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Bibliographical reference

Plutarchus. De procreatione animi in Timaeo Platonis. Adriano Turnebo interprete. Parisii: Turnebus, 1552.

Description

Plutarch was the author of several philosophical works, including a treatise concerning the generation of the soul in the Timaeus. He outright rejects the metaphorical reading of the Timaeus, and holds that the generation of the world and the World Soul must be understood literally, as the result of God’s act of creation, which is not a creation from nothing, but a creation from pre-cosmic principles that had always existed. Matter derives from an amorphous and chaotic corporeal principle and is moved by an irrational soul (i.e., the pre-cosmic World Soul), which is characterised by disordered motion. Plutarch’s interpretation plays a pivotal role on the reception of Plato’s Timaeus and on the theories regarding the origins of the world in the modern age.