Is Plato’s Timaeus Panentheistic?

Hartshorne and Reese thought that in the Timaeus Plato wasn’t quite a panentheist—though he would have been if he’d been consistent. More recently, Cooper has argued that while Plato’s World Soul may have inspired panentheists, Plato’s text does not itself describe a form of panenetheism. In this pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Baltzly, Dirk (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Netherlands 2010
In: Sophia
Year: 2010, Volume: 49, Issue: 2, Pages: 193-215
Further subjects:B Cosmic religion
B Plato
B Panentheism
B Timaeus
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Hartshorne and Reese thought that in the Timaeus Plato wasn’t quite a panentheist—though he would have been if he’d been consistent. More recently, Cooper has argued that while Plato’s World Soul may have inspired panentheists, Plato’s text does not itself describe a form of panenetheism. In this paper, I will reconsider this question not only by examining closely the Timaeus but by thinking about which features of current characterizations of panentheism are historically accidental and how the core of the doctrine might most fruitfully be understood. I’ll argue that there is a polytheistic view that deserves to be called panentheistic and that Plato’s Timaeus describes such a view.
ISSN:1873-930X
Contains:Enthalten in: Sophia
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11841-010-0170-z