The concept of the divine in Plato

This study focuses on the role of nous in Plato's metaphysical system and explores the way in which it is a cause for the Platonic cosmos, with the intention of showing that nous is the key to understanding Plato's concept of what is divine.; The first chapter defends the view that the Demiurge of the Timaeus as the intelligent cause behind the existence of the universe must be understood as nous, and interprets the genesis of time and the universe as a statement of their ontological dependence on the eternal realm, i.e. their being "generated" means that they derive their existence and their nature (insofar as they are good) from the noetic activity of the Demiurge looking to the Platonic Forms. The second chapter, through an analysis of the concepts of self-motion and circular motion in the Platonic dialogues, shows that nous as a self-mover must be interpreted as a kind of soul and the Demiurge as the uncreated soul that is nous. The third chapter defines the kind of causality belonging to nous as a combination of efficient, final and formal causality, and argues that the references to God's benevolent will as the reason for the coming-into-being of what is good and for the enduring nature of the creation show that the Demiurge is not an abstract "rationality," but rather is the cause that is personal and definite. As such the noetic cause is set in contrast to the Forms, which are definite but impersonal causes (the paradigms for the intelligible order in the cosmos), and Necessity, the material and indefinite cause that on its own produces only disorder. It has been claimed that the concept of the person is impossible in Platonic philosophy, but I argue that nous in Plato is the bearer of personhood, both on the divine and human levels. The fourth chapter examines Plato's view of what aspects of our nature are truly human and his picture of the human noetic ascent to objective reality, in order to demonstrate that the truly human is equivalent to the divine, as the essence of both is nous .