Platonists beginning in the Old Academy itself and up to and including Plotinus struggled to understand and articulate the relation between Plato's Demiurge and the Living Animal which served as the model for creation. The central question is whether 'contents' of the Living Animal, the Forms, are internal to the mind of the Demiurge or external and independent. For Plotinus, the solution depends heavily on how the Intellect that is the Demiurge and the Forms or intelligibles are to be understood in relation to the first principle of all, the One or the Good. The treatise V.5 (32) sets...
Platonists beginning in the Old Academy itself and up to and including Plotinus struggled to understand and articulate the relation between Plato's ...
Originally part of a single work (with III.8, V.5, and II.9), it provides the foundation for a positive view of the universe as an image of divine beauty against the Gnostic rejection of the world.
Originally part of a single work (with III.8, V.5, and II.9), it provides the foundation for a positive view of the universe as an image of divine bea...