Abstract

Part 1 examines the roles of intelligent cause, empirical materials, and the resulting cosmos, in the account of world-making in the Timaeus. It is argued that the presence of is essential for the distinctness of and ; and an explanation is proposed for why the biblical idea of creation faces no such problem. Part II shows how different suggestions implicit in Plato's doctrine of the intelligible model give rise to radically different kinds of Platonic metaphysics.