Le démiurge du Timée de Platon ou la représentation mythique de la causalité paradigmatique de la forme du dieu

Abstract

Contrary to most interpreters of Plato’s Timaeus, we do not think that the demiurge really represents a productive cause. This type of causality, explicitly attributed to νοῦς in the Phaedo, cannot, according to us, be associated with something else than the activity of the World-soul and the gods of the tradition. The demiurge plays another role. Representing the best of the intelligible beings (37a), an eternal god (34a), the demiurge cannot, as such, be a principle of movement, because the forms, according to Plato, exercises only a paradigmatic causality. The demiurge is, in fact, the mythical representation of the paradigmatic causality. The demiurge represents, more precisely, as the “maker” of the gods, the form of the god. Some of the characteristics attributed to the demiurge (his corporeal representation, his thoughts, his productive activity) are inseparables from the analogy used to represent the dependence of the gods towards the forms: craftsmanship. The demiurge, as productive cause, has no real ontological value. Nevertheless, what it represents, the form of god, is, according to Plato, the cause of the immortality of the universe and of the other gods of the tradition, a cause which allows the νοῦς of these divinities to exercise their productive causality.

Keywords

• Plato
• Timaeus
• Phaedo
• demiurge
• νοῦς
• idea