, it makes sense to see the Demiurge as instantiating a universe right there and then, as its Noetic centre.

But, in the building of a universe where there are agents in common, we require some sort of compossibility and communion. This is what the Paradigm/Living thing offers, and this is why there is a “disorderly motion” in the first place. Each God is an unlimited unity of an uncountable multiplicity, of Gods primarily, and of orders and powers/potentiality (in the positive sense). To distil any one of these requires a sort of self-limitation, hence why we refer to the Demiurge by this name, as an indication of what limitation they choose for themself, their activity for this goal of world constitution. To get a bit more “Damascian”[6], The Demiurge chooses its paradigm for this task. But since this is not an “external multiplicity” of spatial objects, we have to consider this duality reciprocally and intersubjectively. There is, firstly, the Demiurge as eidetic telos of the world’s constitution. Insofar as there is a paradigm for this Cosmos, the “face” of the demiurge to which it turns is the in fact the appearance of the paradigm, for the demiurge is in fact the medium for this paradigmatic causation. The Cosmos is teleologically oriented to the paradigm in the Demiurge, the Paradigm as it is “in” the Demiurge, and the Demiurge as it “contains” or “reveals” or “thinks” the Paradigm, which is simply its own Intellective Being, since “to think” and “to be” are identical[7]. In the converse, this “thinking” is simply the very production of the Cosmos. The procession of the World Soul from the demiurgic God is the result of the Demiurge’s thinking “reversion” and “contemplation” of the paradigm, and the converse. The “common space” produced by this communion is a much-limited space of “possible worlds”. These possible kosmoi, seen together, as a sort of “interference pattern”[8] constitute the “disorderly motion”[9]. The Gods think each other, and the worlds are. All subsequent demiurgy can be seen through this lens, even up to the “young Gods”, a thinking of each other and a thinking of the Demiurge and Paradigm, an ontological outworking of polycentricity.

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[1] What Everyone Gets Wrong about Avatar: Is Fleshbending Possible? [ ATLA l LOK ], 2018,

[2] Plato, John M. Cooper, and D. S. Hutchinson, Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub, 1997).

[3] As quoted from Edward Butler, “The Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus” (New School University, 2003), https://henadology.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/dissertation-revised-copy1.doc.

[4] “Proclus instantiates this class through the Orphic God Phanes “ - Butler.

[5] Edward P. Butler, “On the Gods and the Good,” no. September (2014): 20.

[6] Edward P. Butler, “Damascian Negativity,” Dionysius 37, no. December (2019): 114–33; Edward Butler, “The Henadic Origin of Procession in Damascius,” Dionysius 31 (December 1, 2013): 79–100.

[7] Eric D. Perl, Thinking Being Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, ed. Robert M. Berchman and John F. Finamore (Brill, 2014).

[8] “This intellectual totality is the point of the constitution of the world of sensibilia, its inferior mode of unity marked by diacritical relationships among all its parts and the consequent ontological “interference” of principles, which manifest the phenomena associated with “materiality.” “ - Butler, “The Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus.”

[9] “the field upon which cosmic formation happens is that of ‘disorderly’, ataktôs, motion (Timaeus 30a). This ‘disorder’, unless it is arbitrarily reified, resulting in a dualism that falls short in explanatory power, can only be the other order(s), or taxeis. The cosmogonic activities of the other pantheons, their kosmoi, thus, are like the waves that crash upon Leibniz’s shore, which sound to the ear of the psyche as an undifferentiated roar. Hence Proclus says of the ‘disorderly motion’ of the Timaeus that it “is illuminated by all the orders of the Gods prior to the demiurge” (In Tim. I, 387), that is, prior to the demiurge qua demiurge, though not qua God. Since this includes the primary henadic manifold, the order as members of which Gods are Gods, it is necessarily wider than any single pantheon. Hence it is the ‘confused’ totality of them all, which forms the background noise of each singular pantheon. This is the ultimate ‘stuff’ or ‘matter’ of cosmic formation, but this ‘prime matter’ is pure relativity itself.“ - Edward P. Butler, “The Nature of the Gods (VI): Mundanity,” Polytheist.Com (blog), August 15, 2016, http://polytheist.com/noeseis/2016/08/15/the-nature-of-the-gods-vi-mundanity/.