The Language of Cosmogony:

Literary Experimentalism and Metaphor in

Plato’s Timaeus and Augustine’s Confessions.

Guy Carney

Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline of English

The University of Adelaide

December 2008

Contents.

Abstract. ....................................................................................................................... iv

Declaration. .................................................................................................................. v

Acknowledgements. .................................................................................................... vi

A Note on Primary Texts and Referencing Style. ....................................................... vii

Introduction. ................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 1. Plato’s Timaeus: an Experiment in Subject and Form ....................... 19

i. An Experiment in Literary Methodology .................................................. 24

ii. A Creation “Myth”? .................................................................................. 36

iii. A Dialogue between Genres .................................................................... 44

iv. Innovations in the Timaeus ...................................................................... 49

Chapter 2. Plato’s Timaeus: Language before the Beginning ............................... 65

i. Narrative and Origins ................................................................................ 69

ii. Eternity and the Creation of Time ............................................................ 82

iii. Structuring Language: “Persuasion” and the Hierarchy of Creation ....... 87

iv. Language, Primal Matter, and the Receptacle ......................................... 96

Chapter 3. Augustine’s Confessions: Creation and the Quest for Wisdom ....... 109

i. Confessions: Describing and Performing a Quest for Wisdom ............... 116

ii. Confessions XII: Syncretic Cosmogony and Literary Structure ............ 127

iii. The Created Order and Mystic Ascent: Platonising Romans 1:20 ........ 136

iv. The Abyss of Dissimilarity .................................................................... 143

v. Creation, Formation, and Conversion ..................................................... 149

iii

Chapter 4. Confessions XII-XIII: Images of Creation ex nihilo .......................... 161

i. The Function of Scriptural Obscurity ...................................................... 166

ii. Psalm 45: Language and the Word ......................................................... 175

iii. Time: Matter and Form ......................................................................... 183

iv. Creation and Interpretation .................................................................... 189

v. Authorship .............................................................................................. 197

Chapter 5. Cosmogony in the Western Tradition ................................................. 211

i. The Timaeus and Neoplatonic Theories of Art and Literature ................ 214

ii. Cosmogony and Medieval Poetics: the Twelfth Century ....................... 218

iii. Dante’s Commedia ................................................................................ 229

iv. “Creating Gods”: Cosmogony in Renaissance to Romantic thought .... 248

v. Contemporary Discourses of Divine Creation ........................................ 254

Conclusion. ............................................................................................................... 261

Works Consulted. ..................................................................................................... 270

iv

Abstract.

Literary critical discussions of cosmogony usually examine ideas and assumptions

about authorship and poetic creation which are formed in light of inherited models of

the world’s creation. Far less attention has been paid to actual representations of the

world’s creation, the literary theory and practice of those discourses on cosmogony

which influenced later philosophical and literary thought. This thesis contributes to the

task of filling that critical gap by analysing two foundational Western discourses on

cosmogony: Plato’s Timaeus, and Augustine’s Confessions.

In analysing these two texts, the thesis makes two main arguments: first, that the

problem of ineffability inherent to cosmogony prompts an author’s recourse to

experimental literary methods, to new ways of deploying narrative, genre, and style;

second, that the theory and practice of metaphor in these accounts bring into focus the

constitutive role of language in “creating” rather than merely reflecting knowledge

about this difficult subject.

If classical and late antique works such as the Timaeus and the Confessions show a

noticeable metalinguistic consciousness, then perhaps subsequent works which engage

with a model of the creation show similar tendencies. The thesis pursues this idea by

highlighting how the concept or myth of divine creation tends to demand, or is

frequently invoked in, attempts to rethink or critique human creativity. I read Dante’s

Commedia as an exemplary instance of this phenomenon. The continued importance of

these foundational cosmogonies is evident in that a discourse of divine creation is

deployed in modern discussions of liminal types of knowledge and the “limits” of

human creativity.

v

Declaration.

This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other

degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my

knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another

person, except where due reference has been made in the text.

I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the University Library, being

made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright

Act 1968.

Guy Carney

December 2008

vi

Acknowledgements.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to my supervisors, without whom this thesis would

have been impossible. Thank you Heather Kerr for your enthusiasm, professionalism,

and good humour which made the difficult always seem manageable, and Lawrence

Warner for bringing great energy and ideas when they were needed.

Thanks to the Discipline of English for providing me with resources throughout my

lengthy candidature, and to the Discipline administrative staff, Sue Mleczko, Shirley

Ball, Simone Corponi, and Judy Barlow for their help with numerous administrative

tasks. This thesis was written with the support of an Adelaide University Scholarship.

The other staff and postgraduates of the Discipline have provided a great atmosphere for

writing a thesis, one both intellectually stimulating and convivial. In particular, cheers

to Malcolm Walker and Shannon Burns — see you at the pub guys. Thanks especially

to Catherine Wait for diligently reading the final draft at short notice, and to Lucy Potter

for her thoughtful suggestions and feedback. Above all, thanks to Katherine Doube for

her constant support and for reminding me to smell the flowers, pat the dogs, and taste

the beers along the way.

Many thanks also to my family and friends for all their supportiveness. Thanks to

Andrew Hunter and Tom Redwood for great friendship over the years. To Annabel

Carney for being a great mum, and to the rest of my family who I couldn’t get by

without, thanks.

vii

A Note on Primary Texts and Referencing Style.

Where possible, references to primary texts (original and translated) will be to the

original paragraphing, rather than to the page number of a particular edition.

Translations are not my own but refer to standard and accepted editions.

References to the Timaeus are to: Plato, Timaeus and Critias, translated by Henry

Desmond Pritchard Lee, Penguin Classics, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin,

1977). References to Lee’s introduction and notes are by author-date-page number.

References to the original Greek are to: Plato, Timaeus, edited by R.D. Archer-Hind,

(New York: MacMillan and Co., 1888). Citations are in the customary manner,

referring to the page numbers of an early edition, Stephanus, printed in the margin of

the translation (1578).

References to the Confessions are to: Augustine, Confessions, translated with

introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Citations denote in order: book in capitalised Roman numerals, medieval paragraphing

in small Roman numerals, and modern paragraphing in Arabic numerals, for example

Confessions XII.ii.3. References to Chadwick’s introduction and notes are by author-

date-page number. References to the original Latin and to James J. O’Donnell’s

commentary on the Confessions are to Augustine, Confessions, Latin Text with English

Commentary, James J. O'Donnell. 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992);

online at <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/conf>. Because O’Donnell’s notes follow the

organisation of the Confessions (and the online version only reflects organization of the

text), my references reflect this structure, using Arabic numerals instead of Roman

numerals, which I use for the Confessions itself; for example: (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13).

Where relevant, I will also include the particular word or phrase O’Donnell discusses,

such as: (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13, quendam hominem).

References to the original Italian and to the English translation of Dante’s Commedia

are to: Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, edited and translated

with a commentary by Charles S. Singleton. 6 vols. 2nd print., with corrections ed,

Bollingen Series; 80, (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1971-75).

viii

Secondary material is referenced by author-date-page number, for example: (Vance

1986, p.3). Where a website is used, I cite the author and the date, for example:

(Johansen 1998).

1

Introduction.

In the Western tradition, some of the most insightful and revealing experiments in

literary form and reflections on the nature of language are found in works on the subject

of cosmogony. Literary critical discussions of cosmogony usually examine ideas and

assumptions about authorship and poetic creation that are formed in light of inherited

models of the world’s creation. Far less study has been done on the actual representation

of the world’s creation, on the literary theory and practice of those discourses on

cosmogony that inaugurate and consolidate the models which influenced later

philosophical and literary thought. This thesis aims to redress that critical gap.

Problems of ineffability intrinsic to stories about the creation or origin of the

known universe frequently require their authors to experiment with literary form and to

reflect on the epistemological function of language. This phenomenon is evident in two

foundational Western discourses: Plato’s Timaeus, which was written around 340 BC,

and Augustine’s Confessions, written around 400 AD.1 In my analysis of these texts I

make two main arguments: first, that the imaginative and conceptual challenges

presented by cosmogony prompt new ways of deploying narrative, genre, and style;

second, that the theory and practice of metaphor in these accounts bring into focus the

role of language in “creating” rather than merely reflecting knowledge about this

difficult subject. These phenomena, I then show, continue to be evident in a variety of

discursive traditions that engage with these inherited models of cosmogony.

1 Most scholars consider the Timaeus one of Plato’s later period dialogues due to its style, content, and themes, although some critics such as G.E.L Owen (1953) argue that it is from his middle period. See Miller (2003) p.51 (note 1) for a summary of recent scholarship about the dating of the Timaeus; see also Lee (1977), pp.22-23. The Confessions is relatively easier to date, and there is greater scholarly consensus that the majority of it was written in AD 397 and completed by AD 400. See James J. O’Donnell’s discussion “The Confessions in Augustine’s Life” in his Prolegomena to the Confessions (1992; online at <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/conf/comm.html>), which includes references to relevant scholarship.

2

Plato’s account in the Timaeus of a creator deity who fashions a primal chaos into

the ordered universe represented a radically new version of cosmogony at the time, and

in Western thought inaugurated the influential model of a divine creator.2 Augustine’s

Confessions, which begins with a “confessional” narrative of self but closes with a

discussion of cosmogony through an exegesis of Genesis 1, is an important early

narrative of conversion that has had a continuous impact on religious thought and on

literary traditions of representing the self. The discussion of cosmogony in Confessions

XII-XIII is one of a number of treatises in which Augustine attempts to theorise Genesis

1, and presents an account of creation ex nihilo that is one of the first widely read

versions of this model.3 Augustine’s cosmogony dominated subsequent theological and

philosophical thought about creation ex nihilo and about an omnipotent creator deity.4

In analysing the Timaeus and the Confessions, I focus on the effect the discussion

of cosmogony has on Plato’s and Augustine’s use of and reflection on language. As

discussions of new subjects and new ideas, and as instigators of radically new models of

the universe and of its origin beyond the everyday order of experience, these works of

philosophy and theology are both characterised by innovation in their literary form and

by new, often reflexive ideas about metaphor and the role of language in epistemology.

This is a little researched subject, and there are a number of reasons why the

literary experimentalism and language theory of these discourses on cosmogony are

2 For a recent discussion of the continued and widespread impact of the Timaeus in Western philosophical and literary traditions, see the collection of essays edited by Gretchen Reydams-Schils: Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). 3 The various passages in which Augustine discusses cosmogony are analysed by Simo Knuuttila’s “Time and Creation in Augustine,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, edited by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.103-15. 4 Thomas Aquinas’ frequent references to Augustine’s theory of creation in his influential Summa Theologica (see for example 1a 45.1 and 1a 66.2) demonstrate the impact of Augustine’s cosmogony on later thought.

3

important. Both the Timaeus and the Confessions represent noticeable diversions from

the customary literary style of their authors, suggesting that we need to rethink each

author’s oeuvre in light of their experimental portrayal of cosmogony. In the Timaeus,

for example, Plato opts for monologic narrative in place of his usual style, dialogue. My

analysis demonstrates that the Timaeus enlists but also disturbs Plato’s categories

relating literary genre and epistemology, categories which are taken as given in most of

his other works.5 Similarly, my analysis of the cosmogony of the Confessions obliges us

to rethink our usual categorisation of the work as an early example of the genre of self-

narrative. I also argue that later critical discussions which relate the creative power of

the poet or artist to a divine creator are anticipated and inaugurated, if only implicitly,

by these early instances of cosmogony. These arguments feed into later discussions of

language as a medium for imaginativeness and the developing understanding of human

creativity. Cosmogonies, even though they focus on extra-human subjects, often reflect

assumptions about language and creativity, and also suggest new ideas about human

creativity. By analysing a variety of examples from discursive forms in the Western

tradition which engaged with these accounts of cosmogony, I suggest that divine

creation is a key concept through which human creativity is conceptualised.

In his analysis of the link drawn in the medieval era between Deus artifex and

Homo creator, Eyolf Østrem summarises the tendency for discussions of cosmogony to

also become discussions of the nature of language and knowledge:

What complicates this quest, but also gave it its tremendous impetus, is that it involves both ontology (‘what is the character of God and the creation?’), epistemology (‘how can we, the creation, know anything about God, the Creator?’), and linguistics (‘what do the words we use to describe God mean, and how? If God is beyond anything human, including human reason,

5 In the Republic, for example, Plato represents philosophical dialogue or dialectic, the style he uses in the majority of his works, as a means of accessing intellectual knowledge about eternal Ideas, whereas most other styles, he argues, procure mere opinion about things of the world (see Republic 531d-534e).

4

how can we use the same words about God and man?’). Thus, questions which originally — and, perhaps, ultimately — concerned only a certain theological dogma, became, through the wealth of implications the question carried with it, a major drive in the late-medieval development of theories of language, poetics, and the arts. (Østrem 2007, p.21)

Where Østrem highlights the interrelation of a model of the creation with epistemology

and linguistics through analysis of a variety of late-medieval discourses, this thesis

addresses earlier, less explicit instances where a theory of the creation leads to

reflection on language and knowledge that occur in the specific discourse of

cosmogony. Indeed there are reasons other than those Østrem gives why a discourse on

cosmogony might demand both literary experimentalism and an authorial awareness of

the nature of language and its relationship to knowledge. Most significant is that the

subject of the creation of the universe is “beyond” the range of everyday language and

thought. Discourses on cosmogony therefore confront, inevitably, the problem of

ineffability, and so bear witness to the use of new literary methods and also authorial

reflection on the efficacy of those methods in enabling the discussion of a problematic

subject.6

The etymology of “cosmogony” itself reveals a combination of philosophy,

science, and discursive practice within a single term, a combination that hints at

parallels between the subject and its literary portrayal. The Oxford English Dictionary

lists three definitions: the “generation or creation of the existing universe”, the “subject

of the generation of the universe”, and a “theory, system, or account of the creation or

generation of the universe”.7 The idea of the world’s creation is thus interrelated with

6 By the Middle Ages, ineffability becomes conventionalised as a topos in which the author expresses an inability to convey the nature of an object or experience, typified in key moments of Dante’s Commedia (Curtius 1979, pp.159-162). We can see these early attempts to describe the world’s creation as instances of ineffability anticipating the later topos. 7 “Cosmogony” refs. 1-3. in The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed. 1989).

5

the act of portraying that process of creation. Indeed if we look further back into the

etymology, we can see other suggestions as to why the subject of cosmogony is so

intertwined with concepts of human creativity. Gregory Vlastos observes that the noun

“cosmos” derives from the Greek verb kosmeō, “to set in order”, which was used to

describe human acts of creating order and a sense of artifice as harmony (Vlastos 2005,

p.3). The idea that the phenomena of the world comprise an ordered cosmos, then,

emerges out of the tradition that celebrates the process by which things are ordered into

a harmonious unity. If such humanly made objects express a pleasing harmony, then the

apparently ordered nature of worldly phenomena might suggest that they too comprise a

unity that has somehow been “set in order”, and so is a cosmos. By extension, I suggest,

the act of portraying such ideas about cosmic order exemplifies the process of setting

words in order, and is itself a cosmos in this sense.

Some critics note that stories of creation exemplify the process they describe, as

Stephen Crites comments: “Telling a story about giving form to the chaos is in fact an

act by which chaos is given form” (Crites 1979, p.295; author’s emphasis). So although

this thesis analyses works of philosophy and theology, we will see that they are marked

by a distinctly literary element, that they exemplify features of the literary work.8 A

number of critics also note that cosmogony frequently encourages a writer’s awareness

of the nature of human creativity because such creativity is often used to illustrate

“broader” divine processes of creation, whether to describe the acts of an artisan deity

or to emphasise the sublimity of divine creation by juxtaposing it with human making.9

8 In his essay on the Timaeus, Derrida emphasises the need to pay attention to “the art of Plato the writer!” (Derrida 1995, p.106) 9 “That there is some connection between artist and divinity,” M.H. Abrams notes, “is, of course, as old as the belief that poetry is sponsored and inspired by the gods; and in classic times, the divine origin of the world was sometimes illustrated by reference to the activity of a sculptor or other human artisan”

6

In this thesis, I aim to demonstrate that a tendency to analogise between human actions

and divine acts of cosmogony is evident not only in Plato’s account of an artisan deity

or Demiurge, but also in Augustine’s use of linguistic analogues in order to describe the

process of God’s act of creation ex nihilo. I also intend to demonstrate that later in the

Western tradition these analogies become more explicit because they enabled

conceptualisation of the nature of poetry and human creativity generally.

Critical discussion of the intellectual tradition relating human and divine creativity

views Renaissance Humanism as a key transition point. Scholarship on the pre-

Renaissance period tends to emphasise the distinction between human making and

divine creation, a distinction which medieval and late antique writers used in order to

better describe the sublimity of the divine creation. In the Confessions, for example,

Augustine notes that the divine creator is fundamentally different to the human

craftsman because the human maker works on existing, already made materials whereas

God creates the universe out of nothing. Literary critical discussions of the cosmogonies

of both Plato and Augustine tend to focus on how their influence restricted, even

negated, concepts of human creativity or authorial autonomy.10

In the Renaissance, however, the idea that the inherited model of divine creation

restricts the idea of authorial agency becomes problematic. As many scholars note, the

idea of a divine creator is used in commentaries on poetry from the Renaissance period

(Abrams 1958, p.272). Northrop Frye notes, similarly, that for some “the notion of a creating God is a projection from the fact that man makes things” (Frye 1980, p.4). 10 Richard Utz summarises the effect an orthodox model of divine creation was seen to have on understanding of human authorship: “Essentializing views of the universally Christian Middle Ages, characterized by St Augustine’s iron-clad rule, ‘solus creator est Deus’…indicated that the medieval subject, left with no free creative space to fill throughout God’s universal and eternally original creatio, could only seek either anonymity or self-effacement in artistic production” (Utz 2007, pp.121-22).

7

onward in order to discuss and conceptualise the creative power of the poet.11 One of

the first and most striking statements in this tradition is Cristoforo Landino’s

Commentary on Dante, written in 1481. In discussing Dante’s “creation” of the

Christian afterlife in the Commedia, Landino combines Greek ideas about art with the

theological notion of creation ex nihilo as a means of both describing the relationship

between human and divine creative processes and explaining the world-making process

Dante has performed:

And the Greeks say ‘poet’ from the verb ‘piin,’ which is half-way between ‘creating,’ which is peculiar to God when out of nothing he brings forth anything into being, and ‘making,’ which applies to men when they compose with matter and form in any art. It is for this reason that, although the feigning of the poet is not entirely out of nothing, it nevertheless departs from making and comes very near to creating. And God is the supreme poet, and the world is His poem. (quoted in Abrams 1958, p.273)

In this passage, the transition from an overtly scholastic focus on the nature of the

divine to a humanist emphasis is apparent. Landino is not trying to describe the creation

of the world, but rather to come to terms with and clarify the nature of poetic creation.

The Commentary on Dante, moreover, is not a discourse on creation but a commentary

on a poet, and as such is an early example of the shift in focus from deity to writer,

regardless of the orthodox idea of cosmogony and of a divine creator on which it is

based. As I shall go on to discuss in more detail, the relation of poetic “creation” to a

creator deity became a key metaphor in models of the artist and in literary criticism,

even though its initial usage was problematic precisely because of the association of

human creativity with divine creation.12

11 For a discussion of the tradition relating divine and poetic creation, see Nahm (1956), pp.63-83, and Abrams (1958), pp.272-85. 12 Alan Bloom states that the earliest uses of the word “create” to describe the activity of man rather than God “had the odor of blasphemy and paradox…God alone had been called a creator” (Bloom 1987, p.180), while M.H. Abrams posits that the contemporary notion of creation “is the residue of a metaphor

8

There is a literary critical tendency to draw generalising distinctions between the

pre-Renaissance and Renaissance concepts of human creativity and authorship. The

former era is often understood to be guided by orthodox views of divine creation which

restrict ideas about authorial agency. The latter era, by contrast, is often considered to

mark the emergence of humanist ideas about poetic autonomy.13 The thesis proposes to

question this critical tendency by highlighting the innovative literary methods of the

Timaeus and the Confessions, by analysing the metalinguistic consciousness of these

same texts, and by surveying some key periods prior to the Renaissance in which these

texts have a significant impact. The principal distinction between the Renaissance and

pre-Renaissance eras, I argue, is not that literary innovation and an awareness of

language’s creative capacity was a wholly new idea instigated in Renaissance literary

theory, but that the Renaissance marks the conscious acknowledgement and exploration

of the notion that language is creative. The creative power of language is more evident

as a discursive effect of the early cosmogonies of Plato and Augustine, an idea which

was only consciously accepted and expressed, rather than conceived outright, in later

commentaries on poetry. Equally significant is that the literary experimentalism of the

Timaeus and the Confessions, prompted by the attempt to describe cosmogony, has not

been adequately analysed.

which only four centuries ago was new, vital, and — because it equated the poet with God in his unique and most characteristic function — on the verge, perhaps, of blasphemy” (Abrams 1958, p.272). For a discussion of the term “create” in religion and art, see Østrem (2007), pp.15-16. 13 A typical example of this view contrasting pre-Renaissance orthodoxy with Renaissance humanism can be found in Joseph Anthony Mazzeo’s argument that in the medieval era “[t]he divine act of creation, the conferral of existence, came to be considered the act of creation in the proper sense of the word while all other forms of what we would call creation were analogically or mimetically related to it” (Mazzeo 1957, p.706). Thus links between divine creator and human maker drawn in this era carried no implication that human creativity rivals nature or even God: “Such a conception was the conquest of the Renaissance” (Mazzeo 1957, p.708).

9

Important to my distancing from the critical tradition which emphasises

fundamental contrasts between medieval and Renaissance concepts of creativity is the

observation by critics such as Northrop Frye and Richard Utz that there is an inherent

tension between theoretical models of cosmogony and a tacit awareness of human

creativity in literary or artistic practice. In Creation and Recreation (1980), Frye

comments on this tension between a theoretical model of the creation and the concept of

human creativity:

Traditionally, everything we associate with nature, reality, settled order, the way things are, the data of existence that we have to accept, is supposed to go back to the creation, the original divine act of making the world. Now we find that if we apply the word creative to human activities, the humanly creative is whatever profoundly disturbs our sense of ‘the’ creation, a reversing or neutralizing of it. (Frye 1980, pp.10-11)

Some of the ideas expressed in Frye’s argument are contextualised in Richard Utz’s

recent discussion of Chaucer’s poetry. Utz argues that there is a tension between the

orthodox medieval view of the sole creative autonomy of God, which the medieval era

inherited from earlier cosmogonies, and some of the literary practice of the same era. To

demonstrate this, Utz argues that Chaucer’s poetry, although written in a cultural and

theological context that emphasised the primacy of divine creation and which would

appear to leave no space for creative agency in the human author, is marked by

experiments with different authorial roles. These experiments, Utz argues, “challenge

some of the more typical medieval rituals of authorship and suggest the possibility of an

author’s potentially absolute power over his original textual creation” (Utz 2007,

p.123). My own contention is that the tension between a theoretical model of the

creation and the authorial creativity tacit in literary practice is also evident within the

accounts of cosmogony I analyse. In other words, the imaginative experimentalism by

which the earliest versions of a divine creator were described is itself testament to the

10

creative autonomy of the writer. A theorisation of language and its epistemological

function, moreover, is tacit in these experimental uses of literary form.

As I have mentioned, my analysis of Plato’s and Augustine’s texts presents two

main arguments, and I have structured the thesis accordingly. Chapters one and three

analyse the phenomenon of literary experimentalism in the Timaeus and the Confessions

respectively. Chapters two and four address the theorisation of metaphor and the

constitutive role of language revealed in the same two texts.14 In chapter five I go on to

explore examples from discourses from some of the periods in which these

cosmogonies influenced different areas of thought, and also consider the persistence of

the phenomenon where the portrayal of divine creation demands or facilitates reflection

on language and human creativity.

In chapter one we will see how the uniqueness of cosmogony as a subject,

particularly its requirement of an account of how the created order and the ideal order of

Forms relate, demands a variety of experimental literary methods in Plato’s Timaeus.

Within Plato’s oeuvre, the Timaeus marks a major change in direction, for while he

usually discusses philosophical subjects such as justice or the ideal Forms, his account

of cosmogony focuses on the creation of the sensible world. My first point of discussion

is the effect this new subject has on Plato’s literary style; whereas most of his works use

philosophical dialogue to discuss philosophical subjects, the Timaeus deploys

monologic narrative to discuss the world’s creation. In discussing the transition from

philosophical dialogue to narrative, I draw on Andrea Wilson Nightingale’s argument

that Plato uses other literary genres in his works as a means of defining and valorising

14 As I have mentioned in the Note on the primary texts used (p.vii), I refer to these texts primarily through standard and accepted translations. However, where it is necessary I furnish this with discussion of the original.

11

philosophy as an epistemology and a genre (Nightingale 1995, p.12). Yet Plato’s

engagement with other genres typically takes the form of an explicit critique or, as

Nightingale has shown, an intertextual incorporation of other genres within dialogue.

The further experimentalism of the Timaeus is apparent, then, because it represents a

new way of engaging with a new genre, namely the replacement of dialogue with

narrative. In considering this radical change of style, I argue that Plato not only carries

out an implicit critique of narrative in comparison with philosophy, but also leaves open

a space for a new type of philosophical narrative, suggesting his interest in applying

philosophic ideas to new subjects and in the use of new styles.

Chapter one then considers some of the effects of Plato’s use of philosophic

concepts within this experimental setting. I reject the application of the “illustration”

theory of Platonic myth to the Timaeus, for the unique nature of its subject matter, I

show, in fact destabilises categories separating myth from true discourse even as it

deploys them. I conclude the chapter by highlighting some of the innovative techniques

Plato deploys in the Timaeus, such as the use of irony to critique narrative as well as the

use of ineffability to enable the discussion of problematic subjects. Plato uses these

techniques, I argue, in order to test out a new type of “philosophic narrative”, to explore

difficult subjects raised in his version of cosmogony which he may have wanted to

avoid discussing in his preferred dialogue style. The problem of ineffability intrinsic to

the attempt to describe cosmogony, we see from the Timaeus, not only prompts the use

of new and innovative literary methods, but also enables the exploration of new literary

possibilities, by which Plato attempts to broaden the scope of philosophy.

In chapter two I discuss how the speculative nature of cosmogonic discourse

brings into focus the constitutive role of language in facilitating knowledge about the

world’s creation. The innovative terrain covered in the Timaeus, I show, highlights

12

metaphor’s role in creating a new type of speculative knowledge. I begin by arguing

that the concept of origins, rather than political issues such as the ideal state, is the

work’s primary concern. The importance of the emphasis on origins driving the

Timaeus is that it reveals the ineffability of the world’s beginning, suggesting that

language, in the form of the multiple beginnings of the narrative, continually precedes

rather than reflects the concept of origins. My analysis of the account of time and

eternity in the Timaeus shows not only the primacy of language, which is always

“before” the idea of a “primal” eternity, but also how terms describing temporality are

the only means by which Plato can describe the nature of eternity. The abstract idea of

eternity is thus reached, rather than reflected, by means of metaphor.

Representations of other acts of creation in the Timaeus emphasise that these acts

are lesser imitations of the primary world-making of the Demiurge. My analysis of this

principle that making is “directed” by a primary act of creation demonstrates that this

theoretical position about creativity does not cohere with Plato’s narrative practice,

which cannot but acknowledge some creative agency at every level of making. I

conclude chapter two by analysing Plato’s account of the ineffable “receptacle” of the

created world, khõra, which I argue highlights the impossibility of knowing about

origins “beyond” language, and also shows the inherently constitutive role of metaphor

in creating knowledge about orders beyond the sensible and everyday. The tendency for

cosmogonies to draw attention to the constitutive role of language is thus especially

apparent where these discourses attempt to describe orders beyond the everyday one of

experience.

Chapter three demonstrates how in Augustine’s Confessions the ineffability of

cosmogony procures a quite different instance of literary experimentalism than in

Plato’s Timaeus. The Confessions has long been a source of confusion to its readers

13

because it begins as a “confessional” narrative of self and yet ends as a discussion of

theoretical views beyond the self, including memory, time, and cosmogony.15 By

analysing discussions of cosmogony in the Confessions, particularly its concluding

exegesis of Genesis 1, I propose a new reading of the Confessions; I suggest that it both

narrates and performs a quest for wisdom, and argue further that reflection on the

world’s creation is crucial to that quest because it enables knowledge to go beyond

introspection. The earlier narrative of self, I show, is quite different to modern

expectations of autobiography, for it records key stages of a quest for wisdom and also

how a developing theory of the creation is crucial to that quest. Analogies between the

account of the soul in books I-IX and the account of the cosmos in books XII-XIII

underline this idea that Augustine’s discussion of the self is in fact fitted into a broader

discussion of wisdom, and that his theorisation of cosmogony facilitates the discussion

of the self. The literary innovation of the Confessions extends beyond a synthesis of

diverse subjects and literary styles to its structure. By opening with a reflection on the

self and concluding with a reflection on the divine origin of the world outside the self,

Augustine seeks to dramatise through the structure of the work the ascent of wisdom

beyond self-reflection. The importance of these connected points is that they show how

the unique nature of cosmogony, the subject’s “threshold” position between divine and

sensible orders, is crucial to the construction of an experimental literary form which

both describes and performs the ascent of wisdom from self-reflection to knowledge

beyond the self. The connection between cosmogony and ineffability is therefore

evident in a slightly different sense in the Confessions than in the Timaeus, for while the

15 For discussions of this confusion about the final four books of the Confessions and its overall structure, see P. Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1950), pp.21f, John J. O’Meara, The Young Augustine (1954), pp.13-19, Vance (1986), pp.2-4, and the Prolegomena to O’Donnell (1992), which also has references to the various theories about the work’s overall structure.

14

ineffable, threshold nature of cosmogony requires much of the experimental literary

form of Plato’s narrative, it is mobilised as a key element in the experimental narrative

form of Augustine’s Confessions.16

Chapter four emphasises that the constitutive role language plays in discourses on

cosmogony is brought into focus, indeed is partly acknowledged, in the discussion of

creation ex nihilo in Confessions XII-XIII. In addition, it asserts that the theories of

metaphor, exegesis, and authorship which accompany Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis

1 discussion underline the necessarily creative role of language. Augustine recognises

the role literary images play in an understanding of ineffable subjects, for example,

when he treats some of the images and phrases of Genesis 1 as symbolic representations

of philosophical ideas about cosmogony. He thus reads the Scriptural reference to the

earth “invisible and unorganised” (Genesis 1:2) as a reference to formless matter, and

concludes that Scriptural language is oriented to help “slower minds” appreciate the

complex notion of formlessness (Confessions XII.iv.4). The chapter also analyses the

linguistic analogues Augustine uses in an attempt to describe creation ex nihilo, such as

his argument that singing is a simultaneous creation and formation of sound to describe

God’s act of creating formless matter and then simultaneously forming that matter into

the cosmos. Most definitions of creation ex nihilo, including a definition in Confessions

XI, rely on contrasts between human making and divine creation. Augustine’s

deployment of linguistic analogues in order to describe the process, rather than just the

nature, of divine creation, privileges language as a special mode of creativity by

16 In De Doctrina Christiana Augustine explicitly describes how an “ineffable” subject can be used in the ascent of wisdom, ascribing the term for “God” a functional role in the ascent of thought: “Hence the fact that he is called God (Deus): he himself is not truly known by the sound of these two syllables, yet when the sound strikes the ear it leads all users of the Latin language to think of a supremely excellent and immortal being” (I.14).

15

comparison to mere craftsmanship because it is seen to resemble divine creation. This

leads me to suggest that the constitutive feature of language is evident as an implicit

discursive effect of the Confessions cosmogony, as well as an authorially recognised

feature of its metaphors.

Augustine’s theorisation of the exegetical process in Confessions XIII shows an

altogether different way in which language and linguistic processes constitute

knowledge. While his reflection on exegesis emphasises that it is a “passive” process

structured by the authority of Scripture, I argue that this concept of interpretation which

“obeys” its object nonetheless has the effect of constituting a particular type of text, of

setting up Scripture as a dynamic of obscurity and revealed truth. In the conclusion to

chapter four, I reflect on the implications of this phenomenon where the complexities of

cosmogony prompt Augustine’s remodelling of both exegesis and of Scripture itself,

given his particular importance and influence as thinker on the exegetical process. In

addition, discussions of authorship within Confessions XII-XIII privilege writing over

mere “making” even though they emphasise the limited agency of any human author.

This is because Augustine’s reflections on authorship, coupled with his use of linguistic

analogues to describe divine creation, posit the creative aspect of authorship and its

similitude to God’s “authorship” of the universe.

In chapter five I discuss the intellectual tradition relating human and divine

creativity subsequent to the Timaeus and the Confessions. This discursive afterlife

relocates the phenomenon where theories of cosmogony lead to theories of language

and literary experimentalism from accounts of cosmogony itself to works of literary

criticism and aesthetic theory. Neoplatonic works of philosophy, poetry, and literary

criticism in the late antique era, for instance, found parallels between the Platonic model

of the created world and the literary artefact, and also between the action of a creator

16

deity and the action of the poet. Twelfth-century works of philosophy, literary theory,

and poetry which engaged with cosmogony, I aim to show, explore the nature of human

creativity through tacit or even explicit parallels with divine creation. I discuss Dante’s

Commedia as an exemplary instance of this phenomenon relating human and divine

creation. Dante, I argue, uses inherited models of divine creation as a means of

reflecting on his poetic art. I suggest that the Commedia should be seen as a pivotal

work in the transition from an inherited, orthodox model of the creation to new ideas

about the creative power of the poet. Dante’s “creation” of the Christian afterlife, which

presents an imaginative poetic vision of Christian orthodoxy, dramatises the world-

making power of the poet as much as the world-making power of the divine it describes.

Early critical reception of the Commedia highlights its importance in the tradition

relating human and divine creativity (see the comment by Landino quoted above).

Chapter five surveys how the inherited models of cosmogony and of a divine creator

were used from Renaissance literary criticism through to Romantic literary theory as a

means of conceptualising the creative power of the poet. In the light of the discoveries I

make in this thesis, we will be able to see this intellectual tradition not as the emergence

of new ideas about language and literature, which is the typical critical view of the

Renaissance, but rather as the conscious acknowledgement of ideas that circulated in

earlier discourses.

Chapter five concludes by discussing what I understand to be modern recurrences

of the phenomenon relating human and divine creativity, where myths of divine creation

continue to underpin contemporary discussions of “liminal” forms of knowledge and

critiques of “trangressive” human creativity. The continued recourse to a discourse of

divine creation, even if only as a metaphor, underlines the ongoing impact of both

Plato’s and Augustine’s cosmogonies on Western thought through a process of

17

discursive migration out of poetics and into contemporary science. In effect, the

language of cosmogony has come full circle, where the original discourse of divine

creation used to consider the nature of the universe, which for so long underpinned

many assumptions about literature, has now come back to questions about the universe

itself. Moreover, the recurrence of the parallels between human and divine creativity

throughout Western thought leads me to suggest that such “myths” of divine creation,

inaugurated in the Timaeus and the Confessions, may continue to enable

conceptualisations of the limits of knowledge and creativity.

18

19

Chapter 1.

Plato’s Timaeus: an Experiment in Subject and Form

Plato’s Timaeus is the central work of Western cosmogony. It inaugurates the concept

of the world’s creation by a creator deity, and it had a significant and continuous impact

on Western thought, especially because it was the only work of Plato’s readily available

in the medieval period (Lee 1977, p.7). Despite the extent of its impact, Plato’s account

of an artisan deity who fashions the ordered cosmos is by no means typical of his

oeuvre; indeed it is almost an anomaly. Whereas most of his works seek to describe

philosophical abstractions such as justice or the Forms, and refer to the concrete or

“sensible” world only for examples, the physical, created world is the primary focus of

the Timaeus. The work is innovative in Plato’s thought because it marks the search for a

new type of knowledge that draws on the created order of becoming, rather than solely

on the eternal order of Forms.

This new type of subject combining both the sensible order and the order of

Forms, this chapter demonstrates, requires Plato to adopt new literary methods. We

know from Phaedo 98 that Plato felt that no adequate explanation yet existed for

cosmogony, despite its importance.17 Yet Plato’s customary style of philosophical

dialogue, as he saw it, was suited to discussing the Ideas, not the nature of the sensible

world.18 Thus the Timaeus marks a necessary experimentalism not only in its subject

17 In this passage Socrates expresses his dismay at Anaxagoras’ claim to show that Intelligence “orders and is the reason for everything”, arguing that all Anaxagoras shows is how rather than why the universe might have been created (Phaedo 98-99). 18 In the Republic, for example, Plato represents philosophical dialogue or dialectic (διαλεχτιχη), which is the style he uses in the majority of his works, as a means of accessing intellectual knowledge about eternal Ideas, as opposed to mere opinion about things of the world (see Republic 531d-534e).

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matter, but also in the literary style used to describe that subject matter. This chapter

argues that in adopting new literary methods in an attempt to portray a new and

sometimes ineffable subject, Plato both critiques the efficacy of those methods and also

experiments with their possible usefulness to philosophy. The Timaeus thus shows us

how new literary methods are demanded by the discussion of cosmogony, but it also

demonstrates the further experimentation in literary methodology which is enabled by

this discussion. The literary experimentalism forced on Plato in his attempt to discuss

the new subject of cosmogony leads him to further innovations in literary methodology.

The insufficiency of philosophical dialectic to describe cosmogony is staged in the

opening conversation of the Timaeus. Socrates, in asking for a history of the perfect

society “in action”, confesses that he is unable to provide any explanation for this new

type of subject which requires the embodiment rather than the abstraction of the ideal

world: “I know that I am myself incapable of giving any adequate account of this kind”

(19).19 Something other than the accepted version of philosophy, it seems, is needed to

provide the stories of creation in the Timaeus, which comprise both the origin of Athens

and of the universe itself. Socrates is thus replaced by Critias and Timaeus, and

correspondingly the dialogue opening Timaeus 17-21 is almost completely replaced for

the rest of the work by narrative, making the Timaeus unique within an oeuvre that is

dominated by dialogue form.

The first section of this chapter demonstrates how a principal innovation of the

Timaeus is its implicit critique of narrative in comparison to philosophy. In most of his

other works, Plato engages with and assesses other literary genres either by explicit

19 References to Plato’s Timaeus are to the translation by Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1977); references to the original Greek are to the edition by R.D. Archer-Hind (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1888). Citations are in the customary manner, referring to the Stephanus pagination. See the Note on the primary texts (p.vii).

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Socratic analysis, such as the critique of the sophistic method in Republic 336-354, or

by an intertextual incorporation of other styles into his dialogues in order to define

philosophy against them, such as the poem within the Protagoras.20 In the Timaeus, on

the other hand, Plato does not explicitly critique narrative, nor does he compare

narrative to a framing philosophical dialogue. Instead, I argue, he performs an implicit

comparison between philosophy and narrative. By adopting this method of implicitly

critiquing the new style he deploys, I suggest, Plato seeks to explore the difficult subject

of cosmogony but at the same time continues to valorise philosophy by ascribing any

problems of ineffability to narrative. Narrative thus provides an “escape clause” in that

it enables Plato to explore a new and difficult subject while simultaneously affirming

philosophy’s superiority as an epistemological method. The importance of this new

mode of using a new style is that while Plato critiques the creation narrative form, he

does not reject it. This is significant, later sections of the chapter show, because it leaves

open a space for a “philosophical” approach to the creation narrative.

In section two I pursue the idea that discourses on cosmogony must sit on a

boundary between different types of knowledge and different literary genres because of

the “threshold” nature of their subject. By showing that there is a tension between the

label “myth” given to the Timaeus and its engagement with philosophy, I argue that it is

difficult to ascribe Plato’s cosmogony to a specific epistemic or literary category. The

section also refutes the “illustration” or “instrumental” theory of Platonic myth as an

explanation of the Timaeus. The Timaeus creation narratives cannot be seen as

subordinate illustrative myths, I argue, because the “threshold” nature of cosmogony

means that in Plato’s ontology it combines both sensible objects of opinion and objects

20 For an analysis of Plato’s use of intertextuality as a means of critiquing other literary styles, see Andrea Nightingale’s Genres in Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

22

of intellection, suggesting that the language describing it combines mythic discourse

with philosophic discourse. Moreover, while Plato’s usual categories of knowledge and

discourse are deployed in the Timaeus narratives, I show that the use of these categories

within this experimental framework has the effect of destabilising the distinctions

between them.

Section three asserts that there is a tension between the theoretical model of

philosophy that underlies Plato’s critique of narrative and Plato’s literary practice in

describing cosmogony. However, I do not take this tension as evidence for the critical

view that Plato was resigned to the inherent falseness of all discourse, philosophy

included. Rather, I propose a “dialectical” model to explain the relationship between

narratives, discourses, and ideas which are deployed in the Timaeus. In comparing the

efficacy of different discourses through implicit critique, I suggest, the Timaeus tests the

epistemological currency of different literary methods, and does so as part of an

experiment which assesses the potential of incorporating new subjects and new styles

into the philosophic method.

Section four analyses some of the new concepts and new literary possibilities

enabled by Plato’s account of cosmogony, and also highlights some of the innovative

methods Plato deploys in order to explore these ideas. I argue that Plato’s principal

innovation in the Timaeus, resulting from its ambiguity and its experimentalism, is to

broaden the scope of philosophy in its style, methods, and subject matter. Plato’s

critique of Critias’ history as an erroneous use of narrative, I show, is set off against

Timaeus’ narrative, which Plato uses to test a “philosophical” approach to narrative.

This comparison suggests that Plato uses the account of cosmogony in the Timaeus to

explore new ideas and methods which might form part of his philosophical project.

However, Timaeus’ position as a philosopher using narrative style requires additional

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innovations by Plato. Plato’s mobilisation of the “problem” of ineffability, we will see,

in fact performs a significant function because it enables Plato’s discussion of difficult

and indeed “risky” ideas which are part of his cosmogony, ideas which were to form

part of the widespread influence of the Timaeus.

The aim of this chapter is to highlight the pervasive experimentalism prompted by

the attempt to portray cosmogony in the Timaeus, not only in the novelty of its subject

matter and style by comparison to the rest of Plato’s oeuvre, but also in the relationship

between discourses and the new ideas about literary style it raises. In demonstrating

how cosmogony both demands and also facilitates Plato’s experimentation with new

literary methods, the chapter holds some important implications for how we regard

aspects of Plato’s philosophic system. Influential scholarship has emphasised that Plato

was frequently concerned to engage with other literary styles in order to define

philosophy in opposition to them: “it is precisely by designating certain modes of

discourse and spheres of activity as ‘anti-philosophical’ that Plato was able to create a

separate identity for ‘philosophy’” (Nightingale 1995, p.11). In this analysis of Plato’s

“experiment” in cosmogony and narrative style, I argue that he was also looking to

incorporate — and not just reject — other styles in the service of philosophy, and also

considered what new subjects the philosophical method could encapsulate. Even in the

Timaeus — probably one of his last works — he was engaged in defining philosophy as

a literary and epistemological method in relation to other styles.21 Our assumptions

about the “stability” of philosophy, as a discrete form inherited from the classical era,

can tend to overlook the context out of which it was formed. By analysing the

experimentalism of the Timaeus cosmogony, this chapter highlights the flexible nature

21 For a discussion of the probable date of the Timaeus and its position in relation to the rest of Plato’s oeuvre, see Lee (1977), pp.22-23.

24

of Plato’s philosophy, and suggests that it was both defined in relation to other genres

and also drew on these other literary methods in constituting itself as a genre.

i. An Experiment in Literary Methodology

Plato’s attitude to literary genres other than philosophy has long excited critical

speculation. Overt criticism of other literary methods, especially influential ones such as

poetry and sophistry, form a major part of Plato’s thought, and yet, as many have

observed, Plato’s evaluations of other styles do not always square with his practice. In

the Republic, for example, Socrates critiques mythical discourse in favour of dialectic,

but Plato nonetheless goes on to use similes and myths as an intrinsic part of the

argument. Furthermore, critics today are identifying an intertextual dimension in Plato’s

writing. In her influential monograph Genres in Dialogue, Andrea Nightingale

demonstrates how Plato often incorporates other literary styles into philosophical

dialogue as a means of defining the philosophic method against other “rival” literary

and epistemological methods (Nightingale 1995, p.12). Plato’s explicit valorisation of

philosophy through a comparison with rival literary methods such as sophism is thus

reflected in his use of intertextuality.

However, the Timaeus presents a problem because it does not fit any of these

patterns. It has little in the way of explicit assessments of other literary styles, and

instead of an intertextual incorporation of other styles into philosophical dialogue,

philosophy is essentially replaced by narrative. It therefore represents not only an

experiment in literary style, but also a new way of deploying and engaging with a new

style. By analysing this method of deploying literary style in the Timaeus, this section

argues that Plato critiques narrative implicitly, especially through subtle ironic

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comparisons with the philosophic method, even as he gives the same style an

unprecedentedly central role in his writing. The experimentalism forced on Plato by the

nature of his subject leads him to adopt a new literary form and to assess that form in

new, subtler ways.

The majority of this critique, we shall see, is directed at Critias’ history of ancient

Athens. However, I will show that many of these shortcomings of Critias’ narrative

have clear relevance to Timaeus’ account of cosmogony. Plato does this, I suggest, in

order to test both the problems and possible benefits of this new style “safely”. That is,

he is able to explore the difficult new subject of cosmogony and try a new literary

method, and any problems or failures of this experiment will be ascribed to narrative

rather than philosophy. This new method of appropriating a new style is important, we

shall see later in the chapter, because it does not necessitate its rejection, and so enables

the application of philosophic methods and ideas to a new subject matter and a new

epistemology.

The underlying critique of the narrative style used in the Timaeus is most evident in the

tacit contrast between two cities: between Socrates’ account of a paradigmatic city and

Critias’ story of ancient, utopian Athens as the historical equivalent of the paradigm. By

questioning the veracity of history — the study of social origins — Plato addresses

problems which he must confront in the subsequent account, Timaeus’ account of the

world’s origin. For this reason, I spend some time here considering Critias’ history of

ancient Athens and its bearing on Timaeus’ narrative.

While the opening conversation of the Timaeus stages the withdrawal of Socrates

and of dialectic, it also invites a continued comparison between dialectic and narrative.

26

This comparison is suggested when Socrates begins the Timaeus conversation by

summarising the previous day’s conversation about an abstract, ideal state, such as that

described in the Republic: “Yesterday my main object was to describe my view of the

ideal state and its citizens” (17).22 The comparison between the two modes of discourse,

as well as between the two cities they describe, becomes apparent when Socrates goes

on to ask for a different viewpoint of utopian society, implicitly calling for a new form:

My feelings are rather like those of a man who has seen some splendid animals, either in a picture or really alive but motionless, and wants to see them moving and engaging in some of the activities for which they appear to be formed. That’s exactly what I feel about the society we have described. I would be glad to hear some account of it engaging in transactions with other states… (19)

In response to Socrates’ request for a description of an embodied ideal state, Critias

begins not with the history itself, but rather with the story behind the story of ancient

Athens, describing how he came to know, through a series of retellings, about the

archaic Athenian polis:

Listen then, Socrates. The story is a strange one, but Solon, wisest of the seven wise men, once vouched its truth. He was a relation and close friend of Dropides, my great-grandfather, as he often says himself in his poems, and told the story to my grandfather Critias, who in turn repeated it to us when he was an old man. It relates the many notable achievements of our city long ago, which have been lost sight of because of the lapse of time and destruction of human life. (20)

For Critias, then, a story of an ideal state engaged in its activities obliges recourse to a

near forgotten legend. However, despite the distance of this story from everyday

experience, Critias maintains that it is authentic because of the authority of one of its

22 While there are deliberate references to particular aspects of the Republic as a background to the Timaeus, this appears to be a textual strategy rather than a historical truth. References to the festival on the day of the discussion, as well as scholarship on the differences in content and style of the texts, place the Timaeus much later in Plato’s oeuvre than the Republic. See Rutherford (1995), pp.285-88, Cornford (1937), pp.1-8, and Zaslavsky (1981), pp.141-49. At the least, Plato appears to be recalling particular aspects of the state discussed in the Republic.

27

tellers, and what is more refers to his story as a true logos (λόγος) rather than a mere

myth (μύθος). If we recall Plato’s customary preference for dialectic over other styles,

these comments come as a surprise, for in the initial exchanges of Critias’ story, the

comparison between historical narrative and dialectic appears to privilege Critias’

history over Socrates’ philosophy.

Indeed this remarkable classification of the two accounts is underlined in

Socrates’ admission that he is “incapable of giving any adequate account of this kind of

our city and its citizens” (19-20), and his subsequent assertion that Critias and Timaeus

would provide better speakers on the subject because of their experience in politics and

philosophy. This valorisation of the creation narrative over philosophy seems to be

emphasised further in descriptions of Critias’ intended discourse. Critias states that he

will “transfer” Socrates’ “imaginary city” or description “in fiction” (έυ μύθψ) (such as

the dialectical exposition of the ideal polis in the Republic to which they refer in the

opening of the Timaeus), to the “real world”, to a story “in truth” (έπί ταληθές) (26).

Socrates welcomes this offer, stating that Critias’ account has the benefit of being “not a

fiction (μύθον), but a true history (άληθινόν λόγον)” (26). The upshot of these labels is

that both Critias’ discourse, and the city it describes, seem to be privileged over the

hypothetical city described by Socratic dialectic.

While in his other works Plato would probably question these labels through

vigorous Socratic query, in the Timaeus he carries out this query implicitly by including

some cautionary elements which suggest a certain irony behind these comments in

praise of his “true history”. Critias states that his story is a λόγος (and hence no μύθος),

but admits in the same sentence that this λόγος is not of a customary sort: “The story

(λόγος) is a strange one” (21). Critias’ word “strange”, άτοπος, means literally “out of

place” (τοπος), “unnatural”, “absurd” (“άτοπος” ref. in Berry ed. 1945, p.113). This

28

term suggests that the story, because it is about the creation of an ancient city, is

“strange” because “displaced” outside Critias’ everyday experience. In contrast to

everyday language, therefore, a discourse on creation must adopt a “strange” or

“displaced” vocabulary.23

The characterisation “strange” is an early indicator of the parallel between Critias’

and Timaeus’ narratives because it establishes that both accounts are necessarily

displaced from everyday experience. Like Critias, Timaeus adopts the adjective

“strange” (άτοπου) in order to describe his account of the receptacle of the created

world, khõra (48). If the discourse about the ancient history and origins of a city is

“strange” in the sense that it is displaced outside the experience of the speaker, then the

later discourse on the creation of the universe should be even “stranger”, for it seeks to

describe a history beyond human existence, not just memory. Plato’s use of the label

“strange” for both discourses therefore hints at the problems associated with these

speculative histories of creation, which balances the explicit celebration of history over

philosophy at Timaeus 26.

A further split between overt comment and implicit critique is suggested where

Plato hints at the similarity between these narratives of creation — which describe a

“distant” subject which evades language — and poetry (that is, poetry according to a

Platonic critique). This similarity becomes apparent when Critias, in raising the

potential problem that his narrative attempts to describe a distant and forgotten past,

attempts to dismiss the problem by referring to the authority of one of its tellers, the

poet Solon. Having posited Solon as a primary authority, Critias then attempts to

23 As John Sallis notes: “the reconstitution in play here can only appear paradoxical: what is now to be called μύθος is precisely a discourse that turns to the είδος, whereas what is called true λόγος is an old story about some largely forgotten ancestors” (Sallis 1999, p.39).

29

establish the reliability of the oral tradition by which the story is recorded by showing

that he knows all the speakers in the history of its transmission: Solon, his great-

grandfather Dropides, and his grandfather Critias (20). In carefully listing the oral

tradition by which he came to know the story, Critias also emphasises either the

credibility of each “teller” or a familial connection, and hence tacitly dismisses the

possible objection that there may be an unreliable narrator within the tradition who may

adversely affect the transmission of the story. The “Chinese whispers” phenomenon, it

seems, does not affect Critias’ story.

Paradoxically, Critias’ very attempts to establish the authenticity of his account by

showing its reliable origin and its transmission through reliable and authoritative

speakers show up its shortcomings, and hence its inferiority to Socrates’ account. One

implied uncertainty over the story’s veracity is suggested in that Solon, initially

presented as the “primary” teller, is a poet, given that Socrates calls this profession into

question as recently as the previous paragraph (not to mention other works of Plato

which criticise poetry as well). In the preceding paragraph, Socrates argues that his

rationale for selecting Critias and Timaeus to speak is based on their experience and

education (20). However, it is not just Socratic dialogue that is inadequate to provide

the required stories of creation. Socrates also contrasts discussions based on experience

with those of the poets and sophists, who he states speak without having adequate

experience of their subjects and so must “simulate” or “create” their accounts:

Not that I have a low opinion of poets in general, but it is clear that in all kinds of representation one represents best and most easily what lies within one’s experience, while what lies outside that experience is difficult to represent in action and even more difficult in words. The sophists, again, I have always thought to be very ready with glowing descriptions of every kind, but I am afraid that, because they have travelled so much and never had a home of their own, they may fail to grasp the true qualities which those who are philosophers and statesmen would show… (19)

30

The poets, according to Socrates, are unable to discuss the workings of a polis because

the subject lies outside their experience and thus outside their language. By contrast, the

philosopher-statesman, because of his education and his proximity to the polis, speaks

from a more appropriate place and hence possesses an appropriate language from

which, supposedly, he may speak of the early history of Athens and of the creation of

the universe.

Plato thus proceeds again through an implicit critique working against an overt

comment. While Socrates sets up a contrast between his speakers and the poets on the

basis that both Critias and Timaeus have experience of the polis, Plato also undermines

this contrast by suggesting that the narratives have necessary similarities to poetry.

Critias defers to the authority of Solon as a primary source, while later on Timaeus

admits his narrative is “likely” at best (29), an approximation of the truth like those

speculative tales of the poets and sophists. Both characters admit, moreover, that their

stories are “strange” because displaced beyond language’s customary range, and hence

involve a degree of simulation of what is outside their experience, like the poets as

Socrates describes them at Timaeus 19. Indeed, the statements by each narrator about

the authenticity of their accounts, or about the control they have over language, are

mostly a response to the problem of the necessary “strangeness” of their stories due to a

“distant” subject matter. Critias notes that his story is strange but then goes on to assert

that the respected figure of Solon vouched its truth; Timaeus notes that his account of

khõra must be strange and then goes on to revert to his principle of likeness. Thus it is

not enough that Plato posits the withdrawal of philosophy for narrative at Timaeus 19;

in the remainder of the work he continues to suggest through implicit critique the

specific ways in which philosophy is different from and superior to narrative.

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The crux of Plato’s critique of the creation narrative lies in the parallel he sets up

between the nature of narrative style and the nature of the created order it attempts to

describe. The “risk” Plato wishes to distance himself and philosophy from, I suggest, is

that narrative (history or cosmogony) is inherently unstable because of the unstable

genos of its subject, that which is created and passes away. This aspect of Plato’s

critique is based on the tacit notion that philosophy provides a “stable” means of

understanding and representing a “stable” order. Plato’s experimentalism on this point

is evident not only in the way he carries out his critique, but also in the new ideas

suggested and tested in the process of performing this critique.

To drive home these most crucial problems of history and cosmogony, Plato’s

implicit mode of critique uses an anonymous character, rather than irony or tacit

comparison. The Egyptian priest whom Critias cites as the ultimate source of his story

functions, implicitly, as a devastating critique of narrative method and oral tradition,

because he links the limitations of a creation narrative with the nature of the subject

matter described by that narrative. The Athenians, Critias states, had forgotten the

earliest accounts of their own city, including its creation and its greatest achievements.

These accounts were re-discovered, Critias continues, when Solon visited a sect of

priests in Egypt. The poet, “wishing to lead them on to talk about early times”, recounts

the earliest tales known in Athens. An old, unnamed priest replies:

‘Oh Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children, and there’s no such thing as an old Greek.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ inquired Solon.

‘You are all young in mind,’ came the reply: ‘you have no belief rooted in old tradition and no knowledge hoary with age.’ (22)

The validity or “stability” of narrative style is then systematically linked with the

stability of the place where that history is recorded. The priest asserts that Greek culture

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is juvenile compared with the older traditions of Egyptian cults because cycles of

disasters — fires and floods — destroyed each Greek civilisation before it was able to

secure a written record of its history. The Egyptians, he continues, have a more secure

connection with the distant past because their civilisation survived until it developed

writing, and so was able to transcribe its unstable oral accounts into permanent, written

records:

But in our temples we have preserved from earliest times a written record…whereas with you and others, writing and the other necessities of civilisation have only just been developed when the periodic scourge of the deluge descends, and spares none but the unlettered and uncultured, so that you have to begin again like children, in complete ignorance of what happened in our part of the world or in yours in early times. So these genealogies of your own people which you were just recounting are little more than children’s stories. (23)

The contrast between speech and writing described here recalls Plato’s more famous

discussion of writing in the Phaedrus (275), in which Socrates maintains that the

invention of writing creates forgetfulness in learners because they come to rely on

external written characters as reminders rather than on their own memories. In contrast

to the hostility directed at writing in this middle-period dialogue, the later Timaeus

seems to question memory and history based on speech and oral tradition. Instead, Plato

gives writing pre-eminence because it provides a reliable, unchanging record which

transcends the vicissitudes of existence.24 He thus continues to question the efficacy of

Critias’ mode of discourse, on this occasion because it is spoken not written. It is

equally clear at Timaeus 23, I suggest, that Plato tests a contrast between different types

of presence resulting from different “inscriptions” of history, in that Critias’ oral

24 John Sallis argues that the priest’s criticism points to a contrast between the radical exteriority of writing marking a remembrance of something ancient and the “living connections” of memory (Sallis 1999, p.43). This reflects Jacques Derrida’s argument about Socrates’ discussion of writing in the Phaedrus, in which he demystifies Socrates’ valorisation of “living” speech and its association with “presence” over “dead” writing (Derrida 1981, p.78). But by the Timaeus it seems that this hierarchy is unsettled, if not reversed, in that it is the very “exteriority” of writing which makes it the better mode of historiography.

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tradition of Athens is inferior, less present to himself, than both written accounts and

Socrates’ account of the paradigmatic city. By extension, Timaeus’ speech on the

world’s creation is also problematic because it is a more speculative history than

Critias’, reminding us of the continued relevance of the critique of Critias’

historiography once Plato turns to cosmogony.

Although we can draw some distinctions between the Phaedrus and the Timaeus

on the issue of writing, two factors limit the extent to which we can claim they represent

radically contrasting viewpoints. One is that the veneration of writing over oral memory

at Timaeus 23 comes not from Plato’s Socrates, but rather from an anonymous character

within Critias’ speech. Another is that writing is discussed only very briefly in the

Timaeus, whereas it is a major topic considered throughout the Phaedrus. In contrast to

the explicit commentary of the Phaedrus, then, the status of writing as a historiographic

tool is considered but left unclear in the Timaeus. While the Timaeus raises the

possibility that writing offers a better mode of recording the history of the sensible

realm because it counteracts the mutability of its subject matter, it neither commits to

nor rejects this new idea. This ambiguity is one effect of Plato’s experimental method in

the Timaeus; later sections of this chapter will analyse similar patterns of ambiguous

suggestiveness that result from Plato’s experimental method.

The motif of inscription and erasure, which informs the critique of written and oral

histories, is equally pertinent to the assessment of memory in the Timaeus. Again the

explicit discussion of memory by Critias is balanced by Plato’s implicit critique; readers

are left to note this as well as the suggested contrast between narrative and philosophy.

Even as Critias attempts to set up the stability of memory, he cannot but emphasise the

withdrawal of historic events from presence, and also that his own “memory” of ancient

Athens relies on Socrates’ discourse on an unchanging city:

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When you were describing your society and its inhabitants yesterday, I was reminded of this story and noticed with astonishment how closely, by some miraculous chance, your account coincided with Solon’s. I was not willing to say so at once, for after so long a time my memory was imperfect… (25-26)

By “rehearsing” the story in a discourse soon after Socrates’ dialectical “reminder”,

Critias claims that he recalled “pretty well all of it”, and indeed goes on to praise the

faculty of memory: “I should be surprised if any detail of this story I heard so long ago

has escaped me” (26). In a reversal of his original comment on memory, Critias then

states that the original story is “indelibly branded” on his memory, while the previous

day’s discussion, he states, is already faint (hence Socrates’ need to recap it). In

describing his process of remembrance, Critias begins by asserting the imperfection of

memory, but quickly reverses his position and praises the stability of memory, neatly

“forgetting” his previous observation about the tenuousness of the original memory and

its reliance on a dialectical prompt.

It is clear, however, that this overt privileging of personal remembrance over the

products of dialectic and reason is undercut by an implicit valorisation of philosophical

reason over Critias’ memory and oral history. The only reason Critias remembers the

tale at all is Socrates’ dialectical “creation” of a utopian society the previous day, a

creation that is the trigger for his recall and without which the story may have been lost

forever. In implicit contrast to Critias’ memory of the ideal city, Plato represents

Socrates’ dialectical construction as a stable realm that is accessible continually to the

same dialectical process, irrespective of separations of time and space, or of the

contingencies of memory and oral culture.25 Again the question remains: if Critias and

the Athenians can barely remember the creation of their own city, then how can

25 John Sallis describes this “Socratic remembrance” as “a remembrative turn to the εϊδος” (Sallis 1999, p.30).

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Timaeus hope to “remember” an even more “distant” moment of creation, the creation

of the world itself?

Plato’s main point suggested in his critique of historiography and memory is that

narrative reflects the unstable genos of the subject it describes. For the reader who can

look beyond Critias’ confidence in his story to this implicit critique, it is apparent that

because Athens constantly re-begins, oral history is itself a series of re-beginnings

rather than an unbroken linear history. This aspect of the critique of Critias’ history also

sets up the most obvious parallel with Timaeus’ cosmogony, in that both narratives

describe something of the genos of becoming, something which is created and is

perishable. Thus the comment within Critias’ narrative that Athens is subject to constant

disasters not only dramatises the constant re-beginnings of the oral tradition by which

ancient Athens is described, but also provides a microcosmic version of the created

universe, which Timaeus describes as the order that is “coming to be and ceasing to be,

but never fully real” (28). Underpinning all these shortcomings of narrative is the

suggested picture of philosophical dialogue that is “stable” because of the genos of the

subject it describes, the unchanging realm of Forms.

The experimentalism of Plato’s method in the Timaeus is evident, therefore, in

that the irony undermining Critias’ “true history”, the generic parallel between history

and cosmogony, and the inferiority of narrative to philosophy, all remain in the

background to be coaxed out from its explicit level. Why should Plato leave these

criticisms and comparisons implicit, when in his other works he addresses these issues

more or less explicitly? The answer, I suggest, is that Plato’s new methodology in the

Timaeus, prompted by the difficulties posed by the subject of cosmogony, means that

the critique of genre does not necessitate its rejection. By leaving his critique implicit,

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Plato is able to test both the limits and the benefits of a new style in the process of

experimenting with it.

ii. A Creation “Myth”?

Commentators on the Timaeus consistently speculate on its epistemological status: is it

a literal account of the world’s creation, a myth, a metaphor (and if so, a metaphor

representing what?), or something else?26 These discussions point to questions which

arise with many accounts of the cosmogony. Into what mode of knowledge does

cosmogony fit? To what extent can we really know about the world’s creation? Indeed

Plato’s own experimental method in the Timaeus, where a new style is deployed but not

explicitly critiqued, also raises but leaves unanswered queries about the epistemological

status of the creation narrative.27 This section begins by demonstrating the problems of

applying critical models about Platonic myth to the Timaeus cosmogony. The section

then shows that while Platonic categories of knowledge and literary style are applied in

the Timaeus narratives, these categories are troubled or even questioned because of the

nature of the subject. The Timaeus thus demonstrates how the threshold nature of

cosmogony demands a fusion of literary styles, that accounts of the world’s creation

cannot have a single, definite epistemic or literary status.

26 A summary of debates over the Timaeus among Plato’s contemporaries, as well as contemporary scholars, can be found in Finkelberg (1996). See also Zaslavsky (1981), pp.141-49 and the notes pp.172-82. 27 As Benjamin Jowett says of the Timaeus: “We cannot tell (nor could Plato himself have told) where the figure or myth ends and the philosophical truth begins” (Jowett 1953, p.698).

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Let us first consider some of the theories about myth in Plato’s works, for Plato’s use of

myths and other “lesser” literary styles within philosophical dialogue has long been the

source of critical debate and indeed confusion.28 One theory proposes that Plato uses

myth in order to speculate on subjects that he considered beyond (or “beneath”) those

describable by philosophy, which can only consider eternal paradigms. In surveying

occasions where Plato explicitly describes a discourse as a myth, Robert Zaslavsky

finds an intriguing common factor: “what clearly marks off a mythos from a logos is

that a mythos is first and foremost an account of the genesis of a phenomenon”

(Zaslavsky 1981, pp.13-15).29 Included in this list is Timaeus’ description of his own

creation narrative as a “likely myth” (είκότα μΰθον), and Zaslavsky therefore concludes

that: “insofar as Timaeus’ account is genetic, it is a myth” (Zaslavsky 1981, p.146).

As Robert Stewart has pointed out, one of the main problems of Zaslavsky’s

theory is that it refuses to accept anything other than a literal dimension to Plato’s

language (Stewart 1989, p.261). The problem of taking Plato’s labels at face value is

evident, for instance, if we compare his accounts of the afterlife. In the Republic, the

story of Er is described as a myth (621), while in the Gorgias Socrates asserts that while

his account of the afterlife appears to be a myth, it is in fact a true logos (523). My

argument in the previous section of this chapter is also important as evidence against a

literalist approach to Plato’s terminology in the Timaeus. The labels describing the

discourses of the Timaeus, we have seen, cannot be taken at face value. Critias’ claim to

provide a “true history” (άληθές λόγος) rather than a mere myth, in particular, is

28 R.B. Rutherford summarises this problem in stating that the “whole question of muthos versus logos…is one aspect of the great question of Plato’s own art: what kind of writer is he, a philosopher or a poet or both; and what does this imply about his works and their intellectual status?” (Rutherford 1995, p.172). 29 Walter Burkert notes that “[i]t has often been assumed that cosmogonic myth, i.e. tales about the origin of the universe, are the very centre or even the essence of mythology” (Burkert 1999, p.87).

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undercut by Plato’s implicit critique. We should therefore be wary of unconditionally

accepting Timaeus’ label “myth” as a description of his cosmogony.

Both the Republic and the Gorgias pose the problem of myth because they are

dialogues which include myths. An additional problem emerges because they argue for

the superiority of philosophical discourse over sophistry and poetic “fictions” or

“myths”, but nonetheless use myths as a central feature of the argument. The Timaeus,

in its recourse to narrative instead of dialectic, poses a variation on this question.

Without an explicit transition between dialogue and narrative, or an intertextual

incorporation of “myth” into a framing philosophical dialogue, the truth-status of the

Timaeus creation narratives is unclear. The experimental nature of the Timaeus, I

suggest, means that there is no ready-made critical model into which we can fit it.

Critical responses to Plato’s use of myth such as the “illustration” argument are

therefore inapplicable to the unique problem of the Timaeus.

This “illustration” model suggests that Plato sought to use other literary styles in

the service of rational philosophy, rather than abuse their persuasive capacity, which he

thought was exactly the practice of the sophists and poets.30 If we were to interpret the

Timaeus according to this model, Plato’s use of historical narrative and cosmogony in

the Timaeus suggests that its narratives are subordinate to dialectic and philosophy, but

they provide a communicative and illustrative tool for the philosopher, who uses it

whilst noting the limits of such an account. In other words, Plato writes the Timaeus as

30 Robert Stewart categorises this theory as a brand of “aesthetic instrumentalism” where “art, if it is to be considered good, asserts truth arrived at through other methods” (Stewart 1989, pp.263-64). Examples of this theory as an explanation of Plato’s myths can be found, for example, in Penelope Murray’s argument that Plato thought to control the waywardness of other literary discourses through an awareness of their shortcomings (Murray 1992, p.260), and Mary McCabe’s suggestion that Plato may have considered the use of other literary styles permissible where accompanied by “health warnings” confessing the limits of a literary narrative (McCabe 1992, p.50).

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an embodied illustration of the ideal state described in the Republic, and also to

speculate on the creation of the universe according to rational principles. In the course

of these narratives he shows his awareness of their limits, and offers the reader a

warning about those limits, by subtly undermining each discourse, and so in turn

reaffirms the status of philosophy. To be sure, my argument earlier in this chapter that

in the Timaeus Plato carries out an implicit critique of narrative in comparison to

philosophy could be used in support of the “illustration argument” regarding Plato’s

attitude to myth. The creation narratives of the Timaeus, in this reading, illustrate

philosophic principles, but remain inferior examples which also posit the superiority of

philosophy.

Two important factors, however, limit the applicability of this critical view to the

Timaeus. One is the uniqueness of its subject matter: there is no rational equivalent of

cosmogony precisely because it describes the creation of the world as images of the

Forms, and so addresses subjects of both intellection and opinion, of both philosophy

and myth. The uniqueness of Plato’s experiment with the creation narrative, therefore,

fails to fit the “illustration” argument not only because there is no philosophical version

which the myths illustrate, but also because a philosophical version of cosmogony is, in

Plato’s system, impossible.

The other factor is due to Plato’s experimental method in the Timaeus, which has

the effect of disrupting and leaving ambiguous distinctions between myth, knowledge,

philosophy, and truth. While discussions of knowledge in the Timaeus deploy these

categories and terms which are used throughout Plato’s oeuvre, they also trouble these

categories of knowledge because the “threshold” nature of cosmogony means that it

occupies a boundary between different types of knowledge and between different

discursive practices

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For instance, Timaeus’ introduction to his discourse on creation is striking because

it both puts into play Platonic concepts about knowledge and also troubles their absolute

status. At first, Timaeus deploys a distinction between truth and belief which recalls

ideas expressed frequently in Plato’s other works:

a description of what is changeless, fixed and clearly intelligible will be changeless and fixed — will be, that is, as irrefutable and uncontrovertible as a description in words can be; but analogously a description of a likeness of the changeless, being a description of a mere likeness will be merely likely; for being has to becoming the same relation as truth (άληθεια) to belief (πίστιν). (29)

The recapitulation of Plato’s ideas about knowledge here is evident if we compare it

with the discussion of knowledge in the Republic, in which Socrates contrasts the

intelligible order that is “genuine” or “true” (άληθεία) with the physical or visible order,

which is not true (510). Understanding of the “true” intelligible order he describes as

“knowledge”, whether by intellection (νόησιν), reason (διάνοιαν), or dialectic

(διαλέγεσθαι) (511); understanding of the sensory order, by contrast, he describes as

“opinion” (δοξαστόν), achieved by belief (πιστιν), or illusion (είκασίαν) (511).

Timaeus thus incorporates a conventional Platonic model of knowledge and

ontology into his account of cosmogony, and so notes the ontological limitations

imposed on language due to the subject matter it describes: “the words in which

likeness and pattern are described will be of the same order as that which they describe”

(29). A challenge to the absolute status of these categories, however, becomes apparent

when Timaeus goes on to claim that the “likely myth” (είκότα μΰθον) he will provide is

“as likely as any” (29). In other words, it is closer to the truth than any other account,

even though “truth” is so often presented in Plato’s oeuvre as the exclusive domain of

philosophy and the Forms, and not of myth. So while in the Republic Plato maintains a

contrast between the “true” immaterial order and the sensible realm, and pursues an

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analogous contrast between intelligence and mere belief, in the Timaeus the distinction

between these regions becomes less clear cut because Timaeus’ category of likeness

brings in an intermediary between intellectual understanding of truth and mere belief.

This shows that one effect of cosmogony, as a subject which combines the ideal and the

sensible orders, is to demand a “threshold” type of discourse that combines a “mythic”

account of the created world with a “philosophical” discussion of the ideal pattern on

which the world is based.31

In a later discussion of the relationship between the orders of reality, Timaeus’

mobilisation of Platonic categories becomes even more of a challenge to those

categories. In the course of positing the existence of a third order within which the

sensible order is created as images of the Ideas, Timaeus suddenly questions his earlier

assertions that there is an ideal reality which provides the paradigm for the sensible

world:

…are the things we see and perceive by our other senses the only true realities? Is there nothing besides them and are we talking nonsense when we say there are intelligible forms of particular things? Is this merely an empty expression? (51)

While his response to this query affirms the existence of the Ideas, it does so only on the

basis of his earlier distinction between different modes of knowledge: “If intelligence

and true opinion are different in kind, then these ‘things-in-themselves’ certainly exist,

forms imperceptible to our senses, but apprehended by thought” (51). Timaeus’

acceptance of the Ideas is thus dependent on his assumption that there are modes of

knowledge which are different in kind.

31 See the discussion “The Logic of Cosmogony” by Walter Burkert, in which the author surveys a number of different cosmogonies from the Greek, Near East, and Christian traditions, and concludes that “there is logos in cosmogonic myth from the start, so that no simple change or progress ‘from muthos to logos’ is to be observed” (Burkert 1999, p.104).

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These discussions of knowledge and discourse in Timaeus’ narrative suggest that

cosmogony demands a degree of experimentalism that goes beyond the issue of style.

Timaeus’ narrative places under scrutiny assumptions which previously formed an

unquestioned basis of Plato’s philosophy. The accepted distance between belief and

reason, and the very existence of the Forms, are adopted in Timaeus’ account of

creation only provisionally or consciously. Note too that on both these occasions

Timaeus incorporates a third element bridging the gap between binary opposites,

whether a category of likeness bringing myth closer to truth, or a third form relating the

ideal and sensible orders. The scrutiny therefore extends to the paradigm of binary logic

itself, the paradigm so important to Plato’s philosophic method elsewhere.32

Critias’ discourse, as we have seen, attempts to overturn the association of

philosophy with truth. His promise of a “true history” (άληθές λόγος)” (26) which will

embody Socrates “fiction” (μύθος) of a paradigmatic city thus reverses Plato’s

customary association of philosophical discourse with truth and other styles with myth

or fiction. Only by implicit critique does Plato establish the problems with these labels,

but even with this irony, especially because it is implicit, he leaves open the possibility

that philosophy is mere fantasy because it describes a paradigm rather than something

concrete. This “risky” experimentalism has the effect of putting into play a new

orientation of truth and its “location”. Are the Forms and the ideal constitution Socrates

describes mere simulations of the “truth” of things which need to be elucidated by a

“truer” mode of discourse? Not to mention Timaeus’ later questions as to the very

existence of the Forms.

32 As Elizabeth Grosz comments, the “third genos” postulated in the Timaeus “dazzles the logic of non-contradiction, it insinuates itself between the oppositional terms, in the impossible no-man’s land of the excluded middle” (Grosz 1995, p.49).

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This doubt over the truth-status of philosophy and its object, notwithstanding the

irony of Critias’ labels, is underlined by the problematic link drawn between philosophy

and sight in the Timaeus. In his other works, Plato frequently refers to the faculty of

sight in order to describe philosophical knowledge. In the Simile of the Cave in the

Republic, he uses vision as a key metaphor for describing the transition from the

“blindness” of opinion based on the sensible realm to knowledge of realities through the

process of intellection (514-521). In the Timaeus itself he gives sight a literal and direct

role in the development of philosophy, in that vision is presented as the origin of

number, mathematics, and philosophical inquiry (47). Yet it is precisely this association

of philosophy with vision that is also problematic in the Timaeus. Socrates laments his

account of the ideal constitution by comparing it with a scenario where he sees animals

only as motionless forms: “My feelings are rather like those of a man who has seen

some splendid animals, either in a picture or really alive but motionless, and wants to

see them moving and engaging in some of the activities for which they appear to be

formed” (19). Philosophical “vision” is therefore set up as a problematic encounter with

“still frames” rather than with the nature of things as acting beings.33 This underlines the

phenomenon evident in the Timaeus where cosmogony prompts reassessment of literary

and epistemological methodology.

Whereas most of Plato’s works focus on abstract Ideas, the Timaeus focuses on a

new genos: the created world. This new type of subject matter has the effect of blurring

the usually clear-cut distinction between true and mythical discourses. By addressing

both the sensible and the ideal orders in a single narrative, Plato’s cosmogony raises the

33 Thomas Johansen points out that the Aristotelian distinction between actuality and potentiality may have been influential on this point comparing the limited conception of the city or animals “at rest” and understanding of the city “in action” (Johansen 1998).

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possibility that what philosophy describes, the “Idea” of things, is less “truthful” than

another way of knowing them, whether knowledge of their origin (as in Timaeus’

account of the cosmos) or through understanding of their active function (Critias’

account of ancient Athens). The explicitness of these possibilities raised in the Timaeus,

especially Socrates’ comments about the “mythical” nature of his ideal city and the

limited vision supplied by philosophical discourse, prevent the suggestion that Plato is

unaware of these implications of his narrative experiment. My argument instead is that

an aspect of Plato’s method in the Timaeus is to play with new possibilities and to avoid

definitive explicit acceptance or rejection of these ideas. One upshot of this method,

then, is to open up a space for a new concept of discourse and its relationship to truth,

and to place under scrutiny the philosophic method and the concept of the Forms.

iii. A Dialogue between Genres

The ambiguity of philosophy’s truth-status suggested by Plato’s method in the Timaeus

might lead to the conclusion that Plato has abandoned his earlier ideas about

philosophy, or that he is resigned to the inherently “mythic” aspect of all discourse,

including philosophy. Indeed Plato’s implicit critique of narrative in the Timaeus, I

show in this section, brings into focus some basic assumptions and techniques in his

own literary method, because in it we can unpack some necessary similarities between

philosophy and narrative, notwithstanding the suggested contrast between the two

styles. However, this section refutes the critical theory that Plato did not really

distinguish between philosophy and myth, and that his oeuvre is punctuated by clues

suggesting he was resigned to the inherent falseness of all discourse. I respond to these

ideas by building on the suggestion by some critics that Plato carries out a “dialogue”

between discourses and hence between literary genres such as myth and philosophical

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argument. Although this analysis highlights the distance between Plato’s theoretical

model of philosophy and his literary practice, it suggests that Plato’s method in the

Timaeus marks a further experimentalism with dialogue form as well as with ideas

about style and knowledge, for he deploys a “dialogue” between genres, but does not

take a definitive overall position on them. His strategy focuses on testing their

epistemological currency. So while Plato’s discussion of cosmogony leads to a sense of

ambiguity about the relationship between different literary genres and the types of

knowledge they describe, it also enables reassessment of these literary methods.

By highlighting references to the mythic aspect of language in Plato’s works, some

critics question whether philosophy and myth are so easily distinguished in Plato’s

thought, regardless of his explicit valorisation of philosophy over other

epistemologies.34 In demonstrating ways in which Plato’s literary method is similar to

those literary practices he suggests are inferior, moreover, these critics suggest that

Plato did not really differentiate between philosophy and myth.35 However, Plato’s

recognition that all discourse, including dialectic, has a fictional element — a

recognition which may well be evident in the creation narratives of the Timaeus — does

not necessarily oblige the conclusion that he regarded all discursive modes to be

34 Penelope Murray notes that Plato’s Socrates will sometimes liken “his own activity to that of a myth-maker”, and that Plato often calls attention to the “quasi-mythical status of his own text” (Murray 1999, p.258). These tendencies, Murray continues, emphasise the limits of a distinction between muthos and logos, and suggest that “the notion of myth in Plato’s dialogues is far more pervasive” than the idea that myths are separable from dialogue, an idea which is suggested by Plato’s criticisms of the poets and in the implicit critique of historical narrative (Murray 1999, p.258). Christopher Rowe offers a similar conclusion in discussing the link between the philosophical city of the Republic and Critias’ history: “it is not that ‘myth’ will fill the gaps that reason leaves…but that human reason itself ineradicably displays some of the features we characteristically associate with story-telling” (Rowe 1999, pp.265-66). 35 Consider, for example, Penelope Murray’s argument that “Dialectic and myth may be viewed as different modes of explanation, but Plato does not present the one as being superior to the other…muthos and logos exist side by side, and indeed are often indistinguishable, since both are in essence types of discourse” (Murray 1999, p.261).

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equidistant from truth. Mary McCabe’s discussion of the relationship between myth and

argument in Plato offers a different conclusion based on the evidence that philosophical

dialectic is similar to other literary styles. She argues that in addition to dialectical

conversations, Plato’s method in fact constitutes a broader dialectic between philosophy

and myth:

Dialectic, I suggested, provided us with two opposed lines of argument. This dialectical relation holds, I suggest, between the myths and the formal arguments in the dialogues…the combination of myth and argument is itself an argument — of the dialectical sort. (McCabe 1992, pp.61-62)

This argument finds some agreement in the influential work of Andrea Nightingale,

who bases her analysis of intertextuality in Plato on the principle that

If genres are not merely artistic forms but forms of thought, each of which is adapted to representing and conceptualizing some aspects of experience better than others, then an encounter between two genres within a single text is itself a kind of dialogue. (Nightingale 1995, p.3; author’s emphasis)

My argument here builds on these views, in that it reads the Timaeus as a more overt

instance of this phenomenon in Plato’s oeuvre, where the tacit “dialogue” between

styles becomes more focused.

One effect of the discussion of cosmogony in the Timaeus is that Plato’s model of

philosophy is itself critiqued as a literary method. This is because many of the problems

Plato ascribes to narrative as part of his implicit critique are in fact applicable to his

own literary practice. This “rhetorical” aspect of philosophy evident in the Timaeus

counterbalances the theoretical view of philosophy tacit in Plato’s critique of narrative.

Critias’ attempt to authenticate his story by listing the oral tradition by which the

narrative is transmitted, for example, does not just show up the deficiencies of his

narrative mode, but also repeats a practice used in many of Plato’s works. R.B.

Rutherford notes that speakers in other works of Plato, Socrates included, adopt the

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same tendency to present a story “as if passed down through an authentic tradition”

(Rutherford 1995, p.289). Penelope Murray, similarly, observes how in many of Plato’s

dialogues narrators admit they are aware of the distance of their story from the truth,

and thus often tend to attribute the myth to a source other than themselves. This

tendency, she argues, serves to “distance the protagonist (Socrates, Critias, or whoever)

from the story he is telling” (Murray 1999, p.256). She continues: “By distancing

himself from the narrative being reported, Plato can have it both ways: the account can

appear to be utterly realistic, but there is no guarantee of its veracity” (Murray 1999,

p.261). Thus Critias’ attempt to validate his story through reference to the authenticity

of oral tradition is symptomatic of a general process evident throughout Plato’s works

by which a narrator (or writer) “externalises” a story from their performance of that

story by assigning it to an outside source.

The similarities in the argumentative method of Critias, Socrates, and Plato warn

us against conflating Plato’s form with his statements about form, against reading his

representation of philosophy and its superiority over other modes of discourse as an

accurate representation of his actual literary practice. When Plato highlights the

provisional and limited status of a discourse, in other words, he is also engaged in

presenting the superiority of philosophical dialectic and the knowledge it accesses. By

leaving the critique of discourse implicit in the Timaeus instead of making an explicit

and final statement, Plato leaves the relationship between philosophy and narrative

unclear, and so allows the two to remain “in conversation” about their similarities and

differences. The “dialogue” between philosophy and narrative in the Timaeus therefore

comes into focus through one of the aspects of narrative which Plato critiques.

Arguments against Plato’s philosophic method often highlight this process of

“externalisation”. Plato’s Socrates, some note, tends to distance himself from the

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content of a dialogue and have others present arguments from which he “selects” the

most appropriate.36 At a still more obvious level, Plato does not speak in his own

dialogic compositions, but rather has his characters present a variety of positions and

arguments, some appearing “strong”, others “weak”. By composing dialogues with

other characters, Plato thus excludes himself, to a degree, from his philosophic practice,

in a similar way to his Socrates.37 So while Plato might emphasise as part of his

philosophy the principle that dialectic is free from rhetorical methods, as opposed to

other genres which he claims rely on these methods in generating “lesser” forms of

knowledge, his literary practice does not necessarily correlate fully with this idea.

The innovative literary methods of the Timaeus which are prompted by

cosmogony, I suggest, mean that this critique of Plato’s methods is itself implicit in the

“dialogue” between philosophy and narrative. Both Plato’s theoretical model of

philosophy and his literary practice are made plain. Indeed the Timaeus, as an “escape

clause” where philosophy itself is kept secure from narrative, harbours a further level of

externalisation in literary style: Socrates’ withdrawal marks the “distance” of the whole

work from philosophy itself. This distance, it seems, allows readers of the Timaeus, and

perhaps Plato himself, to reflect on the whole concept of externalisation itself. By

focusing on problems of narrative method while leaving this critique implicit, in other

36 In noting this process of “externalisation”, Nietzsche argues that Socrates does not in reality speak by recourse to an objective realm of truth as he claims to do, but rather wins his arguments by employing rhetorical trickeries which he conceals as the arguments or testimony exacted from others (Nietzsche 1968 pp.235-37). As Christopher Norris writes, in summary of Nietzsche’s attack on Plato’s Socrates: “Behind all the big guns of reason and morality is a fundamental will to persuade which craftily disguises its workings by imputing them always to the adversary camp” (Norris 1991, p.61). Indeed there are examples of this sort of argument against Socrates within Plato’s works, such as in the Republic (336c). 37 Thus Christopher Rowe argues that Plato’s anxiety over language, including his own writing practice, is evident by the conspicuousness of his absence: “a sense of the ‘fictionality’ of human utterance, as provisional, inadequate, and at best approximating to the truth, will infect Platonic writing at its deepest level…That is one important reason why Plato, self-effacingly, writes dialogues which — at least on the surface — exclude himself (that is, because he is aware of the provisionality of his own written offspring)” (Rowe 1999, pp.265-66).

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words, Plato highlights some of the assumptions and shortcomings of his own methods.

Plato’s experiment, therefore, performs an element of self-critique; it has the effect of

holding up a mirror to his literary strategies.

One upshot of Plato’s portrayal of cosmogony, in which different discourses and

styles are implicitly juxtaposed, is that the account brings into relief some of the

assumptions and techniques informing his literary practice. The next section considers

the contrast between the two creation narratives of the Timaeus, a contrast which forms

part of Plato’s experimental “dialogue” between discourses.

iv. Innovations in the Timaeus

This section examines some of the new methods and ideas required in Plato’s account

of cosmogony. It first argues that a primary aspect of Plato’s critique of narrative in the

Timaeus is a contrast between its two creation narratives. I will show that in assessing

narrative, Plato focuses on authorial intent more than on its intrinsic nature; the main

reason for Socrates’ criticism of the sophists in Timaeus 19, for example, is their

passing off of fictional discourse as authoritative truth. Further, Plato’s attempt to

incorporate philosophic ideas and methods into the Timaeus underpins the contrast

between its two creation narratives. Critias’ history is set up as the “wrong” way to use

the creation narrative, while Timaeus’ cosmogony might be considered a “philosophic”

use of narrative which enables the cautious exploration of new ideas and methods.

I then argue that Timaeus’ position as a new type of philosopher who applies

philosophic principles to a new subject matter and style requires some further

innovations by Plato — mainly his mobilisation of linguistic insufficiency as an “escape

clause” for philosophy whereby he can posit new ideas and ascribe the problems with

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this account to the nature of language. The Timaeus can therefore be read as more than a

testing ground for new ideas which were not given any serious consideration; rather, it

had some important innovations in literary and philosophic method. Indeed these

innovations enable Plato to speculate on some of the more difficult concepts in his

account of cosmogony, concepts which had a significant impact in the later reception of

the Timaeus.

Most discussions of Critias’ history or Timaeus’ cosmogony tend to overlook two

important and connected issues. One is that Plato is careful to represent the attitude of

Critias and Timaeus to narrative. The other is that the Timaeus narratives are best

understood in comparison with each other.38 By comparing how each narrator discusses

his story, we are able to see that Plato uses the Timaeus creation accounts to represent

different uses of narrative with a view to applying philosophical ideas and methods to

new areas of study such as cosmogony.

Critias, as we have seen, shows a great deal of confidence in the capacity of oral

tradition to describe a “truthful” history of Athens. While he notes that Athens’ creation

is a history which is distant, displaced, “strange”, he claims his story is a “true history”

(άληθές λόγος) (26) by explaining the “stability” of oral tradition and his

historiographic method. This claim, and the reasoning behind it, we noted, is rendered

ironic through Plato’s implicit critique. Given that this irony shows up Critias’ lack of

awareness about the reality of his discourse, especially by highlighting the distance

38 Thomas Johansen’s analysis of the Timaeus (1998) is an exception to this general lack of comparison between Critias and Timaeus. He suggests that because of some of the problems with Critias’ account, and Timaeus’ acknowledgement of the limitations of his own narrative, “Timaeus might be seen as correcting Critias”. Gretchen Reydams-Schils also points out that there is an opposition between Critias and Timaeus based on their truth-claims (Reydams-Schils 2003, p.7).

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between his truth claims and the status of his narrative, Plato’s main point of critique

seems less narrative style itself than Critias’ truth claims for his narrative.

Plato’s focus on the problems of truth claims is especially apparent when we

consider Critias’ self-defeating attempts to posit the authenticity of his account, where

he shows himself unaware of the critique of history internal to his opening comments.

His appeal to the authority of the poet Solon, we have seen, is undercut because

Socrates has explicitly rejected poetic histories a few paragraphs earlier. Irony also

undercuts Critias’ attempt to validate his account by showing that it originates in Egypt

and in the “secure” practice of Egyptian historiography. In this instance, Critias’ agenda

is probably based on the traditional Greek idea that the Egyptians were the most ancient

nation, and so the best source of ancient history (Johansen 1998). Plato reinforces this

traditional link between Egypt and ancient history (a tradition recorded in Herodotus)

by including his own “myth” that the Egyptians were the first to invent writing (a myth

he discusses in more detail in Phaedrus 274), and hence were able to transcend the

variance and cultural memory loss that comes with oral history.

By associating his story with Egypt, Critias stages a contrast between his history

and histories that are almost purely myth, tales which may have an origin in real events

but have lost their connection with those events. But a critique of this claim arises in the

very gesture by which Critias seeks to establish his story’s authenticity. When Solon

talks to the Egyptian priests about Greek stories of the first men, Critias states, one of

the priests rejects these accounts as mere myth by pointing to a Greek legend which

both explains the fractured history of the Greeks and is also a paradigm for their

memory-less stories. The Greek tale of Phaëthon, child of the sun, losing control of his

father’s chariot and burning the earth, the priest argues, is in fact “a mythical version of

the truth” (22). It signifies “in reality” the disasters which regularly destroy the

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Athenian civilisation, disasters which prevent the development of writing and hence

prevent the sort of true history which is no myth (22). The legend therefore explains

why the Greeks are condemned to a culture of legend, not of historic truth, and is an

example of one of these legends which shows the past only through figure.

The implication here is that while Critias imagines he can provide an account

which can filter through the hyperbole customary to Greek historic myth, and so

achieve the authenticity ascribed to Egyptian history, the task is impossible because of

the nature of the subject matter described. Critias’ attempts to posit the validity of his

story by “locating” it in Egyptian historical tradition and in the poet Solon thus have a

counter-productive effect, because these very strategies show up the error of Critias’

claims to provide a truthful history.

Plato thus describes through Critias an erroneous use of narrative by showing up

the error inherent in any claim to superiority as a discourse. The irony in Critias’

arguments about his narrative’s authenticity, indeed, shows how Plato’s critique focuses

on Critias’ truth claims, rather than on the nature of historic narrative per se. It would

therefore be excessive to claim that Plato rejects historic narrative itself, for if it is

inferior, why would he include Critias’ narrative when Socrates has given a much better

version in the Republic? How then should we see the relationship between Critias’ and

Socrates’ discourses? The Republic continues to feature prominently on this point, not

only due to its construction of a paradigmatic ideal city against which Critias’ historical

city is compared, but also because of its comments on history and myth. In Republic

382, Plato contrasts different types of falsehood or “lie”, good and bad, and notes that

history can be beneficial but nonetheless remains a “fiction”: “we don’t know the truth

(αληδει) about the past but we can invent a fiction (ψεύδος) as like it as may be”.

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Stories about the past, in light of Republic 382, are not intrinsically undesirable,

indeed they can be useful as a means of speculation.39 Nonetheless, they remain a

ψεύδος, a fiction, myth, or lie (“ψεύδης” ref. in Berry ed. 1945, p.796), and not a “true

history”, as Critias claims. The nature of Plato’s narrative experiment, as I have argued

in this chapter, suggests that the precise truth-status of Critias’ narrative is deliberately

left unclear. What is clear is that Plato describes through Critias a misunderstanding of

how narrative relates to truth. Critias’ claim to offer a truthful narrative which embodies

the mere “myth” of Socrates’ account of an ideal city therefore shows a misjudgement

of the nature of history and its portrayal in narrative.

The idea that Critias’ narrative represents an improper attitude to myth is

especially apparent if compared with Timaeus’ narrative. Timaeus’ account attempts to

apply philosophic ideas and methods to cosmogony and to the new style needed to

describe it. We should keep in mind that in the introductory conversation Socrates

invites Timaeus to speak because he has “reached the highest eminence in philosophy”,

whereas Critias’ qualities are defined negatively, in that he is simply “no amateur in

these matters” (20). The philosophical nature of Timaeus’ narrative is evident in two

additional ways: his adoption of philosophic categories such as being and becoming,

and his more cautious claims about his narrative.

For instance, when Timaeus begins his account of the “origin of the cosmic

system”, he deploys Platonic categories in his distinction between that which always is,

the realm apprehensible by intelligence through reason, and that which always becomes,

the object of opinion and sensation (27-28). He then uses these categories to identify

39 As Penelope Murray comments: “Plato’s concern is not so much to free the mind from myth, but rather to appropriate myth from the hands of the poets and construct new myths that will serve the interests of philosophy” (Murray 1999, p.257).

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how his language is stipulated by the nature of his subject, in that “a description of a

likeness of the changeless, being a description of a mere likeness will be merely likely”

(29). Timaeus’ acknowledgement of these philosophic principles leads to his warning

that: “You must be satisfied if our account is as likely as any, remembering that both I

and you who are sitting in judgement on it are merely human, and should not look for

anything more than a likely story (είκότα μΰθον) in such matters” (29). An

understanding of philosophy thus forms the basis of Timaeus’ caution about the

narrative he is to provide; Critias, by contrast, lacks an awareness of the higher reality

of the Forms, and as a consequence makes erroneous claims about the truth of his

discourse.40

Timaeus’ construction as a philosopher-narrator is especially clear if we recall

warnings about the provisional or limited nature of a discourse elsewhere in Plato’s

oeuvre. In the Phaedo, both the accounts of the soul’s afterlife and the cosmology are

prefaced by a speaker’s recognition that the argument can only go so far, that to prove

its truth would take too long (108). Prior to the Simile of the Sun in the Republic, when

Glaucon asks Socrates to describe the “form of the good”, Socrates notes that “to reach

what I think would be a satisfactory answer is beyond the range of our present inquiry”

(506). Socrates continues by offering an alternative: “But I will tell you, if you like,

about something which seems to me to be a child of the good, and to resemble it very

closely” (506). When Glaucon accepts, however, Socrates is careful to ensure the

limited, mythic nature of the account is not forgotten: “But take care I don’t

inadvertently cheat you” (507). Timaeus’ use of techniques similar to those used by

Socrates, both the retreat from lengthy explanations needed for difficult subjects, and

40 As Gretchen Reydams-Schils comments, Critias is “dangerously ignorant of the forms” (Reydams-Schils 2003, p.7).

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warnings about his own language, thus emphasises the caution needed in the

philosopher’s experiment with new literary forms, whether a simile, as in the Republic,

a myth, such as the Phaedo, or an experimental creation narrative, as in the Timaeus

cosmogony.

Part of the innovation of Plato’s “philosophic” style of narrative, we have seen, is

his incorporation of philosophical principles and techniques into a new literary style,

through which he experiments with the application of philosophy to a new subject

matter. One noticeable effect of this innovation is that philosophy has no explicit

defence as an epistemology or genre. Critias is able to call Socrates’ ideal city a “myth”,

while Timaeus questions some of the principles of philosophy even as he uses them.

This situation, I suggest, results in two further innovations. In place of an explicit

Socratic defence, we have seen, Plato relies on implicit irony in order to critique Critias’

truth claims. In Timaeus’ narrative, I now show, Plato attempts to balance the queries

raised about philosophy by ascribing many of the failures of the discussion to the

insufficiency of narrative. We are therefore able to see Plato’s innovative deployment of

ineffability as a saving principle or “escape valve” in his discussion, whereby he is able

to explore new subject matter philosophically while keeping his philosophic system

“safe” from the implications of this study. One of the early uses of the ineffability motif,

therefore, has as much to do with reasserting a philosophic system as it has to do with

the nature of language itself.

Plato’s use of ineffability as a means of keeping philosophy “safe” forms a critical

aspect of Timaeus’ portrayal of some of the more difficult issues of cosmogony. When

Timaeus attempts to show that the universe was formed according to rational principles,

for instance, he ascribes any problems in his narrative to the nature of language rather

than to any problems with the idea itself. In his opening comments, Timaeus sets up

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rational design as the primary concept guiding his argument about the cosmos. Because

the universe is sensible, he states, it must have come into being, and so must have had a

creator, the Demiurge or craftsman deity (28).41 Because “the world is the fairest of all

things that have come into being” and the Demiurge is the “best of all causes”, he

continues, it must be modelled on an eternal unchanging pattern, the Ideas (28-29).

Rational design is thus established as the motive behind the world’s creation and also

the means of its construction.

Crucially, Timaeus then continues to the principle of likeness, by means of which

he sets up an “escape valve” for the argument to come. Any failures of the narrative, he

maintains, will be the result of language used to describe the world of change, which

can only be likely at best (29). Plato’s method, therefore, is to mobilise the concept of

linguistic insufficiency in support of his philosophic aims, rather than admit that the

problem of language detracts from his argument. Timaeus’ failure to fully explain

rational order will thus reinforce rather than undermine the idea that the world is a

rational copy of the eternal Forms.

The saving principle supplied by linguistic insufficiency is especially evident in

Timaeus’ description of the Demiurge creating and setting in order the movement of the

heavens. His main idea in this discussion is that the orbit of the spheres is rational

because it reflects the eternal realm. The Demiurge endows the “soul of the world” with

“reason and harmony” to provide a “divine source of unending and rational life for all

time” (36), while the course of the stars is arranged so that the world “should in its

imitation of the eternal nature resemble as closely as possible the perfect intelligible

41 For a discussion of Plato’s idea of a creator deity as a craftsman and an artist, and how this differs from the traditional canon of Greek gods at that time, see Vlastos (2005), pp.26-28.

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Living Creature” (39). Likewise, time is created as a feature of the universe in order to

make the world “a moving image of eternity” (37).

While Timaeus asserts that astronomy offers a means of understanding the world’s

rational design, he also notes that the actual movements of the “lesser gods” (the

planets) do not appear completely rational. They move in a “dance” with “relative

counter-revolutions” and indeed “periodically hide each other from us, disappear and

then reappear, causing fear and anxious conjecture about the future to those not able to

calculate their movement” (40). Timaeus is thus faced with an apparent disjuncture

between his theory asserting perfect rational orbits set in place by a rational deity and

the observed movement of the heavens.42

We can get a sense of Plato’s innovative response to this problem if we first

consider a similar passage in the Republic. In discussing the education of the

philosopher, Socrates mentions a role for astronomy after arithmetic and geometry, but

emphasises that empirical astronomy will not be suitable for his curriculum:

The stars that decorate the sky, though we rightly regard them as the finest and most perfect of visible things, are far inferior, just because they are visible, to the true realities; that is, to the true relative velocities, in pure numbers and perfect figures, of the orbits and what they carry in them, which are perceptible to reason and thought but not visible to the eye. (529)

Socrates thus recommends a mathematical approach for the “true astronomer” or

philosopher:

He will think that the heavens and heavenly bodies have been put together by their maker as well as such things can be; but he will also think it absurd to suppose that there is an always constant and absolutely invariable relation of day to night, or of day and night to month, or

42 In his intriguing discussion of the emergence of the noun cosmos out of the verb kosmeō, “to set in order”, Gregory Vlastos posits that a fundamental feature of any cosmos is the “absolutely unbreachable” regularity of natural laws such as the movement of the stars (Vlastos 2005, p.10). As such, Plato’s reference to the universe as a κόσμος (cosmos) (28, 29, 30, 48 etc) shows he assumes its organisation according to rational, natural laws.

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month to year, or, again, of the periods of the other stars to them and to each other. They are all visible and material, and it’s absurd to look for exact truth in them. (530)

Where in the Republic Plato rejects the concept of rational order in the created world,

his Timaeus is built around this idea. Much of the innovation of his cosmogony arises in

his attempt to demonstrate this theory of rational design, or at least show that it is

possible. In asserting that the planetary orbits comprise “the perfect temporal number

and the perfect year”, for example, Timaeus states that “very few men are aware” of

these periods because the “wandering” orbits are so “bewildering” in number and

intricacy (39). Rational order, in other words, is present in the heavens, but their

movements are so complex that this order is difficult to appreciate. The further

innovation of Plato’s method here is that while he posits that the planets have a rational

— if intricate — orbit, he suggests that this is not demonstrable in language:

It would be useless without a visible model to talk about the figures of the dance of these gods, their juxtapositions and the relative counter-revolutions and advances of their orbits, or to describe their conjunctions or oppositions…so let what we have said be enough and let us conclude our account of the nature of the visible created gods at this point. (40)

Language, because it is a verbal as opposed to a visual medium, cannot “get around” the

observed movements of the planets, and so Timaeus admits one would be much better

served by a visible model such as an armillary sphere than by verbal descriptions when

discussing the movements of the heavens. However, this assertion that language is an

inappropriate medium with which to discuss the planets’ “dance” also leaves open the

space for Timaeus’ argument that it is rational; the claimed insufficiency of language, in

other words, enables rather than undermines Timaeus’ argument for rational order in the

cosmos.

An awareness of the limits of language and the saving principle of ineffability also

provides Plato with greater flexibility to explore new concepts about the universe. In

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introducing the novel concept of a “third form” in addition to the two orders of being

and becoming, Timaeus again adopts a philosophical cautiousness about the capacity of

language to describe it. He thus promises that his account will be merely “more rather

than less likely”, yet his concern over the difficulty of this subject sees him go on to

invoke a “protecting deity to see us safely through a strange and unusual argument to a

likely conclusion” (48). He also proceeds with reflexive caution in using metaphors to

describe this third form: “In general terms, it is the receptacle and, as it were, the nurse

of all becoming and change. But true as this is, it needs a great deal of further

clarification, and that is difficult” (49). Later, he self-consciously uses another image of

procreation to describe the third genos:

For the moment we must make a threefold distinction and think of that which becomes, that in which it becomes, and the model which it resembles. We may indeed use the metaphor of birth and compare the receptacle to the mother, the model to the father, and what they produce between them to their offspring. (50)

Having offered these images in an attempt to describe the nature of the third form,

Timaeus admits that the best he can offer using the limited tools offered by language is

a description which is not false: “we shall not be wrong (ού φεσόμεθα) if we describe it

as invisible and formless” (51). Jacques Derrida summarises the implications of this

negative summary: “Not lying, not saying what is false: is this necessarily telling the

truth?” (Derrida 1995, p.90).

One effect of this speculativeness is that the truth-status of Timaeus’ account, like

Critias’ history before it, is left unclear. This ambiguity, as I have suggested, is the

result of Plato’s experimentalism, where he puts in play new concepts about discourse

and truth in the process of attempting to portray a new subject matter. Indeed the

caution of Timaeus’ claims, which are especially evident in his discussion of the third

genos, results in an expressed ambiguity that leaves his audience unsure whether the

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whole creation narrative is a literal theology or a myth explaining by analogy the

philosophical principle that there is rational order in the cosmos.43

My concern here, and in this chapter as a whole, is not so much to resolve this

debate as to highlight the experimentalism and innovation which results from Plato’s

attempt to portray the world’s creation. The discussions of astronomy and the account

of a third form each show the Timaeus at its most experimental, but they also highlight

the new possibilities enabled by Plato’s mobilisation of ineffability. He is able to posit

the problematic concept of a third form as the receptacle for becoming, but by making

the language describing it explicitly fraught, he can underline the difficulty it presents to

thought. Thus the provisionality of Timaeus’ metaphors and the cautiousness of his

descriptions correlate with his assertion that the third form is accessible only by means

of a “spurious” or “bastard” reasoning, through a sort of “dream” rather than through

intellection (52). Plato’s innovative use of ineffability in his discussion of astronomy,

moreover, enables him to pursue the idea that the heavens, despite the complexity of

their movements, are rational and enact a perfect orbit. Having asserted as part of his

cosmogony the principle that the visible heavens are not just an imperfect image of the

Ideas but rather express that ideal order, Plato then underlines the rational harmony of

the planets by showing that they are more perfect than language can convey.

43 Jowett notes that in his later dialogues Plato tended to personify mind or God, and that the account of creation by a rational Demiurge is consistent with this pattern, but also argues that the truth-status of the Timaeus remains ambiguous in that it is much more theological than Plato’s other philosophical works (Jowett 1953, p.634). The best recent discussion of this debate, with reference to both modern scholarship as well as interpretations of the Timaeus by contemporaries of Plato, is Aryeh Finkelberg’s “Plato’s Method in Timaeus.” American Journal of Philology 117, no. 3 (1996), pp.391-409.

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Conclusion

Two recent discussions have drawn attention to specific aspects of experimentalism in

the Timaeus. Kenneth Sayre argues that Timaeus’ account of the third form as a

Receptacle of the created world marks an attempt by Plato to “connect sensible building

blocks of the universe to eternal paradigms”, but that the multiple problems of this part

of the account leaves it a “failed experiment” (Sayre 2003, p.61). Similarly, Aryeh

Finkelberg’s reading of Plato’s analytic method proposes an alternative to literal or

metaphoric interpretations of Plato’s cosmology. Plato’s method, Finkelberg claims,

particularly his use of geometrical figures (see Timaeus 55-56), is “not merely the way

of instruction but the way of analytical inquiry” (Finkelberg 1996, p.402). This method,

Finkelberg states, “frees Plato from the otherwise inescapable alternative of either

telling the truth or lying: Timaeus is neither truth nor fraud, it is a hypothetical

argument” (Finkelberg 1996, p.404). Based on the arguments of this chapter, I suggest

that the experimentalism identified in these two analyses is pervasive in the Timaeus,

especially in its literary style and its ideas about knowledge.

Indeed, Plato’s comment when introducing the Demiurge that “[t]o discover the

maker and father of this universe is indeed a hard task, and having found him it would

be impossible to tell everyone about him” (28) suggests that the model of an artisan

deity is less the object of his account than a functional ideal enabling speculation on the

cosmos. The intertextual relation between the Timaeus and the Republic, as well as the

tacit comparison between Critias’ and Timaeus’ narratives, also underlines the

speculative nature of Plato’s cosmogony and the functional role of the Demiurge. There

is a clear parallel, I suggest, between the role of the Demiurge in the Timaeus and the

function Socrates ascribes to the ideal city he portrays in the Republic. While Socrates

notes that the ideal society is only “theoretically founded” and so doubts if it will ever

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exist on earth, he nonetheless suggests that “it is laid up as a pattern in heaven, where he

who wishes can see it and found it in his own heart” (592b). Whether myth or not,

likewise, the story of the Demiurge in the Timaeus enables a speculative, “inventive”

discourse which will explore the possible reasons behind the apparently rational

construction of the universe. It represents the philosophical equivalent of a creation

narrative.44

The Timaeus, this chapter has shown, highlights a number of ways in which

experimentalism and innovation are prompted by the attempt to describe cosmogony.

For Plato, the new ideas he attempts to portray in his version of cosmogony require a

radical change in literary technique. Plato’s experimentalism, however, goes far beyond

the transition from philosophy to narrative. The status of truth, the nature of knowledge,

and the relationship between different modes of discourse are all questioned in various

ways throughout the two narratives. Most noticeable is that Plato’s method places his

usual categories of knowledge and discourse under scrutiny. Another primary effect of

the Timaeus is that the assertiveness of argument which we find so often in Plato’s other

works is replaced by a more speculative mode of discourse. Plato puts new ideas and

methods into play, but does not take a definitive position on these, and rather proceeds

by implicit critiques and suggestiveness. As a result, the nature of knowledge described

in the Timaeus is left ambiguous. These phenomena demonstrate how the fusion of

subjects required to describe the world’s creation demands a fusion of different

knowledge and genre types. In turn, the threshold nature of cosmogony leads to

44 The “functional” role served by Plato’s story of the Demiurge is discussed by Gregory Vlastos, who comments that Plato’s “metaphysical fairy tale” enabled speculation on the cosmos throughout antiquity, especially because of the necessary limitations of astronomy at the time (Vlastos 2005, pp.61-65). Similarly, Walter Burkert suggests that cosmogonic “myths” served as “scaffolding” by which phenomena in the universe might be explained (Burkert 1999, p.104).

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questions about the distinctions between these different types of knowledge and

discourse.

Plato’s innovative methods in the Timaeus have some significant implications

when we consider its unique influence on medieval thought. Given that it was one of the

only works of Plato’s directly available in the Middle Ages (through Latin translations

by Calcidius and Cicero), Plato’s new method in the Timaeus enabling these new ideas

meant that a unique set of ideas came to have a major impact on Western thought. The

concept of a third form was to fascinate thinkers of a number of periods, while the

principle that a rational order underlies the “wandering” or “dance” of the heavens

should be considered in tracing the development of scientific, philosophical and indeed

religious thought during the medieval period. To a lesser degree, we can speculate on

the impact Plato’s deployment of both provisional metaphor and ineffability as

productive rather than problematic methods may have had on later uses of similar

methods. Later on, the clichéd effect of the ineffability topos as a convention of rhetoric

came to underline, rather than detract from, the point being asserted. This ironic or,

indeed, paradoxical effect, we can see in the Timaeus, is also evident in earlier, more

subtle uses of ineffability.

A further implication of the experimentalism of the Timaeus is that it highlights

the flexibility of Plato’s model of philosophy at that stage. Assumptions about the

“stability” of philosophical dialectic fail to acknowledge that it was a new methodology

which was being defined in relation to competing discourses and epistemologies.

Andrea Nightingale comments that Plato’s deployment of intertextuality was not only

based on definition by exclusion, but also on occasion by appropriation: “Plato remains

open to the possibility that a genre may in fact make a positive contribution to the

philosopher’s enterprise” (Nightingale 1996, p.12). The portrayal of cosmogony in the

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Timaeus, we have seen, leads Plato to broaden the scope of philosophy, to allow it

greater flexibility to explore new subjects in new ways.

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Chapter 2.

Plato’s Timaeus: Language before the Beginning

The chapter addresses two significant and connected features of the subject of

cosmogony. First, accounts of the world’s creation, by their very nature, seek to portray

the ultimate origins of the cosmos.45 In considering the problem of ineffability in such

accounts, this feature of cosmogony is important because there is a necessary tension

between a theory of origins and the temporality inherent to language as well as the

linearity inherent to narrative. Second, keeping in mind that many cosmogonies also

require a functional account of how the sensible world is formed out of an ideal order,

the nature and function of metaphor — the literary device by which the concrete is

converted into the abstract — takes on a heightened importance.

In the Timaeus, we see these phenomena played out as an integral feature of the

discourse. It is one of the earliest recorded accounts of the world’s creation as a

singularity, as an event at the beginning of time and space. It thus deals in a unique way

with one of the pressing philosophical problems of Plato’s time, that of “the beginning”,

άρχή. The extent to which Western thought is steeped in a model of the universe which

begins as a singularity, where the creation of the cosmos is considered a specific event

in time and space, makes it difficult to appreciate the problem “the beginning”

presented in Plato’s time. Long-held monotheistic assumptions about a God creating the

universe in a singular event have come to sit alongside popular acceptance of the

45 That is, theories of an eternal or uncreated universe are not cosmogonies as such, as they do not address the process of its making. For instance, Heraclitus’ theory of the universe in eternal flux, as Gregory Vlastos comments, is “a cosmology without a cosmogony” (Vlastos 2005 pp.5-6).

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scientific model of a “big-bang”. For Plato, by contrast, the concept of an originating

singularity was by no means an accepted idea, and the problem of ineffability evident in

his discussion of this new concept of origins demonstrates how the concept of origins

begins with, and is not merely reflected by, language.

Plato’s account of cosmogony also attempts to explain a subject which is little

discussed elsewhere in his oeuvre: how the sensible realm is created as images of the

eternal Forms. A radical feature of the Timaeus, in other words, is its attempt to

describe a functional rather than a merely theoretical relationship between the

intelligible and sensible orders.46 As a result, it is often self-conscious in its reliance on

metaphor as a means of describing the nature of the non-sensible orders. The attempt to

portray the intersection between the sensible and intelligible orders in Plato’s

cosmogony, I suggest, reveals the possibility that metaphor is not merely an imperfect

reflector of the non-sensible, but instead its origin. An upshot of the Timaeus, in other

words, is that metaphor is not just a descriptor of the Forms and of the “receptacle” of

becoming, but the basis for conceptualising them.47

By analysing the discussion of origins and the nature and function of metaphor in

the Timaeus, this chapter argues that Plato’s account of cosmogony highlights the

46 As Elizabeth Grosz comments, Plato “invokes a mythological bridge between the intelligible and the sensible, mind and body, which he calls chora” (Grosz 1995, p.47). This idea is explored in depth by Kenneth Sayre (2003). 47 My argument builds on five studies of the Timaeus. Catherine Osborne’s “Space, Time, Shape, and Direction: Creative Discourse in the Timaeus” (1996) explores “an analogy between Timaeus’ act of describing the world in words and the Demiurge’s task of making a world of matter” (Osborne 1996, p.179). Arnold Ehrhardt’s The Beginning (1968) surveys the problem of άρχή in classical philosophy and contextualises Plato’s discussion of άρχή within this history, while John Sallis’ monograph Chorology (1999) analyses the philosophical complexities of the concept of “the beginning” and of khõra in the Timaeus. Jacques Derrida’s Khõra (1995) draws out some of the philosophical implications of Plato’s account of the “receptacle” of becoming, a discussion which is applied to feminist theory by Elizabeth Grosz (1995). My analysis develops on these discussions by focusing on the relationship between these philosophical concepts and Plato’s literary practice. It considers models of language and creativity prompted by the version of cosmogony he presents.

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constitutive as opposed to merely reflective role language plays in knowledge. In other

words, Plato’s cosmogony, which attempts to portray the idea of “the beginning” and

describe the nature of orders beyond the created universe, reveals the crucial function of

language in creating knowledge about orders beyond the everyday.48

In section one I argue that the problem of “the beginning”, as opposed to political

concerns such as the polis or the just soul, underpins the Timaeus. My focus is on the

tension between Plato’s concept of “the beginning” of the cosmos and his literary theory

and practice. By analysing the tension between the multiple narrative “beginnings” of

the Timaeus and the ineffability of the originating singularity it attempts to portray, I

show how the impulse for beginnings which drives Plato’s cosmogony is always

abortive: hence language is found to precede rather than reflect knowledge about the

world’s origins.

In section two I analyse a specific instance of this slippage of origins away from

narrative, where Timaeus attempts to describe eternity and the creation of time. The

constitutive as opposed to merely reflective feature of language becomes apparent in

this discussion in two ways. As with the concept of a primal origin, language is

constantly found to precede and originate the idea of eternity. Moreover, language is

invariably found to connote a temporal element in any account of the non-temporal.

Timaeus, therefore, can only phrase eternity in temporal terms, terms which appear to

form the origin and basis, rather than a reflection, of the concept of an eternity beyond

time.

48 The notion that metaphors create rather than merely reflect knowledge is the subject of Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

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Section three considers the representation of other creative acts in the Timaeus,

including Timaeus’ own discourse on cosmogony. Timaeus posits that his language as

well as other acts of “lesser” creation copy and are stipulated by the primal act of

creation where the world is fashioned through the imposition of order on chaos. This

conflation of subject with form, where language is positioned as though it is structured

by the subject matter it describes, has the effect of concealing its creative or constitutive

feature, and so masks the fact that discourse is the origin, rather than the result, of the

concept of rational design. My analysis both queries this theoretical portrayal of

discourse by showing that it does not equate with Timaeus’ narrative practice, and

highlights the persistent problem of the “errant” cause in Timaeus’ philosophy asserting

rational design, in order to unmask the creative role played by language in Timaeus’

discourse.

Section four shows how these attempts to structure language come unstuck in

Timaeus’ account of the “primary” origins of the universe, khõra. Because it culminates

the search for origins of the Timaeus, I argue, this part of Plato’s cosmogony also

highlights most emphatically how language precedes and so constitutes understanding

of the cosmos, both as a basis for knowledge which suggests that any pre-linguistic

origins is unknowable, and as a sensible medium which is the basis for any concept of

the non-sensible.

The conclusion to the chapter discusses the ways in which the Timaeus raises new

questions about how we regard aspects of Plato’s philosophical system and in particular

the role played by language in that system. Elsewhere in his oeuvre, Plato frequently

emphasises that philosophical knowledge is superior to other modes of knowledge

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because it precedes and is independent of the language which expresses it.49 However,

the problem of origins and the role of metaphor in the Timaeus, I argue in this chapter,

suggest that language has a much more crucial role in the conceptualisation of

knowledge, and is no mere passive reflector which somehow “falls short” of difficult

concepts. Plato’s cosmogony demonstrates, in short, that when it comes to imaginative

concepts such as origins, khõra, the Ideas, and eternity, language and metaphor are

constitutive, rather than merely reflective, of knowledge. The unique nature of

cosmogony thus means that the Timaeus brings into focus a distinction between Plato’s

theoretical assertion that knowledge is independent of language and his reliance on

language and especially metaphor in order to write, indeed to think about, aspects of

metaphysics.

i. Narrative and Origins

The primary focus of the Timaeus, and that which unites its narratives of creation, is

cosmogony and the question of “the beginning”. While this may seem obvious, and

indeed has been the accepted interpretation of the Timaeus until quite recently, some

scholarship of the last twenty years has proposed that alternative issues such as politics,

justice, and the ideal state are in fact the primary focus of the Timaeus. In this section I

propose to return to the long-held view of the Timaeus. In particular, I argue that the

problem of origins, rather than other concepts such as the polis and the just soul, is not

49 An example of Plato’s assertion that philosophical knowledge is independent of language can be found in Republic 533. Glaucon asks Socrates to explain “what sort of power dialectic has”, to which Socrates replies by asserting that it is a philosophical method which can do away with mere images: “‘My dear Glaucon,’ I said, ‘you won’t be able to follow me further, not because of any unwillingness on my part, but because what you’d see would no longer be an image (είχονα) of what we are talking about but the truth (αληζες) itself’” (533a). In principle, dialectic offers knowledge which is fully independent from the mere images of other literary styles.

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only the work’s primary concern but also the cause of many of its literary and structural

problems. The importance of origins in the Timaeus is evident in that Plato’s

cosmogony presents “the beginning” as a singularity where the world is created at a

single moment in time. A pervasive effect of this attempt, I suggest, is a basic tension in

the Timaeus between the forward movement of linear narrative — from beginnings to

present experience — and its regressive impulse — its reaching back to a singular

origin of the universe. Many of the linguistic and structural problems of the Timaeus, I

show, are the result of an abortiveness in this regressive impulse towards defining the

primal beginning of the cosmos.50 This tension between narrative and origins, and the

sheer ineffability of “the beginning”, I suggest further, calls into question the theoretical

idea expressed throughout Plato’s oeuvre that knowledge is independent of language.

The problem of origins in the Timaeus, therefore, does not just point to shortcomings of

language; it also highlights the impossibility of knowledge prior to and independent of

language.51

Both the regressive drive towards primal origins in the Timaeus, and the tensions

between this focus and linear narrative, are evident in the striking problems of its

overall structure.52 Just as Critias is about to give his account of ancient Athens, he

50 For a discussion of the concept of “beginning” in literature and how this relates to the idea of a work’s “origin”, see Edward Said’s Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 51 Some of my arguments in this section, it should be noted, build on John Sallis’ detailed analysis of the concept of “beginning” in the Timaeus (1999). My concern in drawing on these arguments is to discuss the problem of origins as a specifically literary problem and to consider the implications of this literary problem for the relationship between language and knowledge. 52 Commentators on the Timaeus have consistently noted its fragmentary structure and the regressions within its linear narrative. John Sallis notes that, while the Timaeus dialogue “has the form of a story”, nonetheless “it is a story that, by almost any standards, seems badly told; for it is a story in which there are interruptions and regressions, discontinuities and abrupt new beginnings” (Sallis 1999, p.3). For Benjamin Jowett, the work suffers from a certain “want of plan. Plato had not the command of his

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stops in order for Timaeus to describe the creation of the cosmos and of human beings.

Even more dramatic is when Timaeus pauses his story of the Demiurge in order to

describe the primal chaos that existed prior to the shaping act of the Demiurge. Only

after Timaeus has concluded his account does Critias resume his story of Athens at war

with Atlantis. The explicit comments of both narrators suggest that this structural

problem is prompted by a predominant concern for the appropriate beginning from

which to begin the narrative. Timaeus’ account of the creation of the universe and its

components, Critias argues, will provide a necessary context for his account of Athens,

giving it a sort of foundation so that it does not arbitrarily begin somewhere in the

middle of history:

We thought that Timaeus, who knows more about astronomy than the rest of us and who has devoted himself particularly to studying the nature of the universe, should speak first, and starting with the origin of the cosmic system bring the story down to man. I will follow him, assuming that human beings have come into existence as he has described… (27)

The history of Athens is, of itself, inadequate because it comes after a more primary

history, that of the cosmos itself.53 Within Timaeus’ history, moreover, the description

of the creative acts of the Demiurge is itself considered inadequate. Timaeus has to

begin again and describe the state of the universe “prior” to the Demiurge: “In almost

all we have said we have been describing the products of intelligence; but beside reason

we must also set the results of necessity” (47-48). These regressions in the Timaeus

narratives, and the explicit comments by both speakers about the need for origins as

context, thus constitute a recurrent pattern where a narrator admits that the particular

materials which would have enabled him to produce a perfect work of art. Hence there are several new beginnings and resumptions and formal or artificial connexions” (Jowett 1953, p.634). 53 As John Sallis argues, the problem of structure relates to the work’s concern with origins: “Why is it necessary to interpose Timaeus’ discourse on the generation on the cosmos and thus defer the true λόγος on archaic Athens? It is necessary only if one would begin at the beginning” (Sallis 1999, p.45; author’s emphasis).

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history he describes is not primary or original, that the story needs to start again to

incorporate that which precedes it.

Some twentieth-century critics, however, interpret the Timaeus as a discourse only

incidentally concerned with cosmogony, arguing instead that it is primarily concerned

with issues of politics. These critics argue that Timaeus’ account of cosmogony

according to rational design is in fact a mere backdrop to, and macrocosmic justification

for, a primary focus on the concepts of the just soul and the just state.54 Timaeus’

discourse on the creation of the universe is thus reduced to a subordinate “preface” to

Plato’s exploration of justice, as described in Critias’ two narratives on the formation of

Athens which seek to describe rational order in the political microcosm.

To be sure, politics is an important element of the Timaeus, especially in the

introductory conversation.55 Yet a political interpretation of the Timaeus fails to account

for the explicit comments of Critias and Timaeus about the importance of starting from

the proper “beginning,” as well as the inherent importance of cosmogony and origins

evident throughout the Timaeus.56 Moreover, these theories do not account for the

length of Timaeus’ narrative, nor its disjointed structure — why couldn’t Plato have

simply begun with cosmogony and then moved on to the formation of human beings

54 R.W. Hanning argues that “Plato is not proposing a theory of the universe’s origin for its own sake, but in order to purvey an image of a rational macrocosm as an analogy and vindication of his teachings about his philosophical microcosm, the just soul” (Hanning 1984, p.98). R.B. Rutherford offers a similar argument about Plato’s focus on politics, and also points out that the apparent length of Timaeus’ discourse in relation to the rest of the dialogue is somewhat illusory, given that Critias’ second speech is incomplete and the dialogue is missing the third promised narrative by Hermocrates (Rutherford 1995, p.286). 55 The importance of cosmogony, particularly a theory of rational design, to Plato’s concept of ethics and governance does become a focused and explicit theme in book X of the Laws, but in the Timaeus, as I will show, any concern for the exploration of political justice is quickly occluded by metaphysical and literary problems of origins and cosmogony. 56 In Phaedo 98, we should also recall, Socrates asserts the importance of a rational account of why the universe was made. Timaeus’ account appears to respond to this request.

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and the state? Most importantly, this view cannot explain the sudden break within

Timaeus’ narrative which echoes the moment where Critias stops himself in order for

Timaeus to speak. On both these occasions, we have seen, the narrator stops because

something precedes the subject they are describing from the beginning. The disjointed

structure of the Timaeus, therefore, results from a tension between the desire for origins

and the problem of precisely defining what those origins are.

Timaeus’ preface to his “first” narrative describing the actions of the Demiurge

highlights both the intrinsic importance of beginnings in the discourse as well as the

tension between origins and narrative. The multiple “beginnings” to his account

constantly come before, and are in contrast to, the idea he wishes to begin describing:

the beginning of the sensible world as a singular event of creation. At first, formalities

comprise the “proper” beginning of Timaeus’ account. Socrates calls on Timaeus to

“speak next, after the customary invocation to the gods”, and Timaeus duly agrees that

“everyone with the least sense always calls on god at the beginning of any undertaking”

(27). At this point, the vexed problem of origin becomes apparent. Timaeus’ particular

task to describe “the origin of the cosmic system” is phrased as a question of beginning

itself: “as we embark on our account of how the universe began, or perhaps had no

beginning” (27). His first task, therefore, is not only to describe why or how the cosmos

began, but also to consider whether it even “began” at all.

This question about whether the universe began or not indicates that Plato’s

cosmogony confronts an urgent and persistent philosophical concern of his era.57 The

problem of “the beginning” appears in Greek thought about 150 years before Plato

57 My summaries of Greek ideas about “the beginning” are drawn from Arnold Ehrhardt’s The Beginning: A Study in the Greek Philosophical Approach to the Concept of Creation from Anaximander to St John (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1968), which discusses the emergence and development of the philosophical problem of άρχή.

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when the philosopher Thales, perhaps in response to an abundance of mythological

accounts of creation at that time, proposed a naturalist description of the world’s origin

by suggesting that the original state of the world was water, from which all other things

began. His pupil Anaximander claimed that the basic elements of the cosmos came out

of an infinite and indefinite state, an aperion. He is probably the first to use the term

άρχή, “beginning” or “principle”, in this metaphysical context. Later theories about

άρχή include the Pythagorean theory that “the beginning” was pure mathematical reason

and the world merely samples of these perfect proportions, and the atomist concept that

Nous sets in order and motion an aperion of elemental particles. Along with the

Parmenides and the Phaedrus, the Timaeus marks one of Plato’s responses to these

theories and offers another concept of “the beginning”.

The theory of “the beginning” proposed in the Timaeus requires a second

“beginning” to Timaeus’ narrative. As a result, the “customary” opening invoking the

gods is quickly displaced as the “proper beginning” for another starting point which sets

up the physical and metaphysical principles about “the beginning” on which the account

of cosmogony proceeds: “We must in my opinion begin by distinguishing between that

which always is and never becomes from that which is always becoming but never is”

(27). Although this theoretical background is crucial to Timaeus’ account of

cosmogony, we can see here that before he can get to the problem of establishing that

the universe has a singular origin, his narrative “preface” stalls and delays due to the

problem of the right “beginning” with which to begin, of the right starting point from

which a story of cosmic origins can proceed.

After contributing this second hypothetical beginning distinguishing the orders of

reality according to whether they “begin” or not, Timaeus calls for another proper

beginning by considering the universe itself. Here the interplay between the idea of a

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singular cosmic origin and the problem of multiple narrative origins becomes evident in

the varying uses of the term “begin” (άρχή):

As for the world — call it that or cosmos or any other name acceptable to it — we must ask about it the question one is bound to ask to begin (έν άρχή) with about anything: whether it has always existed (αγενές, “uncreated”) and had no beginning (άρχη), or whether it has come into existence (γέγονεν, “created”) and started from some beginning (άρχης). (28)

The shift from theology to philosophy, from the “customary” invocation to the gods to

the “new” principle of rational design based on the concept that the universe had a

cause, creates problems for Timaeus’ assumptions: “To discover the maker and father of

this universe is indeed a hard task, and having found him it would be impossible to tell

everyone about him” (28). Even as he sets up the principle that the world had a singular

beginning, Timaeus continues to question whether the world’s primary cause is

knowable or expressible. Indeed, in his comment that the world’s maker is both hard to

find and difficult to express (28), Timaeus’ word “discover” (εύρεϊν) could also mean

“obtain”, “devise” (“ευρισκω” ref. in Berry ed. 1945, pp.287-88), or indeed “invent”

(Sallis 1999, p.52). The recurrent problem of language preceding the beginning

Timaeus seeks over 27-28 is thus compounded by the possibility that discourse itself is

the mode of discovering or inventing the concept of the world’s primary origin. Yet

Timaeus does not, at this point, offer any solution to this apparent quandary that

threatens to undermine the whole narrative, based as it is on the idea that the universe

has a maker. Instead, he leaves the whole problem unresolved, and returns to the

question of the model on which the universe was based, but now proceeding based on

the assumption, not the demonstrated “truth”, that it was made in the first place.

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In evading this problem of defining the world’s maker, Timaeus stalls his preface

for a third time, and in doing so raises a fourth starting point: the question of language

and its subject.58 As the world is “the fairest of all things that has come into being” and

the maker is “the best of causes”, Timaeus states, it must be the case that the world was

modelled on the eternal realm of being (28). The Demiurge, Timaeus then argues, must

have fashioned the visible universe by gazing on the unchanging order of being, making

the world a likeness (είκόνα) or image of the eternal order (28). This distinction

according to genos, based on a contrast between the world as part of the order of

becoming and the Forms belonging to being, leads Timaeus to another “proper”

beginning concerning the link between language and the nature of the subject it is used

to describe:

Now it is always most important to begin (άρχήν) at the proper place; and therefore we must lay it down that the words in which likeness and pattern are described will be of the same order as that which they describe. (29)59

Timaeus’ “preface” to his account thus poses four different narrative “beginnings”

appropriate to the discussion of the world’s singular beginning: customary invocation to

a deity; philosophical principles; whether the cosmos itself begins or not; and finally,

the language of becoming. Timaeus’ one-word response to the query about whether the

58 John Sallis summarises the mood of stalling which characterises Timaeus’ multiple beginnings: “Even here, even with the enunciation of the injunction about beginning, his discourse still does not properly begin but rather is deferred for the sake of a brief yet crucial discourse on discourse” (Sallis 1999, p.54). 59 Some caution is needed when discussing the important concept of likeness used throughout the Timaeus. The term translated as “likeness”, είκότας, is etymologically linked to our term “icon” (“Icon” ref. 1. in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1989), and refers to “image” more than to “probability”. Timaeus’ use of the term είκότας when discussing both the relationship between the orders of being and becoming and the relationship between his language and its subject, therefore, should not be regarded as a reference to the “probable” nature of the relationship but rather as a description of an ontological relationship between model and copy. As John Sallis comments: “One can say likely discourse, but only provided one understands likely by reference, not to some abstract concept of probability, but to the character of that which the likely discourse is about, its character as a likeness, an image” (Sallis 1999, p.55; author’s emphasis).

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universe is made or not — γέγονεν, “created” — crystallises the contrast between the

theoretical principle of “the beginning” as a singularity and the proliferation of narrative

“beginnings” he deploys in an attempt to get underway describing this concept. This

juncture between content and form, where the idea of an originating singularity

contrasts the multiple beginnings of the narrative describing it, is significant because it

suggests problems of both linguistic insufficiency and of the idea of “the beginning”

itself. These multiple beginnings to the narrative show up the difficulties with

accounting for the idea of origins, in that while a singular beginning is demonstrable in

theory, an account of it in practice in linear narrative proves far more problematic.

These difficulties thus trouble the idea that a primal origin beyond language can be an

object of knowledge. But what is at stake here: linear narratives of creation and

knowledge of origins alone, or language and knowledge more generally?

There are two possible readings of the problem of “beginning” in Timaeus’

opening comments and in his narrative as a whole. In one interpretation, the tension

between narrative and origins can be seen to form part of the implicit critique of

narrative which I discussed in chapter one. The problem of “the beginning” thus

dramatises a contrast between language about things which change, as opposed to

dialectical discussions of eternal things. In this interpretation, narratives of origin are

problematic because of the instability of their subject matter, an instability which makes

the origin of any such subject matter difficult to define.60 Philosophy, by contrast, has

60 The link between Timaeus’ and Critias’ “fragmentary” narratives is also established by this problem of origins because both describe something of a similar genos. The generic connection between Critias’ discourse and Timaeus’ is implied in that the historical Athens which is made, destroyed and remade over time is reflected in and also forms a part of the macrocosm of the realm of becoming. Indeed, Timaeus’ description of becoming as the realm which is constantly “coming to be and ceasing to be, but never fully real” (28) could well describe Critias’ Athens. The genos of both oral narrative and cosmogony is characterised by transience, whereas the relative “stability” of dialectic owes in part to the stability of its genos, eternal being.

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no such problems of structure and of beginning, for it passively reflects a pre-existent,

eternal realm which it must come after.

An alternative reading of the problem of origins in the Timaeus, which I would

like to pursue here, is that the tension between narrative and beginning holds

implications that go beyond narratives of creation alone. The previous chapter

highlighted not only the presence of an implicit contrast between philosophy and

narrative in the Timaeus, but also the limits of this contrast. Indeed it is difficult to

separate Timaeus’ narrative of creation from Platonic philosophy because the problem

of origins comes out of the distinction between the uncreated order of being and the

created order of becoming, Platonic categories which are the foundation for Timaeus’

principle of “the beginning” based on a divine creator. The use of these categories as a

foundation of Timaeus’ narrative suggests that the problem of “the beginning” cannot

be restricted to narratives of creation alone, because in Plato’s ontology “the beginning”

is on the threshold between the sensible and intelligible orders.

The broader significance of the problem of origins in Timaeus’ narrative becomes

especially apparent in his second main “beginning” to his narrative, where the

description of the Demiurge’s act of world-creation is suddenly interrupted for a

description of the disordered chaos (“necessity”) out of which the Demiurge fashioned

the world. In the final section of this chapter we will consider in more detail how

Timaeus’ account of necessity impinges on philosophy because the precise relationship

between the Ideas and the created world, and the nature of metaphor, becomes central to

his argument. For now, it is important to note that this second main “beginning” to the

story of creation crystallises the drive towards origins as well as the problems Timaeus

has with precisely defining primal origins.

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With the “false starts” of both Critias’ first speech and Timaeus’ preliminary

comments apparently out of the way, it seems as though the Timaeus finally finds its

appropriate starting point in Timaeus’ account of why, and then how, the creator deity

fashioned the cosmos. However, Timaeus suddenly halts this narrative line focusing on

the rational ordering of the universe by asserting that an account of the cosmos from its

origins should in fact begin with the primordial chaos which confronted the Demiurge:

Rhythm, again, was given us from the same heavenly source to help us in the same way; for most of us lack measure and grace.

In almost all we have said we have been describing the products of intelligence; but beside reason we must also set the results of necessity…We must therefore retrace our steps, and find another suitable original principle for this part of our story, and begin again from the beginning as we did before. (47-48)

The suddenness of the transition, I suggest, indicates how the impulse for origins

supersedes any concept of structural logic. The discourse, in other words, executes

through linear narrative a regression, a movement toward origins such that “later”

elements of the cosmos appear earlier in the narrative, and “earlier” elements later in the

account, just as cosmogony itself comes after Critias’ initial discussion of Athens.61

The extent to which that Timaeus’ discourse is fractured by a sudden regression

because of his focus on origins, according to some critics, is limited because Timaeus

mentions the operation of necessity within his earlier account of reason.62 However,

discussions of necessity in these instances are predominantly concerned with clarifying

the operation of reason rather than providing some sort of transition. In discussing sight

61 As Nick Davis argues, the transition is a “conscious rupture in the text” because “[w]ith the foundering of a narrative imagination of ‘seeing’, we are placed imaginatively inside and not outside (cf. the armillary sphere…) the cosmos whose processes are being evoked” (Davis 1999, pp.31-32). 62 Both Cornford and Sallis point out that even in his discourse on reason, Timaeus mentions the work of necessity, and thus suggest that he includes a kind of transition between the section on reason and the section on necessity (Cornford 1937, p.179; Sallis 1999, p.90).

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and hearing as the senses that perceive the work of reason in the universe, for example,

Timaeus mentions necessity only so as to contrast it with his primary focus on reason

itself: “We must deal with causes of both sorts, keeping those that operate intelligently

and produce results that are good separate from those that operate without reason and

produce effects which are casual and random” (46). So while necessity is present in

Timaeus’ discourse on reason, it is only considered incidentally, and thus the transition

from reason to necessity suggests that Timaeus, in beginning again, has reached a

narrative dead-end which forces him into a fresh start.

The suddenness of Timaeus’ re-beginning is reinforced by echoes between the

formal elements opening the first section on reason and the opening paragraphs on

necessity:

It is not for us to describe the original principle or principles (call them what you will) of the universe, for the simple reason that it would be difficult to explain our views in the context of this discussion…I shall stick to the principle of likelihood which I laid down at the start, and try to give an account of everything in detail from the beginning that will be more rather than less likely. So let us begin again, calling as we do on some protecting deity to see us safely through a strange and unusual argument to a likely conclusion. (48)

The recurrence of these formal, introductory elements — invocation of a deity, the

principle of likelihood, recognition of limits — emphasises that Timaeus here starts

again, that he seeks to re-begin his account of the cosmos from its origin. As in Timaeus

28, furthermore, the term “begin” (άρχή) is prevalent in this passage, being used to refer

to the act of beginning, to the beginning of narrative, and to the beginning or “original

principle” of the cosmos.63 The subject of beginning is once more confused with

63 As Cornford points out, the reiteration of άρχή (“beginning”, “principle”) throughout Timaeus 48 suggests that “The discourse needs a fresh starting-point” (Cornford 1937, p.161). Having commented on a sense of transition between a discourse on reason and one on necessity, Sallis argues nonetheless that despite the anticipation of necessity within the discourse on reason, the transition is still essentially an “interruption” (Sallis 1999, p.90).

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narrative beginning, and so language interrupts rather than reflects the idea of a primal

beginning. The regression in the Timaeus from a discussion of Athens to a discussion of

the universe, and the subsequent regression from the discussion of reason to the

discussion of necessity, underlines the crucial tension between the forward movement

of linear narrative and the impulse to describe the origins of the universe. Both of

Timaeus’ “prefaces”, moreover, confound the idea of a primal beginning with multiple

narrative “beginnings”. These phenomena trouble the idea that knowledge is

independent of language, because knowledge of the world’s beginning constantly

proves elusive and slips away from narrative, while a variety of narrative beginnings

present themselves. “The beginning”, in short, is an effect of language, rather than

something represented by it.

The problem of origins and its difficult relationship to language and narrative, this

section has shown, is evident in both the problematic structure of the Timaeus and the

attempts to begin from “the beginning”. Critias’ ancient history cannot come first

because his subject is preceded by the creation of human beings and the cosmos, while

Timaeus’ first history recording these acts of creation overlooks a more primal history,

the matter from which things are made. Yet the problem of origins appears to extend

beyond linear narratives of creation, because Timaeus’ version of “the beginning” is

based on Platonic metaphysical categories. The upshot of these problems is not just the

ineffability of “the beginning”, but also the possibility that language will always

precede knowledge, that there is no knowledge outside language. Cosmogony brings

this possibility into focus because it requires a theory of “the beginning” in relation to

the eternal Forms. In the next section, we will explore the specific problem of time and

eternity. This analysis will show more concrete ways in which language is found to

originate, rather than merely reflect, knowledge of the creation.

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ii. Eternity and the Creation of Time

If the cosmos was created at a singular moment at “the beginning” of time, then it

follows that the Forms and the Demiurge, which exist outside the created world, exist

outside of time, in eternity. Timaeus deals with this fundamental contrast between the

created and uncreated directly by presenting time as a further means by which the

cosmos is made by the Demiurge as a likeness of the Forms (37-38). This section

analyses the problems Timaeus finds in trying to demonstrate the principle that time is a

rational construct that is an image of eternity. Timaeus’ difficulty in representing

eternity in narrative follows on from the general problem of narrative and origins

discussed in the previous section, for eternity, like the concept of origins in general, is

found to be beyond language. His problems with describing time and eternity also

highlight one of the critical tensions between his theory asserting rational design in the

cosmos and his difficulty proving this principle in language. Finally, this section argues

that language’s constitutive role is evident in Timaeus’ account of time not only because

the account highlights the ineffability of an eternity beyond time, but also because, as

Timaeus himself notes, language inexorably connotes temporal value in any attempt to

describe the idea of the non-temporal. The temporality inherent in language and

grammar, therefore, is more the basis of any concept of the eternal nature of the Ideas

than an imperfect reflection of eternity.

The problem of representing time and eternity in narrative, Timaeus finds, is not just a

problem of linguistic insufficiency, of language falling short of its subject matter. The

temporality of linear narrative, and of language in general, Timaeus admits, stipulates

the way time and eternity can be described. One difficulty Timaeus finds with his

account of an eternal Demiurge whose work takes place out of time is due to the simple

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fact that linear narrative orders events. The problem of linear ordering becomes evident

where Timaeus discusses first, how the Demiurge made the physical body of the

universe, and second, how the Demiurge integrated the soul of the world into its body:

This was the plan of the eternal god when he gave to the god about to come into existence a smooth and unbroken surface, equidistant in every direction from the centre, and made it a physical body whole and complete, whose components were also complete physical bodies. And he put soul in the centre and diffused it through the whole and enclosed the body in it. (34)

By the next paragraph, Timaeus confronts the problems of this picture, articulating a

contrast between his narrative “creation” and the primary act of creation he purports to

imitate:

God did not of course contrive the soul later than the body, as it has appeared in the narrative we are giving; for when he put them together he would never have allowed the older to be controlled by the younger. Our narrative is bound to reflect much of our own contingent and accidental state. But god created the soul before the body and gave it precedence both in time and value, and made it the dominating and controlling partner. (34)

In one sense, it would seem possible that Timaeus could simply reorder his narrative so

as to establish that the soul existed prior to the fashioning of the world. Thus it repeats

in a specific instance the problem noted in the previous section about the Timaeus as a

whole, its many re-beginnings due to “false starts”.64 Yet Timaeus notes that the

problem is more complex than one of sequence, in that his language, both because of its

linearity and its rhetoric suggesting age and precedence, carries temporal connotations

which suggest that one exists “before” the other in time alone, rather than convey a

sense of precedence as value.65 He attempts to modify this “priority” by defining it as an

64 For a more detailed reflection on Timaeus’ problematic discourse on the body and soul of the cosmos, see the discussion by John Sallis (1999), pp.63-65. 65 This problem of “non-temporal priority” enters (via Neoplatonism) Augustine’s Confessions XII.40, and is examined in chapter four section three of this thesis.

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issue of “value”, yet admits that he cannot undo his comments, with their implication

that language unavoidably connotes a temporal, linear aspect in his version of creation.

So it is not just that narrative fails to describe one aspect of the cosmos due to its

linearity or its temporality. Language is also found to inherently embody its temporality

in any discourse, to add a linear element even where that linear element is problematic

to the discussion. The failure of language in this instance manifests a major tension

between Timaeus’ theory asserting non-temporal “priority” where the creation takes

place out of time, and his narrative practice which cannot but describe cosmogony

according to a temporal paradigm.

The tension between the idea of eternity and Timaeus’ narrative practice becomes

more problematic in his argument that time is a “moving image of eternity” (37). One

means by which the Demiurge constructs the cosmos as a likeness of the eternal

essence, Timaeus asserts, is to create time through the ordered movement of the heavens

as an image of the eternity of the Forms: “when he ordered the heavens he made in that

which we call time (χρόνον) an eternal moving image of the eternity which remains for

ever at one” (37).66 This principle is analogous to and forms a part of the general

argument expressed at the start of Timaeus’ discourse that the created universe is an

image or likeness of being, and it also instigates his argument that reason can be

perceived in the created world:

it is perfectly possible to perceive that the perfect temporal number and the perfect year are complete when all eight orbits have reached their total of revolutions relative to each other, measured by the regularly moving orbit of the Same. (39)67

66 This passage describing time as an image of eternity has long been accepted as representative of Plato’s concept of time in general. But the precise meaning of this passage has recently been debated, and in turn critics question whether it represents Plato’s attitude. For a summary of this problem with a discussion of the scholarship, see Sallis (1999), pp.78-84. 67 Timaeus explains this aspect of time in more detail in his discussion of sight: “the sight of day and night, the months and returning years, the equinoxes and solstices, has caused the invention of number,

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Both the argument that time is a likeness of eternity, and the principle that this likeness

can be experienced through observation of the movement of the heavens, are significant

because they set up the importance of time to Timaeus’ main argument that the cosmos

is the product of rational design. Equally, these arguments about the rationality of time

signal that failures in the account of time will prove highly problematic to Timaeus’

entire argument. The tension between these principles and Timaeus’ practice has

already been suggested by his difficulty in describing the idea of non-temporal priority

(34). In arguing that time is an image of eternity, moreover, Timaeus comes across

similar problems in his attempt to describe the eternal nature of the Forms. The

terminology for time, and the concepts behind the terms, Timaeus notes, cannot be used

in discussing the Forms or “Eternal Being”, words which he states should be reserved

for descriptions of change in time, for the realm of becoming. However, it is not just

that the terminology for time cannot be applied to eternal things such as the Forms or

the Eternal Being. Temporality, Timaeus finds, inheres in grammar and tense, and so

language invariably conflicts with the nature of the eternal Forms. Thus language serves

only to differ by assigning the medium in which imitation occurs to the nature of the

original:

For before the heavens came into being there were no days or nights or months or years, but he devised and brought them into being at the same time that the heavens were put together; for they are all parts of time, just as past and future are also forms of it, which we wrongly attribute, without thinking, to the Eternal Being. For we say of it that it was and shall be, but on a true reckoning we should only say is, reserving was and shall be for the process of change in time…nor in general can any of the attributes which becoming attached to sensible and changing things belong to it, for they are all forms of time which in its measurable cycles imitates eternity. Besides, we use such expressions as what is past is past, what is present is present, what is future is future, what is not is not, none of which is strictly accurate… (37-38)

given us the notion of time, and made us inquire into the nature of the universe…This is what I call the greatest good our eyes give us” (47).

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Even in qualifying his terminology, Timaeus recognises the difficulty with language,

that it is inescapably tied to the temporal and the sensible, and thus he seeks to sidestep

the whole problem, as he often does, by recourse to a principle of decorum, arguing that

the question is too vexed to answer briefly as the day’s setting supposedly requires:

“this is perhaps not a suitable occasion to go into the question in detail” (38).

The problematic attribution of chronology to eternity due to language is evident

throughout this passage on the Eternal Being. Timaeus links the failure of language to

an erroneous mode of thinking: he illustrates the problematic attribution of time to the

Eternal Being by noting that grammar and tense ascribe temporal features to it. The

implication here is that understanding of eternity might be possible but for the temporal

mode of thinking prompted by language. Language’s constitutive role in knowledge is

thus manifest by the link between the ineffability of eternity and the impossibility of

conceptualising it. In other words, eternity is strictly unthinkable because there is no

appropriate language with which to conceive — to understand and to represent — the

non-temporal.

Timaeus’ attempt to represent time and eternity thus crystallises the problem of

narrative and origins discussed in the previous section because he discovers that

language, as a temporal medium, cannot fully represent something beyond the temporal.

The discourse on time and eternity in the Timaeus also suggests that language has a

constitutive and primary function because it inevitably adds a temporal element to

accounts of the non-temporal. If Timaeus cannot show how time, an aspect of creation,

imitates the eternal essence, then the basic argument that the cosmos reflects the Forms

also becomes problematic. To the extent that he admits the inherent temporality in

language, Timaeus tacitly acknowledges that language also fails to convey the

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distinction between being and becoming, the very binary upon which the narrative is

based.

Indeed the problems of Timaeus’ account of time and eternity go beyond the

possibility that the universe is not rationally motivated, that it does not resemble the

Forms. Plato’s concept of the eternal Ideas is based on a polarity between being and

becoming, hence the Forms need to be reflected in sensible images. By showing the

inherent addition of temporal features to his account of eternity, Timaeus’ discourse

raises the possibility that the sensible comes before, and is the basis of, any concept of

the non-sensible, just as language itself might form the basis of any origin, not just its

reflection. In turn, this raises questions about how we consider the relationship between

the sensible and intelligible orders in Plato’s epistemology. Might the sensible order be

the primary basis by which the Forms are imagined, and not their secondary reflection?

We will consider this possibility further in the conclusion to this chapter. Before we

discuss this idea, we will in the next section consider a phenomenon in the Timaeus

which has the effect of masking, in part, this primary function of language.

iii. Structuring Language: “Persuasion” and the Hierarchy of Creation

One recurrent effect of the subject of cosmogony is that it prompts authorial

consciousness about how other acts of creativity relate to the primary act of world-

making, including the language by which cosmogony is described. In both the Timaeus

and the Confessions, this phenomenon is evident not only in authorial reflection on

language but also in descriptions of a hierarchy of creation structured by the original act

of creation. This section analyses how Timaeus’ account of the Demiurge affects his

representation of other acts of creation, including his own language. Timaeus’

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discussion of these acts as “imitations” structured by the primary act of world-creation

has the effect of masking, in part, the constitutive role of language and thus his agency

as a narrator in “creating” the story of the Demiurge. Yet this suggestion that form is

stipulated by content tacit in the concept of a hierarchy of creation, I show, does not

square with Timaeus’ narrative practice. Moreover, the “limits” of rational design and

the persistent problem of the “wandering” cause in Timaeus’ argument indicates that

even according to Timaeus’ own system, language and other creative acts must be more

than merely imitative. By showing that the principle of rational design is problematic, in

other words, the section highlights the limitations of this hierarchy of creation, and

hence defuses Timaeus’ theoretical model of language as a merely reflective and

imitative medium.

Timaeus’ representation of the principle of likeness as a feature of both the world’s

creation and of his own narrative marks a conscious positioning of his language in

relation to the primary act of world-making it describes. Having established that the

divine maker looked at the eternal realm in fashioning the universe, making it a likeness

(είκότας) of being, Timaeus posits that his own narrative will be a “likely story” (είκότα

μΰθον) fashioned by gazing on the realm of becoming (29). This concept of likeness in

the Timaeus, as I have discussed in section one of this chapter, does not correspond to

notions of the discourse being close to truth or “probable”. Rather, his term είκότας

presents the discourse as an “image” just as the order of becoming itself is made as

images of the Forms (see footnote 58). The imitative or reflective character of Timaeus’

model of his language is evident here in that the mode of construction of his story is

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portrayed as though it resembles the world-making process it describes.68 Timaeus’

representation of likeness as a pre-existent feature of the cosmos thus has the effect of

concealing the simple fact that he is creating the story of the world’s creation in

narrative, and that the concept of likeness is part of that narrative creation.

Timaeus’ description of his promised discourse on cosmogony as a representation

and imitation of the process by which the cosmos was made is an overt conflation of

form with content, where language is set up as though it is structured by the subject it

describes. This phenomenon is repeated later in Timaeus’ account when he argues that

lesser acts of creation are structured by the primary act of the Demiurge. The concept of

imitation which he sets up as rationale for his language is thus confirmed by the content

of his account. When Timaeus describes the creation of human beings, for example, the

idea that lesser acts of creation including his own language are stipulated by rational

design is suggested in two ways. First, he posits that “lesser” acts of creation resemble

the primary actions of the Demiurge in his assertion that the creation of living beings by

the lesser gods is in imitation of the primary act of world-creation. Second, he masks his

agency as a narrator because he shifts from a third person discussion of the Demiurge to

a first person imitation of the Demiurge, thus suggesting that his language is structured,

indeed “ordered”, by its content:

Anyhow, when all the gods were born, both those whose circuits we see in the sky and those who only appear to us when they wish, the Father of the universe addressed them as follows: ‘Ye Gods, those gods whose maker I am and those works whose father I am, being created by me…turn your hands, as is natural to you, to the making of living things, taking as your model my own activity in creating you…’ (41)

68 Catherine Osborne’s “Space, Time, Shape, and Direction: Creative Discourse in the Timaeus” In Form and Argument in Late Plato, edited by Christopher Gill and Mary Margaret McCabe, 179-211 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) explores analogies between Timaeus’ description of the cosmos and the Demiurge’s construction of the world.

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Timaeus’ account of “lesser” processes of creation such as the making of living beings

thus sets up the doctrine of imitation as an aspect of the creation of the world. Lesser

creative acts such as the imitative processes of the lesser gods and also his own “likely”

story, therefore, are presented as reflections stipulated by the primary act of creation.

The effect of this is that the promise to conduct a likely discourse is subtly ratified

within the creation myth described by that discourse.69 Timaeus’ account of the creation

of the world, in other words, appears to support the way it is described, in that the

model of language he claims to use is confirmed later in the story that language

provides. By adopting the voice of the Demiurge, furthermore, Timaeus suggests that

his language is “ordered” by its primary object, and so downplays his “creation” of the

Demiurge.70 The effect of these two methods is that Timaeus downplays his agency as a

narrative “creator”; language is seen to imitate and reflect, rather than create, the story

of cosmogony.

Timaeus’ narrative practice, of course, does not equal his representation of his

language, nor is it necessarily stipulated by the content it describes, including notions of

creative imitation tacit in that content. The principle that language is structured by its

content is thus open to a critique highlighting the differences between Timaeus’

69 The analysis of Augustine’s Confessions in chapter four section four of this thesis highlights a similar phenomenon, whereby the exegetical process is discussed as though stipulated by its content. 70 Plato’s critique of poetic performance in the Republic has some relevance to Timaeus’ method where he speaks about and then as the Demiurge. In Republic X, Plato rejects poets who perform in first person the speech of each of his characters (mimēsis), and favours instead the use of controlled narration in the third person (narrating, diēgēsis), on the basis that it is dangerous for those with clearly defined roles in a society to copy the character of others (Republic 393-398). However, Timaeus’ use of mimesis does not imitate another human personality but rather a creator god, which would seem a more appropriate model for imitation. Thomas Johansen points out that while Socrates criticises mimetic poetry in the Republic and again briefly in the opening of the Timaeus, the narratives of the Timaeus appear to open the possibility of a new kind of imitation of the ideal state, one which is both word and deed, which is based on philosophical insight, and which is carried out under the scrutiny of philosophers (Johansen 1998). For a discussion of Plato’s critique of mimesis, see John Gould’s “Plato and Performance”, in The Language of the Cave, edited by Andrew Barker and Martin Warner (Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1993), pp.13-26.

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doctrine of a “likely” discourse and the way his language actually works. For one, the

idea of an ordered hierarchy of creation which structures language, as we shall see

presently, proves to be problematic throughout Timaeus’ account.

The idea that language is limited within and structured by more fundamental acts

of creation it describes is often portrayed in the Timaeus by the principle of

“persuasion” (πειθούς). Inherent in the concept is Timaeus’ philosophical and

theological preference for order over disorder, preference which is evident in his

comment that the universe is good because and to the extent that it is ordered according

to an ideal pattern (30). The following analysis highlights some limitations of Timaeus’

doctrine of persuasion, in light of which I argue that the preference for order and the

principle of a hierarchy emanating from the primary act of the Demiurge are rendered

problematic. Because he is unable to totalise the work of persuasion and show order is

an absolute category, Timaeus’ discourse admits the agency of so-called “lesser” acts of

creation precisely because these acts of creation, in his system, are not fully controlled

by an ordering, rational principle.

The limits of Timaeus’ doctrine of reason ordering the cosmos are apparent even

where he describes the primary imposition of rational order by the Demiurge on the

“chaos” of the uncreated world:

God therefore, wishing that all things should be good, and so far as possible nothing be imperfect, and finding the visible universe in a state not of rest but of inharmonious and disorderly motion, reduced it to order from disorder, as he judged that order was in every way better. (30)

The notion that the Demiurge can only carry out his plan to impose rational order on

chaos “as far as possible” suggests the limits of rational order in the universe. Timaeus’

later discussion of the relationship between the two principal aspects of the cosmos,

rational intelligence (νους) and chaotic necessity (αναγκη), reiterates the implication

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that rational order over the cosmos is limited. Intelligence and necessity, Timaeus notes,

do not exist in a precise, ideal relationship of controller and controlled:

Intelligence controlled necessity by persuading it for the most part to bring about the best result, and it was by this subordination of necessity to reasonable persuasion (πειθούς) that the universe was originally constituted as it is. So that to give a true account of how it came to be on these principles, one must bring in the indeterminate cause so far as its nature permits. (48)71

The limits of rational order, and the related constancy of necessity or chaos, are doubly

present here, relating both to cosmogony and to language. Even as Timaeus restates the

hierarchy where reason orders chaos and structures lesser acts of creation, for one, he

notes that parts of the cosmos evade the dictates of reason. If the universe includes

elements which evade rational order, then it is possible that language itself, equally, will

not fully conform to rational structure. In asserting that he needs to account for

necessity as a second aspect of the cosmos, furthermore, Timaeus notes that the aspect

of the cosmos which evades rational design will also evade his language, and thus it can

be incorporated into his “likely” rational discourse only “so far as its nature permits”.

Indeed further problems with Timaeus’ assertion that his language imitates

rational control are evident in his opening comments that his language is “likely”, in

that he recognises that the indeterminate or “errant” cause, an aspect of the sensible

cosmos, forms part of his language: “Don’t therefore be surprised, Socrates, if on many

matters concerning the gods and the whole world of change we are unable in every

respect and on every occasion to render consistent and accurate account” (29). The

implication here is that because language is not fully controlled by broader creative

71 The “indeterminate” or “errant” form of cause (πλανωμένης είδος αιτίας) Timaeus refers to here means literally “wandering” (Lee 1977, p.66 note 1), and so points to a contrast between a predictable hence knowable regular course, and the unpredictable course which evades understanding. In discussing astronomy, Timaeus uses “wandering” (πλάναι) in a more literal sense to describe the intricacies of the planetary orbits (39).

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structures, then it must have an element which evades rational order: a creative element

where the agency of the narrator is key.

Timaeus’ argument that the world’s creation is based on rational design relies not

only on philosophical principles, but also on the possibility of empirical proof that

reason in the cosmos can be experienced as well as described. In making this point, the

“indeterminate cause” becomes especially problematic for Timaeus because the tension

between his theoretical emphasis on rational order and his description of this idea in

practice affects his principle that human actions, including language, provide a means of

perceiving and imitating divinely structured reason in the cosmos. In turn, Timaeus’

conflation of form and content in order to suggest that his language is stipulated by

rational order in the cosmos and by the primary act of divine creation is again troubled.

In seeking to show the validity and workability of his cosmogony, based as it is on

rational design, Timaeus argues that the faculties of vision and speech were designed in

order to facilitate the understanding and imitation of rational order in the cosmos. In

doing so, he deploys an analogy between the soul and the cosmos because both, he

claims, were created as a persuasion of chaos into order, as a combination of reason and

unreason. Specifically, human souls resemble the tension between order and chaos

which is part of the cosmos because they are made from leftovers of the primal material

out of which the Demiurge made the soul of the cosmos (41). Furthermore, just as the

Demiurge reduces the disorder of the universe to a maximum of order, Timaeus argues,

so the Demiurge also structures the human soul such that a person’s moral development

does not come about until they allow “the motion of the Same and uniform in himself to

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subdue all that multitude of riotous and irrational feelings” (42).72 Thus the problem of

the “errant cause”, which was an issue of cosmogony, becomes a moral and spiritual

concern of the individual too. Like the cosmos, the individual is faced with an inner

struggle between divine reason and sensible irrationality, and hence is always at risk of

“limping through life” if devoid of reason and devoted to sensation (44).

The split between Timaeus’ theory of rational design and his narrative practice,

which recurs throughout his account of cosmogony, affects his attempt to resolve this

problem where irrational chaos is an intrinsic part of the soul. His main claim is that

human senses and faculties were designed so that human beings can perceive and copy

rational order in the cosmos, and by doing so tame the chaos of the soul to facilitate

moral progression from unreason to the ordered good.73 Thus he argues that “the cause

and purpose of god’s invention and gift to us of sight was that we should see the

revolutions of intelligence in the heavens and use their untroubled course to guide the

troubled revolutions in our own understanding” (47). The problem here is that Timaeus

has tried and failed to explain how the heavens’ movements are “untroubled”, in that the

“wandering cause” of some planets makes rational order difficult to perceive (39). This

problem affects not only the moral theology Timaeus aligns to his story of creation, but

also his cosmogony itself, in that he relies on experience as well as argument as a proof

of rational design.

72 The analogy between the soul and the cosmos recurs more explicitly in Augustine’s Confessions because, I argue, it is pivotal to the work as a whole. I argue this point in chapter three. 73 John Sallis points out that this emphasis on the “rational” senses as a means of moral progression marks a further “imitation” of the Demiurge: “In such mimesis one would also be imitating the artisan god: just as he looks to the noetic paradigm so as to produce the cosmos as an image of it, imaging it pre-eminently by the orderly movement of the starry heavens, so through the vision of that orderly movement above one would produce an image of it in one’s soul” (Sallis 1999, p.89).

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Ultimately, this split between theory and practice becomes an issue of language,

because while Timaeus joins the faculty of speech to sight and hearing as one of the

means of experiencing and replicating rational order, he is unable to suggest how

language might conform to rational patterns. The gods, he argues, furnished the

faculties of hearing and speech for “the same end and purpose” as sight, so that humans

can perceive and replicate rational order in the created universe (47).74 Yet while

Timaeus asserts that language has the same function as sight and hearing as a measure

of order in the cosmos, that speech “was directed to just this end (as sight) to which it

makes an outstanding contribution” (47), he has no explanation for exactly how

language and speech might do this. Music’s aid to the development of reason, by

contrast, is given a detailed explanation, in that it was “given us for the sake of

harmony, which has motions akin to the orbits in our soul”, and so functions as a

“heaven-sent ally in reducing to order and harmony any disharmony in the revolutions

within us” (47).

So while Timaeus explicitly notes on other occasions that there are distinct

problems with the relationship between his language and the work of reason in the

cosmos, his assertion on this occasion that speech serves rational processes reinforces

this tension in an implicit sense. This is due to the divergence between the ideal model

whereby speech provides insight into the work of reason and his inability to

demonstrate this in practice. As in the opening comments in which he maintains that his

narrative can be as “likely” as any in describing the created universe, Timaeus asserts a

feature of language here but does not fully equate this model with the practice of his

own account. The upshot of this split between Timaeus’ theoretical model of language

74 Timaeus refers here to rational speech and philosophic discourse and not mere myth, using λόγος not μύθος for “speech”.

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and his narrative practice is to suggest that language is not structured by a pre-existent

rational order in the cosmos it describes, but is instead quite free from its subject matter.

If anything, language is the source and not the product of the idea of reason in the

cosmos.

We have seen in this section how Timaeus’ reference to the conscious actions of a

Demiurge as an explanation for rational order in the cosmos, in prompting reflection on

how other acts of creation relate to this primary act, results in his emphasis on a

hierarchy structuring his language as a “creative” act. His philosophical position

emphasising a hierarchy of creation and favouring reason over necessity thus has the

effect of masking the constitutive nature of his language. By showing the limitations of

this theoretical principle, and by looking beyond the theological and philosophical

position emphasising reason over necessity to Timaeus’ narrative practice, my argument

leaves open the space for the idea that language is constitutive. The next section

discusses how these structures ordering creation are further troubled as the Timaeus

reaches the cosmic “origins” it seeks as its narrative beginning.

iv. Language, Primal Matter, and the Receptacle

Timaeus’ “re-beginning”, where he attempts to describe the “elements” out of which the

world was made as well as the “receptacle” in which those elements existed, crystallises

the two critical and connected aspects of the Timaeus I have discussed in this chapter. It

is the culmination of the impulse for beginnings driving the Timaeus, as it is the point in

the discourse where Plato seeks to describe what he takes to be the primary origins of

the universe, the “place” in which it was created. In turn, this part of Plato’s cosmogony

intensifies the demand to describe the relationship and intersection between different

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orders of reality, rather than just posit their existence in theory. As a result, my two

main arguments about the constitutive role of language revealed in the Timaeus also

culminate in this final section. First, by highlighting how the problem of ineffability is

most prevalent in Timaeus’ attempts to describe the primal origins of the cosmos, I

suggest that the primacy of language becomes apparent because it manifests the

possibility that there is no knowable origin beyond language. Second, I consider the

problem of metaphor which results from Timaeus’ attempt to describe the nature of

non-sensible orders and how they relate to the created order of becoming. Language’s

constitutive aspect becomes evident in this part of the discussion because of its

inherently sensible nature. The discourse on the “receptacle”, we shall see, highlights

how metaphor is the basis of any conception of the non-sensible.

The problem of language and origins, which is the driving focus of the Timaeus, is

brought to the fore by Timaeus’ account of necessity in two ways: first, in the

inadequacy of the “elements” of the cosmos to be designated its origins, and second, in

the ineffability of the “primal” receptacle of those elements. Having mentioned the need

to discuss necessity alongside reason, Timaeus first considers the four elements prior to

their shaping into the cosmos by the Demiurge, and so begins his discussion of

necessity by stating the need to “consider what was the nature of fire, water, earth and

air before the beginning of the world and what their state was then” (48). However, he

quickly retreats from this requirement, arguing that it is “inappropriate” (or too

difficult): “It is not for us to describe the original principle or principles (call them what

you will) of the universe, for the simple reason that it would be difficult to explain our

views in the context of this discussion” (48). While the original state of the elements is

clearly important to Timaeus’ account of the world’s creation, it also proves to be

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conceptually difficult, even though this difficulty is partly concealed by his recourse to

principles of decorum.

Despite this “retreat” from discussing the elements because it goes beyond what

the discussion needs, Timaeus keeps coming back to them. Timaeus seems fixated on

the inadequacy of these elements to act as a stable origin, but also on the fact that the

terms designating them are readily recognisable, that they are accepted as signs

representing the world’s “primary” components. So he posits the “elemental” terms

“fire”, “water”, “earth” and “air” only to withdraw them, stating that it is “difficult to

say with complete certainty” that any one thing is absolutely that and none other: “for

they have no stability and elude the designation ‘this’ or ‘that’ or any other that

expresses permanence” (49-50). Thus they cannot be compared to “syllables” of the

universe, let alone its “alphabet”: “we talk as if people knew what fire and each of the

others are, and treat them as the alphabet of the universe, whereas they ought not really

to be compared even to syllables” (48).75 This criticism of the analogy between the

elements and language is telling. While language, Timaeus implies, is reducible to

different levels of constituents such as letters and syllables, the apparent “elements” of

the cosmos have no stability and so cannot form the basis or primary constituents of the

cosmos. The “stability” of language, by contrast, suggests its relative suitability as a

basis of knowledge.

75 In book X of his Laws, Plato criticises at length those who deny the existence of gods, in particular those who assert that the “elements” of the cosmos are its ultimate origin and are ordered by mere chance (885). As Gregory Vlastos points out, proponents of this view in fact oppose Plato’s most crucial philosophical assumptions about rational order in both the cosmos and the polis, hence his urgency to critique this concept of unmotivated origins: “The difference on this point Plato considered so momentous in its moral and political implications as to justify the removal from the body politic of anyone who holds it. What does he offer in return? A theological cosmogony” (Vlastos 2005, p.25).

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It seems that the realm of becoming and change is not the place to look for its own

origins, and that the accepted terminology for these elements in fact designates unstable

categories which do not refer to the beginning of the cosmos. Just as the attempt to

identify the original Athens results in Critias’ recognition that the concept of a primal

city radically evades definition because it is subject to constant disasters, so the

“elements” of the cosmos do not function as primal origins because they belong to the

genos of becoming and hence constantly change. To account for the origins of the

cosmos, therefore, Timaeus introduces a whole new genos: “We must start our new

description of the universe by making a fuller subdivision than we did before; we then

distinguished two forms of reality — we must now add a third” (48). This third genos,

Timaeus explains, is the “place” where the so-called elements existed prior to their

ordering into the cosmos. Like Critias’ history of ancient Athens, the “origins” of which

come from another place (Egypt) and another historiography, the “origin” of the

universe itself comes from an alien genos, something outside or exterior to itself.

Timaeus’ account of the primal origins of the cosmos, khõra or “space”,76 sets it

up as a formal principle representing the primal beginning of the cosmos. Primal but

ineffable, khõra stands in opposition to the “elements” or constituents of the universe,

because the elements are designated by ordinary language but are not the origins of the

cosmos, failing to provide any knowledge of the world’s original state. By contrast,

khõra is the receptacle in which the “constituents” of the universe existed prior to their

shaping into the world by the Demiurge, and as such came “before” them. In turn, it

76 Plato’s term khõra can be translated roughly as “space” or “receptacle”, but in the text, as both Derrida and Sallis emphasise, the “work” of translation is alien to the khõra, that “[i]nasmuch as χώρα has no meaning — at least not in this classical sense — it is intrinsically untranslatable”, described only through “semantic affinities” (Sallis 1999, p.115). Derrida suggests, similarly, that “if Timaeus names it as receptacle (dekhomenon) or place (khõra), these names do not designate an essence, the stable being of an eidos, since khõra is neither of the order of the eidos nor of the order of mimemes, that is, of images of the eidos which come to imprint themselves in it” (Derrida 1995, p.95).

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precedes customary language which is suited to the nature of the sensible world.

Language, as Timaeus defines it, is suited to describing the genos of becoming, but not

the receptacle in which becoming exists.

The problems of defining khõra are apparent even before Timaeus comes to

describe what it is. By referring to his narrative as άτόπος, “strange” (48), Timaeus

anticipates the difficulties in describing the world’s beginning, the need to push

language beyond its customary range. The narrative is without place (τόπος) because it

discusses something far removed from everyday experience or thought. Later on,

indeed, Timaeus states that khõra is apprehended only though a “spurious” or “bastard”

reasoning (52). The ordering here, “strange” language before “spurious” thought, is

important, because it implies that language is first in the attempt to conceptualise

something outside experience. The primal cosmic “place”, which is alien to everyday

modes of thought and language, is accessed only by an alternative “strange” language

that provides in turn the mode of “spurious” reasoning needed to conceptualise it.

Language’s constitutive role, therefore, becomes more apparent where the subject is

beyond customary ideas, and so Plato’s cosmogony, in describing the receptacle of

becoming, highlights the crucial role of language in conceiving, perhaps “creating”,

speculative orders beyond the sensible.

While Timaeus identifies problems with the narrative he is about to give, he also

maintains that he is able to control the level of linguistic variance: “So let us begin

again, calling as we do on some protecting deity to see us safely through a strange and

unusual argument to a likely conclusion” (48). Just as Critias notes the potential

displacement of his narrative only to maintain that it is a reliable account (because of

the authority of one of its first tellers), so Timaeus balances the notion of an “alien”

strangeness by returning to his stated means of control over language, the category of

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imitative likeness: “I shall stick to the principle of likelihood which I laid down at the

start, and try to give an account of everything in detail from the beginning that will be

more rather than less likely” (48).

However, Timaeus’ return to the category of likeness here is especially

problematic, because khõra exists “outside” the principles on which Timaeus bases the

concept of likeness earlier in his narrative. In his “first” beginning he argues that the

world is a likeness of the eternal Forms and that his language, in turn, is a likeness of

the world’s creation (29). Specifically, he promises a narrative that is a copy of a

sensible copy, and which copies the creative act of the Demiurge so as to recreate a

lesser, linguistic version of the world. However, khõra, as Timaeus defines it, evades

both of these categories of likeness. It is not a likeness of anything, because it is the

receptacle in which becoming is fashioned as a likeness of being. It makes “likeness”

possible, and hence is outside the polarity based on Idea and likely copy. Timaeus’

“origin” of the cosmos, therefore, evades not only customary language, but also the

polarity between being and becoming which underpins his concept of literary style and

indeed his model of metaphysics. Moreover, khõra is not created, and therefore cannot

be represented through linguistic imitation of how it was made. While at other points in

his discourse Timaeus is able to align likeness with imitation in order to downplay his

agency as narrator, here the role he plays in constituting the idea of the receptacle

through language is brought into relief.

The problem of ineffability pervades Timaeus’ account of khõra. The culmination

of the regressive impulse driving the Timaeus is thus continually abortive because

khõra, as the “ultimate” origins from another genos, continually “slips away” from

language and indeed thought. It is represented as both “hard to describe” (50) and only

conceivable through a process of “spurious reasoning” (52) rather than through reason

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or sensation. Metaphors for khõra are offered with caution or the need for

“clarification”. A metaphor of birth, Timaeus notes, can be used only “[f]or the

moment” (50). All Timaeus can say in concluding his description of khõra is that “we

shall not be wrong if we describe it as invisible and formless” (51). The paradox here is

that the “primal” origins Timaeus describes as the khõra frustrates the constant reaching

back of the Timaeus towards the origins of things; the climax of its regressive impulse is

also where linguistic failure becomes most prominent and most problematic.

The upshot of these problems of ineffability is not just that the idea of a

“receptacle” in which the universe was made evades description in language. It also

raises the possibility that there are no such origins outside language, or that primal

beginnings are strictly unthinkable without language. Language, in other words, is the

indispensable medium in which any origin that is “outside” metaphysics can be

speculated on; hence language comes “before” knowledge of such an origin.

Plato’s cosmogony, based as it is on an “originating” receptacle, reveals not only

the impossibility of knowing origins beyond language, but also highlights the primacy

of metaphor in creating knowledge about the non-sensible. The noted problems of

metaphors used to describe khõra do not simply reconfirm the distance between the

sensible and intelligible orders, as they might in other works of Plato’s. Bearing in mind

that metaphor is based on the binary between the sensible and the intelligible orders, the

“location” of khõra as a third genos which is outside this binary means that it is outside

the paradigm which underpins metaphor.77 This externality of khõra to metaphor, we

77 As Derrida comments: “Almost all the interpreters of the Timaeus gamble here on the resources of rhetoric without ever wondering about them. They speak tranquilly about metaphors, images, similes. They ask no questions about this tradition of rhetoric which places at their disposal a reserve of concepts which are very useful but which are built upon this distinction between the sensible and the intelligible, which is precisely what the thought of the khõra can no longer get along with” (Derrida 1995, p.92).

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shall see, provides some critical distance that will enable us to analyse the “work”

performed by metaphor in creating and describing the non-sensible, and also the

impossibility of conceptualising a purely non-sensible order. Language must come first

in the imaginative process of conceiving orders of reality beyond the everyday, and the

sensible basis of language, moreover, will always inhere in descriptions of the non-

sensible, even if the Forms or the receptacle are described by a negative definition

emphasising a withdrawal of the sensible features of language.

The ontological status ascribed to khõra highlights the need to use a “strange”

mode of discourse beyond the customary range of language in order to describe it. In

the absence of a conventional language to describe the receptacle of the sensible realm,

Timaeus reverts to imagery and metaphor, and consistently reflects on his success in

doing so. He maintains that his imagery of khõra as “receptacle” or “nurse” needs

“clarification” (49); a metaphor of birth, he states later, can be used “for the moment”

(50).78 One reason for this awareness of the effectiveness of language is that whereas

Timaeus takes the Forms and the created order of becoming as given, he works hard at

proving the existence of khõra, as well as its nature. He has to bring khõra into being, as

it were, and so is ever-conscious of his means of doing so.

Timaeus’ account of khõra, while deploying metaphor, continually suggests its

withdrawal from such imagery. Initially, he attempts to define khõra by reference to

concepts of space and family, but straightaway retreats from this position and highlights

its limits: “In general terms, it is the receptacle and, as it were, the nurse of all becoming

and change. But true (τάληθες) as this is, it needs a great deal of further clarification”

(49). Even in the initial stages of his account, therefore, Timaeus’ reflection on his

78 For a discussion of the gendered metaphors in Plato’s discussion of khõra, see Elizabeth Grosz (1995).

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narrative slides from the relatively confident promise of a “likely” account to his

recognition that it is provisional and general. The category of truth, moreover, loses its

absolute status when it comes to the third genos, because it is outside Plato’s system

aligning intellection of the Forms with truth and sensory experience of becoming with

belief.

Timaeus’ further problems with describing khõra reveal the primacy of metaphor

in constituting knowledge due to the inherent addition of sensible features to that which

he defines as non-sensible. In principle, khõra is itself not sensible because it is the

receptacle of becoming, for otherwise it would affect the creation of things within it. An

unavoidable addition of sensible qualities to the receptacle of becoming, however, is

suggested in Timaeus’ recourse to an image drawn from human procreation in order to

describe cosmic creation:

For the moment we must make a threefold distinction and think of that which becomes, that in which it becomes, and the model which it resembles. We may indeed use the metaphor of birth and compare the receptacle to the mother, the model to the father, and what they produce between them to their offspring; and we may notice that, if an imprint is to present a very complex appearance, the material on which it is to be stamped will not have been properly prepared unless it is devoid of all the characters which it is to receive. (50)

The expressed provisionality of Timaeus’ argument here, as in his earlier images using

space and family, I suggest, reveals indirectly the constitutive nature of metaphor in

adding sensible features to whatever it describes. This inherent feature of imagery is

revealed by the caution with which Timaeus uses it, by his concern to “distance” his

metaphors from their referent. Thus he puts into play metaphors of family and

procreation, but simultaneously retreats from them, posing them as experiments in

description.

Later on, when Timaeus attempts to clarify how khõra functions as the non-

sensible receptacle of changing things, he reverts to another provisional image, but in

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doing so the discourse continues to show how metaphors add sensible features to the so-

called “receptacle” of the sensible:

Suppose a man modelling geometrical shapes of every kind in gold, and constantly remoulding each shape into another. If anyone were to point to one of them and ask what it was it would be much the safest, if we wanted to tell the truth, to say that it was gold and not to speak of the triangles and other figures as being real things, because they would be changing as we spoke... (50)

This argument, Timaeus continues, applies to the relationship between khõra and the

“elements” of the cosmos because khõra is “a kind of neutral plastic material on which

changing impressions are stamped” (50). The “provisional” image of shapes being

fashioned out of gold help describe khõra as something that is devoid of any sensible

qualities, as it is the “receptacle” of sensible realm. The limitations of the metaphor,

however, are apparent in that gold has sensible characteristics in itself, whereas khõra,

by contrast, “continues to receive all things, and never itself takes a permanent impress

from any of the things that enter it” (50). In other words, khõra is devoid of any sensible

qualities because it is the “receptacle” of the sensible order, and the images such as the

analogy to modelling gold fail to the extent that they import sensible features into the

non-sensible. Yet there is more to this problem than one of linguistic insufficiency.

Timaeus’ metaphors do not just fail to convey the concept of formlessness of khõra

because they are based in another order. They also add sensible qualities which are not

of khõra as Timaeus, or Plato, conceives it. This reflects Timaeus’ discovery about the

inherent temporality of language in attempting to represent time and eternity, but it also

brings the concept that language is not a “neutral” medium into an even sharper focus.

Timaeus’ language here does not simply fall short of its object. As well as failing to

convey a sense of absence, it also inserts, indeed constitutes, a sensible element.

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I have shown that some of the problems of Timaeus’ account of khõra stem from

the impossibility of going back to a primary origin, the assumption on which his whole

narrative is based. My analysis of his metaphors, however, also highlights language’s

constitutive role as a sensible medium, its inherent tendency to describe the non-

sensible (whether the Forms or the receptacle of becoming) according to the sensible.

Language cannot have its sensible element evacuated in imaging intelligible or

“spurious” realms. By contrast, it becomes apparent that those realms are only made

possible through the literal, by means of projection out of sensible examples. Metaphor

is not a mere imperfect reflection of a realm “beyond” language and customary thought;

rather, it inheres in any conception of a transcendent realm beyond the everyday

because it is the indispensable means of any such knowledge.

Conclusion

One of the most intriguing elements of the subject of cosmogony is that it frequently

marks the search for an ultimate and singular origin of all things. The pursuit of this

elusive concept in the Timaeus shows us how language is always the “beginning” of any

such concept of origins, that conceptualising the world’s beginning requires some sort

of narrative beginning. The problem of defining “the beginning” of the universe

pervading the Timaeus is also the cause of its problematic structure. My analysis of the

contrast between the multiple narrative beginnings of the Timaeus and its focus on the

principle of a singular beginning of the cosmos highlights the primary as opposed to

merely reflective role of language. Plato’s account of cosmogony, because it focuses on

the problem of άρχή, has the effect of suggesting that knowledge of conceptually

difficult subjects begins with language.

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As a threshold subject which comprises both science and metaphysics, moreover,

cosmogony demands the use of both literal and metaphorical facets of language. In the

Timaeus this phenomenon is evident in its discussion of concepts such as eternity, and

in its portrayal of orders beyond the everyday. Again this phenomenon demonstrates the

constitutive nature of language because metaphor is primary in the conceptualisation of

non-sensible orders. If, in the Timaeus, metaphor plays a primary role in conceiving the

non-sensible, then we may need to rethink the role of language and metaphor in

descriptions of the intelligible order of Forms throughout Plato’s oeuvre. Moreover, if

Plato’s account of the creation of the world as images of the eternal Forms reveals the

inherent role of language in conceptualising orders beyond the everyday world of

experience, then it also raises an alternate possibility concerning the nature of the

polarity between being and becoming. Plato typically argues that the Forms are given

categories which are a basis for knowledge and are paradigms of the sensible world. If

metaphor is the basis by which realms beyond the sensible are understood, then the

sensible realm itself, equally, is less an imperfect reflection of the eternal Forms than

their basis. The Timaeus, in forcing reflection on the relationship between being and

becoming, on the epistemological role of language, and on the nature of metaphor,

therefore manifests the necessity of language in making the concept of a realm beyond

the sensible possible.

The Timaeus also highlights the tendency for cosmogony to prompt ideas about a

hierarchy of creation related to the primary act of world-making, and thus a sense of

connection between the act of the writer and the act of the creator deity described.

Timaeus’ assertion that his language is structured by its content, we observed, has the

effect of downplaying his agency as a narrator and the constitutive component of his

language. However, my argument shows Timaeus’ conflation of form within content is

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the result of a theoretical model of language which does not square with his narrative

practice. Moreover, by relating the act of the writer to the act of the deity, these ideas of

the Timaeus anticipate later literary critical discussions which draw explicit analogies

between poet and divine creator.

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Chapter 3.

Augustine’s Confessions: Creation, Neoplatonism, and the Quest for Wisdom

St Augustine (AD 354-430) stands alongside Plato as one of the most important early

thinkers on the subject of cosmogony. His exegeses of Genesis 1 are fundamental to

Christian thought, especially because they mark one of the earliest attempts to describe

the nature of divine creation ex nihilo,79 a foundational model in Christianity and in

Western thought more generally. Augustine is also one of the most influential early

theorists of language. His manual for Christian exegesis, De Doctrina Christiana,

includes one of the earliest treatises in Western literature of the nature of the sign, and

in a more general sense, Augustine maintains a constant theoretical and practical

awareness of language in his writing.

In chapter one we considered how for Plato the new subject of cosmogony

demands experimental literary techniques, and also explored how he used this

experimentalism as a means of further innovation. Augustine’s account of cosmogony

in the Confessions shows us that the uniquely threshold nature of the subject can

facilitate greater innovation in literary style. Whereas the experimental nature of Plato’s

discourse on cosmogony is most evident in its transition from dialogue to narrative, the

cosmogony in the Confessions suggests an experimentalism in literary form because of

its very presence in what is apparently a narrative of self. When Augustine describes his

conversion and baptism in books VIII and IX of the Confessions, thus completing the

79 For a summary of these treatises, see the reference to “Creation” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopaedia, Fitzgerald ed. (1999), p.251, as well as Knuuttila (2001), pp.103-115. A philosophical and analytical reading of Augustine’s ideas about cosmogony and beginning can be found in Kirwan (1989), pp.151-66.

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story of his salvation and bringing the record of the past up to the experience of the

writer in the present, he does not end there (even though many readers do), but instead

adds four more books which address theoretical, seemingly impersonal issues such as

memory, time, and cosmogony.80 Clearly, unless we regard nearly half of the book as

mere appendices, a focus on the self is not the sole or indeed primary aim of the

Confessions, but rather forms part of a larger project. What then is this larger project?

Why does the work Augustine calls his Confessions begin with a reflection on his past

and conclude with a discussion of the world’s creation? While there are some nineteen

theories which attempt to explain the role of books X-XIII of the Confessions and their

relation to the first nine books on the self (O’Donnell 2005, pp.71-72), my intention in

this chapter is to offer a new explanation of the nature and structure of the Confessions

by focusing on its discussion of cosmogony. This new reading of the Confessions will

show us how cosmogony leads to and facilitates an experimental literary style and

structure. The Confessions demonstrates the extent of literary innovation offered by the

subject of cosmogony, especially by an incorporation of its threshold nature into literary

structure and theme.

Questions as to why Augustine discusses cosmogony at all in a work which begins

as an account of the self are symptomatic of a variety of mysteries about the

Confessions and its unique form. The diverse literary precedents and influences we

could cite for the Confessions also attest to its experimental nature. Christian, spiritual

biographies, autobiographies, and self-exploration literature, such as the “Life of

80 Hubertus Drobner notes that while the tremendous scholarly interest in the Confessions stems from the “extraordinary insight” into Augustine’s personality, intellectual development, and psychology it provides, the majority of scholarly discussion begins precisely where the Confessions abandons the focus on the individual in order to discuss philosophical and theological concerns (Drobner 2000, p.20). As Eugene Vance points out, the “supplemental” books X-XIII of the Confessions are often considered unimportant or indeed confusing additions, for Augustine appears to have become distracted at precisely the point where the spiritual autobiography would logically conclude (Vance 1986, p.3).

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Antony” Augustine mentions at Confessions VIII.vi.15, are an obvious possible

inspiration (Clark 1993, pp.44-45). The Confessions fits into a tradition of philosophy as

autobiography, of thinkers who write first person accounts of their own lives

(Thompson 2006, pp.31-63). One further and (so far as I am aware) hitherto unstudied

possible source for the Confessions is the genre of Wisdom Literature, accounts of lives

from the Old Testament such as the book of Job, which are intended to have

instructional value.81

The consistent intertextuality of the Confessions suggests both another set of

influential genres or themes, and also another dimension of its uniquely syncretic form.

While Augustine critiques the pagan classical literature he was once entranced by

(Confessions I.xiii.20), Virgil’s story of Aeneas’ wandering journey, intertwined with

Neoplatonic discussions of the Wandering Soul and the Scriptural story of the Prodigal

Son, all filter into Augustine’s narrative of himself as a wandering soul alienated from

its divine origin.82 Allusions to Scripture, especially the Psalms, are constant throughout

the Confessions. Augustine not only discusses a variety of subjects which would

normally be addressed in different categories of work, but also blends other texts,

particularly Scripture, with his.

The diverse disciplinary paradigms which discuss the Confessions also suggest its

unique fusion of subjects and styles. It is often considered to inaugurate the modern

81 The possible influence of Wisdom literature on the Confessions is emphasised when Augustine expresses his hope that his Confessions will provide “sympathetic readers” with edification from both his faults and his successes (Confessions X.iv.5). 82 For a discussion of Virgil’s impact on Augustine’s oeuvre, see Sabine MacCormack’s The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). A general discussion of the intertextual aspect of the Confessions can be found in Clark (1993), pp.73-79.

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genre of autobiography,83 to demonstrate the validity of reader-response theory,84 and

has also been the subject of psychological studies which analyse it for its insight into

infancy, childhood, parenthood, and the nature of religious experience.85 Historians of

thought see it as a pivotal study of cosmology and temporality within the late antique

era.86 In addition, there are numerous studies of its impact on the history of religious

thought and theological doctrine.

Readers of the Confessions have long noted its puzzling combination of usually

distinct styles, subjects, and themes, where what begins as a narrative of self ends up

with a focus on memory, time, and cosmogony. All these phenomena — diverse literary

precedents, creation ex nihilo, allusions to and appropriations of other texts, fields in

which the Confessions is studied — point to a radically syncretic text, to an

unprecedented fusion of different subjects and literary styles. “The work is sui generis”,

comments James J. O’Donnell (1985, p.83).

This chapter, in analysing discussions of cosmogony in the Confessions, argues

that the work’s underlying, unifying focus is the narration and performance of a quest

83 James Olney’s Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), treats the Confessions as a key stage in the emergence of modern autobiography, although Olney maintains an awareness of some of the problem with considering Augustine’s work a narrative of “self”. The Confessions is also the first text studied in William Spengemann’s The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). See also Michael Humphries, “Foucault on Writing and the Self in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and the Confessions of St Augustine”, Arethusa 30:1 (1997): 125-38, and Lawrence Rothfield, “Autobiography and Perspective in the Confessions of St Augustine”, Comparative Literature 33:3 (1981): 209-23. 84 In his Confession and Complicity in Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Dennis Foster uses the Confessions in its survey of the model of communication tacit in confessional narratives. 85 William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans Green and co, 1902) is a classic early study of the Confessions from a psychological perspective. 86 For a summary of Augustine’s contribution to late antique and early medieval thought about time and the creation, with a discussion of the Confessions, see Richard Sorabji’s Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1983).

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for wisdom, and that this focus is the cause of its uniquely syncretic form. The subject

of cosmogony is vital to this innovative literary form, I argue, because reflection on the

created order beyond the self enables the text to discuss and indeed enact by its structure

the ascent of wisdom beyond the limits of self-reflection. However, I also demonstrate

how the complexities of cosmogony demand further experimentalism in the

Confessions, in that Augustine’s account of cosmogony draws on a fusion of

philosophical and Scriptural accounts of the creation.

Within the quest for spiritual knowledge driving the Confessions, the narrative of

self is but one aspect, if the longest and most accessible. Modern concepts of

autobiography as a narrative form have contributed to the reception of the Confessions

as an early instance of “life writing”,87 especially because the story of conversion is its

first and most predominant aspect, but Augustine himself tells us in the Confessions that

self-interest, by itself, is an “empty” concern compared to the “immortality of wisdom”

(III.iv.7). This chapter suggests that in addition to providing a crucial theme that enables

the ascent of knowledge, cosmogony is also a pivotal subject within an experimental

literary form which dramatises by its structure the progression of knowledge from

introspection (books I-IX) to the creation and then to the divine origin of the created

order (books XII-XIII).

The first section of the chapter highlights key passages in the Confessions which

indicate that its primary focus is wisdom, and also establishes the crucial role of

cosmogony in the concept of wisdom it discusses. Because Augustine’s brief discussion

of the “books of the Platonists” in Confessions VII highlights and defines the nature of

87 A discussion of modern assumptions regarding autobiography and how it has affected reception of the Confessions can be found in Vance (1986), pp.1-4.

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his quest for wisdom and the role a theory of cosmogony plays in this quest, the section

will in turn address one of the most vexed issues about the Confessions and Augustine:

his relationship to Neoplatonic philosophy. Confessions VII demonstrates how better

understanding of cosmogony plays an important role early on in the narrated quest for

wisdom described in the Confessions, anticipating the performance of that quest later in

the Confessions where cosmogony is discussed in depth. The book also shows that

Augustine integrates Neoplatonic and Scriptural language in his theorisation of

cosmogony, suggesting that the quest for wisdom was from the outset a syncretic quest

which combined distinct epistemologies. The philosophical demands of cosmogony

thus lead to a blending of knowledge systems in the Confessions.

Section two analyses the account of cosmogony in Confessions XII. It shows that

a synthesis of Neoplatonism with Scripture underlies Augustine’s discussion of

cosmogony, even if he does not identify the role of Neoplatonic ideas in his exegesis of

Genesis 1, and even if in Confessions VII he emphasises the limits of Neoplatonism.

The importance of the account of cosmogony in book XII is that it brings this

unacknowledged synthesis of knowledge systems in the Confessions into focus,

showing us how the quest for wisdom driving the text results not only in experimental

combinations of styles and subjects, but also a synthesis of different fields of knowledge

needed for its discussion of cosmogony. Equally important is that the exegesis of

Genesis 1, which dominates the final two books of the Confessions, suggests an

innovative structure which ascends from discussing first a previous quest for wisdom

and then approaches the divine by means of reflection on the created world.

In section three I focus on one aspect of Augustine’s cosmogony which recurs

throughout the Confessions: the speculation on how understanding of the divine can be

reached through experience of the created world. While Augustine has in Romans 1:20

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an obvious Scriptural source for this concept, I show that his working out of this theory

deploys a fusion of Scripture and Neoplatonism, thus continuing the point of the

previous section that the discussion of cosmogony in the Confessions highlights its

innovative combination of theological and philosophical language. Furthermore, I show

that the theory of sensory experience forms a vital part of the quest for wisdom, in that

this part of Augustine’s cosmogony marks the beginning of the idea that knowledge can

go beyond self-knowledge.

The final two sections of the chapter explore the ways in which cosmogony

enables the discussion and performance of wisdom going beyond the limits of self-

knowledge. Section four analyses the link between the “region of dissimilarity”

described as part of the soul’s journey in Confessions VII and the idea of a cosmic

formless dissimilarity described in the cosmogony of Confessions XII-XIII. In the final

section I analyse the correlative link between the conversion of the soul out of

dissimilarity (book VIII), and the formation of the cosmos (book XIII). An

unacknowledged synthesis of ideas from classical philosophy with Scripture, we will

see, continues to underpin many of these themes. My argument in these sections is that

in the story of intellectual development and conversion (Confessions VII-VIII)

Augustine points forward to broader, cosmic themes as a means of transcending the

shallow concerns of self-knowledge, while the account of cosmogony contextualises

aspects of the soul’s journey. Both these phenomena thus form part of the experimental

literary form Augustine attempts: the transcendental project which describes the ascent

of wisdom by writing the individual soul into a history of the cosmos.

The conclusion to the chapter explores some of the implications of my argument.

Both the driving focus on wisdom and the syncretic style of the Confessions, which are

facilitated by the threshold nature of cosmogony, suggest the impossibility of

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categorising the Confessions into one or other modern literary category. My analysis of

the syncretism underlying the Confessions, particularly its fusion of Neoplatonism with

Scripture which is required by the complexities of cosmogony, contributes to debates

about the relationship between early Christian and classical thought. The syncretism of

the Confessions suggests that where it comes to complex ideas such as cosmogony and

difficult Scriptural passages such as Genesis 1, Christian thought relied on Platonism,

even if it outwardly condemned the paganism of classical philosophy. In the

Confessions, at least, the issue is not so much one of appropriation or rejection, but

rather one where the threshold nature of cosmogony requires a fusion of different

epistemologies.

i. Confessions: Describing and Performing a Quest for Wisdom

This section argues that certain key passages in the Confessions establish that its main

focus is to describe and enact a quest for wisdom, passages which also establish that the

subject of cosmogony is crucial to that quest. Augustine’s discussion of his intellectual

development in the earlier “self-narrative” of the Confessions, we will see, suggests that

the “autobiographical” books I-IX in fact record a previous quest for wisdom, and also

shows the syncretic nature of this quest because Augustine explicitly aligns ideas from

classical philosophy which influenced him with his later understanding of Scriptural

ideas. Classical philosophy and Scripture, in short, are treated equivalently as systems

of thought which enable the pursuit of wisdom. By focusing on Augustine’s much-

debated discussion of the impact Neoplatonism had on his intellectual development, I

introduce the importance cosmogony has in the quest for wisdom in the Confessions,

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and also set up subsequent sections of this chapter which show how Neoplatonic ideas

continue to underpin Augustine’s reflection on cosmogony.88 The syncretic nature of

wisdom, described explicitly in Confessions VII as a stage in Augustine’s intellectual

past, continues to be evident in Augustine’s discursive methods in writing the

Confessions. Confessions VII thus demonstrates how the difficulty of cosmogony

prompts an experimental fusion of intellectual systems, a fusion which continues to be

evident in the work’s uniquely combinatory style, language, and structure.

The opening paragraphs of the Confessions, which are pervaded by questions and

paradoxes about the concept of knowing and “calling” on the divine, introduce its

preoccupation with wisdom: “Grant me Lord to know and understand which comes first

— to call upon you or to praise you” (I.i.1).89 As Augustine teases out these problems of

knowing and invoking the divine, the importance of a theory of cosmogony in a quest

for wisdom begins to be apparent: “Lord my God, is there any room in me which can

contain you? Can heaven and earth, which you have made and in which you have made

me, contain you?” (I.ii.2). The narrative of self in Confessions I-IX, as we shall see

shortly, is punctuated by reflections on the quest for wisdom and the role a theory of

cosmogony has in that quest.

88 There is no space in this chapter for more than a concise discussion of the various debates about the impact of Neoplatonism on Augustine and early Christian thought in general. For a recent summary of these discussions of Augustine’s relationship to Neoplatonism, with references, see Robert Crouse, “Paucis mutatis verbis: St Augustine’s Platonism,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, edited by Robert Dodaro, George Lawless, and Gerald Bonner (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp.37-50. My footnotes in this section will summarise, with references, the main debates about Neoplatonism in the Confessions and in Augustine’s thought more generally. 89 References to the English translation of the Confessions are to the edition by Henry Chadwick (1991). Chadwick identifies intertextual references to Scripture in the Confessions by quotation marks and by citing the relevant Scriptural passage. I will only include these where I discuss the Scriptural passage Augustine draws on. References to the original Latin, which rarely sets apart Scriptural allusion but rather incorporates Scriptural language, are to the edition by James J. O’Donnell (1992). See the Note on primary texts at p.vii.

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The continuance of these questions about the divine after the “autobiographical”

narrative of the Confessions has ended shows us that the search for wisdom is more than

an event in the past, but rather underpins the work itself. Confessions X, for instance,

opens by dramatising the desire for knowledge about an omniscient divine: “May I

know you, who know me. May I know as I also am known” (X.i.1). The passage, by its

use of present tense, suggests that the quest for wisdom continues to drive the

Confessions, and is not a problem resolved in the narrated past. Book XI, similarly,

opens with Augustine’s statement about his continuing desire to achieve wisdom, this

time by means of Scriptural interpretation: “For a long time past I have been burning to

meditate in your law” (XI.ii.2). The exegesis which Augustine performs in Confessions

XI-XIII demonstrates that the Confessions performs this meditation on divine law. It

both narrates a previous quest for wisdom, and also performs the continuance of this

quest as a discourse. Equally important is that the Scriptural law Augustine chooses to

meditate on, Genesis 1, describes the world’s creation, suggesting that the discursive

performance of wisdom depends on an account of cosmogony. I discuss this point in

greater detail in the next section of the chapter.

The most explicit indication that the narrative of self in Confessions I-IX records a

quest for wisdom is when Augustine, in recalling his student years, describes his

epiphanic encounter with Cicero’s Hortensius: “The book changed my feelings. It

altered my prayers, Lord, to be towards you yourself. Suddenly every vain hope became

empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in

my heart” (III.iv.7).90 Although he notes the book had limitations because it lacked

90 For a discussion of Augustine’s “conversion” to philosophy via the Hortensius, studied as an event of reading, see Stock (1996) pp.37-42. John J. O’Meara dismisses the importance of the Hortensius, suggesting instead that it was more likely an “ordinary book” which “set off a flame in Augustine’s mind when that mind was prepared to be inflamed” (O’Meara 1954, p.58).

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certain Christian ideas, he states that its particular impact was that it advised a syncretic

approach to knowledge: “the one thing that delighted me in Cicero’s exhortation was

the advice not to study one particular sect but to love and seek and pursue and hold fast

and strongly embrace wisdom itself, wherever found” (III.iv.8). I see this as a crucial

comment describing both the driving focus on wisdom of the Confessions and the effect

this focus has on its form, resulting in an experimental narrative which, following

Cicero’s urge to seek wisdom “wherever found”, blends multiple subjects, styles, and

languages. I shall develop this idea throughout the chapter. The threshold nature of

cosmogony, we shall see, is crucial in structuring this pursuit of wisdom towards

knowledge of the divine.

Indeed the concept of a syncretic approach to knowledge, found within the

Hortensius, is immediately evident in Augustine’s assertion that he found parallels

between Cicero’s book and Scripture. The comment at Job 12:13 and 12:16, “with you

(God) is wisdom”, Augustine finds complemented in Cicero’s explanation of the

meaning of the Greek word philosophia, “Love of wisdom” (III.iv.8). Similarly,

Augustine finds a parallel between Cicero and St Paul on the function of philosophy

(III.iv.4), in that the Hortensius supports and parallels, Augustine claims, the principle

from Colossians 2:8-9 that philosophy helps one avoid excessive concern for human

convention and the created world and instead focus on higher realities.

The importance of this early encounter with the Hortensius is underlined in

Augustine’s revisiting of this episode later in the narrative of self. He recalls that on

turning thirty, he lamented his situation given his commitment ten years earlier,

prompted by his encounter with Cicero, to seek wisdom: “I myself was exceedingly

astonished as I anxiously reflected how a long time had elapsed since the nineteenth

year of my life, when I began to burn with a zeal for wisdom…And here I was already

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thirty, and still mucking about” (VI.xi.18). He also revisits the “conversion to

philosophy” when discussing his pending conversion to Christianity: “Many years of

my life had passed by — about twelve — since in my nineteenth year I had read

Cicero’s Hortensius, and had been stirred to a zeal for wisdom. But although I came to

despise earthly success, I put off giving time to the quest for wisdom” (VIII.vii.17). The

encounter with the Hortensius, its turning the young Augustine on the path to wisdom,

is thus set up as a pivotal event resonating throughout the Confessions, suggesting that

Augustine’s narrative of self revolves around key events in the pursuit of spiritual

knowledge.

By Confessions VII, in which Augustine records his encounter with Platonic

philosophy, the concept that books I-IX narrate a search for wisdom and that this search

is based on a fusion of classical philosophy with Scripture becomes more apparent. In

addition, the discussion of Platonism in Confessions VII highlights the importance of a

theory of cosmogony within this quest. Book VII records, in short, an educated and

sophisticated mind grappling with problems of metaphysics. The idea of the non-

physical (VII.i.1), the nature of evil (VII.iii.4), free will (VII.iii.5), God’s existence “in”

the creation (VII.v.7), and astrology (VII.vi.8), are some of the intellectual problems

Augustine recalls. These passages combine to represent a crisis point in Augustine’s

quest for wisdom. Manicheanism, his old sect, he found intellectually flawed. Scripture,

which he had been struggling to understand, lacked any sophistication and clarity about

metaphysics.

The crucial turning point in this crisis of wisdom, Augustine recalls, was his

reading of some “books of the Platonists”, books which provided him with new ideas

about the world’s creation and its relationship to the divine:

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you (God) brought under my eye some books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin (platonicorum libros ex graeca lingua in latinam versos). There I read, not of course in these words, but with entirely the same sense and supported by numerous and varied reasons, ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made’. (VII.ix.13)

Before we address the significance of this passage as a key stage in an ascent of

wisdom, one which also highlights both its intellectual syncretism and its recourse to a

theory of cosmogony, some mention must be made of the tremendous scholarly analysis

prompted by Confessions VII.ix.13. Given its tantalisingly ambiguous insight into

Augustine’s early thought and its relationship to Neoplatonism, the passage is one of the

most studied in Augustine’s oeuvre.91 Twentieth-century scholarship of Augustine has

increasingly shown the influence of Neoplatonism throughout the Confessions,92

especially in its later theoretical discourses such as the discourse on cosmogony in book

XII.93 Much work went into speculating about what passages from Plotinus or Porphyry

Augustine actually read, although recent scholars have questioned both the possibility

and the usefulness of this sort of scholarship.94

91 James J. O’Donnell notes, for example, that “[t]he present passage has been the focus of every debate in the present century over the meaning of Augustine’s intellectual autobiography. What books of the Platonists did he read? What effect did they have upon him--in 386 and later?” (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13). 92 For summaries of the early scholarship of Augustine, see Menn (1998), pp.77-82. At first, twentieth-century scholarship focused primarily on establishing close textual parallels between Neoplatonic works and Augustine’s writings. The most important work in this area was the scholarship of Pierre Courcelle, who explored Platonic influences throughout Augustine’s early works (especially his Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin, Paris, 1950). 93 Henry Chadwick’s translation (1991) highlights numerous Neoplatonic principles and terms throughout the Confessions. Many of these Neoplatonic echoes are also highlighted throughout O’Donnell (1992). 94 James J. O’Donnell argues that there is no possibility of reconstructing the texts Augustine cites in Confessions VII: “I believe it is true that every single Platonic text adduced in the scholarly debates as one that Augustine may have read has been lost to us in the form that Augustine knew. Even Plotinus he read in a Latin translation we no longer have and, given the difficulty of Plotinus, any translation must have been a palpably different thing from the original” (O’Donnell 1992, Prolegomena, note 10). Moreover, many of the Neoplatonic doctrines Augustine experienced early on, we now know, were already represented in a Christianised form, such as the Christianised Platonism expressed in the sermons of the bishop Ambrose (“Plotinus” ref. in Fitzgerald ed. 1999, p.655). Both Stephen Menn and Phillip

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Some scholarship sought to reconcile the potentially scandalous presence of

pagan, Neoplatonic ideas within Augustine’s theology, resulting in a methodology

which focused on Augustine’s explicit statements in Confessions VII that Neoplatonism

served a limited and transitional phase in his intellectual development.95 Indeed

Augustine’s discussion of the books of the Platonists in Confessions VII.ix.13 by

quoting the Scriptural passage (John 1:1-2) he found them to clarify, as opposed to

quoting the philosophic passages themselves, underlines this idea that Neoplatonism

plays only a limited role in his thought.96 In the Confessions, anonymity is consistently

a partial condemnation — the books and the people which Augustine refers to but does

not name are all points of critique.97 Moreover, Augustine goes on to argue that while

the Platonic books allowed him an insight into the divine One, they did not give any

indication of the concept of the incarnate Word, as expressed in John 1:13-14: “But that

‘the word was made flesh and dwelt among us’, I did not read there” (VII.ix.14). This

idea that the Platonic books offer only a limited knowledge of the divine is reconfirmed

Cary point out that similar Neoplatonic doctrines would have come from a variety of different writers (Menn 1998, p.79; Cary 2000, p.34). 95 Paul Henry, for example, asserts that we should regard first and foremost “Augustine’s own testimonies on the writings of the philosophers which he has read, on the circumstances in which he read them, on the intellectual or moral profit which he drew from them” (quoted in Menn 1998, p.78). Only after, and second to this primary consideration, Henry maintains, can we consider “the (unattributed) textual citations of Neoplatonic philosophers embedded in Augustine’s works” (quoted in Menn 1998, p.78). 96 Both Brian Stock and James J. O’Donnell note how Augustine introduces the platonicorum libros in a way which thematically and stylistically limits their importance to the extent that they accord with Scripture. Stock comments that: “The introduction of the libri Platonicorum then takes place within a restatement of the prologue to the gospel of John” (Stock 1996, p.65); while O’Donnell points out that: “Augustine’s presentation of the doctrines of the Platonists employs a rhetorical device that has gone comparatively unattended. He does not quote or paraphrase the Platonic books themselves (thereby making their identification difficult), but he quotes the ipsissima verba of Christian scripture as though they offered a fair summary of contents of a non-Christian philosophical work” (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13). 97 The most striking example of anonymity as a means of critique is Augustine’s reference to “a man puffed up with monstrous pride” (Confessions VII.ix.13). As James J. O’Donnell comments: “Augustine is careful…to name in the Confessions only those who contributed to his religious pilgrimage in positive ways--a category generous enough to include the heretic Faustus. To refrain from naming this man is then a judgment against him, corroborated by the words that describe him” (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13, quendam hominem).

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later in book VII by an image familiar to critical discussion of the role of Neoplatonism

in the Confessions:

It is one thing from a wooded summit to catch a glimpse of the homeland of peace and not to find the way to it, but vainly to attempt the journey along an impracticable route surrounded by the ambushes and assaults of fugitive deserters with their chief, ‘the lion and the dragon’. It is another thing to hold on to the way that leads there, defended by the protection of the heavenly emperor. (VII.xxi.27)

Neoplatonism, Augustine suggests, was simply an important stage in his search for

truth, and thus it ultimately held a transitional place in this quest and in the structure of

the Confessions which records that quest. These factors — the anonymity of the books

of the Platonists, the use of Scripture and paraphrase, and the image of the wooded

summit — combine to suggest that Neoplatonism only performed a limited role in

aiding Augustine’s understanding of Scripture and his intellectual development, and so

should not affect the writing of the Confessions, including its discussion of cosmogony.

However, Augustine’s explicit statements about his influences (as well their

limits), do not give us the complete picture. There is a distinction between what

Augustine openly judges important in the Confessions and what he actually relies on in

the course of writing it. This section will now show that, although Augustine states that

the books of the Platonists had a limited impact on his reaching an understanding of

Scripture, they are in fact integral to his discussion of Scripture in Confessions VII,

especially because of the clear significance a Neoplatonic theory of cosmogony has in

his thought. Subsequent sections of this chapter, by focusing on discussions of

cosmogony, show how Neoplatonism forms an equally integral, if unacknowledged,

part of the Confessions. In relying on cosmogony as a pivotal subject in its

conceptualisation of divine wisdom, the Confessions demonstrates how the complexities

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of cosmogony prompt not only a fusion of diverse subjects and styles, but also of

different systems of knowledge.

Augustine’s comment at Confessions VII.ix.13 that he found the books of the

Platonists to paraphrase and explain John 1 is intriguing both for its synthesis of

Neoplatonic with Scriptural concepts, and also because it makes better understanding of

cosmogony a key feature of Augustine’s resolution of his intellectual crisis. While some

critics treat Augustine’s failure to identify the philosophic books he read as a judgement

against the ultimate spiritual value of those books, it is nonetheless quite clear that

Augustine gives the books of the Platonists a pivotal place in his search for wisdom

because, he states, they explain an idea which he found to be only ambiguously

expressed in Scripture: “There I read, not of course in these words, but with entirely the

same sense and supported by numerous and varied reasons, ‘In the beginning was the

Word…” (VII.ix.13, my emphasis). Moreover, a fusion of knowledge systems is

evident here both thematically and discursively. Because Augustine cites the Scriptural

passage that he found the books of the Platonists to paraphrase and hence clarify, he

treats the two as interchangeable representations of the same idea.

The books of the Platonists are also described as a key instigator of introspection,

a process which is vital as an early stage in the ascent of wisdom described in

Confessions VII: “By the Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself”

(VII.x.16). Confessions VII.x.16, which describes the ascent of wisdom by means of

introspection into the mind, then to the soul, and then to the soul’s maker, is suffused

with Plotinian themes and terms,98 and concludes with the affirmation that truth can be

98 For some of the ideas from the Enneads apparent in Confessions VII.x.16, see the notes by Chadwick (1991), p.123 notes 18-22. For a summary of the scholarly debate generated by this passage, see O’Donnell (1992), 7.10.16, where he notes for example that: “All discussions of Augustine’s Platonic

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discovered “from the things that are made”, which is a theory about experience of the

creation from St Paul (Romans 1:20, discussed in more depth in section three of this

chapter). Platonic theories about gaining mystical insight by means of introspection,

therefore, lead to the Scriptural doctrine that knowledge of the divine can be achieved

by means of experiencing created things.

The intellectual and discursive syncretism demanded by cosmogony, which is a

key element in the pursuit of wisdom, also pervades the account of mystic vision of the

divine at Confessions VII.xvii.23. A key feature of Plotinus’ accounts of mystic ascent

is the transient nature of epiphanic vision: “struck perhaps by that authentic light, all the

soul lit by the nearness gained, we have gone weighted from beneath; the vision is

frustrate” (6.9.4). The mystic ascent of Confessions VII recreates this mood of

transience frustrated, indeed it adopts Plotinus’ concept of the “weight” of the soul in

order to express this mood: “But I was not stable in the enjoyment of my God. I was

caught up to you by your beauty and quickly torn away from you by my weight”

(Confessions VII.xvii.23). Not only does Augustine describe mystical knowledge using

Neoplatonic terms, he also fits this experience into a Neoplatonic paradigm. Whether

this unacknowledged deployment of Neoplatonism describes an experience at that time,

suggesting that early on Augustine sought to imitate a Platonic intellectual ascent, or

whether Augustine’s description in the Confessions retrospectively describes a mystic

experience using Neoplatonic concepts, it is difficult to say. What is important about

this passage is its syncretism, where Plotinus’ account of introspective mystic

experience of the One or Intellectual Principle is fitted into Augustine’s account of a

mystic vision of the divine.

indebtednesses since Courcelle have returned to these paragraphs, in which we get our fullest--if not clearest or most concrete--view of the impact the platonicorum libri had on him.”

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A further important factor suggesting that the books of the Platonists are integral

to the quest for wisdom performed in the Confessions is that of structure. The

introduction of the books of the Platonists at Confessions VII.ix.13, as James J.

O’Donnell points out, occurs at the central passage of the central book of the

Confessions (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13).99 The implication of this structure is that

“pivotal” is perhaps the best way to describe, metaphorically and literally, Augustine’s

encounter with Neoplatonism and its role in the Confessions. That Augustine structures

the Confessions around his encounter with the books of the Platonists is striking because

it gives Neoplatonism, indeed a Neoplatonic explanation of cosmogony, a central place

in both Augustine’s account of himself as well as in the text of the Confessions itself.

The Confessions cannot have “additional” Neoplatonic comments and paraphrases

removed; rather, the account of cosmogony in the books of the Platonists is shown to be

inherent to the quest for wisdom and so to the literary experiment of the Confessions

which seeks to perform this quest.

This section has shown how the Confessions, insofar as it is a narrative of past

events, in fact records a search for wisdom, and that a theory of the world’s creation is

crucial to that search. In turn, we have seen how a synthesis of ideas and passages from

classical philosophy and Scripture infuses Augustine’s writing at Confessions III and

VII. This pervading focus on wisdom in the Confessions, and the consequent fusion of

knowledge systems prompted by this focus, is summarised by Stephen Menn:

The Confessions is about wisdom. It is misleading to think of the book as describing Augustine’s conversion to Christianity: conversio is indeed a central theme, but for Augustine this word means, not a change of religious allegiance, but a turning toward God away from

99 “With six books before and after, this one stands in the middle…By count of words or lines of text, this paragraph stands at the middle of the Bk. 7. As long as Augustine’s goal was intellectual enlightenment, the reading of the platonicorum libri was the decisive intellectual event that reoriented his ways of thinking as nothing before or after would do” (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.13).

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other things. From the beginning, Augustine identifies his desire for wisdom with a desire to “fly from earthly things to you” — that is, to God, the addressee of the Confessions — “for with you is wisdom” (Confessions III.iv.8). Christianity (that is, the authority of the scriptures and the discipline of the Catholic church) is only a means for achieving this flight to God: Augustine comes to think it is an indispensable means, but he never thinks that it excludes other means to wisdom, or that it is sufficient in itself. (Menn 1998, p.74)

The following sections of this chapter build on this comment by focusing on

Augustine’s discussions of cosmogony. We will see how cosmogony, as a “threshold”

subject that combines knowledge about the sensible order with knowledge about a

divine order which originates the sensible, forms a pivotal aspect of the literary

experimentalism of the Confessions — its dramatisation of the ascent of knowledge.

ii. Confessions XII: Syncretic Cosmogony and Literary Structure

This section, in analysing the discourse on cosmogony in Confessions XII, makes two

points. First, I show how Augustine’s explication of the story of creation in Genesis 1

brings into focus the continued if unacknowledged role of Neoplatonism in the

Confessions. While in book VII Augustine asserts that the books of the Platonists had

only a brief and limited impact on him, in book XII we will see the necessary and

supplemental role Neoplatonism continues to play in the composition of the

Confessions. This demonstrates how the complexities of cosmogony demand an

experimental, if unrecognised, fusion of Neoplatonic metaphysics with Scripture. My

second point focuses on the location of cosmogony within the innovative structure of

the Confessions. If the continuance of the Confessions beyond the narrative of self

dramatises the limits of self-knowledge, then Augustine’s decision to conclude the

Confessions with an exegesis of Genesis 1 over books XII-XIII suggests that the

structure of the Confessions also dramatises the ascent of wisdom beyond the self to the

divine order which originates the created world of experience.

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Augustine’s representation of Neoplatonism as a merely limited stage in his reaching an

understanding of Scripture, dramatised by his image of philosophy as a “wooded

summit” offering a view but not the way to enlightenment (Confessions VII.xvi.27), is

in principle supported by the contrasts between Platonic and Christian theoretical

models of cosmogony. Indeed, the initial descriptions in the Confessions of how God

made the universe emphasise the sublimity of divine creation, and so would appear to

leave out any need for a materialist, Platonic theory of cosmogony to clarify

Augustine’s theory. Whereas Plato claims that a Demiurge shaped the universe out of

existing materials using a pre-existent ideal realm as a model, Augustine presents a

more sublime divine mode of creation by asserting that God creates all things at once.

In stating this, Augustine employs the term de nihilo, thus pre-empting orthodox ideas

of creation ex nihilo.100

However, as Augustine’s discussion of cosmogony continues, especially when he

interprets the story of creation in Genesis 1, this basic contrast between Platonic and

Christian cosmogonies becomes less clear-cut. Elements of the Platonic model of

cosmogony which was inaugurated by Plato’s Timaeus, indeed, become apparent in

Augustine’s language and concepts.101 As we noted in the previous section, scholarship

has increasingly shown the presence of Neoplatonic ideas and terminology throughout

the Confessions, beyond the few explicit comments of book VII. But what is the nature

of these references? Are they consciously used intertexts, like Augustine’s consistent

100 Chapter four of this thesis analyses the conceptual and descriptive problems Augustine faces in his attempt to describe the nature of creation ex nihilo. 101 Augustine had direct access to Cicero’s translation of the Timaeus prior to his De Civitate Dei (413-26), but it is not clear whether he would have had access at the time of writing the Confessions. At the least, Augustine knew the Timaeus indirectly through Plotinus.

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use of Scriptural references throughout the Confessions, which are aimed at educated

readers?102 Given Augustine’s explicit rejection of Platonic philosophy in Confessions

VII because the books of the Platonists lack the doctrine of grace, this possibility seems

less likely. My contention is that Neoplatonism influences the writing of the

Confessions as an unacknowledged and perhaps unrecognised supplement which

provides a philosophical support to theological arguments. The profound impact of the

books of the Platonists described in Confessions VII, in other words, continues to have a

bearing when Augustine comes to speculate on diverse phenomena in writing the

Confessions. The difficult nature of cosmogony brings this supplemental role into focus.

Some evidence for this role played by Neoplatonism in Confessions XII is

clarified when the book addresses the subject of the “lowest things” of the cosmos.

Augustine’s concern for wisdom in the Confessions, which is a search for knowledge

beyond the individual, results in a consistent attempt to situate created things in a

hierarchy emanating from the divine. This reflection on a hierarchy of being requires

definition of the “lowest” order of things, such as the pre-formed state of the cosmos.

The prevailing issue in Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis 1 in Confessions XII, therefore,

is what God made the universe out of, and not so much how it was made. So while

Augustine begins his exegesis of Genesis 1 with a restatement of the principle that God

is “maker of heaven and earth” (XII.ii.2), he soon turns from this appreciation of the

highest order of created things, the “heaven of heaven”, to a query about the Scriptural

reference to the earth “invisible and unorganised” (Genesis 1:2). His interest in the

physical world’s original state becomes clear in that he interprets this Scriptural phrase

102 Gillian Clark points out that “In the Confessions, Augustine takes it for granted that his readers are people like himself, who can hear what he is saying because the rhythms of Virgil and the Latin Bible are part of their lives…So the intertexts of the Confessions are very prominent, and are of great importance in making the link between Augustine and his readers” (Clark 1993, p.73).

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as a reference to the “lowest things” of the universe, to its primal state as “a kind of

deep abyss” prior to divine creation (XII.iii.3).

A number of specific concepts from the account of cosmogony in Plotinus’

Enneads are evident in Augustine’s elucidation of the idea of a “formless abyss” of the

cosmos (Chadwick 1991, p.246 note 2). The idea in Confessions XII.ii.2 that the

physical world “is not in its entirety present in every part” of heaven — that the things

of the physical world are fragments, in contrast to the wholeness of intelligible objects

— is anticipated by Plotinus’ statement that “Soul is present only in proportion to the

degree of essential reality held by each of such partial objects” (Enneads 2.3.13).

Augustine’s comment about the physical world that there is “a beautiful form in its very

lowest things” (XII.ii.2), likewise, reflects Plotinus’ argument that although chaos

affects the lower aspects of the world, nonetheless “Reason rules in the lower things”

(Enneads 3.2.7). Finally, the question at Confessions XII.v.5 about whether formless

matter can be known draws on a Platonic tradition which argues for the possibility of

knowledge by means of negative definition (Enneads 2.4.10).

The discourse on cosmogony in Confessions XII thus shows how an innovative

blending of texts and knowledge systems, prompted by cosmogony, is not only part of a

previous intellectual journey to wisdom recorded in Confessions III and VII, but also

forms part of the writing of the Confessions itself. This continuing impact of

Neoplatonic ideas in Augustine’s cosmogony is further underlined, ironically, in

Augustine’s account of the thought processes by which he came to an understanding of

formless matter. While in book VII, as we noted in the previous section, Augustine

states that the books of the Platonists paraphrase and explain ideas about cosmogony in

John 1, in book XII he emphasises that divine revelation is the sole instigator of his

reaching an understanding of matter, one of the more difficult ideas in cosmogony:

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For myself, Lord, if I am to confess to you with my mouth and my pen everything you have taught me about this question of matter, the truth is that earlier in life I heard the word but did not understand it, and those who spoke to me about it did not understand it either. (XII.vi.6)

Augustine’s repetition of this idea later in the same paragraph underscores his setting up

of divine revelation alone, without the additional aid of philosophy, as the source of his

knowledge about formless matter: “If my voice and pen were to confess to you all that

you disentangled for me in examining this question, no reader would have the patience

to follow the argument” (XII.vi.6).

Yet in describing his understanding of the materia informe (XII.iii.3) which

existed prior to the formation of the cosmos, Augustine’s language highlights the

continued impact of Neoplatonism in Confessions XII. In describing his thought

processes, Augustine posits that when he first attempted to conceive of a formless

matter between form and nothingness, he was only able to imagine “foul and horrible

forms”, and so his use of the word “formless” (informe) was in fact erroneous: “I used

the word formless not for that which lacked form but for that which had a form such

that, if it had appeared, my mind would have experienced revulsion” (XII.vi.6). This

misunderstanding of informe, and the consequent errant use of the word, Augustine

continues, persisted until “[t]rue reasoning convinced me that I should wholly subtract

all remnants of every kind of form if I wished to conceive the absolutely formless”

(XII.vi.6).

There is more to this process of abstraction than Augustine’s description of a

combination of divine revelation and true reasoning. The process also closely follows

Enneads 1.8.9 (Chadwick 1991, p.248 note 5), which states that in order to perceive

Matter “We utterly eliminate every kind of Form; and the object in which there is none

whatever we call Matter: if we are to see Matter we must so completely abolish Form

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that we take shapelessness into our very selves.” Paradoxically, it is the very act by

which Augustine attempts to emphasise the divine origin of his understanding of matter

which is highly revealing about the degree to which Neoplatonic philosophy informs his

discussion of matter and so of Genesis 1. The difficulty Augustine has with describing a

process by which he came to understand this aspect of cosmogony, we can see here, has

the effect of highlighting for us the continued impact of Neoplatonism on his discursive

methods.

The parallel between Neoplatonism and John 1, mentioned explicitly in

Confessions VII, is thus replicated in parallels between Neoplatonic cosmogonic theory

and Genesis 1 in Confessions XII, although this later parallel is unacknowledged.

Indeed the proliferation of specific Platonic ideas in the opening paragraphs of

Confessions XII suggests that they perform a function more significant than mere

clarification, that they are fundamental to Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1. It seems,

therefore, that the role once played by Neoplatonism in the quest for wisdom, as

described in Confessions VII, continues in the composition of the Confessions, even if

Augustine does not mention that these ideas inform his discourse. And as I shall now

argue, the discussion of cosmogony in the closing books of the Confessions suggests

that it portrays, thematically and structurally, the ascent of wisdom, suggesting that this

innovative structure relies on an innovative fusion of epistemologies.

The discussion of cosmogony in Confessions XII is intriguing not only for its

unexplained use of Neoplatonic philosophy within its exegesis of Genesis 1, but also for

its very presence in what is apparently a narrative of self. I have argued in the previous

section of this chapter that the Confessions is primarily about wisdom, and that the

narrative of self forms an aspect of this search for wisdom insofar as it is where

Augustine narrates the history of his search. My interest now is to explore how the

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structure of the Confessions, beginning with an account of the self and closing with a

reflection on the world’s creation, dramatises the ascent of wisdom beyond self-

reflection.

In discussing this “problem” of the structure of the Confessions, it is useful to

recall Eugene Vance’s comment that

we should both question those implicit critical models by which we comprehend and evaluate the Confessions and be willing to consider Augustine’s decision to conclude with an exegesis of the Old Testament as a discursive strategy subtended by a set of assumptions, both metaphysical and rhetorical, not wholly apparent to us today. More important, we need to understand how this exegetical gesture may be seen as a positive fulfilment of the composition of the Confessions as a whole. (Vance 1986, p.4)

For Vance, the concluding exegesis of the Confessions forms “the last phase of a

spiritual itinerary” in which “Augustine considered the commentary on the creation in

Genesis as a speech act which is the re-creation…of his soul” (Vance 1986, pp.10-11).

Yet even if exegesis is indeed the final stage of a discursive performance, the question

remains: why Genesis, and not some other Scriptural passage such as one of the Psalms,

with which he had an obvious fascination? Vance suggests that it is due to an analogy

between the soul and the creation as they are portrayed in the Confessions (Vance 1986,

p.11), an idea also noted by James J. O’Donnell (O’Donnell 1985, p.80). However,

neither Vance nor O’Donnell examine the specifics of this analogy in the Confessions,

and so I will discuss in greater depth in sections four and five of this chapter how this

analogy is deployed and its implications for the literary structure of the Confessions.

We can also build on these arguments of Vance and O’Donnell and explain the

role of the Genesis 1 exegesis by showing how the structure of the Confessions is in fact

modelled on the ascent of wisdom. Augustine’s discussion of wisdom in De Libero

Arbitrio (The Problem of Free Choice), a work probably completed just before he began

the Confessions, provides an important clue about the nature and structure of the

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Confessions. Augustine, when describing the path of wisdom in De Libero, is careful to

warn about the dangers of assuming that introspection alone provides understanding of

the divine:

The soul in contemplating supreme wisdom — which, being unchangeable, cannot be identified with the soul — also looks at its changeable self and in some sense comes into its own mind...But if, so to speak, it goes out of its way to produce a false imitation of God, and to will to take pleasure in its own power, then the greater it wishes to become the less it becomes in fact. And that is pride, the beginning of all sin. (III.xxv.76; author’s emphasis)

While Vance refers to this passage to point out the problems of applying modern

assumptions about narrative and self-writing to the Confessions (Vance 1986, pp.4-5), I

suggest that the passage says something important about the structure of the

Confessions itself. The continuance of the Confessions beyond the narrative of self, and

the intrinsic importance of books X-XIII, dramatises the idea of De Libero Arbitrio that

self-reflection, and the literary genre of self-reflection, is by itself a cause of pride.

Rather, it must be fitted into a broader focus.

Further evidence that the structure of the Confessions dramatises the ascent of

wisdom is apparent in Augustine’s narrated and literary past. James J. O’Donnell

suggests that Augustine’s decision to study and write about the liberal arts in 387

marked a commitment not to furthering his career but rather to “philosophical

retirement”: “The sequence of disciplines (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic,

geometry, music, and astronomy) was meant to take the mind away from the

world…The sequence was important, ending with astronomy, which lifted the mind to

the stars and to what lay beyond the stars” (O’Donnell 2005, p.76). Might the

Confessions also use this feature of astronomy and cosmogony as a way of lifting its

focus away from a problematic introspection towards the divine origin of the created

world? Eugene Vance, similarly, postulates that the Confessions follows the seven stage

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ladder of wisdom outlined in De Doctrina Christiana, where the narrative of self

describes the achievement of the earlier steps toward wisdom, while the exegesis of

Genesis 1 completes this ascent through proper understanding of Scripture (Vance

1986, p.20).

The idea that the Confessions is structured around the ascent of wisdom, and

concludes with cosmogony in order to dramatise the zenith of this ascent, is especially

apparent if we again turn to De Libero Arbitrio. Just as the continuance of the

Confessions beyond self-narrative dramatises the limits of introspection described in

book III of De Libero Arbitrio, so the closing exegesis of Genesis 1 in the Confessions

dramatises another principle of De Libero Arbitrio: “Every man advancing on the way

to wisdom, perceives, when he attentively reflects on the whole of creation, that wisdom

shows herself to him cheerfully on his way” (II.xvii.45). Self-reflection, and the literary

mode of self-reflection, thus forms only an aspect of the Confessions not only because

introspection is problematic in itself, but also because divine wisdom is also reached

through reflection on the created world beyond the self: “Therefore all good things,

great or small, can only come from God” (De Libero Arbitrio II.17.46). In the next

section, I pursue this idea in the Confessions that knowledge of God might be achieved

through experiencing the created world.

While the Confessions may represent a slightly different theology from De Libero

Arbitrio, its transition from the genre of self-reflection to a focus on cosmogony through

an exegesis of Genesis 1 follows two ideas about wisdom described in De Libero

Arbitrio: that introspection, while forming a key stage in the path to wisdom, is by itself

problematic, and that reflection on the world’s creation forms a vital additional step in

achieving divine wisdom. The remainder of this chapter will explore both structural and

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thematic means by which the cosmogony of the Confessions facilitates the ascent of

wisdom.

iii. The Created Order and Mystic Ascent: Platonising Romans 1:20

In this section I narrow my focus from the overall structure of the Confessions to one

aspect of Augustine’s cosmogony: his theory of how knowledge of the divine might be

gained from experience of the created world. Ultimately, this part of Augustine’s

doctrine of creation, which he discusses throughout the Confessions, comes back to the

question of why God made the cosmos with man in it. The concept presented towards

the end of the Confessions is that the cosmos was made in order for human beings to

experience its “made-ness” and so come to appreciate its divine maker. The section

shows that Neoplatonism is essential to the “workability” of Augustine’s theory, and

thus continues the point of the previous section that an innovative fusion of knowledge

systems underlining the composition of the Confessions, while not explicitly

acknowledged, is brought into relief when it focuses on issues concerned with

cosmogony. Equally, we shall see in this section, questions about sensory experience

and about why the cosmos was created are critical in the Confessions because they help

dramatise the ascent of wisdom beyond self-reflection in the text’s early stages. The

section thus demonstrates how cosmogony facilitates a literary technique which

dramatises the idea that a divine order is available to everyday experience.

The Confessions, as a quest for knowledge that transcends the individual, consistently

returns to the issue of how understanding of God, as creator of the cosmos, can be

achieved by means of experiencing the created world. How can something which is

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created be used as a means to understand the only thing which is not created, because it

creates all else? Augustine summarises this problem of knowledge about the non-

sensible divine through experience of the created order in De Doctrina Christiana:

So in this mortal life we are like travellers away from our Lord: if we wish to return to the homeland where we can be happy we must use this world, not enjoy it, in order to discern ‘the invisible attributes of God, which are understood through what has been made’ or, in other words, to derive eternal and spiritual value from corporeal and temporal things. (I.9)103

The solution Augustine describes here mobilises a Pauline passage which is also

frequently quoted or paraphrased in descriptions of spiritual knowledge in the

Confessions: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly

seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20). Scholars are

divided about precisely how Augustine uses this Pauline doctrine in the Confessions.

Some argue that he treats Neoplatonism as though it is consistent with the Scriptural

comment of Romans 1:20, or indeed that it enables understanding of Scripture. Others

suggest that Augustine’s use of Romans 1:20 in the Confessions is essentially anti-

philosophical: St Paul’s subsequent warning of Romans 1:21-22, where he critiques

those who worship the creation rather than the creator, is thus treated by Augustine as a

warning against the limits of philosophies such as Neoplatonism.104

My concern in the next few paragraphs is to show that even where Augustine

describes the limits of philosophy in aiding the principle that sensory experience of the

creation plays a role in the ascent of wisdom, Neoplatonism is nonetheless

103 References to De Doctrina Christiana (DDC) are to the translation by R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). I follow Green’s division of the text into books and sections, for example II.8. For the Latin original, I refer to: <http://www.augustinus.it/latino/dottrina_cristiana/index.htm>. 104 For a discussion of the debate over Augustine’s use of Romans 1:20, see O’Donnell (1992), at 7.9.14, etsi cognoscunt deum; and at 5.1.1. O’Donnell argues that “[t]he rhetorical strategy of this citation must be seen in the history of Christian assimilation of philosophical doctrines (marked at the same time by the insistence that they were originally Christian all along)” (O’Donnell 1992, 7.9.14, etsi cognoscunt deum).

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indispensable to his use of the Pauline doctrine in the Confessions. This reaffirms my

point that issues to do with cosmogony bring into relief the synthesis of knowledge

systems inherent to the Confessions, notwithstanding some of Augustine’s explicit

comments to the contrary. In turn, I show how this syncretic theory about sensory

experience is vital in the theorisation of divine wisdom attempted in the Confessions.

Consistent with the tone of Confessions VII, Augustine’s explicit comments about

knowledge achieved through sensation suggest that any insight philosophy offered him

remains fundamentally limited, and so nothing more than a “wooded summit”.

Neoplatonism, Augustine records, did indeed prompt him to search for divine

knowledge in the created world: “after reading the books of the Platonists and learning

from them to seek for immaterial truth, I turned my attention to your ‘invisible nature

understood through the things which are made’” (VII.xx.26). Once more, we can see

Augustine’s explicit blending of knowledge systems in Confessions VII, where the

books of the Platonists lead him to an understanding of a Scriptural concept.

Yet just as Augustine claims that any understanding of John 1 through philosophic

paraphrase remains limited, so the Platonic equivalent of Romans 1:20 is of itself

limited, indeed damaging: “Where was the charity which builds on the foundation of

humility which is Christ Jesus? When would the Platonist books have taught me that?”

(VII.xx.26). Only in St Paul, Augustine argues, does he find this sort of knowledge

coupled with a humility lacking in philosophy: “I began reading and found that all the

truth I had read in the Platonists was stated here together with the commendation of

your grace” (VII.xxi.27).

At this point we should recall that in Confessions VII Augustine represents his

intellectual development in a controlled way with a view to asserting that the influence

Neoplatonism had on his thought is limited and only lasted for a brief stage. By

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highlighting the unacknowledged presence of Neoplatonic ideas in the account of

cosmogony at Confessions XII, I argued in the previous section that Neoplatonism

forms an inextricable part of the quest for knowledge which drives the Confessions.

Indeed, if we look beyond Augustine’s explicit comments, it becomes evident that his

use of Romans 1:20 throughout the Confessions corresponds to his exegesis of Genesis

1 in book XII, in that a synthesis of philosophy with Scriptural passages underpins his

arguments about sensory experience.

This synthesis of epistemologies in Augustine’s theory of sensory knowledge is

first apparent in Confessions VII, where his discussion of key stages in his intellectual

development continually deploys philosophic concepts. Augustine’s account of self-

discovery in the “region of dissimilarity”, prompted by his experience of the Platonic

books, results in his assertion that he found greater faith in the possibility of knowledge

through “things that are made” than by self-reflection (VII.x.16). In describing his

transient mystical vision — a vision steeped in Plotinian themes (Chadwick 1991, p.127

note 25) — Augustine twice asserts that God’s invisible nature is achievable “through

the things that are made” (VII.xvii.23). Note that in both these instances Neoplatonic

philosophy is discussed in the context of transcendent wisdom, that they furnish the

possibility of knowledge beyond self-reflection by means of sensory experience. Only

by asserting that the Platonic books fail to praise God at the same time as he cites the

knowledge they impart does Augustine dissimulate the suggestion that his model of

sensory experience was formed out of a fusion of Neoplatonic and Scriptural passages.

Augustine’s use of Neoplatonism in Confessions VII to aid his deployment of the

principle represented in Romans 1:20, considered alongside his comments about the

limited role of Neoplatonism in the same book, thus points to a recurrent contrast

between the unacknowledged role served by philosophy in the Confessions and

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Augustine’s explicit assertions that the same philosophy is limited.105 While he suggests

that Neoplatonism only influenced him at a stage in the past, and that it suffers for its

lack of Christian grace, the discussion of mystic ascent in Confessions VII, and the

theory of sensory experience used throughout the Confessions, bring into relief the

necessary synthesis of Neoplatonic and Scriptural ideas in his cosmogony. Romans

1:20, like Genesis 1, is not the object of Augustine’s discussion, but rather is combined

with Neoplatonic philosophy in order to speculate on divine wisdom.

The synthesis of philosophy and theology in Augustine’s theory of experience is

especially apparent in book X, where the Confessions leaves behind the

autobiographical record of conversion for a consideration of broader themes beyond the

individual. Having completed his account of the soul’s conversion over Confessions I-

IX, Augustine revisits at the opening of book X some of the themes opening the

Confessions such as the soul’s distance from God and the ineffability of faith: “Without

question we see now through a mirror in an enigma, not yet face to face. For this cause,

as long as I am a traveller absent from you, I am more present to myself than to you”

(X.v.7). The continuance of these themes after the narrative of conversion has

concluded establishes that the problematic limits of self-knowledge continue after

conversion, suggesting that wisdom is a continual process, rather than an achieved state.

This continuing problem of self-knowledge explains in part the experimentalism of the

Confessions, in that the diversity of subjects it addresses results from the search for

wisdom in areas beyond introspection.

105 Even if some critics see Augustine’s use of Romans 1:20 as “anti-philosophical”, by De Civitate Dei he distinguishes between different philosophies, asserting the Platonists achieved better understanding of God because they theorised about the cause of the world’s creation. He takes Romans 1:21 — “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God” — as a warning only against other philosophers whose thought is “based on the elements of this world, and not on God, the world’s creator” (VIII.10).

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Augustine’s theorisation of sensory experience in book X, in addition to

highlighting a fusion of knowledge systems in the Confessions, shows how cosmogony

plays a vital role in resolving these problems of self-knowledge, and thus underpins the

project of the Confessions in its quest for wisdom. As the Confessions moves from

describing a previous search for wisdom to performing this search in the present, where

the narrated “I” of the past catches up with the speaking “I” of the present, Augustine’s

first point of reflection is the relation between sensory experience and knowledge of the

divine, a relationship which may ultimately be obstructive:

But when I love you (God), what do I love? It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs…Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God — a light, voice, odour, food, embrace of my inner man, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize… (X.vi.8)

While the negative theology of the passage rejects any sensory component of

knowledge of the divine, it also describes experience of the divine according to a

sensory paradigm. Cosmogony, in the form of Augustine’s deployment of Romans 1:20

as well as its Neoplatonic equivalent, is essential in resolving the paradox expressed

here because it enables Augustine to find a place for sensation, the predominant aspect

of human experience, in the ascent of wisdom:

And I said to all these things in my external environment: ‘Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him.’ And with a great voice they cried out: ‘He made us.’ My question was the attention I gave to them, and their response was their beauty. (X.vi.9)

In theorising sensory experience here through a sort of hypothetical dialogue, Augustine

proposes that one reason why the world was made was in order that experience of the

“made-ness” of things might prompt reflection on the creator of those things.

This idea that the beauty of the physical world is a sign of its divine creation

anticipates the trope of the world as a book written by the finger of God or Nature, a

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trope that was to become popular from the twelfth century through to the Renaissance

(Curtius 1979, pp.319-26). But for Augustine, beauty and aesthetics represent

dangerously seductive categories, in that they can lead to “enjoyment” of the physical

object rather than “use” of it in order to reach its divine origin (De Doctrina I.7), as for

example those who “serve the creation rather than the Creator” (Confessions V.iii.5),

who Paul warns against in Romans 1:21-25.

It is in addressing this problem that beauty might become an end in itself that a

fusion of Neoplatonic and Scriptural theories about sensory experience, despite

Augustine explicit comments about the limitations of Platonic philosophy, are shown to

underpin the Confessions. His argument that a person’s “love of created things” makes

them “subdued by them, and being thus made subject become incapable of exercising

judgement” (X.vi.10) draws on Plotinus’ assertion that “Admiring pursuit of the

external is a confession of inferiority” and that no-one with such admiration “could ever

form any notion of either the nature or the power of God” (5.1.1). His suggestion that

the judging soul is superior over the body which it moves, likewise, is again Plotinian

(4.3.7) (Chadwick 1991, p.184 notes 8-10). For Romans 1:20 to work here, Neoplatonic

ideas are not problematic, but on the contrary indispensable, for they provide

philosophical arguments against beauty as an end in itself and also explain how the

divine might be reached through the created world.

Confessions X marks a turning point in the Confessions because it is where

Augustine shifts from a retrospective discussion of past events to present experience.

This transition needs a theory of cosmogony because Augustine begins with the

question of how sensation, the most immediate aspect of present experience, can form

part of the search for wisdom beyond the individual. Through cosmogony Augustine

seeks to affirm that sensory experience of a thing’s “made-ness” facilitates this

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transition from self-knowledge to an appreciation of a divine creator beyond the

individual. It is no accident that Confessions X concludes with Augustine’s lengthy

reflection on the dangers of sensory experience in obstructing knowledge of the divine,

where he confesses his tendency to enjoy rather than use certain experiences. Even

church music, he suggests, poses a seductive danger if one were to enjoy it “in-itself”

rather than as a mode of worship (X.xxxiii.49). Underlying this discussion is

Augustine’s theory of sensory experience, supported by a combination of Plotinus 5.1.1

with Romans 1:21-25, where experience coupled with judgement provides a means of

accessing the divine origin of the objects of experience. Cosmogony therefore underpins

the literary experiment of the Confessions because it is vital to the work’s dramatisation

of the ascent of knowledge beyond the individual; Neoplatonic principles underpin

many aspects of the cosmogony Augustine presents.

The Confessions, like the Timaeus, shows how discussions of cosmogony prompt

thinkers to postulate the reason for human sensory experience and for the world’s

creation. It results in quasi- or proto-humanist ideas that the world is created for man,

that man’s experience of the cosmos has a purpose, whether to aid the development of

reason and philosophy, as suggested in the Timaeus, or to appreciate its maker and so

come to know the divine, as in the Confessions. The next sections consider specific

ways in which the individual microcosm and the universe are related in the cosmogony

of the Confessions.

iv. The Abyss of Dissimilarity

This section shows that there is a link between the moral concept of the “region of

dissimilarity” of the soul, described in Confessions VII, and the idea of a formless

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dissimilarity of the physical cosmos, described over books XII-XIII. This parallel, we

will see, underlines the epistemological syncretism evident in the Confessions because

the fusion of Neoplatonic and Scriptural concepts demanded by the complexities of

cosmogony underlies both the idea of spiritual and physical dissimilarity. The relation

of the moral story of the soul to the story of the physical cosmos, I argue further,

contributes to the experimental literary style of the Confessions prompted by its focus

on wisdom, because it innovates a fusion of subject types, the physical and the spiritual,

and also means that the history of the soul is written into and compared with the history

of the cosmos.

The series of intellectual revelations described in Confessions VII, as I discussed in the

first section of this chapter, record how Neoplatonism allowed Augustine to overcome

some of the intellectual problems and errors with which he had been grappling. Prior to

his experience of the “books of the Platonists”, Augustine recalls, he erroneously

considered philosophic problems from an essentially materialist viewpoint, resulting in

ideas such as the cosmos being a sponge filled by God as divine “sea”, and the

Manichean idea of evil as a substance (VII.xiv.20). The change in intellectual outlook

brought about by the books of the Platonists, a change described over the course of

book VII, enabled him to overcome this attitude, to reject his focus on the external

world and instead consider spiritual realities, beginning with inner experience: “By the

Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself” (VII.x.16).

This self-reflection leads to Augustine’s recognition of the displacement of his

soul from the divine, of its distance in the chain of being from its divine origin: “And I

found myself far from you in the region of dissimilarity (in regione dissimilitudinis)”

(VII.x.16). This is a famous image in the Platonic tradition. Plato, in his Politicus

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(273d), uses it to depict the place of the soul turned away from the divine into a

“bottomless abyss of Unlikeness”. The image is adopted by Plotinus (1.8.10), who

states that “We are become dwellers in the Place of Unlikeness, where, fallen from all

our resemblance to the Divine, we lie in gloom and mud”. In turn, as both Chadwick

and O’Donnell note,106 Plotinus is Augustine’s source for the image in Confessions VII.

Confessions VII, therefore, records how Neoplatonic philosophy, especially its

description of the lowest order of the universe, enabled Augustine to achieve a new

understanding of the created world as a hierarchy of being and also his own place within

that hierarchy.

Augustine’s juxtaposition of the microcosm of the soul with the history of the

cosmos by means of the idea of dissimilarity is summarised early in Confessions XIII,

where he reflects on some of the arguments about Genesis 1 he has made in book XII:

What merit before you had physical matter even to be merely ‘invisible and unorganised’? It would not exist at all unless you had made it...What claim upon you had the inchoate spiritual creation even to be merely in a dark fluid state like the ocean abyss? It would have been dissimilar to you unless by your Word it had been converted to the same Word by whom it was made… (XIII.ii.3)

The use of the term “dissimilar” (dissimilis) here to describe the ontological state of

formless matter suggests that there is a link between the soul and the cosmos through

both a verbal and a thematic echo. The dissimilarity of formless creation from the divine

recalls Augustine’s self-location in the “region of dissimilarity” (dissimilitudinis)

(VII.x.16). Moreover, the passage describes both physical and spiritual creation, and so

106 Chadwick (1991), p.123 note 22; O’Donnell (1992), 7.6.13. In De Civitate Dei (IX.17), Augustine cites this passage directly: “What has become of that saying of Plotinus, ‘We must flee to our beloved country. There the Father is, and there is everything. Where shall we take ship? How can we flee? By becoming like God.’ If man comes near to God in proportion as he grows more like him, then unlikeness to God is the only separation from him, and the soul of man is estranged from that immaterial, eternal and unchangeable being in proportion as it craves for things that are temporal and changeable.”

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posits that the state of dissimilarity relates to both the physical cosmos and to spiritual

things, such as the created spiritual heavens or the individual soul.

In recognising that there is a degree of interchange between Augustine’s account

of the soul and of creation, James J. O’Donnell argues that Augustine’s discussion of

cosmogony in Confessions XII “makes the text of Genesis 1 tell literally of the formatio

of created informis materia, but allegorically of the conversio of the fallen creature”

(O’Donnell 1992, 13.2.3). The juxtaposition of soul with creation, I suggest, goes

beyond the concept of an analogous relation to one of literal connection because the

interpretation of the earth “invisible and unorganised” (Genesis 1:2) by reference to

Plotinus’ idea of formless matter comes to describe an embodied place of the fallen

soul. At first, indeed, the link is closer to one of an analogy where formless matter

provides an image for the fallen soul: “But it is good for it always to cleave to you lest,

by turning away from you and slipping back into a life like the dark abyss, it lose the

light it obtained by turning to you” (XIII.ii.3). However, by XIII.xiv.15, Augustine uses

the image of the formless deep or “abyss” (abyssus) to describe his self-location in

dissimilarity: “Yet still my soul is sad because it slips back and becomes a deep

(abyssus), or rather feels itself still to be a deep” (XIII.xiv.15). Finally, abyssus comes

to describe the nature of the fallen soul: “the sons of Adam who forget you, who hide

from your face and become an abyss (abyssus)” (XIII.xxi.30). Thus over the course of

Confessions XIII, Augustine’s relation of the soul with the abyss of the cosmos

progresses from analogy to direct association. In dramatising parallels between the soul

and the cosmos, we can see here, the syncretism of the Confessions extends to a blurring

of the distinction between the physical and the spiritual.

Cosmogony enables the link between the moral dissimilarity of the soul and the

formless dissimilarity of the physical cosmos, I suggest, because it marks a threshold

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between thought systems. Just as the Timaeus explores the link between sensible and

intellectual realms, so the Confessions brings together the divine and the physical, in

that Augustine gradually incorporates his moral-theological system into his later

discussion of cosmogony. Moreover, Augustine’s “Neoplatonism” here is no mere

rehearsal or appropriation of philosophical concepts, for he brings together two ideas

from Plotinus’ Enneads which are separate: the region of dissimilarity (1.8.13), and

formless matter (2.4.10).107 The epistemological syncretism of the Confessions,

therefore, is more complex than a combination of ideas in Scripture with similar ideas in

Neoplatonism, for Augustine has also fused different aspects of Neoplatonic philosophy

within his juxtaposition of the microcosmic soul with the universe, a juxtaposition he

deploys as part of the focus on wisdom going beyond self-knowledge.

By enacting an analogy between the dissimilarity of the soul and the dissimilarity

of the cosmos, the account of cosmogony in Confessions XII-XIII helps resolve some of

the intellectual problems raised in Confessions VII. Moreover, the parallel between the

soul and the cosmos suggested in Augustine’s idea of the abyss of the soul offers a more

permanent form of knowledge to problematic transience of knowledge described in

book VII. While Confessions VII records a degree of intellectual success, it also

dramatises the potential error of self-focus in the search for knowledge because it lacks

a wider sense of the hierarchy of being. This problem of introspection is dramatised by

the mystic ascent of Confessions VII, where Augustine describes his epiphanic vision of

the divine as unsatisfactory because it is transitory: “But I was not stable in the

enjoyment of my God…I did not possess the strength to keep my vision fixed”

107 As James J. O’Donnell comments: “The belief that the conversio of the fallen creature metaphysically resembles the original formatio of the creature from materia informis is central to Augustine’s adaptation of Platonism” (O’Donnell 1992, 13.2.3).

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(VII.xvi.22). The problem of this philosophical ascent is its self-centeredness, its

emphasis on self-reflection to the relative disregard of the rest of creation: “By the

Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself. With you as my guide I entered

my innermost citadel” (VII.x.16). Only by bringing the doctrines of dissimilarity and

formlessness together does Augustine fit the soul’s experience of dislocation into a

hierarchy of being, which in turn broadens the moral experience of the soul into the

story of the physical cosmos.

The suggested link between the dissimilarity of the soul and the dissimilarity of

the cosmos, a link achieved through an innovative fusion of Neoplatonic concepts with

Christian doctrine, shows how cosmogony prompts new ideas about the relationship

between human beings and the wider cosmos. In addition to the concept that the world

was created in order for it to be experienced, as discussed in the previous section, one

implication of Augustine’s model is to posit the connectedness of the individual and the

universe, to ascribe them a joint origin and joint history. Furthermore, by linking the

abyss of the soul and the abyss of the cosmos, Confessions XIII reformulates the type of

knowledge described in book VII by giving self-reflection a broader, cosmic

perspective. Many of the unresolved problems raised in Confessions VII are thus

clarified in book XIII, and indeed the later book on cosmogony can be seen in part as a

critique of the self-centeredness of knowledge in book VII. Thematically, cosmogony is

central to the ascent of wisdom because it performs a critique which resolves errors of

self-focus. The next section explores further Augustine’s search for a transcendental

epistemology in his discussion of cosmogony. My focus moves from the concept of

dissimilarity to the concept of conversion.

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v. Creation, Formation, and Conversion

This section analyses another parallel between the account of the soul and the account

of cosmogony in the Confessions, where the conversion of the soul away from the

“region of dissimilarity” towards its divine origin resembles the formation of matter into

the created cosmos. This parallel further underlines the experimental form of the

Confessions which juxtaposes diverse subjects and literary styles. In analysing this link

between conversion and formation, the focus of this section is on the clarifying function

performed by the account of cosmogony. We will see how the nature of conversion

considered in a series of stories in Confessions VIII is broached but left unclear, because

these stories both dramatise the role of the individual will in conversion but also

emphasise the need for something beyond the will to complete spiritual progression. We

will then see how Confessions XIII, where Augustine relates the history of the soul with

the story of creation, serves to clarify this catalyst for conversion which is “beyond” the

individual. In turn, one of the crucial intellectual problems of Confessions VIII, the

problem of evil, is resolved by the discussion of cosmogony in Confessions XIII, in

which the creation and conversion of the individual soul are a microcosm of the creation

and formation of the universe. This parallel between conversion and formation

underlines the vital intellectual, thematic, and structural role played by cosmogony in

the quest for wisdom attempted in the Confessions. The upshot of the link, I suggest, is

to highlight the innovative fusion of subjects and styles which results from this quest for

wisdom and from the threshold nature of cosmogony.

Confessions VIII, in which Augustine prefaces his own narrative with other stories of

conversion, sets up a significant yet unresolved problem by dramatising both the role of

the will and the limits of the will in achieving knowledge of the divine. The story of a

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successful teacher and orator Victorinus, who was publicly pagan for the sake of his

career, but who was secretly Christian, dramatises a will to convert outweighed by fear

over the loss of worldly success (VIII.ii.4). We hear a similar story of Ponticianus and

his friends, who were unable to see the limits, indeed dangers, of secular ambition

(VIII.vi.15). Augustine himself notes that his experiences of these conversion stories

were in fact divine admonishments to him to convert, but that he failed due to the limits

of his will: “This new will, which was beginning to be within me a will to serve you

freely and to enjoy you, God, the only source of pleasure, was not yet strong enough to

conquer my older will, which had the strength of old habit” (VIII.v.10). His inward cry

to convert, “Let it be now, let it be now (ecce modo fiat, modo fiat)” (VIII.xi.25), marks

a performance of the will which remains unsuccessful due to human limitations: “Vain

trifles and the triviality of the empty-headed, my old loves, held me back” (VIII.xi.26).

In each conversion story, therefore, Augustine also emphasises the role of

something beyond the individual which acts as a catalyst for conversion. The spur for

Victorinus to publicise his faith is his encounter with Scripture, which helps him to

overcome his fears: “after his reading, he began to feel a longing and drank in courage”

(VIII.ii.4). Ponticianus and his friends are admonished when they happen on a book

describing the story of a monk Antony, whose mode of living, along with the ascetic

lifestyle of the Christians in whose house they find the book, reveals to them the

shallowness of their secular ambition (VIII.vi.15). Finally, Augustine himself notes the

relevance of these stories to his own situation and takes them as a divine intervention to

prompt his conversion: “This was the story Ponticianus told. But while he was speaking,

Lord, you turned my attention back to myself” (VIII.vii.16).

The emphasis on an external aid as a necessary aid to the will continues in

Augustine’s account of the final moments of his conversion. The performative yet

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ultimately limited statement of the inner will, “Let it be now, let it be now (ecce modo

fiat, modo fiat”), is echoed and complemented by an external catalyst, the famous voice

of a child chanting “Pick up and read, pick up and read (tolle lege, tolle lege”)

(VIII.xii.29), on hearing which Augustine turns to a copy of the writings of St Paul. The

“random” passage he chooses on hearing the child’s voice, Romans 13:14, urges the

reader to abandon carnal lusts and instead embrace Christ the Word. The passage could

not be more apt to Augustine and his inner debate: “I neither wished nor needed to read

further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all

anxiety flooded into my heart”: he is finally converted (VIII.xii.29).

The point of this famous episode is to emphasise the role of something external to

the individual in conversion, that for all the struggles, self-reflections and performances

of the will Augustine describes over Confessions VIII, it is a series of messages and key

Scriptural passages which are the ultimate catalyst for conversion. Yet the precise

nature of this external catalyst for conversion that is beyond the individual will is left

unclear. While the experiences of Augustine and Victorinus suggest that this catalyst is

Scripture itself, the fortunate coincidences of book VIII go beyond an individual’s

encounter with an appropriate Scriptural passage. Augustine also describes role-models

as divine messages: Antony for Ponticianus and his friends, and Victorinus, Antony,

and Ponticianus for Augustine himself.

In the midst of describing different stories of conversion, Augustine broadens his

perspective and reflects on the whole hierarchy of created things, and in doing so hints

at cosmogony’s role in clarifying the nature of the agent beyond the will which enables

conversion:

Why is it that this part of the creation alternates between regress and progress, between hostilities and reconciliations? Or is that a restriction is placed on them, a limit you have imposed, when from the highest heaven down to the lowest things on earth, from the beginning

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to the end of the ages, from an angel down to a worm…you have assigned to its proper place and time all kinds of good things and all your just works? (VIII.iii.8)

The drama of conversion and its opposite perversion (in the literal sense of a turning

away from the divine), in other words, is not restricted to human beings, but rather

applies to the whole order of created things. The stories of conversion of Confessions

VIII, therefore, are set up as microcosms of the order of creation.

By Confessions XIII, Augustine’s discussion of the world’s creation and the

subsequent changes of the created world fits conversion into a cosmic system, which in

turn clarifies the nature of the divine aid to conversion. All things, Augustine reiterates,

depend for their existence on a divine creator, but whether physical or spiritual, he

continues, all things tend to move toward chaos, toward dissimilarity from their divine

origin: “On your wisdom depended even embryonic and formless things, all of which in

their own spiritual or physical category move towards the chaos where there is no

control, and to a far off dissimilarity to you” (XIII.ii.2). Thus created things do not

remain ontologically stable; they fluctuate, like the wandering soul, between formless

dissimilarity and proximity to their divine origin.

At this point, Augustine comes to define the external agent in the soul’s

conversion as the same agent which both creates the primal matter of the cosmos and

forms matter into the created world: “So formless things are dependent on your Word. It

is only by that same Word that they are recalled to your Oneness and receive form”

(XIII.ii.2). Two paragraphs later, Augustine’s argument that God “converted” formless

matter to “receive form” (convertens ad formam) (XIII.iv.5) suggests that “conversion”

(conversio), the term customarily associated with the turning of the soul to the divine

(see VIII.xii.30), equates to the formation of matter into the created cosmos. The

syncretism here is twofold, for the fusion of subjects — the individual soul with the

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cosmos — is complemented with the thematic identification of conversion with

formation.

Augustine’s cosmogony marks an attempt to resolve the nature of conversion and

the problem of human will because it seeks to describe the relationship between the

mere existence of a thing and its formation toward the divine. It thus proposes a trans-

personal mode of knowledge by showing the soul’s place in the cosmos, and in turn

seeks to clarify the relationship between the soul’s “made-ness” and its capacity for free

choice. In Confessions XIII.ii.3 Augustine attempts to relate the story of the world’s

creation to that of the soul’s conversion by discussing first formless physical creation

(“What merit before you had physical matter even to be merely invisible and

unorganised”), then formless spiritual creation (“What claim upon you had the inchoate

spiritual creation even to be merely in a dark fluid state”), and finally the “formless”

aspect of the soul:

For we also, we are a spiritual creation in our souls, and have turned away from you our light. In that life we were at one time darkness. We toil on in the remains of our obscurity until, in your unique Son, we are your righteousness like the mountains of God, for we were your judgements like the deep abyss. (XIII.ii.3)

This passage highlights two important features of the role played by the discourse on

cosmogony in the Confessions in posing the ascent of knowledge beyond the individual.

One is that it describes the soul’s dissimilarity and conversion within the broader history

of the universe. Second, and connectedly, it returns to another of the intellectual

problems raised but left unresolved earlier in the Confessions: the problem of evil.

Augustine’s reference to the “remains of obscurity (reliquiis obscuritatis)” of the

soul here thus revisits one of the major intellectual problems raised in Confessions VII

— how can the soul act against its divine origin, especially when that origin is

omnipotent: “Who made me? Is not my God not only good but the supreme Good? Why

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then have I the power to will evil and to reject good?” (VII.iii.5). Notice that the

problem of evil is phrased as an issue of cosmogony, because it comes back to the

relationship between the ontological status of the thing made and the “pure goodness”

of its creator. This problem is borne out with Augustine’s discussion of the original

evildoer: “If the devil was responsible, where did the devil himself come from? And if

he began as a good angel and became a devil by a perversion of the will, how does the

evil will by which he became devil originate in him, when an angel is wholly made by a

Creator who is pure goodness?” (VII.iii.5). The suggestion here is that a fuller

understanding of cosmogony will enable a resolution to the problem of evil.

The importance of a theory of cosmogony in resolving these questions is first

suggested a few paragraphs later in book VII, where Augustine treats the problem of

evil in the created universe as a problem of formless matter:

What then is the origin of evil? Is it that the matter from which he made things was somehow evil? He gave it form and order, but did he leave in it an element which he could not transform into good? If so, why? Was he powerless to turn and transform all matter so that no evil remained, even though God is omnipotent? Finally, why did God want to make anything out of such stuff and not rather use his omnipotence to ensure that there was no matter at all? (VII.v.7)

However, the discourse on cosmogony over Confessions XII-XIII provides a more

thorough solution to these problems of evil, matter, and the will. In turn, it

contextualises the microcosmic soul within the created universe, and so presents

cosmogony as a critical stage in the enactment of wisdom going beyond the concerns of

the individual. Book XII begins this resolution by setting up the link between the

physical concept of formless matter and the theological idea of dissimilarity. By book

XIII, Augustine is more able than in book VII to account for the problematic concept of

chaotic matter: “Formless physical entities are better than no existence at all” (XIII.ii.2).

Mere chaotic existence in dissimilarity to the divine, in other words, remains

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ontologically “better” than nothingness, because even formless things are the result of

the plenitude of divine goodness (XIII.iv.5). Augustine’s notion of the “remains of

obscurity (reliquiis obscuritatis)” of the divinely created soul corresponds to this

doctrine of primal matter, because both are dissimilar to their divine origin, but both

remain good because created by the divine. Evil is thus set up as an issue of

transformation rather than essence, in that it is defined by the turning of a thing away

from its divine origin. The soul’s conversion, in turn, corresponds to the convertens ad

formam of the cosmos out of dissimilarity; the “perversion” of the soul, likewise, is

equated with the movement of a created thing back toward formless chaos, and it is this

turning away which is the source of evil in the soul and in the cosmos.

The effect of this correspondence between the ontological status of the soul and

the cosmos is a broadening of the perspective of Confessions I-IX. Where Augustine at

first focuses on the experience of the soul in its conversion out of dissimilarity to its

divine origin, Confessions XII-XIII shows that this story is a microcosm of the story of

the created universe. In doing so, I suggest, Augustine seeks to further depict the ascent

of knowledge beyond the shallow concerns of the individual. Where Confessions VII-

VIII focus on the personal aspect of knowledge, such as the soul’s experience of

dissimilarity (VII), its conversion (VIII), and its attempts at mystic ascent (VII and IX),

Confessions XII-XIII make these doctrines of knowledge “cosmic” in their focus. Thus

book VIII, like book VII, presents an account of intellectual ascent oriented to the

individual; Confessions XIII serves to objectify this individual perspective within the

created order. The juxtaposition of the narrative of the soul with an exegesis describing

cosmogony, used in order to dramatise the ascent of wisdom, thus results in an

experimental fusion and interrelation of different subjects and related literary genres, of

a self-narrative which looks forward and beyond itself to the story of the cosmos with

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an exegesis which looks back to the story of the self and which retains the mood of

introspection.

Conclusion

In light of my arguments about the role the discussion of cosmogony plays in the

Confessions, and the effect this discussion has on its form, this chapter has questioned

some of the conventional assumptions about Augustine’s most famous work. The focus

on divine wisdom in the Confessions, which is attempted through a discussion of

cosmogony and which leads to some innovative literary methods, suggests that we need

to rethink some of the long-held views of the Confessions as autobiography or as a

narrative of conversion. Today the use of the term “confession” to describe or name the

literary text carries well-worn associations of unveiling the inner and privileged access

to the “inner life” of the author. Although elements of this concept of confession are

apparent in the original Confessions, and indeed we can see it as a prototype in the

history of confessional literature, there is much more to Augustine’s book. His title

Confessionum, for one, suggests not only confession of sin (confessio pectorum), the

aspect which originates later concepts of confessional literature (although often in a

secular rather than religious context), but also confession of praise (confessio laudis).108

Moreover, the main theme of the Confessions, as we have seen in this chapter, is less

self-expression than the search for wisdom. The confession of sin is thus a by-product

of this search for knowledge as opposed to the main object of the work. The

significance of the cosmogony of Confessions XII-XIII is that it marks an attempt to

108 For a discussion of Augustine’s title Confessionum and the relevant sources, see O’Donnell (1992), Title, confessionum.

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perform the ascent of wisdom beyond the self. Augustine writes about cosmogony in an

attempt to push the Confessions beyond a “shallow” or “empty” focus on self-

knowledge. He focuses on the story of creation because it marks the threshold between

the physical realm and the spiritual realm of the divine creator, and thereby enables a

literary structure that begins with an account of self-knowledge but which describes the

ascent of knowledge beyond the self-enclosed concerns of the individual. Hence mere

confession of individual faults, which has been a standard reading of the Confessions

and is a model for “confessional” literature, only really has a function in the work

inasmuch as it is a first step on the path of wisdom.

Augustine’s use of cosmogony as a central part of his innovative literary form

highlights one of the principal contrasts between the Timaeus and the Confessions.

While cosmogony causes much of the literary experimentalism and discursive

ambiguity of the Timaeus, the disparate subjects and styles of the Confessions result

from an underlying quest for wisdom, a quest in which Augustine mobilises the

threshold nature of cosmogony. An additional contrast is evident in that the subject of

the world’s creation provides Augustine with a way of thinking about a divine origin,

whereas in Plato the reverse applies: the idea of a divine origin provides a way of

conceptualising the cause and nature of the world’s construction.

Discussions of cosmogony in the Confessions, I have also shown in this chapter,

bring into relief its unstated yet innovative fusion of Scripture with Neoplatonism. This

unacknowledged syncretism of the Confessions sheds new light on how we regard the

relationship between Augustine’s thought and Neoplatonism. Later in De Civitate Dei

Augustine recommends Platonism as a branch of thought which can aid Christian

education precisely because it describes how knowledge of the divine can be gained by

reflecting on the created order and how it relates to its creator: “the Platonists, coming

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to a knowledge of God, have found the cause of the organized universe, the light by

which truth is perceived” (VIII.10). A suggestion of this chapter is that some

acknowledgement of Neoplatonic philosophy may have been prompted by its

unacknowledged use in the exegesis of Genesis in the Confessions, especially because

the same exegesis enabled Augustine to create a literary style which relates self-

knowledge to an immutable knowledge beyond the individual. Moreover, given

Augustine’s influential role in the early history of the Christian church, both during his

lifetime and more importantly as a highly influential and prolific writer, the wider

implications of the epistemological syncretism of the Confessions are especially

important.109 The presence of Neoplatonic concepts and terms in the discussion of

cosmogony throughout the Confessions thus taps into, but also suggests new ideas

about, debates about the early stages of Christianity and its complex relationship to

what was at the time a much more sophisticated and highly regarded system of thought.

In the Confessions, and perhaps in other works of early Christianity, the issue of

classical philosophy is possibly less a case of either appropriation or rejection, but

rather one where those writers who were familiar with classical philosophy invariably

brought some of these ideas to their interpretations of Scripture. The complexities of

cosmogony made this recourse to classical philosophy especially urgent.

While the Confessions marks an innovative synthesis of subjects and genres by

combining a narrative of self with an account of the world beyond the self, it also raises

new ideas about the individual as a microcosm related to the larger universe. This

phenomenon where the individual is related to the cosmos, we have seen, also forms

part of the Timaeus, suggesting that the subject of cosmogony provides a means of

109 Phillip Cary goes so far as to label Augustine “the most influential Christian Platonist of all time” (2000 p.34).

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conceptualising the place of human beings within the cosmic order, and of harmonising

individual experience with an understanding of the universe beyond the self. While the

Timaeus describes only briefly a connection between the cosmos and the individual

microcosm, the analogy is more dramatic in the Confessions. Because Augustine makes

the parallel between soul and cosmos historical and theological, and uses the key

concepts of dissimilarity and conversion to maintain this link, there is greater drama

both to the narrative of self and to the cosmogony of the Confessions, hence more

gravity to the world’s “made-ness”.110

This contrast signals a significant way in which the theological worldview

develops on, and indeed differs from, the Platonic, philosophical worldview.111

Although the Confessions is in many ways influenced by the Platonic version of

cosmogony, it is nonetheless based on a more dynamic, changeable concept of history

and the creation, where the soul and the cosmos traverse an ontological distance from a

divine origin. The Platonic model relating the individual with the cosmos, by contrast, is

more static, for although changes in the individual occur due to experience of the world

as a rational construct, this change is mostly epistemological, aiding the development of

number, reason, and philosophy. In Augustine, the same analogy becomes a pivotal

aspect of a theology. Cosmogony, I suggest, both highlights these distinctions and is

also a primary source of these distinctions. Differences between Plato and Augustine

110 In discussing the Confessions, James J. O’Donnell comments that: “[C]hristian theology only succeeds when the believer sees that the story of all creation (‘macrotheology’) and the private history of the soul (‘microtheology’) are identical. Differences between the two are flaws of perception, not defects inherent in things” (O’Donnell 1985, p.80). 111 One of the contemporary debates about Augustine and the Confessions, which builds on scholarship demonstrating the extent of the Neoplatonic influence on Augustine, seeks to position his thought in relation to modernity and post-modernity (see Hankey 1997). Critics such as Stephen Menn (1988) explore Augustine’s contribution to modernity and to the rationalist tradition which emerges in Platonism, while others such as Jean-Luc Marion and John Milbank (1997) see in his thought the “origins” of postmodern deconstruction. See Hankey (1997) and (1998) for a summary of these debates.

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cause them to postulate different versions of cosmogony; but it is also evident that Plato

and Augustine differ because they present a different model of divine creation.

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Chapter 4.

Confessions XII-XIII: Images of Creation ex nihilo

This chapter analyses the problem of ineffability Augustine faces in attempting to

define creation ex nihilo in Confessions XII-XIII. The chapter argues that Augustine’s

account of divine creation brings into relief the vital constitutive role processes of

language play in that account. Whereas this idea that language and metaphor play a

necessary constitutive role in knowledge is evident as a discursive effect of the

Timaeus, as I argued in chapter two, the same idea becomes a theme in the Confessions.

Unlike Plato, Augustine acknowledges the role of metaphor in aiding thought about

cosmogony. In addition, Augustine’s use of linguistic analogues to describe the process

of creation ex nihilo aligns language with divine creation, and so dramatises the unique

creative power of language.

One important consideration in this chapter is the theoretical distinction between

the Platonic model of creation and the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, about

which Augustine was one of the earliest writers. In essence, the Christian model refuses

any limitation on God’s creativity, whereas the Platonic Demiurge is limited both by

pre-existent materials and by an intellectual model that is the pattern on which the

creation of the universe is based.112 Augustine’s initial definition of cosmogony in the

Confessions plays on precisely this contrast between unfettered creation and limited acts

of making: “You (God) were not like a craftsman (homo artifex) who makes one

112 Peter A. Bertocci summarises the distinction between Platonic and Christian cosmogonies: “a good Demiurge offends the religious consciousness of most theists. God, to be God, must be perfect, limited by nothing but his own will and reason” (Bertocci 1973, p.571).

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physical object out of another…He imposes form on what already exists and possesses

being, such as earth or stone or wood or gold or any material of that sort. And these

materials exist only because you had first made them” (XI.v.7).113 The human capacity

to mentally conceive a form and apply that form to an object, Augustine asserts, is also

a part of the primary sublime creation (XI.v.7). The creation of the universe itself, by

contrast, was not “in” or “out of” anything, and God did not use any “tool” or

“machine” (XI.v.7). In stating this, Augustine employs the term de nihilo to describe

this sublime making, thus pre-empting orthodox ideas of creation ex nihilo.114

This chapter draws on the problems of definition created by this distinction, where

Augustine illustrates creation ex nihilo by comparing it with the act of the homo artifex

who is limited by the materials and faculties he uses. While the Platonist can resort to

human imagery (the weaver or some other artisan) fairly unproblematically, the

Christian theologian can only really describe creation ex nihilo by what it is not, for it is

necessarily beyond the customary range of language. Portraying creation ex nihilo

therefore creates problems of ineffability which, in theological discourses, often

becomes an issue of negative theology. Augustine’s negative definition of divine

creation as a process manifestly different to and beyond human experience might

suffice as a theoretical model. However, his portrayal of the divine and of the actual

process of divine creation necessarily departs from this definition because it resorts to

sensible images, to metaphors based on human making and on the created world. And

113 George Steiner’s discussion of the inevitable equation of God with creation highlights an important exception to the notion of God’s absolute freedom: “Numerous divines and metaphysicians have gone so far as to discern in the absolute equivalence between God and the act of creation the sole constraint on God’s freedom. He cannot but create. He is, by self-definition, le Grand Commenceur (René Char). A sterile God, one who would not, in Hegelian idiom, negate negation, would be worse than a sinister absurdity” (Steiner 2001, p.15). 114 The attitude that God created the “visible world…out of nothing (ex nihilo), without any pre-existing matter or other things outside God”, persists throughout Augustine’s oeuvre (Knuuttila 2001, p.103).

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Augustine seems aware of this paradox of negative definition. In De Doctrina

Christiana he states that “God should not even be called unspeakable, because even

when this word is spoken, something is spoken” (I.13). Equally, Augustine’s

cosmogony must describe a creative act which is in theory ineffable, and because it is

based on an exegesis of Genesis 1, it must also address the nature of Scriptural imagery

for the world’s creation.

In section one I argue that a principal effect of Augustine’s attempt to describe

creation ex nihilo is that he comes to emphasise the communicative function of

Scriptural imagery rather than focus on intention or on imperfections in the link

between sign and referent. This principle of communicativeness, we shall see, is

predominantly deployed as a “saving” principle for Scripture; but a further effect of the

theory, I will argue, is that Augustine comes to emphasise communication over

intention when reflecting on the language of cosmogony generally. Moreover,

Augustine’s attempt to “save” Scripture by emphasising communicated meaning

suggests his acknowledgement of the role metaphor plays in enabling thought. The

images of Genesis 1, he suggests, are there to help people think about the complexities

of cosmogony. By comparing Augustine’s discussion of negative theology in De

Doctrina Christiana with similar discussions in Plotinus and in the Confessions, I will

argue further that Augustine, in confronting the difficulties of cosmogony, begins to

mobilise this idea of the constitutive metaphor as part of his own literary methods.

Section two analyses Augustine’s use of the Scriptural image of the “tongue of the

pen” (Psalm 45:1) in the Confessions. While he deploys the image primarily in order to

describe the limits of his language in conveying his understanding of cosmogony, we

will see how he uses the same image later in his oeuvre in order to explicate another

Scriptural image, the divine Word of creation. The significance of this is to show how

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linguistic analogues function as a prism through which Augustine works out and

discusses cosmogony. Even though Augustine uses the Scriptural image to emphasise

the limits of his language, linguistic analogy is critical to his described thought process

and his literary methods.

In section three I focus on the problem of time and eternity discussed in

Confessions XII-XIII. By showing Augustine’s innovative fusion of philosophic ideas

in his working out of Genesis 1, which he performs in order to “save” Scripture from

apparent inconsistencies, I also show his recognition that language plays a necessary,

active role in helping readers to conceptualise the relationship between time and

eternity. The section also analyses a further use of linguistic analogue by Augustine to

describe divine creation, which I argue has the effect of setting up the unique status of

linguistic creation by comparison to other human acts, which form part of his contrast

between human making and divine creation. This contributes to my general argument

that the constitutive as opposed to merely functional aspect of language is highlighted

by Augustine’s use of linguistic analogue. By force of analogy with creation ex nihilo,

the uniquely creative power of language is implied.

When Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis 1 reaches its account of the creation of

human beings — with their unique capacity to make things themselves and to respond

critically to the world of signs — it increasingly becomes a story about texts and their

interpretation. Section four, in analysing this part of the Confessions, demonstrates that

Augustine’s discussion of Genesis 1:26-28 is as much a window into his exegetical

theory and practice as it is into his concept of cosmogony. Augustine uses a circular

approach to Genesis, reflecting both on how it should be interpreted and how it

stipulates the manner of its interpretation. The constitutive aspect of interpretation, I

argue, is indirectly evident in the circular logic which downplays and conceals the

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subjective process of projecting ideas onto the text. In turn, Augustine’s theorisation of

exegesis has the effect of constituting a certain type of text, of creating the nature of

Scripture itself in addition to formulating the specific meanings in it.

Section five analyses Augustine’s reflection on processes of authorship in the

course of discussing cosmogony. As with his discussion of exegesis, Augustine’s

discussion downplays the creative aspect of writing because it emphasises that valid

ideas and expressions are inspired by the divine and by appreciation of the divine

“authorship” of the universe. This tendency, I argue, shows indirectly the constitutive

aspect of authorship, as the text, even if divinely inspired, must have some human input.

Augustine’s attempt to conceal the necessary creative aspect of authorship, in other

words, shows that authorial agency is itself a problem. Augustine’s deployment of

imagery based on books and writing in order to discuss different modes of authorship

and creativity, I argue further, underlines the constitutive role of language suggested in

his discussion of creation ex nihilo.

The constitutive aspect of language, this chapter shows, is highlighted by a

number of features of the discussion of cosmogony in the Confessions. Scriptural and

philosophical imagery, linguistic analogues, and Augustine’s attempts to downplay the

creative aspect of interpretation and authorship, all show different ways in which

language performs a vital function in knowledge about cosmogony. This argument is

significant because it shows us how cosmogony acts as a “threshold” subject that

prompts the use and acknowledgement of new ideas about language, and that language

is a necessary medium for imaginative thought and creativity. The cosmogony of the

Confessions is also important on this point, as I discuss further in the conclusion to this

chapter, because of Augustine’s influence on Christianity and on Western thought

generally, especially on ideas about Scriptural exegesis and thus the nature of

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interpretation. Many Western ideas and assumptions about writing, interpretation, and

the text were worked out in Christian thought, and Augustine is well-known as a major

early thinker about Scripture, language, and interpretation. Some of his ideas about

these connected subjects, this chapter shows, were deeply influenced by his account of

cosmogony. Finally, as I will discuss in more detail in chapter five, Augustine’s use of

analogies between linguistic processes and divine creation anticipates, and perhaps is an

early influence on, the later literary critical tradition which explicitly compared the

writer or poet to a divine creator. While Augustine’s reference to language in his

cosmogony is ostensibly out of a concern to better define the nature of divine creation,

this sort of analogy eventually becomes a means by which the writer and poet were

ascribed a unique, “divine” power to make new worlds out of words.

i. The Function of Scriptural Obscurity

The language of Scripture, Augustine continually asserts throughout his oeuvre, must be

a perfect expression of divine authority.115 Any problems with Scripture, therefore, are a

result of its reception by human readers or perhaps the limited resources of human

language, rather than one of the intention or mode of expression of Scriptural authors.116

In this section we shall see how Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis 1 requires him to

confront, with some urgency, the problem of Scriptural obscurity. Because Augustine’s

discussion of cosmogony necessarily involves an exegesis of its representation in

Scripture, he must reflect on the nature of Scriptural language and how it communicates

115 For examples of Augustine’s view that Scripture is a perfect expression of the divine Word, see Confessions XII.xxx.41, and De Civitate Dei XI.3. 116 At Confessions XI.ii.3, for instance, Augustine reiterates the idea that Scripture is a perfect expression of God’s Word, but goes on to note that many of its pages are, deliberately, “opaque and obscure”, and asks that the meaning of these obscure passages be revealed to him.

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meaning. In addressing the problem of Scriptural language about cosmogony and in

attempting to “save” Scripture and assert its validity, Augustine comes to focus on

communication rather than intention or rhetoric in theorising meaning. By

“communication” I mean the realisation of a valid meaning by a reader, any meaning

which is consistent with theology, rather than an attempt to realise the single intent of

Scriptural authors or the single correct meaning of the text. This theory of

communicativeness, which is a response to the obscurity of Genesis 1, shows how

cosmogony demands new ideas about metaphor and about the relationship between

language and knowledge.

Augustine’s emphasis on the communicative aspect of Genesis 1 becomes especially

apparent when we compare his theory of Scriptural creation imagery with Platonic

concepts of imagery about similar subject matter. Plotinus, in reflecting on Plato’s

metaphors for khõra such as gold or a plastic mouldable material in describing formless

Matter, emphasises that language cannot be fully displaced outside its everyday usage,

that there is a tension between ordinary language and the “alien” thought it seeks to

depict:

in the metaphor cited we have some reasonably adequate indication of the impassibility of Matter coupled with the presence upon it of what may be described as images of things not present. But we cannot leave the point of its impassibility without a warning against allowing ourselves to be deluded by sheer custom of speech. (3.6.12)

Both Plato and Plotinus emphasise the imperfect relationship between the resources of

human language and the concept of a formless matter that is beyond the sensible realm

and so beyond everyday language.

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As we have seen in chapter three, Augustine rehearses some of the content of

Neoplatonic cosmogonic theory in Confessions XII, reading for example the reference

to the earth “invisible and unorganised” in Genesis 1 as a representation of formless

matter. 117 Yet he is equally concerned to assert the validity of Scriptural language,

rather than highlight the limits of metaphor as Plotinus does. He thus focuses on the

truths readers may find in Scriptural language rather than on the relationship between

language and abstract notions “beyond” everyday thought or speech. For example,

while he notes that there are problems in representing formless matter, he maintains that

Scripture is engineered toward the communication of meaning: “To give slower minds

some notion of meaning here no word is available except that of familiar usage”, thus

“the formlessness of matter...is conveniently described for human minds in the words

‘the earth invisible and unorganised’” (XII.iv.4). His repetition of the same idea later on

affirms his need for a “communicative” model of Scriptural language in his exegesis of

Genesis 1: “These words suggest the notion of formlessness to help people who cannot

conceive any kind of privation of form which falls short of utter nothingness”

(XII.xii.15). Accompanying this practical, communicative model is recognition of the

active, constitutive role played by symbolic language in aiding thought, especially about

the subtle and difficult ideas of cosmogony.

One further effect of Augustine’s justification of the language of Genesis 1 is his

argument for the concept of interpretive plurality, for the possibility that multiple valid

meanings may be drawn from a single Scriptural passage. In Confessions XII.24-30, for

example, he summarises the numerous interpretations proposed for the phrase “heaven

and earth” (Genesis 1:1), only to assert the validity of all interpretations which conform

117 See chapter two section four of this thesis for a discussion of Plato’s ideas about metaphors and formless matter.

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to divine truth, even if not to the intended meaning of the human author: “So what

difficulty is it for me when these words can be interpreted in various ways, provided

only that the interpretations are true?” (XII.xviii.27). When it comes to Genesis,

therefore, Augustine widens the space for communicated meaning in order to preserve

the validity of Scripture.

It is apparent that in the exegesis of Genesis 1 in Confessions XII, Augustine

reflects more and more on the process of exegesis itself. This shows that in the context

of discussing cosmogony, in particular the obscurity of Genesis 1, Augustine explores

most searchingly the nature of language and the processes by which signs are

interpreted. These theoretical reflections on exegesis also posit a doctrine of interpretive

plurality as opposed to the sceptical idea that language fails to represent an objective

reality. When Augustine argues, for example, that the subject described in Genesis must

be true because it is a divine reality, and also that its author, Moses, must have

represented this subject truthfully and in words which were “appropriate” (XII.xxiii-

xxiv.32-33), he goes on to note his interpretation might not correspond to the meaning

intended by the author, but asserts that any reading is adequate so long as some

understanding of spiritual concepts is achieved (XII.xxiv.33).

These theories of communicativeness and interpretive plurality, which attempt to

secure the validity of the language of Genesis 1, lessen the role of intention in

Augustine’s working model of language. Although Augustine notes that authorial

intention is an aspect of interpretation, he diminishes its role in Scripture by claiming it

is distinct from and subordinate to a more important factor, truth: “It is one thing to

inquire into the truth about the origin of the creation. It is another to ask what

understanding of the words on the part of a reader and hearer was intended by Moses”

(XII.xxiii.32). This position suggests a remarkable alteration in Augustine’s

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understanding of language and exegesis if we compare his comments in De Doctrina

Christiana that language is precisely about intention. This applies to everyday language:

“There is no reason for us to signify something…except to express and transmit to

another’s mind what is in the mind of the person who gives the sign” (DDC II.3), but

Augustine also asserts that Scriptural interpretation is precisely an issue of discovering

intention: “The aim of its readers is simply to find out the thoughts and wishes of those

by whom it was written down and, through them, the will of God, which we believe

these men followed as they spoke” (DDC II.9).

The cause of this change in attitude, it seems, is both the complexity of

cosmogony as a subject matter and the obscurities of Genesis 1, which force Augustine

to deviate from the theoretical model proposed in De Doctrina Christiana to a more

flexible working system in order to avoid suggesting that Genesis was inadequately

written. This new model of Scriptural language is also necessary because Augustine

seems unsure about his theory of creation and his interpretation of Genesis 1, given the

varying interpretations he proposes. He therefore opts for a system of maximum

flexibility in his applied model of exegesis.

One of the main contrasts between Platonic and Christian thought which explains

their different models of the language of cosmogony is that, unlike Augustine, the

Platonists have no concept of a divine Scripture, of a supreme, revelatory text that is

inherently “true” and to which human language is compared.118 Augustine, by contrast,

fits his theory of creation into his assumption that Scripture is divinely revealed truth

which must be worked out at the level of reception. The result of this adherence to both

118 To be sure, Plato, as we have seen, posits dialectic as the supreme mode of discourse, but nonetheless it remains a limited discourse which must be defined by comparison to other discursive modes.

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Scriptural revelation and to creation ex nihilo, therefore, is Augustine’s departure from

the concept of single intention to one of communicated meaning, plurality, and

flexibility, in assessing Scriptural language. In turn, he recognises that metaphor plays a

role in thought, and does not just reflect ideas already realised.

Although Augustine is more cautious about the capacity of non-Scriptural

language to aid thought about cosmogony, he nonetheless shows some recognition of

the interconnectedness of language and thought. This is especially apparent where his

rehearsal of Platonic concepts of matter and of language’s role in representing matter

aligns problems of language with problems of thought, and does not depict language as

an obstacle to understanding. Like the Platonists, Augustine argues that formless matter

is conceived by thought which is spurious and alien, but instead of merely stating the

need for an equivalently “alien” representation as in Plotinus (2.4.10), or “spurious

reasoning” as in Plato (Timaeus 51), Augustine reflects on the limited function served

by words in the process of thinking about Matter: “Human thinking employs words in

this way; but its attempts are either a knowing which is aware of what is not knowable

or an ignorance based on knowledge” (XII.v.5). Likewise, his comment at XII.xi.14,

“There is an inexpressible formlessness” (ecce nescio quid informe) suggests in the term

nescio both “inexpressible” and “unknowable”, for the term as it is used throughout the

Confessions refers to both concepts (see for example Confessions I.vi.7, where nescio

suggests “I don’t know”). Ineffability is less a failing of language than a consequence of

unknowability.

Augustine’s discussion of two subjects connected to the problem of cosmogony —

time and negative theology — suggests further his incorporation of a communicative

model of language and of an active, constitutive model of metaphor into his discursive

methods. His lengthy analysis of time, which like Plato he treats as a part of the creation

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of the cosmos rather than something “beyond” the sensible world,119 emphasises the

role of communicated meaning in philosophical language, despite problems of

referential accuracy. To speak of the existence of three times — past, present and future

— Augustine claims, is an everyday use of language which is “inexact”, for past and

future only exist in the present experience of the soul through memory and anticipation.

Augustine does not, however, stop at noting this inaccuracy, but rather asserts that

inexact language has a meaningful effect:

This customary way of speaking is incorrect, but it is common usage. Let us accept the usage. I do not object and offer no opposition or criticism, as long as what is said is being understood, namely that neither the future nor the past is now present. There are few usages of everyday speech which are exact, and most of our language is inexact. Yet what we mean is communicated. (XI.xx.26)

Everyday terminology is ascribed here with the same communicative effect as

Scripture, and so we can see how Augustine’s working theory of meaning focusing on

communication goes beyond the preservation of the validity of Scriptural language to

philosophical and indeed ordinary language.

It is useful at this point to compare Augustine’s discussion of negative theology in

De Doctrina Christiana, which constitutes a theory that knowledge of the divine creator

can be achieved by describing what God is not, with two other similar passages: a

discussion of negative theology in Plotinus’ Enneads, and a passage describing mystic

ascent in Confessions IX. The dual comparison is useful because it shows two effects of

Augustine’s discussion of cosmogony. First, that cosmogony prompts Augustine’s

emphasis on communication, where Platonic thought focuses on the limits of language.

119 Although Augustine treats time as part of the creation of the cosmos and God the creator as outside time (Confessions XI.xiii.15), he also rejects the idea, such as the one we saw mentioned in the Timaeus, that time is constituted by the movement of the heavens (Confessions XI.xxiii.29). He proposes instead a model of time based on the mind and on memory (XI.xxi.26, XI.xxvii.35). For a discussion comparing Augustine’s view of time with Platonic and Neoplatonic views, see Sorabji (1983), pp.17-32.

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Second, that cosmogony compels Augustine to recognise and perhaps mobilise the idea

that language, although limited in describing the divine, plays an active role in thought

about a divine creator, whereas elsewhere he often treats language as though it is

inherently obstructive in knowledge of the divine.

In one of the defining moments of the Confessions — the account of mystic ascent

to divine wisdom described in book IX — Augustine describes ideal, spiritual

understanding as an evacuation of language because of its mediating, sensible, hence

obstructive role in knowledge: “We would hear his word, not through the tongue of the

flesh, nor through the voice of an angel, nor through the sound of thunder, nor through

the obscurity of a symbolic utterance” (IX.x.25). The unmediated, non-linguistic

experience of divine truth is available to the soul which is “making no sound”, no

longer distracted by the “tumult of the flesh” of all transient things and of self-

reflection. As the vision of the higher world fades, similarly, Augustine does not state

that he simply returns to the “normal world”, but rather that he returns to “the noise of

our human speech where a sentence has both a beginning and an ending” (IX.x.24).

Sensible language is the defining experience of disappointment at the close of mystic

experience. This concept crystallises a crucial tension underpinning the Confessions, for

if true experience of the divine is, as Augustine argues, a non-linguistic vision, then why

attempt to narrate these experiences at all?

A similar sense of doubt over the role language plays in knowledge about the

divine can be found in Plotinus, who poses a type of negative theology based on the

limits of language. The divine One from which the creation emanates, he argues, can

only be apprehended negatively by using words about what it is not:

We do not, it is true, grasp it by knowledge, but that does not mean that we are utterly void of it; we hold it not so as to state it, but so as to be able to speak about it. And we can and do state what it is not, while we are silent as to what it is: we are, in fact, speaking of it in the light of its sequels; unable to state it, we may still possess it. (5.3.14)

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Plotinus emphasises here the limited type of understanding or “possession” that may be

achieved through language. Both Confessions IX.x.24-25 and Enneads 5.3 therefore

posit a model of language that is basically obstructive to thought about the divine; they

describe or imply a type of knowledge which is “beyond” the limitations of language.

A classic statement of negative theology in Augustine, which parallels and indeed

may draw on the passage from Plotinus quoted above (Green 1999, p.148, notes 10-11),

can be found in De Doctrina Christiana, a work roughly contemporary with the

Confessions. In reflecting on words about God, Augustine notes that even an expression

of ineffability remains within a linguistic paradigm and hence fails to convey spiritual

truth:

God should not even be called unspeakable, because even when this word is spoken, something is spoken. There is a kind of conflict between words here: if what cannot be spoken is unspeakable, then it is not unspeakable, because it can actually be said to be unspeakable. (DDC I.13)

Yet Augustine is not content to reiterate the limited function of language alone. Words

about or directed to God, despite their inherent limitations, he continues, are nonetheless

a source of spiritual joy and also a means of spiritual ascent:

Yet although nothing can be spoken in a way worthy of God, he has sanctioned the homage of the human voice, and chosen that we should derive pleasure from our words in praise of him. Hence the fact that he is called God (Deus): he himself is not truly known by the sound of these two syllables, yet when the sound strikes the ear it leads all users of the Latin language to think of a supremely excellent and immortal being. (DDC I.14)

In this passage Augustine reverses the problematic link between language and thought

expressed in Neoplatonic discussions of matter and of the divine One, a concept which

is also dramatically asserted in his discussion of mystic ascent at Confessions IX when

he equates the experience of the divine with the evacuation of language. Here

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ineffability becomes instead a more productive category, in that Augustine celebrates

the conventional and limited nature of language as a means of praise and of reaching

something beyond. What has occurred between Confessions IX and De Doctrina

Christiana I? A key element instigating this change of attitude to the role of language in

theological knowledge, I suggest, is the discourse on cosmogony later in Confessions

XII-XIII. A focus on the communicative aspect of Scriptural imagery, and a correlative

acknowledgement of the role language and metaphor play in thought, as we have seen,

are evident in Augustine’s discussion of the “everyday” terminology for time. In

discussing the apparent problem of language about an ineffable divine creator in De

Doctrina Christiana, it seems, Augustine has adopted and applied these ideas about the

communicative and constitutive function of language more explicitly.

ii. Psalm 45: Language and the Word

John 1:1-12, the understanding of which Augustine presents as a pivotal moment in his

conversion (Confessions VII), describes the world’s creation according to a linguistic

paradigm:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

It is remarkable that Augustine, who is usually so attuned to linguistic paradigms for

thinking through issues of theology and philosophy, mentions this concept of a divine

Word of creation only briefly in his discussion of cosmogony over Confessions XII-

XIII. His predominant focus is instead Genesis 1, the Old Testament account of the

creation.

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This section argues that while Augustine does not explicitly address the New

Testament model of cosmogony in the Confessions, an important factor in his working

out of a concept of the divine Word of creation originates in his use of an image from

Psalm 45, the “tongue of the pen”, in Confessions XI-XII. While he uses the image

primarily to emphasise the limits of language, my analysis of subsequent discussions in

Augustine’s oeuvre (De Doctrina Christiana and the Ennarationes in Psalmos) shows

its importance to his understanding of divine and human creativity. The section thus

shows how discussions of cosmogony not only prompt an awareness of the nature of

language, but also a reliance on analogies based on human creativity and linguistic

processes. John 1 presents a famous version of the creation oriented to linguistic

imagery; another linguistic analogue from Scripture, we will see, becomes critical in

Augustine’s discussion of a Word of creation because it facilitates his reflection on

different aspects of language in order to describe the nature of divine creation.

On three occasions in the Confessions Augustine adopts the image of the voice of the

pen to suggest that his language is insufficient to convey the impact divine revelation

had on his understanding of cosmogony. When he recounts his reaching an

understanding of formless matter, he states twice that God is the sole means by which

he reached this knowledge. On both occasions, Augustine refers to confessing with his

voice or mouth in combination with his pen: “if I am to confess to you with my mouth

and my pen (ore meo et calamo meo) everything you have taught me about this question

of matter, the truth is that earlier in life I heard the word but did not understand it”; and

later on, “If my voice and pen (vox et stilus) were to confess to you all that you

disentangled for me in examining this question, no reader would have the patience to

follow the argument” (XII.vi.6).

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The conflation of speech and writing used in Confessions XII is also deployed in

the previous book, when Augustine again expresses doubt over his ability to adequately

confess the full extent of God’s impact on his intellectual development: “But when shall

I be capable of proclaiming by the tongue of my pen (lingua calami) all your

exhortations” (XI.ii.2). As both Chadwick and O’Donnell note, Augustine’s language

on these occasions draws on Psalm 45:1 (44:2): “My heart is inditing a good

matter…my tongue is the pen of a ready writer (eructavit cor meum verbum

bonum…lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis).”120 The implication here is

that language fails to express divinely revealed knowledge, and is therefore a secondary

and inadequate reflection of knowledge. However, if Augustine is concerned in these

instances to assert the limits of language, why then should he draw on a Scriptural

image — on what he thought to be God’s perfect and divine language — in order to

express this?

Two other works of Augustine’s offer some insight into this problem of

Augustine’s use of the Scriptural image to highlight the limitations of language: De

Doctrina Christiana, for its discussion of speech and writing, and the Enarrationes in

Psalmos, for its exegesis of Psalm 45.121

In the process of his study of exegesis in De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine

discusses the relationship between speech and writing, a relationship which is tacit in

120 Chadwick (1991), p.221; O’Donnell (1992), 11.2.2. References to the Bible are to the Oxford edition (1997). Owing to discrepancies in citing the Psalms, I refer to the passage as it appears in the Oxford edition (the Masoretic system), and include in brackets the variant Septuagint citation, which was the version used in both the Vetus Latina, the Bible available to Augustine, and the Vulgate of St. Jerome. See Chadwick’s Introduction to his translation of the Confessions (1991, p.xxvi) for a discussion of Augustine’s Bible. For the Latin Vulgate, I refer to: <http://www.newadvent.org/bible>. 121 The majority of De Doctrina was written around the same time as the Confessions, and so provides a good theoretical counterpoint because it summarises Augustine’s views on signs and Scriptural language in a more theoretical manner.

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his appropriation of the image of the “tongue of the pen”. “Spoken words” (verba),

Augustine notes, are the predominant signs (signis) by which we may “express and

transmit to another’s mind” what is in our own mind (II.3).122 These spoken signs,

however, only last as long as the sounds by which they are transmitted, “hence the

invention”, states Augustine, “in the form of letters, of signs of words” (instituta sunt

per litteras signa verborum) (II.8). Written words, Augustine argues, are a secondary

signification of our thoughts: “In this way words are presented to the eyes, not in

themselves, but by certain signs peculiar to them” (II.8). While speech is a more direct

expression of inner mental states, it is transient; writing, which offers a permanent

reflection of speech, is nonetheless a mediation of speech, as signs, into another level of

signs.123 Even the language of God, Augustine notes in De Doctrina Christiana, is

mediated from its primary articulation in speech into written Scripture, and thus

Augustine presents exegesis as a process of recovering intention, of ascertaining “the

thoughts and wishes of those by whom it was written down and, through them, the will

of God” (DDC II.8-10).124

When Augustine discusses Psalm 45 in his Ennarationes in Psalmos, he returns to

this issue of speech and writing, but with one important development on Confessions

XII.vi.6 and De Doctrina Christiana II.8. He takes the relationship between speech and

writing suggested by the image of the “tongue of the pen” as a means of describing the

nature of divine language or the Word instead of the limitations of human language.

122 For a thorough discussion of Augustine’s theories about signs throughout his oeuvre, see Markus (1972). 123 In The Trinity, similarly, Augustine states “letters are the signs of words, while the words themselves in our speech are the signs of things of which we are thinking” (XV.19). 124 The emphasis on intention in theorising exegesis in De Doctrina Christiana, we have seen in the previous section, is supplanted by an emphasis on communicativeness in Confessions XII, which is a necessary result of Augustine’s attempt to assert the validity of Scriptural language in the context of cosmogony.

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Augustine’s concern to treat the Psalm as a representation of divine language is

evidenced by his interpretation of line one of the Psalm, “Mine heart hath uttered a good

word”, as a direct statement by God, and not by the Psalmist: “Who is the speaker? The

Father, or the Prophet? For some understand it to be the Person of the Father” (En Ps

45:4).125 His assertion that there is a contrast between human language, “this word of

yours which sounds once and passes away”, and divine language, “God’s ‘speaking’ is

eternal…That which is uttered abideth; and is uttered but once, and has no end” (En Ps

45:5), serves as a reminder of the limits of such a description, of the difficulty in

describing the nature of divine language. Augustine’s use of the tongue of the pen

image in the Confessions in order to describe the limits of human language is clearly

still relevant here. So if God is indeed the speaker in Psalm 45, why then should he

choose to compare his own speech as a “tongue” to the transcriber’s “pen”? The

resemblance of these analogies to their referent, according to Augustine, is incomplete,

but he argues that “such comparisons have been made; and were they not made, we

should not be formed to a certain extent by these visible things to the knowledge of the

‘Invisible One’” (En Ps 45:6). The focus, as in book XII of the Confessions, is on

communicated meaning rather than the limits of metaphor. For God’s speech to be

likened to the pen, he continues, suggests that it has both the immediacy of speech

(verba) as well as the endurance of writing (litteras signa verborum):

Inasmuch as what is spoken by the ‘tongue,’ sounds once and passes away, what is written, remains; seeing then that God uttereth ‘a Word,’ and the Word which is uttered does not sound once and pass away, but is uttered and yet continues, God chose rather to compare this to words written than to sounds. (En Ps 45:6)

125 References to the Ennarationes in Psalmos (En Ps) are to: Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, edited by Philip Schaff, from the Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956). For the Latin, I refer to: <http://www.augustinus.it/latino/esposizioni_salmi/index2.htm>.

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Speech and writing, taken together, go some measure toward describing the divine

Word which creates all things, in that the Word is at once simultaneous or present, like

speech, and permanent, like writing: “God’s ‘speaking’ is without beginning, and

without end: and yet the ‘Word’ He utters is but ‘One’” (En Ps 45:5). The tongue of the

pen image, first used by Augustine to portray the limits of language’s capacity to

convey some of his thought processes about cosmogony, has now been reoriented to

describe the nature of the divine Word.

Another important feature of Augustine’s reading of Psalm 45 is that he treats the

relationship between human and divine languages as a means of discussing the nature of

creation, in particular a New Testament model of cosmogony as described in John 1:

“some understand it to be the Person of the Father, which says, ‘Mine heart has uttered

a good word’, intimating to us a certain unspeakable generation” (En Ps 45:4). This

interpretation is intriguing because it is precisely this analogue between the Word of

divine creation and human language which Augustine chooses to avoid discussing in

any detail in the Confessions. By the Ennarationes in Psalmos, Augustine considers

directly the linguistic analogue of the New Testament, associating the divine Word with

the world’s creation:

What manner of Word is that by which heaven and earth were made; and all the splendour of the heavens; all the fertility of the earth; the expanse of the sea; the wide diffusion of air; the brightness of the constellations; the light of sun and moon? These are visible things: rise above these also; think of the Angels, Principalities, Thrones, Dominions, and Powers. All were made by Him. How then were these good things made? Because there was ‘uttered forth a good Word,’ by which they were to be made. (En Ps 45:4)

Whereas in the Confessions Augustine considers divine creation in more “literal” terms

with only brief references to the linguistic analogue suggested in John 1, here he

incorporates the concept of the divine Word into his model of creation ex nihilo: “If

then by the Word ‘all things were made,’ and the Word is of God, consider the fabric

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reared by the Word, and learn from that building to admire His counsels!” (En Ps 45:4).

So far this chapter has highlighted a phenomenon where discussions of cosmogony

prompt reflection on language, and has argued that these discussions highlight the

constitutive role of language and metaphor. We can also see here how linguistic

analogues enable Augustine to work through ideas about cosmogony, specifically a

linguistic analogue in the New Testament describing creation ex nihilo.

While in Confessions XI Augustine uses a contrast between human making and

divine creation, in the Ennarationes he makes a distinction between different types of

human acts of creation in an attempt to describe the sublime nature of divine creation,

and in the process suggests that there are similarities between certain types of human

creativity and divine cosmogony:

Lest you should haply think something to have been taken unto Him, out of which God should beget the Son (just as man takes something to himself out of which he begets children, that is to say, an union of marriage, without which man cannot beget offspring), lest then you should think that God stood in need of any nuptial union, to beget ‘the Son,’ he says, ‘Mine heart hath uttered a good word.’ This very day thine heart, O man, begets a counsel, and requires no wife: by the counsel, so born of thine heart, thou buildest something or other, and before that building subsists, the design subsists; and that which thou art about to produce, exists already in that by which thou art going to produce it. (En Ps 45:4)

So while Augustine reuses the contrast between the homo artifex and Deus creator

which he deployed in Confessions XI.v.7, he adds a crucial intermediary in explicating

the Psalm, that of human intellectual design which is ontologically “above” the artifex

and which resembles, in a limited way, divine creation. The “unspeakable generation”

of mental design, though lesser to the creation of the universe, nonetheless reflects the

primary divine act of the Word because it creates forms without the addition of some

exterior agent, and this “creation” exists already in the mind of the creator and in the

raw materials prior to its actual construction.

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We can see here, then, that one linguistic analogue — the tongue of the pen of

Psalm 45 — provides the means through which Augustine is able to explicate another

linguistic analogue — the Word of creation of John 1. An image which he takes to

describe different processes of language, therefore, provides the means by which he

thinks through the concept of a Word of creation. Mental design goes some measure

towards describing a process of creation which does not require anything outside itself;

speech and writing, taken together, allow an insight into a divine “Word” which is at

once spoken and unending.

What then can we conclude about the use of the “tongue of the pen” image in the

Confessions? De Doctrina Christiana II.8 suggests that as a reference by Augustine to

his own speech, the “tongue” describes speech as a direct expression of thought, while

the “pen” represents writing as a secondary but permanent record of speech. The

deployment of the Scriptural image suggests both a contrast between the limits of

human language and the perfection of divine language, and also an attempt to bring

together different features of language — the presence of speech and the permanence of

writing — in order to better describe divine creation. An ideal version of language that

manages to combine these features would indeed serve to explicate the complex thought

processes to which Augustine points. It would parallel divine creation itself. Most

important, though, is that the use of a linguistic analogue that combines the different

features of language is the means by which Augustine explicates another vital linguistic

analogue describing cosmogony, the divine Word of creation. Thus the New Testament

idea of a Word of creation can be seen to be latent in the “tongue of the pen” image

used in Confessions XI-XII.

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iii. Time: Matter and Form

Genesis 1 has a number of inconsistencies and apparent repetitions, we now know,

because it is comprised of a fusion of different creation stories, combining an earlier

Yahwist account with a later Priestly story.126 Augustine, of course, did not know about

Genesis’ multiple authorship; for him, it was written by Moses under divine inspiration:

“And may we agree in so honouring your servant, the minister of this scripture, full of

your Holy Spirit, that we believe him to have written this under your revelation”

(Confessions XII.xxx.41). With this assumption of singular authorship, however,

Augustine recognises that Genesis, read literally and as a whole, appears to have a

number of contradictions. Its opening, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the

earth” (1.1), Augustine states, poses a problem if interpreted as a reference to the first

“event” in linear time, that “first he made” (Confessions XII.xxix.40). The difficulty

here is that if all of heaven and earth is made in the first act described by Genesis 1.1,

what then is left to create? What does the rest of Genesis 1 describe, such as at 1:21,

“And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth”?

This section focuses on the specific problem of time and eternity raised by

Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis 1. The attempt to describe eternity and the creation of

time in the Confessions highlights the inherent temporality of language, demonstrating

how any discussion of the non-temporal is invariably affected by the linearity of

language.127 Augustine, we will see, deploys a fusion of different ideas from classical

philosophy in an attempt to resolve problems of time, such as the apparent

126 For a discussion of the different creation narratives comprising Genesis, see Gerhard von Rad’s Genesis: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1973), and Victor P. Hamilton’s The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990). 127 In chapter two section two I discussed a similar tension evident in the Timaeus between the theory of eternity and the inherent temporality of the language by which eternity is portrayed.

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inconsistency in Genesis discussed above, reminding us of Augustine’s reliance on

philosophy out of a need to preserve the validity of Scripture. However, a comparison

of Augustine’s ideas with his Neoplatonic sources will show his recognition that

language is a necessity when thinking about and describing temporality and eternity.

Finally, the section considers Augustine’s reference to the example of singing as an

illustration of the idea of non-temporal “priority”. Augustine’s account of time and

eternity in his cosmogony results in a subtle valorisation of the creative aspect of

language, both through its admitted constitutive role in knowledge about time, and also

in the linguistic analogies Augustine uses to image divine creation.

Augustine’s reliance on the Neoplatonic concept of formless matter in his reading of

Genesis 1 creates an added difficulty arising from the contrast between philosophical

and theological cosmogonies. Matter, in Platonic creation accounts, is eternal and not

created, in that it is represented as the formless stuff confronting the Deus Artifex prior

to the world’s creation. Creation ex nihilo rejects this concept, in that a truly omnipotent

creator is completely unfettered and is the origin of all things.128 In addition to

accounting for the apparent inconsistency intrinsic to Genesis 1 which first describes the

creation of all things and then lists subsequent acts of creation (quoted at the beginning

of this section), Augustine must therefore account for the creation of matter and also its

formation into the created world as a process which is not sequential, which is not in

time. As a result, he argues that the “heaven and earth” referred to at Genesis 1:1 is

“first made” because it only describes the formless matter out of which God made

128 As Etienne Gilson points out, Augustine’s doctrine of matter is an especially problematic part of his cosmogony because it seeks to combine the theological idea of creation ex nihilo with the philosophical concept of matter, and thus poses a concept of formless matter which is still created, which is impassable but nonetheless exists (Gilson 1961, p.204).

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things that have form (XII.xxix.40). The primary act of creation, Augustine continues, is

not one where formless matter was made in time, and only at a certain point afterwards

did God shape matter into formed things. The formless matter “first made”, the “heaven

and earth” described in Genesis 1:1, rather, “was not made first in a temporal sense,

because the forms of things provide the originating cause of the time process”

(XII.xxix.40). Formless matter, in other words, is created out of time; its formation into

the things of the world marks the “beginning” of time.

It is at this point that Augustine’s innovative fusion of diverse ideas from classical

philosophy becomes evident. However, whereas these classical philosophers such as

Plotinus maintain the view that language often obstructs thought, Augustine differs

from his philosophical sources by recognising that language plays a necessary and

constitutive role in thinking about time and eternity.

In order to account for the concept that God both creates and forms matter “out of

time”, Augustine draws on the philosophical idea of non-temporal priority, and thus

effects an innovative reworking of philosophical concepts where he brings together

distinct aspects of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought. Augustine has mentioned

earlier in the Confessions that Aristotle’s Ten Categories were important in his

philosophical education (IV.xvi.28). Here, in describing how matter is prior to formed

things in a non-temporal sense, he brings in concepts from the Categories 12.14a.26ff,

as well as from Neoplatonic discussions of non-temporal priority such as Plotinus

6.1.25.17 (Chadwick 1991 p.269 note 27, O’Donnell 1992, 12.29.40), in order to

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distinguish between different types of “priority” (priorem): priority in eternity, in time,

in preference, in origin (XII.xxix.40).129

Augustine’s appropriation of philosophical ideas to enable the working out of

creation ex nihilo, however, does not involve an adherence to the context in which those

ideas are expressed. In particular, his discussion of priority also suggests a model

relating language and knowledge which differs from the assumptions of the Platonists.

We have seen in chapter two how Plato, in discussing the soul and body of the cosmos,

claims that language adds an unwelcome temporal aspect to the desired meaning of

priority as value. Language “creates” the impression of temporal priority and linear

order, and as such is a discursive reflection of a human “accidental state”. While

Plotinus repeats the same idea of a non-temporal priority, he asserts that the source of

the idea’s difficulty is in thought, and less so in language. In discussing the relationship

between Being and the Intellectual-Principle informing Being, he asserts that the two

are “one Nature” but that a human “separating habit” implies that the Intellectual-

Principle precedes Being, adding a concept of succession because of the custom of

thought (5.9.8). The concept of priority in eternity, of succession out of time, he claims,

is more unthinkable than ineffable.

For Augustine, this problem of non-temporal priority is more an issue of the role

language plays in constituting thought, its function in potentially actualising the idea of

priority in origin. The issue of something being “before” something else in a non-

129 An innovative fusion of distinct philosophical streams and concepts is evident here in that Augustine has combined two distinct branches of classical thought, and has also linked two ideas which in Plotinus were separate, or at least not explicitly connected — formless matter and non-temporal priority. Thus classical philosophy is not just a necessary “supporting element” in Augustine’s theological cosmogony; rather, the specific demands of describing creation ex nihilo, as Augustine presents it, results in a fusion of classical ideas in his exegesis of Genesis 1, reminding us of the essentially practical nature of philosophy’s use in the Confessions. For a discussion of Augustine’s use of the philosophic concept of non-temporal priority in Confessions XII, see Solignac (1962), pp.599-603.

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temporal sense, he asserts, is particularly challenging because it confronts the threshold

nature of cosmogony, marking the point of convergence between the mutable and

immutable realms: “it is rare to see and very hard to sustain the insight, Lord, of your

eternity immutably making a mutable world, and in this sense being anterior”

(XII.xxix.40). Augustine’s notion of language as an active part of thought is evident in

his relation of the conceptual difficulty of non-temporal priority with the idea of

linguistic insufficiency. After noting a number of times the difficulty in thinking about

priority in eternity, he goes on to reflect on the inadequacy of language to actualise this

idea: “it is impossible to put into words any statement about formless matter without

speaking as if it were prior in time” (XII.xxix.40). Thus, where Plato focuses primarily

on words and how they reflect mental states, and where Plotinus emphasises the limits

of thought, Augustine relates language to thought when confronted by similar problems

of cosmogony, even though he focuses on the negative. Ineffability causes something to

be unthinkable.

In response to this problem of ineffability, Augustine turns to analogy in an

attempt to illustrate the concept of matter’s priority to formation. His recourse to

analogy is intriguing not only because it shows how Augustine now focuses on

similarities between divine creation and human action in his cosmogony, whereas in

book XI he uses a contrast with the homo artifex to define creation ex nihilo, but also

because the analogy he uses is based on language itself.

To illustrate the idea of priority in origin, Augustine equates the difficult concept

that God creates then forms matter out of time with the act of singing, which he portrays

as a human creation which is formed in “prior” sound:

The difficulty lies in the point that song is formed sound (cantus est formatus sonus), and something not endowed with form can of course exist, but can what does not exist receive form? In this sense matter is prior to that which is made out of it. It is not prior in the sense that it actively makes; it is rather that it is made. Nor is priority one of temporal interval here. For it

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is not that first we emit unformed sound without it being a song, and later adapt or shape it into the form of a song… (XII.xxix.40)

The link between Augustine’s model of language and creation ex nihilo is underlined by

his term formatus describing song as “formed” sound.130 Moreover, Augustine’s

explanation for this concept that sound is prior to its shaping into song in a non-

temporal sense uses a contrast with other acts of making which in turn has the effect of

emphasising that singing, hence language generally, is a special type of making which is

ontologically “above” acts such as that of the homo artifex:

For it is not that first we emit unformed sound without it being a song, and later adapt or shape it into the form of a song, in the way we make a box out of wood or a vase out of silver. In the latter instances the materials are in time anterior to the forms of the things made out of them, whereas in the case of a song, that is not so. (XII.xxix.40)

Singing is like divine creation because it is, in a sense, a simultaneous creation of matter

and form, and so is ontologically different to craftsmanship, which simply shapes

existing materials into a new form. The effect of Augustine’s use of this example of

singing in order to explain the relationship between created matter and created things is

that language is set apart from “mere making” such as craftsmanship. Instead, it takes a

position in Augustine’s ontology proximate to creation ex nihilo. This echoes the

alignment of human and divine creation in the Ennarationes in Psalmos, where different

features of human language are used to describe the divine Word of creation, and where

mental design is set apart from reproduction in order to portray creation ex nihilo.131

130 James J. O’Donnell comments that “the act of formatio is the imposition of words on inarticulate sound by the intelligence, hence an apt parallel to the creative role of the second person of the trinity” (O’Donnell 1992, 12.39.40, cantus est formatus sonus). 131 The use of a linguistic analogy between human making and divine creation presented by Augustine here, where the use of language in creating a song out of the matter of sound reflects the imposition of divine forma (Word) on the informis materia, is also repeated later in De Trinitae, where Augustine

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In Confessions XII, the constitutive nature of language is evident not only in

Augustine’s acknowledgement of the necessary role it plays in the representation of

creation ex nihilo, but also in the linguistic analogues which have a vital role in

Augustine’s thinking through the idea of non-temporal creation. Because of its

numerous difficulties, the account of cosmogony in the Confessions, it seems, has the

effect of posing one of the most explicit analogies at that stage of Augustine’s oeuvre

between human and divine action. In dealing with the problem of time and matter, in

particular, Augustine ascribes a unique status to the human ability to conjure sound

“from nothing” and shape it into meaningful order, but does so out of the need for an

illustrative example more than due to a deliberate attempt to align human making with

divine creating.

iv. Creation and Interpretation

We have seen in this chapter how Augustine’s discussion of cosmogony through an

exegesis of Genesis 1 prompts his discussion of the interpretive process itself. Indeed in

a work in which the nature of signification and interpretation is consistently an

important issue, the passage in the Confessions in which Augustine reflects on the

Scriptural account of man’s creation (Genesis 1:26-28) marks a focal point in the

work’s concern with hermeneutics. This is especially so because this part of

Augustine’s exegesis, in continually returning to the issue of signs and interpretation,

doubles the focus on the nature of signification as simultaneous theory and practice.

Because Augustine treats this part of Genesis as an allegory describing the exegetical

argues that “just as our word in some way becomes a bodily sound by assuming that in which it may be manifested to the senses of men, so the Word of God was made flesh by assuming that in which He might also be manifested to the senses of men” (XV.20).

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process, his exegesis is pervaded by a degree of circular logic, with questions of how to

interpret Genesis and of how Genesis stipulates interpretation.

My argument in this section is that the circularity of Confessions XIII.xxii.32-

xxiv.37, while appearing to limit the subjective or creative aspect of Augustine’s

exegetical method, in fact highlights for us the constitutive aspect of interpretation. The

apparent subordination of exegesis to Scripture, for one, does not square with other

aspects of Augustine’s methods.132 The tacit denial of the idea that exegesis is a

subjective and creative process is further countered when Augustine goes on to ascribe

Scriptural interpretation a pivotal role in the “self-making” of conversion. Moreover,

Augustine’s assertion about the ontological limits of the exegetical process results in a

“deepening” of the text as an object of interpretation. By this I mean that Augustine’s

deployment of circularity sets up a model of Scripture which downplays its literal

dimension and instead dramatises a dynamic of obscurity and revealed truth.

Augustine’s cosmogony, read through Genesis 1, therefore suggests that the process of

interpretation constitutes not only meanings in a text, but also the nature of the text

itself.

One recurrent method by which Augustine emphasises the passivity of his exegetical

method — thereby deemphasising its “subjective” or “creative” aspect — is by

consistently presenting it as a response to apparent problems with Scripture, rather than

the imposition of ideas on a text. For instance, the command at Genesis 1:28 that man

132 The phenomenon where Augustine argues that his process of interpretation is structured by the object of interpretation recalls the concept of “persuasion” in the Timaeus, which I discussed in chapter two section three of this thesis. Both phenomena, I argue, are indirect evidence about the constitutive aspect of language and interpretation. Augustine’s need to establish the limits of exegesis highlights his consciousness of, and anxiety over, the creation of knowledge through interpretation.

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“increase and multiply”, Augustine claims, is inconsistent if read literally as a blessing

on mankind alone, for God has also “blessed fishes and whales to grow and multiply

and fill the waters of the sea, and birds to multiply over the earth” (Confessions

XIII.xxiv.35). The fact that all living creatures propagate by reproduction or generation

is already described in Genesis 1:22, and thus the limitation of “increase and multiply”

to human beings alone makes no sense for both empirical and Scriptural reasons.

Augustine’s solution to this apparent problem with Scripture performs a sort of

argumentative “loophole” whereby he finds justification for his argumentative method

within Scripture itself. If the literal meaning of the text “fails”, Augustine asserts, then it

must have some figurative meaning, especially because the expression and

interpretation of meaning is often indirect and plural in nature: “I know that at the

bodily level one can give a plurality of expressions to something which in the mind is

understood as a single thing, and that the mind can give a multiplicity of meanings to

something which, at the physical level, is a single thing” (XIII.xxiv.36). A case in point

is the very opening statement of Genesis for which Augustine has proposed and

considered numerous meanings over Confessions XII-XIII: “consider what scripture

offers and what its language expresses in a single phrase: ‘In the beginning God made

heaven and earth’” (XIII.xxiv.36). A figurative reading of the phrase “increase and

multiply” itself, Augustine continues, indicates that it might refer to the physical

creation, to spiritual creation, to Scriptural authors, and so on. But the double reference,

“increase and multiply”, he claims, is best read as a reference to signs:

only in signs given corporeal expression and in intellectual concepts do we find an increasing and a multiplying which illustrate how one thing can be expressed in several ways and how one formulation can bear many meanings...That is why we believe that you, Lord addressed both categories in the words ‘Increase and multiply’. By this blessing I understand you to grant us the capacity and ability to articulate in many ways what we hold to be a single concept, and to give a plurality of meanings to a single obscure expression in a text we have read. (XIII.xxiv.37)

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The circular logic of this argument becomes apparent in the suggestion that Scripture,

read spiritually, yields meanings which call for spiritual interpretation. Augustine has

set up the necessity of using figurative interpretation to read Genesis 1:26, and then has

found as a result of that mode of interpretation a divine command for figurative

exegesis. The tone of passivity here, where the exegetical process is described as a

response to a problem with Scripture and also as though structured by the Scripture it

interprets, has the effect of suppressing the subjective or “creative” aspect of exegesis,

that Augustine’s deployment of a figurative interpretation enables the discovery of

meaning within the “problem” of Genesis 1:26. By extension, his methods constitute a

certain type of text, assigning it greater “depth” by eschewing its literal dimension in

favour of figurative, “hidden” meanings.

The pattern of circularity which highlights a “passive” as opposed to “creative”

model of exegesis is evident throughout Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1:26-28. In an

earlier discussion, he again identifies a manifest problem with a literal reading in order

to set up the need to approach a passage as a figurative account of the exegetical process

rather than a literal account of the creation of man and his place in the created world.

Genesis 1:26, he maintains, appears problematic for its suggestion that humankind is a

God-like ruler over the created things of the world:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26)

The problem Augustine has with this passage no doubt has to do with the principle

expressed throughout the Confessions that a focus on sensible experience of the created

world alone should be avoided: “Be not conformed to this world. Restrain yourselves

from it. By avoiding this world the soul lives; by seeking it the soul dies” (Confessions

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XIII.xxii.30). Augustine’s argument against interpreting Genesis 1:26 as a literal

description of temporal rule is not against worldly power per se, but rather that the

passage should be read spiritually. The Scriptural notion that man “judges all things”

and has “dominion”, Augustine argues, refers to spiritual judgements of worldly things,

and does not connote any sense of earthly power: “He judges and approves what is right

and disapproves what is wrong” (Confessions XIII.xxiii.34).

Augustine’s reflexive preoccupation with exegesis is evident here in his

representation of spiritual judgement as an essentially hermeneutic, textual process. Just

as he reads “increase and multiply” as a reference to signification and interpretation, so

the “dominion” of man equates to the human critical capacity to read things as a “text”.

Having mentioned that spiritual “approval” or disapproval might refer to sacraments

and rites, he reserves the majority of the discussion of spiritual “dominion” for the

human linguistic-critical faculty: “He must assess interpretations, expositions,

discourses, controversies, the forms of blessing and prayer” (Confessions XIII.xxiii.34).

This reading sets up Scripture as the code which enables the effective understanding of

other, less self-evident “texts” such as rituals and the created world. Only by

understanding the spiritual meaning intended in the reference to man’s “dominion”, this

passage suggests, can spiritual judgement be achieved in the world of signs, in “the

verbal signs and expressions which are subject to the authority of your book”

(XIII.xxiii.34). The suggestion here is that the model of interpretation figuratively

encoded in Scripture describes a method which is applicable to other less obvious texts,

and so the creation itself is set up as another “text” available to exegetical methods.

The representation of the text as a network of “hidden” meanings is also suggested

by Augustine’s allegorization of the Scriptural account of man’s creation. The problem

presented by the passage “And God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27),

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Augustine claims, is its suggestion when read literally that God is a physical being and

that human beings were made physically similar to the divine.133 Augustine attempts to

resolve this problem of a literal reading by linking Old and New Testament concepts, a

technique similar to what we now call “typology”.134 Yet while most uses of typology in

Christian exegesis are historical in that they seek to explain the apparent “carnality” of

Old Testament events as prophecies for New Testament events, such as Isaac being a

type of Jesus, Augustine here sees the “carnal” image as the embodiment of a

theological idea. By appropriating the Pauline concept of spiritual “renewal” in quoting

Romans 12:2 “And be ye not transformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the

renewing of your mind”, Augustine maintains that Genesis 1:27 in fact refers to the

spiritual creation and conversion of human beings: “So man is renewed in the

knowledge of God after the image of him who created him” (XIII.xxii.32). In

confronting the problems arising from a literal reading of Genesis 1:27, Augustine

suggests that Pauline doctrine enables a spiritual interpretation of the passage. Equally,

it seems, the passage in Genesis is a “type” of Romans 12:2 because it explains and

embodies the abstract idea of St Paul. Typology, particularly the concept that Scripture

constitutes a “network” of image and revealed idea, becomes critical to Augustine’s

exegesis here because it enables him to use Pauline concepts in order to steer the

meaning of Genesis 1:27 away from its problematically unphilosophical implications.

Augustine’s approach in Confessions XIII not only creates a particular set of

meanings in Genesis 1, but also constructs a certain model of Genesis 1 itself. His

methods assign greater “depths” of meaning to Scripture because Genesis 1:26-28 is set

133 For a discussion of Augustine’s doctrine of imago and similitudo, with references to further criticism, see O’Donnell (1992), 13.22.32, ad imaginem et similitudinem nostrum. 134 For a discussion of typology and the various ways in which exegetes harmonised the Old and New Testaments, see De Lubac (1998), vol 1, especially pp.241-61.

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up as a system of codified secrets and revelation rather than a literal, if complex,

philosophical description of the creation. A “deepening” of the text is also evident in

that Old Testament obscurity is only fully revealed in New Testament doctrine, while

the story of creation embodies the abstract concept of spiritual renewal. In addition to

the concept that Scripture harbours its own interpretive “key”, therefore, Augustine’s

reading constructs it as a network of obscure image and later spiritual revelation. A

constitutive aspect of exegesis is therefore apparent in Confessions XIII in that

Augustine’s methods “create” a certain type of text, as well as constructing, to a degree,

the specific ideas he finds in it.

Although Augustine attempts to delimit the subjective aspect of interpretation by

authorising his methods within Scripture, his discussion of the theological function of

exegesis nonetheless ascribes it a pivotal role in conversion, thus making it

ontologically superior to other human activities. By combining the two ideas he reads

into Genesis 1:26-28 — the authorisation of figurative exegesis and spiritual renewal —

Augustine ascribes exegesis a role in conversion or “self-making”:

So spiritual persons, whether they preside or are subject to authority, exercise spiritual judgement. They do not judge those spiritual intelligences which are lights in the firmament…Not do they sit in judgement on your book, even if there is obscurity there. We submit our intellect to it, and hold it for certain that even language closed to our comprehension is right and true. Even a person who is spiritual and is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him has to be a doer of the law, not its critic. (XIII.xxiii.33)

The language and tone of the passage emphasise passivity to Scripture and its law,

rather than “judgement” of it. And yet there is a tension between this emphasis on

passivity and the idea of “doing” the law of Scripture, for exegesis is ascribed a unique

position of access to divine law, regardless of how passive it is. In particular, it plays a

role in “doing” Scriptural law, as opposed to the mere passive reception of its content.

Augustine’s term translated by Henry Chadwick as “doer”, factor, relates to facit, “to

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make” (“factito” ref. in Lewis ed. 1962, p.718), a word use which further balances the

idea of passive reception of Scriptural law. The creative aspect of exegesis thus forms

an explicit part of Augustine’s theology, as well as an indirect suggestion of his attempt

to deny the subjective aspect of interpretation. It has a privileged access to Scriptural

truth, it is a performance of that truth, and it is a means of self-making.

Confessions XIII.xxiii.33 thus posits that both the nature and function of exegesis

are figuratively described within the Scriptural account of man’s creation, in that both

figurative interpretation and the spiritual “renewal” achieved by spiritual interpretation

are described in “increase and multiply” and “image and likeness” respectively. This

double codification of exegesis by reference to Scripture marks one of the more

elaborate attempts to resolve an ontological tension over the nature of linguistic creation

which Augustine confronts throughout the Confessions. While he consistently attempts

to argue for the pivotal role played by linguistic practices such as confession and

exegesis in his theology and especially his concept of conversion, in discussing

cosmogony he also attempts to limit the “creative” feature of these practices by

suggesting that they are prescribed in the same theology. Thus by setting up exegesis as

a practice stipulated by its object — Scripture — and then suggesting that such practice

plays a pivotal role in conversion or “spiritual renewal”, Augustine’s approach models

the function but also the limits of Scriptural interpretation.

Cosmogony, this section has shown, affects ideas about interpretive processes as

well as ideas about expression and the role language plays in knowledge. Given

Augustine’s reliance on Scripture and interpretation in order to work out his theological

system, the importance of a theory of exegesis to him is evident. Moreover, given the

extent of Augustine’s influence on Christian and Western thought, especially in his

theories about exegesis and the nature of the text, the significance of this part of the

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Confessions cosmogony is considerable. In wrestling with the nature of interpretation

and with the role of hermeneutics in his theology, and in confronting some of the

inconsistencies and apparent problems of Genesis 1, as I have mentioned, Augustine

posits a model of Scripture which valorises “hidden” truth rather than literal meanings

or philosophical imagery. The effect of this modelling of the text is that it undergoes a

“deepening”; it becomes a code by which Scriptural obscurities, and the world of signs

itself, may be unravelled. Although Augustine continually grapples with the problem of

Scriptural obscurity throughout his oeuvre, the Confessions cosmogony is one of the

key early stages in which he gives obscurity a positive function, and so engenders a

model of the text which is not only literal, but also a network of direct and indirect

meanings available to a variety of interpretive methods. The Christian and Western

reception of Augustine’s ideas about the text and interpretation, we can speculate, may

owe a great deal to his working out of ideas about exegesis and Scripture during the

course of writing about cosmogony.

v. Authorship

The discussion of cosmogony in the Confessions, this section shows, also prompts

Augustine to reflect on the concept of authorship. Two important factors contribute to

this self-reflection. One is that because Augustine writes about cosmogony through an

interpretation of Genesis, he considers the nature of Scriptural authorship, which he

treats as a process of divine revelation. The other important reason is that Augustine

links Scripture and the creation as two “texts” that reveal their divine authorship. God’s

speaking through Scriptural authors is thus paralleled with his speaking through the

world he has created. These assumptions suggest that Augustine’s theory of the writer,

including himself, is distinctly different from modern-Romantic assumptions about the

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author as an arbiter of meaning; his concept of “inspiration” or excitas, we will see,

emphasises, if anything, his rejection of this idea. However, a constitutive aspect of

language is indirectly evident in Augustine’s discussion of authorship in relation to

cosmogony, as it was in his theorisation of exegesis discussed in the previous section.

While Augustine’s discussion of expression within his discourse on cosmogony

downplays the creative component of authorship, just as in his interpretation of Genesis

he downplays the subjective aspect of exegesis, his emphasis on divine inspiration

guiding expression hints at the unique status of literary creation, its capacity for “world-

making”. Moreover, we will see how Augustine’s discussion of authorship in the

context of cosmogony continually deploys linguistic analogues because such metaphors

enable a transition between the sensible-literal level and the spiritual-figurative level.

This shows us the pivotal role played by both language and the image of language in

Augustine’s working out of a theory of divine creation and of authorship.

Augustine’s rejection of the idea of authorial autonomy, and his emphasis on the

importance of a theory of cosmogony in resolving this erroneous idea, can be seen in his

brief discussion of one of his earlier works, De Pulchro et Apto. In Confessions IV he

recalls that in thinking about the question of beauty, he came up with a theory which

distinguishes the beautiful in itself (de pulchro) from something beautiful because well-

adapted to something else (de apto) (an early Neoplatonic influence is evident here).

Augustine’s representation of this thought process and the writing of these ideas uses a

curious image which appears to celebrate this process of meaning-production: “This

thought bubbled up in my mind like a spring from the deepest level of my heart, and I

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wrote On the Beautiful and the Fitting” (IV.xiii.20). Yet this representation of the

composition of ideas, which appears almost Romantic in its organic imagery,135 is no

mere celebration of “the semi-independent force of the inner mind — a neo-Platonic

thought”, as Gibb and Montgomery suggest (quoted in O’Donnell 1992, 4.13.20,

scaturrivit). The context of this account suggests, rather, the problematic limits of self-

created ideas and the error of Augustine’s concept of beauty owing to his lack of a valid

concept of the creation. In the second sentence of IV.xiii.20, for instance, Augustine

emphasises that at the time his understanding of the created world and especially its

divine origin was limited and flawed: “I loved beautiful things of a lower order, and I

was going down to the depths”. Other paragraphs of book IV reiterate the problems of

“pure” aesthetics, and at IV.xii.18 the “heart” (cor) is presented as having wandered

from its divine origin, rendering the concept of ideas “bubbling” from the heart

problematic where that heart is empty of truth about the divine origin of beautiful

things.136

If the production of ideas by “independent” processes represents for Augustine a

dangerous or at least naive concept of authorship, how then are literary works

generated? How can a philosophical work such as the Confessions itself be (validly)

composed in light of this critique of the idea of an “autonomous” author? The model

that Augustine both recommends and represents as one operative in his own writing

depends on a concept of divine “authorisation”, a model which parallels his argument

that his exegetical method is structured by Scripture. Ideas — valid ideas — ultimately

135 Augustine’s term scaturrivit suggests a welling from a spring (“scateo” ref. in Lewis ed. 1962, p.1639). 136 Augustine also dismisses the work in that he dedicated it to the orator, Hierius, no doubt because of the shallow concerns of secular ambition this dedication represented. That the book was lost, finally, “I no longer have this work; I do not know how it went astray from me” (IV.xiii.20) suggests, perhaps, an element of disregard Augustine felt for his early speculation on beauty.

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stem from a divine origin or inspiration, and thus resemble both Scripture and the

created world because these, too, are represented as a result of divine inspiration.

The very first paragraph of the Confessions offers some insight into Augustine’s

attempt to set up a model of the “inspired” hence divinely “authorised” author. His

assertion to God that “You stir man to take pleasure in praising you” (I.i.1) suggests in

the term for “stir”, excitas, the divine origin of praise. If we recall that one of the

meanings of “confession” is “confession of praise”,137 we can see how Augustine sets

up excitas as a category for the Confessions itself. Indeed, he uses the term excitas

throughout the Confessions to reassert this principle of a divine “triggering” of valid

ideas.138

At V.i.1, Augustine explicitly states that excitas is a category of his own language:

“Accept the sacrifice of my confession offered by the hand of my tongue which you

have formed and stirred up (excitasti) to confess your name”. The same paragraph also

relates excitas with cosmogony, because it describes an act of confessional praise by the

created world which is “stirred” by its divine origin:

Your entire creation never ceases to praise you and is never silent. Every spirit continually praises you with mouth turned towards you; animals and physical matter find a voice through those who contemplate them. So from our weariness our soul rises towards you, first supporting itself on the created order and then passing on to you yourself who wonderfully made it. (V.i.1)

An understanding of this aspect of cosmogony and its relationship to the concept of

expression, where the creation itself, and those who experience it, are inspired into

137 For a discussion of Augustine’s title Confessionum and the relevant sources, see O’Donnell (1992), Title, confessionum. 138 James J. O’Donnell identifies sixteen uses of the term excitas in the Confessions (1992, 1.1.1, excitas).

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“confession” of praise, is thus set up as a condition for mystic ascent which, as I have

argued in chapter three, is the main object of the Confessions.

However, the association of writing with the created world here, as an attempt to

establish that valid expressions are limited to those resulting from divine inspiration, has

a basic limitation. Even if one applies here the trope of the creation as a book written by

God’s finger (an idea hinted at in the Confessions and more widespread by the medieval

period), the written text is nonetheless inherently different from this created “book of

the world” because the universe only has a divine author, whereas the model of the text

described in the Confession has both a divine origin and a human “agent”. While he can

represent the created world as completely the result of a divine hand, Augustine must

account for at least a degree of human creativity in the writing of a text. Moreover,

Augustine’s model is troubled by the possibility that some writing is not divinely

authorised, such as his own De Pulchro et Apto. That it was at all possible for him to

write De Pulchro, in other words, is a problem for Augustine’s model of authorship

based on divine inspiration. Both the unclear relationship between the divine and human

aspects of composition, and the possibility that excitas does not always occur in the

generation of a text, are an indirect hint that authorship invariably has a creative and

constitutive aspect.

By the account of cosmogony in Confessions XIII, it appears as though Augustine

begins to recognise and perhaps confront these problems with his model of the inspired

author. In the earlier part of the Confessions, the concept of excitas or divine inspiration

of expression is predominantly discussed by reference to distinct acts, whether

Scriptural authorship, confession and writing, or the “praise” performed by the creation.

The discussion of cosmogony in Confessions XIII prompts Augustine to bring these

different aspects of inspiration together and to describe a relationship between them. He

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thus explicitly relates God’s speaking through the creation as an origin of his own act of

expression: “Lord, let us look at the heavens, the work of your fingers…I have not

known, Lord, I have not met with other utterances so pure, which so persuasively move

me to confession” (XIII.xv.17). An idea which is hinted at in Confessions V.i.1 is made

explicit here in Confessions XIII; Augustine uses imagery suggesting that the concept of

a chain of being, which places human beings within the divinely created world, also

applies to acts of expression. Where initially he asserts through the term excitas that

authorship is a result of direct inspiration by the divine, here the concept of a divine

trigger for expression is filtered through a theory of cosmogony, through

acknowledgement of the divine origin of created world. The suggestion here is that

Augustine attempts to assert that a hierarchy of creation influences and guides

expression while also opening up a space for authorial creativity. In discussing

cosmogony, in other words, he seeks to open up the space for agency within a model of

inspired authorship, for where the earlier model of authorship suggests the writer is a

conduit for divine inspiration, here the writer is inspired by the divine origin of the

creation.

The constitutive aspect of expression is evident here not only in this more flexible

model of authorship acknowledging the inevitability of human agency, but also because

of Augustine’s reliance on imagery based on language. Both Confessions V.i.1 and

XIII.xv.17 show that linguistic analogues continue to pervade Augustine’s account of

cosmogony, as the relation between different orders of the creation is discussed by

imagery describing their expressiveness. More intriguing about the account in book XIII

is that in order to describe in greater detail the idea of a link between the creation,

Scriptural authorship, and mortality — a link based on a common divine origin —

Augustine deploys Scriptural imagery which he interprets as though concerned with

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writing and books. Yet even though he continues to describe both the function and the

limits of writing by limiting the human “author” within divine “authorisation” and the

inspiration of the creation, the linguistic imagery of the episode underlines the

necessary, constitutive role played by language and metaphor in his discussion of

cosmogony and authorship.

Augustine’s deployment of the Scriptural image of “coats of skins”,139 which he

reads as a representation of texts and their covers, introduces this importance of imagery

based on writing in order to describe and also embody the relationship between the

mutable world and its divine origin. His assertion that “the heaven will fold up like a

book and now like a skin it is stretched out above us” (XIII.xv.16) relates the terrestrial

creation to the heavenly creation and in turn presents the created world as a “text”

which has a heavenly “cover”. As is often the case with exegeses of Genesis 3:21

(Chadwick 1991, p.238 note 17), Augustine sees the mortality of human beings

symbolised by the “coat of skins”: “You know, Lord...how you clothed human beings

with skins when by sin they became mortal” (XIII.xv.16). The mortality of Scriptural

authors, Augustine continues, becomes the means by which Scripture obtains an

authority which endures beyond mortality: “Your divine scripture has more sublime

authority since the death of the mortal authors through whom you provided it for

us...Indeed, by the very fact of their death the solid authority of your utterances

published by them is in a sublime way ‘stretched out’ over everything inferior”

(XIII.xv.16). If we recall section two of this chapter, where I noted Augustine’s

discussion of the transitory presence of speech as opposed to the endurance of writing,

we can see the importance of the image of writing at Confessions XIII.xv.16. It provides

139 “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21).

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a means of describing human mortality, but it is also portrayed as the activity which

enables one to transcend the limits of mortality. By writing a text, one endures not only

beyond the transitory nature of speech, but also mortality itself. The image is therefore

simultaneously aligned with the mutable created world and also the immutable domain

of spiritual and textual authority; it is important because it connects these two as well as

describing the difference between them.

The “bookishness” of this passage underlines as much as anywhere else in the

Confessions Augustine’s reliance on the image of writing and of the written text in

order to think through the problems created by his account of cosmogony and its

implications for language. The written text comes to symbolise distinct elements — the

heavens and the creation as a “book” which is authoritative in human existence because

it is testament to their divine origin; Scripture itself as an authoritative book; and mortal

existence as a kind of book, where the “skin” representing the “coat” of the book also

represents the limits of existence. The constitutive role of metaphor in Augustine’s

discussion is evident in the multiplication of this image to describe and embody the

relationship between these elements. The “work” performed by the metaphor of the

book enables Augustine to relate mortality with written Scripture and with the heavens

stretched out like an authoritative book — as though the rapid transition from literal

images such as the book of Scripture to figurative imagery such as mortality and the

creation blurs the boundaries between these literal and non-literal elements even as it

describes these boundaries. Indeed, writing performs a dual function when it comes to

the mortal level, in that while the image of the book is used to describe the limits of

existence, the act of writing is also portrayed as the means by which Scriptural authors,

and perhaps the author of the Confessions himself, can go beyond mortality.

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A number of important factors in Augustine’s discussion of authorship in relation

to cosmogony, therefore, contribute to the idea that language plays a constitutive rather

than merely reflective role in knowledge. One is the role of linguistic analogues, such as

the use of the “coat of skins” image. Both Augustine’s use of the image of writing and

his understanding of the implications of writing form an essential aspect of a parallel

between mortality, Scriptural authorship, and the creation. Bearing in mind the

preoccupation with books as objects of authority and indeed reverence in the later

medieval mindset, in addition to the later trope describing the created world as a book

“written” by God,140 this passage is important as an anticipation of and influence on

later thought.

Cosmogony frequently prompts reflection on the process of authorship because it

prompts an analogy, whether explicit or implicit, between a divine creator and the writer

as creator. Augustine’s attempt to describe a model of authorship follows this pattern to

the degree that it relates God’s creativity with the problematic phenomenon of “human

creativity”. In response to this problem, as we have seen, he proposes a model of

expression in light of the primary sublime act of creation ex nihilo. To be “authentic”,

writing has to be inspired by the divine, whether directly or because triggered by

acknowledgement of the divine origin of the creation. Although this model is intended

to limit the creative aspect of authorship, a paradoxical effect of the model is to align

the process of writing with the sublime act of cosmogony. So while it is problematic to

apply modern concepts of the author as an autonomous generator of meaning to a work

of the early Christian era such as the Confessions, Augustine’s discussion of authorship

in the context of his discourse on cosmogony has the effect of anticipating, and perhaps

140 For a discussion of the medieval trope of the “book of the world”, see Curtius (1979), pp.302-48.

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inaugurating, later ideas which were to explicitly associate the writer with a divine

creator.

Conclusion

Perhaps Augustine’s greatest field of influence on Christian and Western thought is on

the topic of Scriptural interpretation, on the nature of the text and how to read it. An

important feature of the discourse on cosmogony in the Confessions, this chapter has

shown, is its impact on Augustine’s ideas about exegesis. Communication, interpretive

plurality, figurative interpretation, and typology, are all theories that are prompted by,

or which enable, Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1 in the Confessions. The difficult

nature of cosmogony, this chapter has shown, is a significant factor in the formation of

these ideas. Augustine’s emphasis on intention in theorising language and exegesis, for

instance, is replaced by a more flexible model of communication which is needed for

the discussion of cosmogony and of Genesis 1.

We have also seen in the Confessions recognition of the functional role of

metaphor in aiding thought. The difficulty of cosmogony, which in other cases might

lead to statements that language obstructs thought, prompts Augustine to acknowledge

the necessity of metaphor and so give language a positive and primary role in thought.

In many ways, there is much more at stake in the Confessions than, say, in the Timaeus

or the Enneads, for it blends philosophy, theology, cosmogony, and self-reflection

within a quest for wisdom (see chapter three of this thesis). Failure to explicate Genesis

1 and reach a satisfactory model of cosmogony represents a crisis for Augustine, to a

degree not faced in Platonic thought. One upshot of this need to establish the validity of

Genesis 1, in combination with the complexities of cosmogony, is Augustine’s

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acknowledgement and appropriation of the idea that language and imagery play an

active role in thought.

Our search for a constitutive role of language in knowledge suggested by the

cosmogony of the Confessions has also identified the crucial role played by linguistic

analogues and theories of language. The “tongue of the pen” image of Psalm 45, while

initially used to show up the limits of language, eventually becomes the means by which

Augustine explains the divine Word of creation. Singing, treated as the simultaneous

creation and then formation of sound, describes the non-temporal imposition of divine

form on formless matter. The image of the book and writing, finally, enables Augustine

to relate different orders of creativity. All these are testament to the linguistically

oriented method in Augustine. Throughout his oeuvre, language is a consistent point of

reference, whether as an explicit object of focus or as a prism through which other

phenomena are discussed. While Augustine defines creation ex nihilo by a contrast with

human making, in using this linguistically based method to discuss cosmogony, he puts

into play analogies between human language and divine creation. So although the

cosmogony of the Confessions focuses on defining the nature of divine creation,

Augustine’s linguistic analogues inaugurate and anticipate a later tradition which drew

explicit parallels between authorship and divine creation, one which eventually

celebrated the divine power of the poet or writer to make new worlds out of words.

Augustine is often explicitly opposed to the idea that language plays a role in

spiritual knowledge. This is evident in the account of mystic ascent of Confessions

IX.x.25 which describes spiritual experience as the evacuation of language (see the first

section of this chapter). The idea that language obstructs spiritual thought because it is

inherently carnal signals a major tension in Augustine’s works, a tension between his

consistent focus on language and his assertions that language cannot play a positive role

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in knowledge of the divine. It also connects to his assertions that experience should

move beyond the sensible to the spiritual.141 Because language is so often the lens

through which Augustine addresses different aspects of experience and knowledge,

these issues are frequently expressed in linguistic terms. The progression from carnal to

spiritual knowledge is therefore dramatised in the Confessions through accounts of a

fatal concern for the literal meaning of a text or an experience, or on salvation achieved

by finding the spiritual meaning in the literal level.

My argument that the portrayal of cosmogony in the Confessions brings into focus

the necessary constitutive role of metaphor suggests either that we need to rethink

Augustine’s doctrine of moving from the literal “letter” of sensible experience to the

“spirit” of true knowledge, or it underlines an irresolvable tension in his works (or

both). In chapter two I argued that Plato’s account of cosmogony suggests that

metaphors are essential in the conceptualisation of orders beyond the everyday, and are

not merely secondary reflections of concepts such as the Forms. Similarly, Augustine’s

cosmogony, because it describes a “vanishing point” where the worldly plane meets the

intelligible or divine order, ends up showing the possibility that the spiritual realm

begins in language and sensible images. His attempt to account for creation ex nihilo, I

suggest, raises the possibility that divine creation is a projection out of human, literal

141 This doctrine about experience and knowledge is summarised in the Confessions when Augustine, in reflecting on the dangers of temptation, argues that the sensible, carnal aspect of an experience should be ignored in favour of its spiritual aspect or significance. The visible world or “physical light”, for example, “works by a seductive and dangerous sweetness to season the life of those who blindly love the world” (X.xxxiv.52); used correctly, however, it allows one to experience the divine hand behind its creation: “But those who know how to praise you for it, God creator of all things, include it in their hymn of praise to you” (X.xxxiv.52). These principles are summarised in the paradoxical language he deploys in describing the five “spiritual senses” where experience of the divine is portrayed as a non-physical “food”, as a “light which space cannot contain”, and as a “sound that time cannot seize” (X.vi.8).

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categories; language does not just reflect a process of divine creation, it also manifests

it.142

Furthermore, if we recall my argument in chapter three that the project of the

Confessions is to describe and indeed embody the ascent of wisdom beyond the limits

of introspection, then the constitutive role played by metaphor and by linguistic imagery

in Augustine’s cosmogony must also be seen as pivotal to the Confessions as a whole.

Writing comes to mark one of the principal faculties, or at least symbolises most

effectively, the transition or threshold between the mortal, sensible realm and the eternal

divine. The constitutive function of language, in particular the transition from the literal

to the symbolic enabled by metaphor, is vital to the project of the Confessions because it

facilitates a description and performance of the ascent of wisdom from the sensible to

the spiritual.

142 In The Word Made Strange (1997), John Milbank recognises and draws on the necessarily linguistic aspect of Augustine’s theology in presenting his own “postmodern” Christianity. As Wayne John Hankey writes, in summary of both Augustine’s thought and of “postmodern” theology: “Reality, including reality of God, is linguistic” (Hankey 1997).

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Chapter 5.

Cosmogony in the Western Tradition

Throughout Western thought, both Plato’s and Augustine’s models of cosmogony were

widely read as authoritative models of the creation and organisation of the universe.143

However, in addition to the direct impact of the Timaeus and the Confessions on later

theories about cosmogony, there are a number of ways in which these texts, and some of

the key concepts discussed in this thesis, persist in and influence later thought. This

chapter surveys some of the key periods in the Western tradition where the cosmogonies

presented in the Timaeus and the Confessions continue to have a significant impact on

ideas about not only the world’s creation, but also language, knowledge, and aesthetics.

One of the principal implications of this thesis, I suggest, is that the engagement with an

inherited model of cosmogony is often a vital source of new ideas about language and

art, just as new ideas are prompted in an initial account of the world’s creation. Indeed

the endurance of some of the principal concepts and literary methods of the Timaeus

and the Confessions in Western thought suggests that we need to rethink some of the

assumptions we apply to different periods of literary critical history, and give greater

contextualisation to works which engage with, rather than merely rehearse, inherited

models of cosmogony.

143 The influence of the Timaeus in the Middle Ages was heightened by its availability through translations by Cicero and Calcidius, as most of Plato’s other works were unavailable for much of this era and so were only known indirectly via Neoplatonism. For a discussion of the impact of the Timaeus throughout the Western tradition, see the collection of essays edited by Gretchen Reydams-Schils, Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). The Confessions, which has consistently been one of the most widely read of Augustine’s works, is a significant authoritative statement about creation ex nihilo, a doctrine which has dominated Christian, Western thought.

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For instance, by analysing the impact of the Timaeus on Neoplatonic literary

criticism of late antiquity, I argue that new ideas about both the usefulness of literary

form to philosophy and the philosophical potential of literature result from the explicit

integration of cosmogony and literary theory. Section one shows that in engaging with

cosmogony, Neoplatonic writers reflected on the parallel between writer and divine

creator, in light of which I suggest that Neoplatonism needs more attention in our

assessment of the history of literary criticism. In section two I demonstrate how

discussions of cosmogony in medieval poetry and literary criticism call into question

some contemporary assumptions that medieval thought rejected any idea of authorial

creativity or autonomy. The notion that medieval poets experimented with new models

of authorship by engaging with an inherited model of cosmogony has been suggested by

critics such as R.W. Hanning, Daniel Heller-Roazen, and more recently Richard Utz.

My contribution to this debate is to show how this experimentation in fact forms part of

a more pervasive phenomenon of literary innovation and reflection on language

prompted by the discussion of cosmogony, of which the Timaeus and the Confessions

are significant early instances.

In section three I present Dante’s Commedia as an exemplary instance of the

phenomenon where the engagement with cosmogony prompts new ideas about authorial

creativity. Dante’s poetic “creation” of the afterlife, I suggest, represents a crucial

culmination of many of the themes discussed in the thesis, particularly in its reflexive

assessment of poetic creation and its tacit analogy between poet and divine creator.

Because of the significance of the Commedia in this tradition relating poetic and divine

creation, I spend some time discussing a particularly important passage in which

cosmogony and creativity are central themes: the account of the thieves and their

punishment in Inferno XXIV-XXV.

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Analogies between poet and divine creator are explicitly deployed as a key

concept in Renaissance thought. My analysis of Renaissance literary theory in section

four, which begins with a discussion of the early critical reception of the Commedia,

questions the critical commonplace that the Renaissance marks the emergence of new

ideas about the creative agency of the artist and the author. In light of my arguments in

this thesis, particularly in this chapter, I suggest that the Renaissance period should be

seen as one which marks the overt exploration of parallels between poet and divine

creator, parallels which were already circulating, albeit less explicitly, in earlier poetic

practice and literary theory. By showing that references to divine creation continue to be

used as a way of conceptualising poetry and poetic creation from the Renaissance

through to Romantic literary theory, I demonstrate the extensive impact the models of

creation discussed in the Timaeus and the Confessions had on Western thought.

In the modern secular-scientific outlook, the gradual disappearance of the

discourse of divine creation in discussions of aesthetics and literature, as critics such as

M.H. Abrams and Northrop Frye have commented, means that the concept of artistic

“creation” has undergone a dilution of its significance. The final section of the chapter

argues that the continued relevance of the Timaeus and the Confessions, as instigators of

influential models of cosmogony, is evident in contemporary discussions of science,

where new fields of knowledge and new areas of creativity are often discussed by

reference to a discourse of divine creation. By concluding my survey of the consistent

reflection on divine creation in the Western tradition with the problem of scientific

knowledge and creativity, I suggest that the direct contemplation of divine creation

performed in the Timaeus and the Confessions will continue to influence thought about

the limits of knowledge and creativity, as it has done until today.

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i. The Timaeus and Neoplatonic Theories of Art and Literature

The impact of Plato’s Timaeus on the history of aesthetics and literary criticism, in

addition to its more recognised influence on philosophy, is evident when we consider

Neoplatonic discussions of art and literature in the antique and late antique era. Some

discussions of sculpture in antiquity, for instance, deployed Plato’s model of a

Demiurge because both divine creator and human artisan were thought to gaze on an

ideal order of Forms that is used as the model for both the cosmos and art. Cicero, in his

discussion of sculpture and rhetoric, asserts that the human sculptor is like the

Demiurge because both refer to an ideal model:

Surely that great sculptor, while making the image of Jupiter or Minerva, did not look at any person whom he was using as a model, but in his own mind there dwelt a surpassing vision of beauty; at this he gazed and all intent on this he guided the artist’s hand to produce the likeness of the god. Accordingly, as there is something perfect and surpassing in the case of sculpture and painting — an intellectual ideal by reference to which the artist represents those objects which do not themselves appear to the eye, so with our minds we conceive the ideal of perfect eloquence, but with our ears we catch only the copy. These patterns of things are called ίδέαι or ideas by Plato, that eminent master and teacher both of style and of thought; these, he says, do not “become”; they exist for ever, and depend on intellect and reason; other things come into being and cease to be, they are in flux, and do not remain long in the same state. (Cicero, Orator 9-10)

Although Cicero does not refer directly to the Timaeus or the Demiurge here, his

discussion of an order of Ideas which do not “become” and which is used as a pattern

for art clearly recalls Plato’s cosmogony. We should also remember that Cicero

produced one of the most important early Latin translations of the Timaeus.144 An

intriguing feature of this passage is that Cicero uses the concept of the Demiurge not

only to discuss sculpture, but also to consider the nature of rhetoric and eloquence. This

concept that the rhetorician uses the Ideas to order his language is interesting because it

144 For a discussion of Cicero’s translation of the Timaeus into Latin, and of the impact of the Timaeus on his thought, see Lévy (2003), pp.95-110. It is possible that the Neoplatonist thinker Antiochus may have influenced Cicero on this point about sculpture, and that Antiochus himself may also have made an explicit connection between the sculptor and the Demiurge (Coulter 1976, p.99).

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anticipates much later comparisons between the poet and divine creator, and also

demonstrates the potential for new ideas about language which the Timaeus enabled.

In Seneca we find a discussion of sculpture and the arts which relies more overtly

on Plato’s model of the Demiurge. Seneca, in identifying five “causes” in both the

creation of the universe and the making of a statue, adopts Plato’s doctrine of a divine

creator using an ideal pattern:

Just as in the case of the statue...the material is the bronze, the agent is the artist, the make-up is the form which is adapted to the material, the model is the pattern imitated by the agent, the end in view is the purpose in the maker’s mind, and, finally, the result of all these is the statue itself. The universe also, in Plato’s opinion, possesses all these elements. The agent is God; the source, matter; the form, the shape and arrangement of the visible world. The pattern is doubtless the model according to which God has made this great and most beautiful creation. (Seneca, Epistle LXV, On the First Cause, 8-10)

While Seneca, like Cicero, does not refer to the Timaeus in his relation of sculpture with

divine creation, his debt to the Timaeus is underlined by his suggestion that God’s

reason for making the world is that “God is good, and no good person is grudging of

anything that is good” and that therefore “God made it the best world possible” (Seneca,

Epistle LXV, On the First Cause, 10). This principle is a clear repetition of the

argument in Timaeus 29-30.

The discussions of sculpture by Cicero and Seneca are intriguing not only for the

simple fact of their debt to Plato’s model of the Demiurge, but also because they reverse

Plato’s analogy of the artisan deity, using the idea of the divine creator as a way of

conceptualising the artist, rather than use the artist to portray a divine creator. This is

significant because it shows that the Timaeus offered new concepts of aesthetics, and

also because it anticipates much later discussions of art that use the idea of creation ex

nihilo to discuss the nature of poetic creation. The well-known Renaissance

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representation of the poet as a type of divine creator, in other words, is anticipated by

the understudied area of Neoplatonic theories of art in antiquity.

In the work of other Neoplatonist thinkers such as Philo, Proclus, Boethius, and

Calcidius, we can see how the Timaeus generated glosses, guided translations, and

imitations, indicating that the complexities of the Timaeus, in addition to its compelling

subject matter, prompted an increased interest in, and need for, critical response to its

form.145 Even the philosophical discussion of cosmogony by Plotinus, we have seen,

includes speculation on Plato’s use of metaphors (see for example Enneads 2.4.10).

These critical responses, guided translations, and imitations are an important reason

why Plato’s cosmogony was the most available of all his works in the Middle Ages.

Moreover, the work of these late antique Neoplatonic writers demonstrates the

importance of the Timaeus as a key text in the tradition of literary criticism because it

generates so much critical response.

The specific connection between poetic and divine creation, an idea which was to

flourish in Renaissance literary criticism and in eighteenth-century theories of the

literary heterocosm, can also be found in Neoplatonic discussions which either reflected

on the parallel between the content and form of the Timaeus or which used Plato’s

model of cosmogony in assessing other literary compositions. An anonymous

commentator on the Timaeus of the fifth century, for example, celebrates Plato’s use of

dialogue as the most suitable form with which to write about the world’s creation.

Although this commentary appears to misread the significance of the transition from

145 Philo’s On the Creation of the World applies the Timaeus cosmogony to Genesis (see David Runia’s Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato [Leiden: Brill, 1986]), while Proclus wrote an influential commentary on the Timaeus (available in the translation by Taylor [1820]). Both Calcidius and Cicero wrote a translation of the Timaeus, and Calcidius supplemented his translation with an influential commentary; Boethius incorporated the Timaeus cosmogony into his Consolation of Philosophy, in which Plato’s model is especially apparent in the famous creation poem (Poem IX).

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philosophy to narrative in the Timaeus, the discussion is important because of its very

focus on the link between the world created by the Demiurge and the literary world

described by Plato: “We must now mention the reasons why Plato used this literary

form. He chose it, we say, because the dialogue is a kind of cosmos” (quoted in Coulter

1976, p.102).

Similar sentiment can be found in the discussion of Virgil by the Neoplatonist

thinker Macrobius (also fifth century), who states that “if you look closely into the

nature of the universe, you will find a striking resemblance between the handiwork of

the divine craftsman and that of our poet” (Saturnalia, V.i.19). Just as the earth displays

varying characteristics — rich with crops, rough and mountainous, dry, raging — so,

Macrobius states, Virgil deploys a variety of literary styles which match these

characteristics — smooth, torrential, dry, ornate (Saturnalia, V.i.19). So while the

anonymous commentator finds a reflexive link between the content and form of the

Timaeus, Macrobius, who spends some time discussing the nature of the cosmos in the

Saturnalia, goes on to laud the power of the poet to fashion a literary world with

diversity akin to nature.

Neoplatonic literary criticism of late antiquity, in responding to the Timaeus, thus

postulates new ideas about literature by drawing on Plato’s model of the Demiurge and

by drawing a parallel between a model of cosmogony and the literary portrayal of that

model. We can see in these passages that parallels between the created order and the

literary artefact, parallels which lead to the idea that the literary work is a discrete

microcosmos, emerge in Neoplatonic responses to the Timaeus. The upshot of these

Neoplatonic discussions is that they demonstrate how ideas about the artwork or poem

as an objective heterocosm, a concept which was to become a major theme in literary

criticism (which I discuss in section four of this chapter), were already circulating,

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albeit in a much more speculative form, in some of the earlier responses to Platonic

philosophy and to the Timaeus. More generally, we can see that a heightened awareness

of the literary aspect of a text is evident in the Neoplatonic reception of the Timaeus.

This suggests we should rethink and explore further the importance of the Timaeus in

the history of literary-critical thought, and not just as an important work in the history of

philosophy.146

ii. Cosmogony and Medieval Poetics: the example of the Twelfth Century

In the Middle Ages, the subject of cosmogony — understanding of the creation and

organisation of the universe — is a crucial theme which influences numerous fields of

knowledge, pedagogy, and intellectual practice.147 It therefore marks a period in which

the texts and models of cosmogony analysed in this thesis have a significant impact.

Both the Timaeus and the Confessions were frequently the subject of critical analysis,

and were consistently used as authorities in further philosophical speculation. Genesis 1,

and its interpretation by Augustine and later by Aquinas, formed the basis of medieval

cosmogony. However, the concept of the Demiurge inaugurated by Plato’s Timaeus is

also a pervasive image by which medieval thinkers explicated the Christian model.148

146 James A. Coulter, who provides a survey of the literary theories of the later Neoplatonists in The Literary Microcosm, argues that Neoplatonic thinkers engaged with significant issues of textual interpretation and that they “merit a more secure place in the history of literary criticism and theory that they now occupy” (Coulter 1976, p.vii). His book highlights the impact of Plato’s cosmogony on what remains a little studied period of literary criticism. 147 For discussions of the significance of cosmogony to medieval thought, see Østrem (2007), pp.15-48, Wetherbee (1988), pp.21-53, Hanning (1984), pp.96-116, and Mazzeo (1957), pp.706-09. 148 The synthesising of Platonic and Christian cosmogonies performed in the Middle Ages is evident, for example, in William of Conches’ identification of the world-soul described in Timaeus 35-37 with the Genesis concept of the Holy Spirit. See the discussions by Wetherbee (1988), p.38, and Gregory (1988), pp.60-63.

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Both the Platonic and Augustinian models of cosmogony had a profound impact

not only on medieval thinking about cosmogony, but also on medieval thought

generally. The argument of this thesis that cosmogony leads to reflection on other

human practices, especially the language by which cosmogony is portrayed, is

underlined by the tendency for medieval discourses to discuss human activities and

faculties such the seven liberal arts, knowledge, language, and creativity by reference to

inherited models of cosmogony.149 My focus in this section is on twelfth-century

discourses on cosmogony and creativity, because this period, as scholars such as

Southern (1970), Wetherbee (1972 and 1988), Hanning (1984), and Heller-Roazen

(1998) have shown, represents a crucial culmination of these themes.150 However, it

should be pointed out that the focused discussion presented here is only of certain key

thinkers from one period, and that this period itself is part of a broader tendency in

medieval thought to discuss human creativity in the context of cosmogony.

In some medieval discourses which explicate or deploy an inherited model of

cosmogony, we can see evidence that thinkers acknowledged the constitutive role

language and metaphor play in enabling an understanding of the world’s creation. This

is evident in literary criticism of the twelfth century, particularly in glosses on the

Timaeus which emphasised the role of literary methods as a means of understanding

cosmogony. The theory of the integumentum used in twelfth-century literary criticism,

evident for example in William of Conches’ suggestion that the discussion of the “lesser

149 A useful illustration of the medieval discussion of human creativity by reference to cosmogony is in studies of the arts such as architecture. Thinkers drew inspiration from Plato’s model of a rational Demiurge, which was found to cohere with the Scriptural statement that God “ordered all things in measure and number and weight” (Wisdom 11:20), in order to suggest that the ratio of human art imitates divine creation. For a summary of the twelfth-century discussion of ratio as a concept by which human arts are seen to resemble divine cosmogony, see Hanning (1984), pp.116-23. 150 The significance of cosmogony to the intellectual climate of this period, and the particular impact of Plato’s cosmogony, is summarised by Peter Dronke: “the whole of the twelfth century stands under the sign of Plato’s Timaeus” (Dronke 1988, p.2).

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gods” in the Timaeus is a literary device “concealing” the truth about angels or the

planets (quoted in Dronke 1974, p.37), indicates that a principal impact of the Timaeus

was to make literary and interpretive methods a significant aspect of the philosophic

method.

Winthrop Wetherbee shows how in William of Conches’ glosses on the auctores,

myth and figurative language are advocated as a means of procuring, and not merely re-

presenting, philosophic truths (Wetherbee 1988, p.35). Wetherbee concludes that

William’s approach extends Neoplatonic concepts of a “literary” philosophy and makes

explicit concepts which are tacit in the work of other twelfth-century thinkers:

His approach is grounded in Plato’s view of the world as the image of a divine archetype, and it is clear that thinking through myth and image plays a far more important cognitive role, and one more clearly integrated with William’s sense of the task of the philosopher, than in Macrobius’ view. For William indeed the language of philosophy is fundamentally ‘integumental’ in character, and his discussion makes explicit assumptions which are pervasive in the work of Bernard and Thierry. (Wetherbee 1988, p.36)

The significance of this argument is that it suggests Platonic cosmogony is the basis for

William’s relation of language and knowledge. Just as the world is composed of images

which conceal their divine model, so texts are made of images which “conceal”

philosophic truths.

We have seen in the previous section how Neoplatonic criticism treated literature

and literary devices as valid and significant means of reaching philosophic truths.

Twelfth-century literary criticism builds on the work of Neoplatonic critics such as

Boethius and Macrobius not only by acknowledging the literary aspects of philosophy

such as the Timaeus, but also by speculating on the philosophical dimension of

literature. The application of the notion of the literary integumentum to literary and

poetic works by critics such as Bernard Silvestris demonstrates how literature and

poetry were ascribed epistemological authority akin to “traditional” philosophy

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(Hanning 1984, p.104). As R.W. Hanning comments: “The concept of the integument in

effect recognises the role of the poet as a purposeful creator, albeit of fictions — one

who constructs an ornate world of words at once to hide a set of truths and to lure

(properly trained) readers on to discover what has been hidden” (Hanning 1984, pp.104-

5). This shows that the Timaeus, as an object of analysis in the twelfth century,

prompted critical reflection on the philosophical truths which could be found in

literature as well as on the literary aspect of philosophy. This suggests, in turn, that the

reception of Plato’s cosmogony in the medieval period included some

acknowledgement of the constitutive role of language in the conceptualisation of

imaginative concepts and in the world-making potential of literature.

Twelfth-century discourses on cosmogony demonstrate how both Plato’s and

Augustine’s accounts of cosmogony influenced and enabled new ways of thinking about

the nature of knowledge and about how different types of knowledge might be related.

For instance, the theory that experience of the created order can lead to greater

understanding of the divine origin of the universe, a theory which I discussed in chapter

four section three of this thesis, influences some twelfth-century discussions of

knowledge and cosmogony. Abelard proposes that sensory experience of the created

order leads to reflection on its divine origin, and intriguingly illustrates this concept by

reference to the relationship between the artist and the artwork:

whoever wishes to know of a certain artist if he is good or skilful in his labors, ought to consider not him but his works. And thus God, who is invisible and incomprehensible in himself, first confers on us knowledge of him by means of the greatness of his works. (Abelard, Expositio 733A, translated and quoted in Hanning 1984, p.109)

This passage demonstrates that the reception of cosmogony in the Middle Ages

prompted greater reflection on the ontological status of the artist. Moreover, the passage

shows the synthesis of cosmogonic models performed in the era, for the Christian

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doctrine expressed in Romans 1:20 and developed by Augustine in the Confessions is

combined with the Platonic model of the Demiurge.

Discourses on literature and philosophy in the twelfth century also show how

cosmogonies functioned as models for the synthesising of knowledge. By this I mean

that they were considered not only as a summa of knowledge, but also as subjects by

which other fields of knowledge might be brought together. This concept is best

demonstrated in the Philosophia Mundi of William of Conches. Where other collections

of philosophy and knowledge prior to the Philosophia usually took the form of

encyclopaedias or treatises, the innovation of the Philosophia is that it describes a

Platonic model of cosmogony in order to produce a summa of knowledge about the

natural world (Southern 1970, p.44). Works such as the Philosophia show how the

synthesising function of cosmogony, which is subtly evident in the syncretic form of the

Confessions, becomes an important feature of medieval thought.

The twelfth-century’s heightened awareness of the literary dimension of

philosophy and of the epistemic potential of literature forms a significant aspect of these

new ideas about synthesising knowledge. Again the Timaeus functioned as an

exemplary instance of philosophic truths caged in literary imagery. In Thierry of

Chartres’ De sex dierum operibus, for instance, the focus on myth and metaphor as a

means of explicating Genesis 1 deploys and synthesises a variety of discourses,

including philosophy (Plato) and poetry (Virgil), and in doing so ascribes both works a

similar degree of epistemological authority (Gregory 1988, p.68). A similar process of

synthesis by which literature, myth, and philosophy are ascribed equal epistemological

status is evident in Matianus Capella’s De nuptiis, which equates the stories of Aeneas,

Mercury, and Boethius as figurae all dramatising the search for philosophic truth

(quoted in Wetherbee 1988, p.44). The importance of cosmogony to these new ideas

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about a “literary philosophising”, and in particular the pervasive influence of the

Timaeus, is summarised by Wetherbee: “The Timaeus is the paradigmatic literary text

as well as the summa of philosophy, and to the extent that the poets had succeeded in

emulating this great model, virtually the embodiment of the natural order itself, their

own works attain a similar scope and coherence” (Wetherbee 1988, p.44). This suggests

that the Plato’s cosmogony, viewed as an act of literary world-making, became a model

for a new type of “literary” philosophy. If Plato could create a literary cosmos in

describing the world’s creation, then perhaps later philosophers too could seek to

explore and expand knowledge through similar literary devices.

Cosmogony’s use as a vehicle for the unification of different types of knowledge

is also dramatised in the Metamorphosis Goyle episcopi, a Latin dream-poem in which

the poet describes a mansion where Mercury and Philosophy (eloquence and wisdom)

are married, with famous poets and philosophers in attendance. The synthesising

function served by cosmogony, and in particular by a Timaean model of cosmogony, is

evident in that the mansion is described by the poet as the universe itself:

The mansion is the realm of the universe itself, containing the forms of things together with things formed, which that best creator who oversees creation made and ordered as an expression of his goodness.

(translated in Wetherbee 1988, p.41)

We can see from works such as the Philosophia Mundi and the Metamorphosis Goyle

episcopi how the medieval tendency to compile and unify all available knowledge and

forms of intellectual enterprise found a highly productive model in cosmogonies such as

Plato’s Timaeus.

Such imitations of and extensions on the Timaeus as a model of philosophical

literature, indeed, are a significant source of twelfth-century literature. Cosmogony, I

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have argued, both requires and enables the exploration of new literary methods. With

the Timaeus as an authoritative model for both literary innovation and for a summa of

knowledge, twelfth-century writers engaged in further experimentation, particularly in

philosophic and allegorical poems describing the world’s creation. Bernardus Silvestris’

poetic cosmology, the Cosmographia, is a primary instance of this tradition, one which

uses personification to describe the creation of the cosmos. Personification, allegory,

pun, and literary allusion are all used in Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature, which, like

Boethius’ Consolation, combines poetry and prose and which discusses the creation of

the universe by drawing on both the Timaeus and Genesis 1.151 A union of poetry,

philosophy, and Platonic cosmogony, we have seen, is evident in the Metamorphosis

Goyle episcope. These poetic cosmologies highlight the impact of cosmogony and

particularly the Timaeus as an authoritative model of literary innovation which enabled

further experimentation in literary method. In the next section of this chapter, I discuss

Dante’s Commedia as an exemplary instance of the poetic cosmogony which represents

a summa of knowledge and which synthesises diverse types of knowledge in that

summa.

Despite the new ideas about language and knowledge which emerge in the

twelfth-century reception of cosmogony, medieval explications of Christian cosmogony

often result in a negation of authorial autonomy and human creativity. This negation of

human creativity in the theorisation of divine creation is evident in Augustine’s contrast

between the unfettered nature of creation ex nihilo and the limited actions of the human

151 Winthrop Wetherbee argues that the poetic cosmologies such as the Cosmographia and the Plaint of Nature indicate a heightened degree of poetic self-consciousness: “In the poems of Bernardus and Alain, Chartrian humanism becomes itself a theme for poetry, and the quest for knowledge is shown to be less important than the act of self-definition implicit in it” (Wetherbee 1972, p.7). This argument reinforces the suggestion of this thesis that accounts of cosmogony lead to some degree of reflection on the authorial process.

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craftsman (Confessions XI.v.7). In his later work, The Trinity, Augustine posits this idea

more directly in his famous assertion that “solus creator est Deus” (III.ix.16). This

principle is stated with greater explicitness by the twelfth-century thinker Thomas

Aquinas, who builds on Augustine’s arguments about the uniqueness of divine creation:

“creation (creare) is the proper activity of God alone” (Summa Theologica 1a 45.5).

This reception of cosmogony has had a significant influence on critical discussions of

the Middle Ages and its place in histories of literature and literary theory. 152 For

instance, Joseph Anthony Mazzeo argues that:

The image of the Deus Pictor or Deus Artifex in mediaeval or patristic thought is not intended as a glorification of the artist. It is rather an attempt to understand divine creation by using the artist as an analogue. Mediaeval theory basically Plotinian never gave to human creativity a positive or active role in relation to nature. Such a conception was the conquest of the Renaissance. (Mazzeo 1957, p.708)

For Mazzeo, the intense and consistent reflection on cosmogony in the Middle Ages

merely reaffirmed the absence of ideas about human creativity in that period: “any

human making is utterly different in kind and quality from that of either nature or God”

(Mazzeo 1957, p.708). This view of the Middle Ages as a period which rejected any

notion of authorial autonomy or artistic creativity because of its concern for a model of

cosmogony is underlined in Thomas Cramer’s article, “‘Solus creator est Deus’: Der

Autor auf dem Weg zum Schöpfertum” (1986), Daphnis 15, pp.261-276. Similarly,

Joseph Koerner suggests that Dürer’s “second creation” theory of art “stands in

opposition to the entire tradition of medieval anthropology and aesthetics from St.

Augustine and Peter Damian to Thomas Aquinas, which asserts categorically that solus

creator est Deus” (Koerner 1993, p.138).

152 The predominance of this view about the Middle Ages is summarised by Richard Utz: “As recently as twenty-five years ago, literary histories more or less all agreed that it was during the Renaissance that the self-consciousness of artists and writers emerged from its medieval slumber” (Utz 2007, p.121).

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The arguments presented in this section suggest that these categorisations of

Middle Ages aesthetics and literary theory according to the Augustinian and Thomist

principle that solus creator est Deus do not fully cohere with the actual explication or

literary portrayal of cosmogony in the medieval period. For instance, Mazzeo’s

assertion that the image of the Deus Artifex has nothing to do with conceptualising the

artist does not account for Abelard’s suggestion that an artist can be assessed by

reference to the artwork just as God is visible in the creation. Moreover, this thesis has

argued for a distinction between a theoretical model of cosmogony and the creativity

tacit in the literary portrayal of divine creation. This is apparent in the tension between

Augustine’s definition of divine creation according to a fundamental contrast with the

human craftsman and his use of linguistic analogues to describe creation ex nihilo.

Furthermore, the innovative literary methods by which cosmogony is described requires

reflection on the nature of language, and also underlines the creative, constitutive aspect

of that portrayal, notwithstanding the negation of authorial creativity which might be

suggested by or read into a model of divine creation.

In this section we have seen that phenomena such as reflection on the nature of

language, which are evident in the Timaeus and the Confessions, recur in twelfth-

century works of literary criticism and philosophy which engage with cosmogony. The

recurrence of these phenomena calls into question the validity of applying the solus

creator est Deus topos to all medieval discourse. Indeed recent criticism of medieval

poetry underlines the problems with applying the solus creator est Deus concept to

medieval poetic practice. Critics such as R.W. Hanning, Daniel Heller-Roazen, and

Richard Utz have shown that poets of the Middle Ages, in engaging with an inherited

model of cosmogony, often experimented with new concepts of authorship rather than

rehearse the negation of authorship asserted in Aquinas’ theorisation of cosmogony.

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The significance of cosmogony to this poetic experimentation underlines the impact of

the Timaeus and the Confessions on the Middle Ages, and in particular reinforces my

suggestion that the literary portrayal of cosmogony requires and also enables the

realisation of new ideas about language and authorship.

R.W. Hanning’s discussion of twelfth-century discourses on creation and

creativity demonstrates how some poets of the period frequently dramatise a parallel

between God creating in matter and the literary artist who creates in the “matter” of

language (Hanning 1984, p.125). He also notes how customary openings to poems in

which writers propose to convey new wisdom to their readers serve to “call attention to

their makers as secular analogues of God, who did not hold back his Wisdom, but spoke

it, and thus created the world” (Hanning 1984, p.128). More recently, Daniel Heller-

Roazen has shown how the parallel between language and formless matter is a key

aspect of the poetry of one of the first troubadours, Guilhem de Peitieus. Guilhem,

Heller-Roazen shows, uses the concept of formless matter or silva in order to reflect on

and explore the nature of language and poetic creation (Heller-Roazen 1998, p.879).

The medieval concept of silva stems from Calcidius’ Latin translation of the Timaeus,

and is a major theme in cosmological poetry such as Bernard’s Cosmographia.

Guilhem’s use of silva, Heller-Roazen argues, establishes that for the poet “the

potentiality of silua [sic] is interpreted as the power — Amor — enabling the poet to

compose the poem” (Heller-Roazen 1998, pp.879).

These arguments of Hanning and Heller-Roazen demonstrate how medieval poets

use some of the concepts of earlier cosmogonies as a productive category for reflection

on authorship. The notion of authorial creativity which, I have argued, is implicit in the

Timaeus and the Confessions, becomes an explicit theme in some medieval poetry that

explores other modes of creativity. The ideas about poetic creativity evident in these

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examples of medieval poetry which engage with established ideas about cosmogony

suggest in turn that we need to rethink some of the accepted notions about the Middle

Ages such as the rehearsal of the solus creator est Deus concept seen in Mazzeo,

Cramer, and Koerner. Orthodox theological discussions of creation and creativity in the

medieval period such as Aquinas’ formula at Summa 1a 45.5, we have seen, frequently

emphasised the essential difference between divine creation and human making, and it

is this reception of cosmogony which has guided much scholarship on art and literature

in the Middle Ages. To be sure, there is much to this scholarship, especially when we

consider the issue of terminology — the term “creation” was used exclusively for divine

acts, and only first used to describe art probably in the seventeenth century (Østrem

2007, p.16). However, the issue of terminology, in addition to medieval topoi which

emphasise the fundamental difference between divine creation and human industry,

does not prevent a more balanced view of medieval literature and literary theory. The

impact of the Timaeus and the Confessions on medieval poetry, as opposed to medieval

philosophy, suggests that we should rethink categorisations of this period as one of

scholastic emphasis on the sole creative power of the divine; parallels between poet and

divine creator deployed or implicit in some poetic practice of the Middle Ages, by

contrast, dramatises new ideas about human creativity.

The tendency for some medieval poetry to experiment with concepts of authorship

using established principles of cosmogony, and the need to reassess medieval literature

in light of its engagement with cosmogonic theory, has recently been demonstrated by

Richard Utz. Utz argues that Chaucer, possibly influenced by nominalist thought which

speculated on the nature of divine creation, stages his power as poet to write “alternative

worlds” (Utz 2007, p.123). Having demonstrated this experimentation with authorial

roles in Chaucer, Utz concludes that in assessing the literature of this period, orthodox

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views about authorship should not be applied uncritically to our understanding of

literary practice:

the ritualistic and often formulaic discourse of poetic creation in the Middle Ages may not be explained by simply enumerating statements in lists of topoi that suggest an unbroken chain of tradition from the Classical to the early modern western world. Rather, each of these creative writings of alternative fictional worlds deserves specific historicizing attention and detailed epistemological contextualization. (Utz 2007, p.138)

Critics who discuss the literary theory and literary practice of the Middle Ages, as this

section has shown, are increasingly acknowledging its indebtedness to cosmogony,

particularly Plato’s Timaeus. Some of the implications of this debt are evident in the

work of critics such as Hanning, Heller-Roazen, and Utz, who show that the poetic

engagement with cosmogony results in new ideas about language and literary creativity.

This criticism calls into question long-held ideas about medieval aesthetics (or the

“lack” of a medieval aesthetic). In light of the arguments of this thesis, I suggest that

these new ideas about authorial agency in the medieval period in fact mark a

recapitulation of, and extension on, ideas which are already evident in the original

cosmogonies which prompted those ideas. This recurrence of ideas about language in

the medieval reception of cosmogony underlines the significance of works such as the

Timaeus and the Confessions in the Middle Ages, and also suggests the need to reassess

some assumptions about the medieval period in histories of literature and literary

theory, especially when we assess individual writers and their specific discussions of

creativity.

iii. Dante’s Commedia

The phenomenon where cosmogony requires and facilitates reflection on human

creativity, particularly on the nature of language and authorship, is especially apparent

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in the important instance of Dante’s Commedia (early fourteenth century). I devote this

section to an analysis of the Commedia because in Western literature it is an exemplary

instance of authorial reflection performed in the context of cosmogony. This

phenomenon is evident not only in passages in the Commedia where themes of divine or

poetic creativity are more or less directly addressed and in which we can observe the

influence of Platonic and Augustinian cosmogony,153 but is also inherent to the poem

itself precisely because of its nature. By “creating”, as it were, its own version of the

Christian cosmos, the Commedia necessarily addresses questions about the nature of

poetry and how it relates to the divinely created universe it attempts to re-present. The

poem’s portrayal of a journey through the Christian afterlife thus results in a continuous

representation and interrogation of divine and poetic creation as an inherent feature of

its subject and form.

A full study of the parallel between poetic and divine creation in the whole of the

Commedia is not my intention here. In order to show the importance of these themes in

the Commedia and the further analysis they require, I analyse one illustrative example:

the portrayal of the divine punishment of thieves by metamorphosis into snakes at

Inferno XXIV-XXV. This episode, I demonstrate, concentrates the parallel between

human and divine creation which underlies the whole of the Commedia, and is a crucial

episode in which Dante critiques his poetic art.

From the opening of canto XXIV, themes concerning cosmogony are evident,

particularly problems of conceptualising human creativity in relation to a model of

divine creation. In order to dramatise the dependency of the pilgrim on his guide Virgil

153 For a summary of passages which discuss cosmogony in the Commedia, and the specific influence of Platonic, Augustinian, and Thomist cosmogony on Dante, see Joseph Anthony Mazzeo’s “The Analogy of Creation in Dante” Speculum 32, no. 4 (1957), pp.706-21.

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and thus the poet on his literary model, Dante deploys an elaborate pastoral simile

showing the limited creative agency of a peasant whose work is restricted by broader

processes of creation in Nature and the heavens:

In quella parte del giovanetto anno che ’l sole i crin sotto l’Aquario tempra e già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno, quando la brina in su la terra assempra l’imagine di sua sorella bianca, ma poco dura a la sua penna tempra, lo villanello a cui la roba manca, si leva, e guarda, e vede la campagna biancheggiar tutta; ond’ ei si batte l’anca, ritorna in casa, e qua e là si lagna, come ’l tapin che non sa che si faccia; poi riede, e la speranza ringavagna, veggendo ’l mondo aver cangiata faccia in poco d’ora, e prende suo vincastro e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia. Così mi fece sbigottir lo mastro quand’ io li vidi sì turbar la fronte, e così tosto al mal giunse lo ’mpiastro;

In that part of the youthful year when the sun tempers his locks beneath Aquarius, and the nights already wane towards half the day, when the hoarfrost copies on the ground the image of his white sister, but the temper of his pen lasts but short while — the peasant, whose fodder fails, rises and looks out and sees the fields all white; at which he smites his thigh, returns indoors and grumbles to and fro, like the poor wretch who knows not what to do; then comes out again and recovers hope when he sees how in but little time the world has changed its face, and taking his crook, drives forth his sheep to pasture. Thus my master caused me dismay when I saw his brow so troubled, and thus quickly came the plaster to hurt. (XXIV.1-18)154

The image with which Dante describes the dependency of the pilgrim on Virgil,

likening it to the shepherd’s dependency on Nature and the elements, broaches a

hierarchy of creation similar to those we have seen in the Timaeus and the Confessions,

both of which describe “lesser” acts of making restricted and guided by a “higher” order

of creation. In Dante’s simile, the order of creative processes descending from the

divinely created heavens through Nature to the peasant presents a similar hierarchy of

creation, describing broader creative acts which frame and affect lesser activities. The

peasant’s reliance on Nature explains the sense of urgency belying the calm, bucolic

scene because of his utter dependency on the operations of Nature, specifically the frost

and the snow, which are in turn affected by the sun, itself established “under Aquarius”,

the broader pattern of heavenly movements which create time and the seasons.

154 References to the Commedia (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), both the original Italian and English translation, are to the edition by Charles Singleton (1971-75). See the Note on primary texts at p.vii.

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In the Confessions, we have seen, Augustine refers to linguistic analogues, and

hence the unique status of language, in order to describe the process of creation ex

nihilo. An intriguing and significant feature of Dante’s simile is the comparable

reference to the image of writing as a means of describing other acts of creation. We

will see in this analysis that writing is a key analogue which Dante deploys throughout

Inferno XXIV-XXV in order to describe processes of creation and by which he also

explores the nature of poetry. In the simile, parallels between poetic and natural creation

are suggested in the reference to the hoarfrost as a penna that loses, like the winter sun,

its tempra or sharpness as it melts, and which also “copies”, assempra, the image of

snow. As critics note, this imagery draws on twelfth-century works such as Bernard’s

Cosmographia and Alan of Lille’s De planctu naturae that depict Nature as a writer

(Economou 1976, pp.642-43). Moreover, the simile recalls one of Dante’s earlier

works, La Vita Nuova, in which he performs a commentary on the genesis of some of

his poems. Both the simile and the earlier work open with the same four words, In

quella parte del (“In that part of”). Further, Dante’s comment in the opening paragraph

of the Vita Nuova that he intends to copy, assemprare, images from his memory onto

the page (I.i.1), recalls the image of the frost “copying” the snow.155 These echoes of

terminology reinforce a thematic link between the simile and the Vita Nuova. As an

account of the conditions by which his early poetry was written, the Vita Nuova marks a

pivotal early stage in Dante’s critical self-reflection. In representing natural processes of

creation by reference to the act of writing, likewise, the pastoral simile demonstrates

Dante’s self-conscious reflection on the nature of poetry and its similarity to other

creative processes.

155 The parallel between “copying” in the pastoral simile of Inferno XXIV and the opening of the Vita Nuova is observed by Durling and Martinez (1996), p.372.

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The linguistic analogues of Dante’s pastoral simile, and in particular its

intertextuality, demonstrate how in the Commedia, as in the Timaeus and the

Confessions, the portrayal of cosmogony requires and also facilitates authorial reflection

on the nature of language and literature. However, the simile’s revisiting of the Vita

Nuova and of Latin poetry also demonstrates that parallels between poetry and divine

creation in the Commedia have a more complex, multifaceted form than in the

cosmogonies analysed in this thesis. Augustine’s linguistic analogues, for instance, are

deployed principally as a means of explicating creation ex nihilo. By contrast, Dante’s

reference to writing and copying in the pastoral simile relates multiple processes,

including the nature of poetic creation, the tradition in Latin poetry relating Nature and

writing, and also divine creation. This suggests that by the time of Dante, cosmogony

has become a significant theme in literature and in literary theories. Dante builds on the

self-conscious experimentation of medieval poets in order to explore further parallels

between divine and poetic creation.

The simile crystallises the interplay of divine, natural, and poetic creation which

underlies the whole of the Commedia. However, the Commedia adds a new element to

the themes concerning cosmogony and human creation I have discussed in this thesis. In

the journey through hell, the pilgrim encounters sinners and their punishment, learning

about processes of false creation such as usury and alchemy, processes which go against

the “natural” hierarchy of creation.156 In particular, the capacity to commit fraud, to

falsely create by means of speech, is a crucial theme addressed throughout the Inferno,

and adds a further point of reflection on poetic creation.

156 Augustine’s intriguing account of when he stole some pears as a child (Confessions III.iv.9) considers “false” creation as an offence against the natural order of creation. In the Inferno, such false creation and its ontological implications are a constant issue.

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The capacity to offend the hierarchy of creation through both fraudulent creation

and the potentially fraudulent nature of poetry is dramatised when we encounter the

sinners of cantos XXIV-XXV, in which Dante describes the punishment of thieves

through metamorphosis into snakes. Readers of the Commedia have long wondered

about this episode, in that the contrapasso or correspondence between sin and

punishment is not immediately obvious: why should metamorphosis be a fitting

punishment for theft?157 Indeed this problem is compounded by another phenomenon:

Dante’s explicit indulgence in his poetic achievement in cantos XXIV-XXV, which

combines both a display of technique and self-praise.

Critics of Inferno XXIV-XXV will tend to focus either on the problem of its style

and attempt to explain its “problematical virtuosity”, to use Richard Terdiman’s words

from the title of his essay (1973), or on the problem of its theological content, seeking

to relate the sin of theft with punishment by metamorphosis into snakes.158 However,

there is as yet no analysis relating the theme of creation which permeates the cantos

with Dante’s portrayal of these themes. In particular, there has been little attempt to

relate the problem of metamorphosis with the problem of style. My interpretation of the

cantos is that Dante sets up theft as an errant mode of creation that is duly punished by

uncreation, by metamorphosis. In turn, both the divinely created punishment of

157 Scholars point out that Dante may draw on the association of thieves and snakes in Genesis 3, in which the devil attempts to “steal mankind from God” (Durling and Martinez 1996, p.374). In this section I argue that even if this is Dante’s source for cantos XXIV-XXV, he elaborates on this traditional link to explore the relationship between poetic and divine creation. 158 Richard Terdiman argues that Dante’s excessive style in portraying such unusual events marks an unconscious rupture between the poetics and the morality of Dante’s description of the bolgia of the thieves (Terdiman 1973, pp.27-28). Peter S. Hawkins, by contrast, argues that Dante’s “error” is “deliberate and heuristic”, a way he can “dramatize the demonic possibilities open to poetry” (Hawkins 1980, pp.1-2). Other critics see these cantos as an exploration of the link between poetry and theft (Durling and Martinez 1996, p.570, Ferrante 1998, p.316), while James T. Chiampi rejects the idea that Dante’s style is problematic and instead argues that the thieves represent the “anti-type of the redeemed poet” (Chiampi 1984, p.58).

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metamorphosis and human miscreation in theft are vehicles by which Dante dramatises

the capacity for poetry to transgress the rightful order of creation (an order which is

portrayed in the pastoral simile).

We are thus able to understand the moral theology of theft by assessing the nature

of the punishment. Dante’s elaborate, often excessive style in Inferno XXIV-XXV, I

suggest, is a poetic correlative for the transgressive creation of theft, and so the

unmaking of the thieves is matched by images of the destruction of writing as a

dramatisation of the fate of poetry that exceeds its proper mandate (we have already

seen this image of “writing destroyed” figured in the melting pen of the frost in the

pastoral simile). This analysis demonstrates that in engaging with and portraying

cosmogony, Dante explores the nature of poetry and its capacity to transgress a

hierarchy of creation, and also seeks to situate poetry within a model of cosmogony by

portraying the destruction of poetic excess. This suggests that the Commedia performs

explicitly, and in greater complexity, processes of authorial reflection which are implicit

or only tentative in earlier works of cosmogony such as the Timaeus and the

Confessions.

The three main metamorphoses between sinners and snakes described in Inferno

XXIV-XXV, viewed together, correspond to an inverted pattern of human life in three

stages: death, procreation, and birth. In turn, these stages represent three ways in which

Dante uses cosmogony — God’s “creation” of the afterlife and processes of Nature —

as a means of assessing the nature of poetry. The incineration and reconstitution of the

first thief, Vanni (XXIV.97-105), portrays death unfulfilled, suggesting the transience

of all writing and the illusion of poetic fame. The fusion with a serpent suffered by the

second thief, Agnel (XXV.49-78), depicts a travesty of sexual reproduction — the

formation of a third being out of the combination of two other beings — and also

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dramatises the “fusion” of influences and language informing poetry. The final

metamorphosis of the thief Buoso into a snake (XXV.79-138) marks a parody of birth

and also depicts poetry as a form of progeny.

Comparisons to writing used in each portrayal of metamorphosis establish

parallels between poetic creation and other modes of creation, such as God’s creation of

the cosmos and the afterlife, his agency though Nature, and the errant actions of the

thieves. In the first sinner encountered in cantos XXIV-XXV, Vanni Fucci, the image of

writing is used to portray the speed and gravity of God’s punishment:

And lo! at one who was near our bank darted a serpent that transfixed him there where the neck is joined to the shoulders, and never was o or i written so fast as he took fire and burned, and must sink down all turned to ashes; and when he was thus destroyed on the ground, the dust drew together of itself and at once resumed the former shape. (XXIV.97-105)

With a single stroke of the divine “pen” the sinner is “unwritten” and reduced to the

ashes from which, Genesis states, man is made (Genesis 3:19). The reference to o and i,

which continues the theme of textuality pervading the cantos, suggests speed because

these are the two letters that can be written with a single stroke of the pen (Singleton

1970, p.417).159 However, o and i reversed, Io, also conveys another equally important

meaning, “I” in the Italian, underlining how Vanni is “unwritten”, reduced to formless

matter and losing all that characterises the “I”.160 Implicit in this sequence is a

comparison between the omnipotence of the divine “pen” and the limitations of the

literal pen of the poet. Whereas Augustine compares the endurance of writing with the

159 A further meaning to the image of o and i is proposed by D.L. Derby Chapin, who suggests that Dante refers to the monogram of Io, the myth of the woman changed into a cow in Ovid’s Metamorphosis (Derby Chapin 1971, pp.51-52). 160 Joan M. Ferrante comments: “o and i are both the basic forms of circle and line on which all construction and writing rely, and also the letters that, in reverse, io, express the most personal form of individual existence, ‘I’” (Ferrante 1998, p.324).

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eternity of the divine Word in his Ennarration on Psalm 45, and speculates on writing

as a means of transcending mortality, Dante’s image of a divine “pen” emphasises its

difference from the transience of poetry and of human existence, transience which is

figured in the immolation of the sinner Vanni.

In particular, I believe that Dante performs in this sequence, and in cantos XXIV-

XXV generally, a critique of poetic fame. Early in canto XXIV, Virgil admonishes the

pilgrim to continue because of the importance of fame: “whoso consumes his life leaves

such vestige of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water” (XXIV.48-51). This

argument recalls the final lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses — the work so important as a

source for the metamorphoses described in Inferno XXIV-XXV — in which the poet

asserts that his poetic achievement means he will transcend his own mortality: “through

all the ages I shall live in fame” (XV.879).161 The fate of Vanni “consumed” by a divine

fire, however, dramatises the transience of human existence, critiquing the claims of

Virgil and Ovid about poetic fame. By comparison to the divine “pen”, it seems, poetic

creation is as transient as human existence.

By analysing the Commedia as a work which performs an act of world-making

and which also critiques poetry, the process of its own making, we are able to explore

its poetics and moral-theology in tandem, because these elements both go into the

makeup of a discourse which performs and speculates on different processes of creation.

This method allows us better insight into the second main metamorphosis of the cantos.

As the pilgrim, Virgil, and two other sinners look on, a serpent throws itself onto one of

161 References to the Metamorphoses (Latin and English translation) are to Ovid, Metamorphoses, edited and translated by Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library; No. 42-43 (London: Heinemann, 1916).

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the thieves, and by wrapping itself around him the two are fused together in a perverse

anti-type of an embrace:

Ivy was never so rooted to a tree as the horrid beast entwined its own limbs round the other’s; then, as if they had been of hot wax, they stuck together and mixed their colors, and neither the one nor the other now seemed what it was at first: even as in advance of the flame a dark color moves across the paper, which is not yet black and the white dies away. The other two were looking on, and each cried, “Oh me, Agnello, how you change! Lo, you are already neither two nor one!”

Now the two heads had become one, when we saw the two shapes mixed in one face, where both were lost. Two arms were made of the four lengths; the thighs with the legs, the belly and chest, became members that were never seen before. Each former feature was blotted out: the perverse image seemed both and neither, and such, with slow pace, it moved away. (XXV.58-78)

By reading the poetics of this sequence in relation to its moral-theology, we can see

how the “hybrid” creature Dante describes — the fusion of sinner and serpent —

dramatises and critiques the hybrid nature of Dante’s poetic creation, indeed of all

poetry. A major source of this “hybrid” metamorphosis, scholars note, is Ovid’s story of

the fusion of Salmacis with Hermaphroditus at Metamorphosis IV.365 (Singleton 1970,

p.438; Durling and Martinez 1996, p.392). However, Dante’s language is itself a fusion

of vernacular Italian with Ovid’s Latin, and is therefore itself a “hybrid” creation like

the metamorphosis it describes:

due figure miste in una faccia two shapes mixed in one face (Inferno XXV.71-72)

faciesque inducitur illis una one face and form for both (Met. IV.374-75)

Vedi che giá non se’ né due né uno Lo, you are already neither two nor one (Inferno XXV.69)

neutrumque et utrumque videntur They seemed neither, and yet both (Met. IV.379)

In this instance, intertextual references show the possibility that poetry itself is “neither

two nor one”, because they dramatise how poetic creation is partly a fusion of different

literary forms and influences. By dramatising this through a divine punishment, Dante

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expresses a certain “anxiety of influence” about the relationship between his vernacular

style and his Latin authorities, the risk that his poetry might be erased or subsumed by

the language and cultural weight of his acknowledged predecessors.162 This anxiety

over the hybrid nature of poetry is underlined in that the image of writing destroyed —

burning paper — is used to describe the hybridising metamorphosis. Once more, the

poet outlines a crucial difference between the “hybrid” nature of poetic creation and

unfettered divine creation, for the former is seen to be transient because formed out of

pre-existing language and works, whereas the latter creates from nothing.163

The contrasts between poetry and divine creation suggested in the first two

metamorphoses resemble an Augustinian or Thomist negation of authorship and art in

relation to a model of cosmogony, summarised by the solus creator est Deus topos

which I discussed at the end of the previous section.164 However, the final

metamorphosis of cantos XXIV-XXV is not so easily reconciled with this reading, for

the account of Buoso’s transmutation into a serpent simultaneous with a serpent’s

change into a human results in the zenith of Dante’s self-congratulation. The perverse

image of gestation and birth suggested by this final metamorphosis acts as a prism by

which the idea of poetry as progeny can be explored, and in turn highlights the creative

power of the poet.

162 E.R. Curtius outlines this problem of Dante’s relationship to classical authority under the heading “Dante and Latinity” (Curtius 1979, p.350-57); Richard Terdiman also identifies how central the problem is to Dante’s account of the bolgia of the thieves, finally emphasising “a crucial element in his esthetic (as opposed to his theological) system: the superiority of classical models” (Terdiman 1973, p.36). 163 Garth Tissol’s The Face of Nature: Wit, Narrative, and Cosmic Origins in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997) offers a close analysis of the intertextual “hybridity” of the Metamorphoses itself, highlighting the fusion of sources at the origins of Ovid’s own poetry. 164 Scholars such as Joseph Anthony Mazzeo (1957) argue that the Commedia enacts a Thomist model of cosmogony and aesthetics. This idea is evident in the discussion of poetry in the Inferno in which Virgil explains that poetry “follows” Nature and so is, in effect, “grandchild of God” (Inferno XI.97-105). Other critics such as Theodolinda Barolini (1992) argue that there is a crucial distinction in the Commedia between Dante’s portrayal of his poetry and the poetry itself. This distinction, I suggest, is evident in Inferno XXIV-XXV.

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The idea that the final metamorphosis is a sort of infernal “birth” is first suggested

in the location of the snake bite suffered by the sinner. A small black snake dashes

towards some sinners and pierces one at “that part by which we first receive our

nourishment” (XXV.85-86), in other words, the navel. This completes a pattern

whereby each sinner suffers a snake bite appropriate to the metamorphosis they suffer

(Durling and Martinez 1996, p.393). Vanni is bitten on the neck, severing brain from

body, before catching fire and being reduced to ashes; Agnel is bitten or “kissed” on the

cheek prior to his perverse “embrace”; Buoso is bitten on the navel and then is “born

again” as a serpent. After the snake has bitten Buoso, the two transfix each other,

creating an unnerving prelude to metamorphosis: “He eyed the reptile, the reptile him;

the one from his wound, the other from its mouth, smoked violently, and their smoke

met” (XXV.91-93). The smoke is no mere “gratuitous, brilliant complication”, as

suggested by Richard Terdiman (1973, p.33); rather it is the means by which serpent

and sinner “write” their forms onto each other, reinforcing the notion that gestation and

birth underlie the final metamorphosis of canto XXV: “While the smoke veils the one

and the other with a new color, and generates hair on the one part and strips it from the

other, the one rose upright and the other fell down, but neither turned aside the baleful

lamps beneath which each was changing his muzzle” (XXV.118-123).165 The notion

that this metamorphosis depicts an infernal version of birth, finally, is underlined when

we look forward one canticle to Purgatorio XXV, in which the pilgrim learns about the

natural and divine processes guiding foetal development: “so soon as in the foetus the

165 The suggestion by Durling and Martinez that the smoke is possibly related to “the ‘spirit’ that in medieval views of conception is the active principle in semen” (Durling and Martinez 1996, p.394), supports the notion that this change is a parody of birth.

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articulation of the brain is perfect, the First Mover turns to it with joy over such art of

nature, and breathes into it a new spirit replete with virtue” (XXV.68-72).

We have seen in this thesis that one of the more difficult concepts discussed in

both the Timaeus and the Confessions is the nature of formless matter and its

arrangement into the things of the cosmos. In depicting a metamorphosis of “birth” in

Inferno XXV, Dante also addresses the problem of conceptualising the imposition of

form on formless matter. By the action of the smoke, Dante writes, the “forms” (forme)

of the sinner and the saint “were prompt to exchange their substance (matera)”

(XXV.102-103). This makes the final metamorphosis fundamentally different to the

previous change, for where Agnel’s outward appearance is altered because he is fused

with a serpent, Buoso and the snake change in essence.166 This metamorphosis of inner

essence, as opposed to outward form, is the basis of Dante’s infamous silencing of those

classical poets who he draws on in cantos XXIV-XXV but who he also claims to outdo:

Let Lucan now be silent, where he tells of the wretched Sabellus and of Nasidius, and let him wait to hear what now comes forth. Concerning Cadmus and Arethusa let Ovid be silent, for if he, poetizing, converts the one into a serpent and the other into a fountain, I envy him not; for two natures front to front he never so transmuted that both forms were prompt to exchange their substance. (XXV.94-102)

As E.R. Curtius identifies, this statement fits into a literary topos of proclaimed poetic

novelty which calls for the silencing of antiquity, a topos which he labels the trope of

“outdoing” (Curtius 1979, p.162-65).167 The presence of this trope excites a variety of

critical responses: is Dante claiming to be a better technical poet, to have witnessed a

divine scene unavailable to pagan poets, or is he claiming to achieve something more

166 In Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, as Charles Singleton points out, “[t]he ‘form’ is the soul…which informs the materia or ‘substance’ of the body” (Singleton 1970, p.442). 167 Indeed there is an intertextual, double aspect to Dante’s use of the trope, in that Lucan himself adopts the same trope, and so Dante claims here to outdo the “great outdoer” (Curtius 1979, p.164).

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substantial with his poetry?168 My interpretation is that Dante claims to have achieved

through poetic virtuosity a metamorphosis which outdoes his predecessors, but that this

claim is also a deliberate performance of erroneous pride. This suggests that ideas about

the constitutive nature of poetry form a significant aspect of Dante’s account of

metamorphosis, but that Dante seeks to dissimulate the creative power of poetry even as

he stages it. To elaborate this point, I consider now Dante’s discussion of form and

matter elsewhere in his oeuvre.

The concept of form and matter is addressed throughout Dante’s oeuvre, and these

discussions demonstrate how a concept in cosmogony enabled Dante to speculate on

different types of creative process. In the Monarchia, Dante reflects on the analogy

between modes of creation in Nature and in human art by noting that in each situation

there are three elements: the idea, the instrument enacting that idea, and the material

(materia) on which the idea is enacted through the instrument (II.ii.2). Flaws in Nature

and in the artwork, he continues, are a result of flaws in the material, rather than in the

divine idea or the Natural instrument enacting that idea (II.ii.3). In the Convivio, Dante

expresses his difficulty in conceiving the idea of a primal matter (prima materia) and its

relationship to God (IV.1), and also notes that an understanding of the divine might be

sought in earthly substances including the prima materia (III.8).

Dante also uses the relationship between forme and materia in the Convivio to

explicate the literal and allegorical senses of poetry. Using the example that: “it is

impossible for the form (forma) of the gold to come if the matter (materia), that is, its

168 Anthony Oldcorn argues that Dante’s claim is not one of imaginative or technical prowess, but rather that he was privileged, as God’s scribe, to a vision necessarily unavailable to his pagan predecessors (Oldcorn 1998, pp.343-44). By contrast, Richard Terdiman argues that “it is in no sense clear whether the triumph of poetic inventiveness here is primarily a matter of personal and esthetic satisfaction, or rather a witness to the extraordinary creativity of God’s castigation of sin” (Terdiman 1973, p.36).

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subject, is not first laid down and prepared; or for the form of the ark to come, if the

material, that is, the wood, be not first laid down and prepared” (II.1), Dante maintains

that in poetry “the Literal must always go first, as that in whose sense the others are

included, and without which it would be impossible and irrational to understand the

others” because “in each thing, natural and artificial, it is impossible to proceed to the

form without having first laid down the matter upon which the form should be” (II.1).

A number of these ideas are reflected within the Commedia, especially in the

Paradiso where Dante describes processes of divine creation directly. In Paradiso VII,

for example, the pilgrim learns that God created the angels, the heavens, and the primal

matter on which the heavens act as instruments (VII.124-48), hence correcting the

erroneous question of Convivio IV.1 about whether primal matter was contained within

God. In Paradiso XIII, the pilgrim comes to understand the concept, similar to that

expressed in Monarchia II, that there are imperfections in nature, given that “The wax

of these and that which molds it are not always in the same condition, and therefore

under the ideal stamp it then shines now more, now less” (XIII.67-69).

These discussions of form and matter in relation to a variety of processes hold

important implications for the problem of Dante’s boast in Inferno XXV and the nature

of the metamorphosis he claims to portray. Bearing in mind Dante’s discussions of form

and matter, the boast appears to suggest that while Ovid alters the outer appearance of

Cadmus, Dante claims to perform, or describe, something doubly impossible, unmaking

and reforming both the form-creating soul and bodily substance at once. I suggest that

Dante indeed claims to create through poetic virtuosity what has not been previously

achieved, but that this claim is a deliberate performance of poetic excess. In hinting at

the world-making capacity of poetry, its ability to perform changes which go against a

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hierarchy of creation, Dante also seeks to dismantle this possibility by dramatising the

erasure of such writing.

Dante’s performance of poetry as a world-making and world-altering art is

underlined by his reorientation of word meanings in Inferno XXIV-XXV. In the

portrayal of the final metamorphosis, words that were used as images and metaphors

earlier in the account of the thieves are “converted” into their literal meanings. For

instance, earlier in canto XXIV Virgil uses the image of smoke in the air (fummo in

aere) to describe the fate of the poet who lacks the appropriate effort to leave a vestige

on the world and achieve fame. In the final metamorphosis, on the other hand, smoke is

used literally as the agent whereby one form is imposed on the matter of another. Poetic

failure, in turn, is replaced by a concept of poetic progeny, for the “writing” of one form

is at once the “unwriting” of the previous form — Buoso the human is unmade while at

the same time Buoso the snake is made, just as a previous meaning for smoke figuring

poetic failure is “unmade” while a new, more literal meaning for the inscription of form

is made in its place.

The implication here is that in Inferno XXV Dante experiments with levels of

poetic meaning, flaunting his capacity to convert a word from figurative to literal and

also to alter its meaning. This flaunting is consistent with the general tone of self-

congratulation evident throughout cantos XXIV-XXV, but which is especially evident

in his account of the final change. However, Dante’s concern to dramatise the error of

this self-congratulation, with its implications about the constitutive nature of poetry, is

suggested by his sudden “apology” for poetic “failure” at the conclusion of canto XXV:

“Thus I saw the seventh ballast change and transmute — and here let the novelty be my

excuse, if my pen goes aught astray (e qui mi scusi la novità se fior la penna abborra)

(XXV.142-44). As with the boast, there are a number of theories about how to translate

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and interpret Dante’s phrase la penna abborra. The majority view is that abborra here

means “goes astray” or “falters” — Dante apologises that the novelty of the scene

forces him to wander off the correct corso.169 Another suggestion is that the term means

“poorly” or “hurriedly”.170

A focus on parallels between poetic and divine creation which, we have seen,

underlie cantos XXIV-XXV, offers another explanation for Dante’s apology. I suggest

that Dante apologises that the nature of his subject matter, the bizarre metamorphoses

which are part of God’s creation of the afterlife, lead him to go off the correct “path” of

the poet and assume erroneous concepts of poetic world-making. This reading is

suggested in that the notion of abborra as “falters” recalls the image of the blunted

“pen” of the frost in the pastoral simile, as well as the scholastic analogy between the

failed imprint of natural forms and the slip of the pen (Durling and Martinez 1996,

p.396). Another instructive concept supporting this view that Dante apologises that

imperfections in his subject are a significant cause of his poetic error can be found in

both Monarchia II.ii.3 and Paradiso XIII, which discuss the imposition of the divine

idea, through Nature, on primal matter. In Paradiso XIII for example, Dante uses the

image of wax to represent the primal matter created in God’s first act (Paradiso

XIII.133-138), noting that imperfections in Nature result from irregularities in primal

matter which causes an uneven imposition of the divine idea through Nature:

169 Charles S. Singleton refers to the use of abborri in canto XXXI.24 as the “controlling factor” in his translation, stating that “This sense, and the excuse of which it is a part, must be seen within a broader context to be fully understood, since it represents a passing apology on the part of the poet for indulging so long in spectacle for spectacle’s sake” (Singleton 1970, p.445). Peter S. Hawkins points to the poet’s self-conscious statement of control in the next canto, “and I rein in my wit more than is my custom” (XXVI.21), to emphasise that Dante stages a deliberate error that he wishes to expel (Hawkins 1980, p.9-10). 170 E.G. Parodi, Singleton notes, posits a link with the term borra, suggesting instead that “Dante’s use of the word reflects the fact that in certain dialects abborrare is the equivalent of abbarrucciare, ‘to throw things around in confusion,’ ‘to do something poorly and hurriedly’” (Singleton 1970, p.446).

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If the wax were exactly worked, and the heavens were at the height of their power, the light of the whole seal would be apparent. But nature always gives it defectively, working like the artist who in the practice of his art has a hand that trembles. (Paradiso XIII.67-78)

No discussion of la penna abborra, so far as I am aware, refers to this passage. Yet

even if there is no deliberate link between Inferno XXV.144 and this passage, there are

some important parallels.171 The passage makes explicit the association between the

imperfect imprint of Nature and the artist’s trembling hand, an association which is

implied throughout cantos XXIV-XXV, especially in the description of the frost as a

penna, and in Dante’s reflection on the way in which his poetry describes another

imprint of forme on matera, the transmutation of Buoso. Ineffability is thus a feature of

cosmogony itself, of the failure of natural processes, as well as an aspect of the

language of cosmogony.

A misunderstanding of cosmogony and of the poet’s position within a hierarchy of

creation is thus revealed as the source of Dante’s “error” in claiming to outdo Ovid and

Lucan and to perform a transmutation in language of both forme and matera which can

only be achieved by a divine creator. Indeed the idea that natural law might be

overturned by excessive, virtuous poetry, or that Dante might be able to represent the

transgression of natural law in language, is also “unlearnt” in Paradiso XIII. The

pilgrim learns the error of seeking to know of, to represent, or indeed to enact

something which goes against philosophical, scientific, or spiritual principle, to overturn

the order of creation (Paradiso XIII.97-102). The claim to perform or represent the

transmutation of the forme and matera of Buoso in Inferno XXV, then, dramatises the

171 Paradiso XIII is also linked to Inferno XXV by verbal echo. Some critics (Oldcorn 1998, p.342) observe that there is a verbal echo between Vanni’s statement “Open your ears to my message, and listen” (Inferno XXIV.142) and Statius’ “Open your breast to the truth that comes” (Purgatorio XXV.67); but there is also a third of these orders prior to instruction, the spirit Aquinas’ comment “Now open your eyes to that which I answer you” (Paradiso XIII.49).

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poet’s erroneous presumption that he might achieve this challenge against metaphysical

principle, that the poet might rival and overturn divine creation.

The upshot of Dante’s dramatisation of error and its correction in Inferno XXIV-

XXV is to show that the concept of poetic creation rivalling divine creation is itself a

problem.172 In my analysis of the Timaeus and the Confessions, literary innovation and

the constitutive role of language are established primarily as a discursive effect of the

portrayal of cosmogony. Metalinguistic consciousness, in these earlier works on

cosmogony, does not extend to a direct parallel between literary and divine creativity.

On the other hand, the same phenomenon in Dante, where cosmogony enables

consideration of literary creativity, results in an exploration of the possibility that poetry

might rival divine creation. To be sure, Dante uses the portrayal of metamorphosis to

dramatise the destruction of poetry which commits this sort of error. Nonetheless, the

possibility of error is broached, pointing to a tension between Dante’s portrayal of his

poetry in the Commedia and the poetry of the Commedia itself.

Cosmogony underpins the Commedia not only as a specific subject or as the basis

of its composition, but also as a key theme by which other forms of creativity,

particularly poetry, are assessed. The Commedia therefore represents a crucial stage in

the historical phenomenon relating literary creativity with a theory of divine creation. In

building on the self-conscious deployment of cosmogony by medieval poets such as the

Latin cosmographers Bernard Silvestris and Alain of Lille, the Commedia gives the

172 My interpretation thus agrees with Richard Terdiman’s suggestion (1973) that Dante’s portrayal of the thieves has the effect of briefly destabilising the cosmological foundation of the Commedia, but I disagree with his argument that this effect is fully unconscious. In turn, I agree with Peter S. Hawkin’s argument (1980) that in Inferno XXIV-XXV Dante stages the correction of poetic error, but I disagree with his acceptance of this correction as the overall effect of these cantos. In dramatising both poetic error and its correction, I suggest that Dante’s account of the thieves invariably highlights the constitutive aspect of poetry and thus brings into focus a tension between Dante’s poetics and his theology.

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parallel between poetic and divine creation greater significance in Western literature.

Although Dante’s emphasis may well be “scholastic” rather than “humanist”, in that he

seeks to negate ideas about the constitutive aspect of poetry and reaffirm a model of

divine creation, the very nature of his poem makes it an exemplary instance of an

account of divine creation which invariably highlights the imaginative possibilities of

language and the creativity of the writer. The next section of this chapter begins by

demonstrating that the “humanist” aspect of the Commedia, and its role in establishing

the parallel between poetic and divine creation in Western literature and literary theory,

is borne out by criticism of Dante’s poem from the late fifteenth century onward.

iv. “Creating Gods”: Cosmogony in Renaissance to Romantic thought

My argument that literary practice which engages with cosmogony prompts new ideas

about human creativity, and that Dante’s Commedia represents a crucial instance of this

phenomenon, is underlined by what happens in literary criticism after Dante. While the

earliest commentaries on the Commedia followed traditional models of interpretation

which focused on its portrayal of Christian doctrine (see Botterill 2005, pp.590-611), it

is significant in itself that a work of vernacular literature demanded so much critical

attention, as this marks a shift away from Scripture as the predominant object of critical

attention. Dante himself was a major innovator in this literary critical tradition

explicating vernacular poetry. Moreover, in fifteenth-century criticism of the

Commedia, we can observe a transition from critical focus on the poem’s theological

elements to questions about its composition and its literary aspects (see Botterill 2005,

pp.590-611). By Cristoforo Landino’s 1481 Commentary on Dante, new questions

about the creative power of the poet were being asked (Abrams 1958, pp.272-73). As

Steven Botterill comments, the new critical approaches of the late fifteenth century,

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typified in Landino’s commentary, departed from the theological doctrines expounded

in the Commedia, and instead posed questions which reflect a new “humanist” attitude

to literature: “Under the pressure of a historical and intellectual movement from the

climate loosely called ‘scholasticism’ to that equally loosely called ‘humanism’, the

cultural affinity between commentators and Commedia had weakened, by Landino’s

time, almost to vanishing point” (Botterill 2005, p.610).

In Dante and Dante criticism we can trace the emergence of the Renaissance

model of the poet as a type of divine creator. Based on the arguments of this thesis, I

suggest that we need to rethink some long-held critical views that Renaissance

humanism signals the inauguration of the view that the poet resembles a divine creator.

Rather, in demonstrating here parallels between Renaissance literary theory and some of

the earlier discourses analysed in this thesis, I suggest that Renaissance humanism

marks the conscious and explicit exploration of ideas which were circulating, albeit less

overtly, in earlier literary theory, philosophy, and poetic practice.

For instance, Landino’s argument that “although the feigning of the poet is not

entirely out of nothing, it nevertheless departs from making and comes very near to

creating” (quoted in Abrams 1958, p.273) resembles earlier concepts that poetry is

“halfway” between making and creating. In medieval poetry, as discussed in this

chapter, poets experiment with and reflect on the nature of poetic creation through

parallels and analogies with inherited concepts of cosmogony. A further example of

Renaissance literary theory making explicit ideas which circulated in earlier works on

cosmogony is evident in the similarity between Landino’s suggestion that poetry is

halfway between making and divine creation and Augustine’s suggestion that

intellectual design and linguistic acts such as singing are ontologically “above” making

and resemble creation ex nihilo.

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Similar parallels between Renaissance literary theory and earlier discussions of

cosmogony become evident in English literary criticism of the sixteenth century. In the

Defence of Poesie (written 1580-81), Sir Philip Sidney observes that while most human

industry is limited by nature for its object and its materials, the poet has the unique

ability to improve on nature or indeed create forms never seen in nature, and thus is “not

enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts but freely ranging within the zodiac of

his own wit” (Sidney 1970, p.9). Noting this, Sidney dismisses the potential hubris in

this elevation of the poet’s status (although, notably, he still feels the need to defend

himself against the charge), and rather maintains that poetic creation exceeds nature and

is a type of divine act which is also divinely prescribed. The poet, because of his special

power to create, is the supreme example of man as the imago Dei:

Neither let it be deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the highest point of man’s wit with the efficacy of nature, but rather give right honor to the Heavenly Maker of that maker, who, having made man in His own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of that second nature... (Sidney 1970, p.10)

In The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham presents an argument similar

to those of Sidney and Landino that the activity of the poet is similar to God’s

creativity. The poet, Puttenham argues, “makes and contrives out of his owne braine,

both the verse and matter of his poeme” (Puttenham 1936, p.3), without any external

model or material. Because poets can create a second, fantastic nature, Puttenham

continues, they exceed all other human artificers, and what is more appear a kind of

lesser creator deity: “if they be able to devise and make all these things of them selves,

without any subject of veritie, that they be (by manner of speech) as creating gods”

(Puttenham 1936, p.4). Thus, while Sidney is somewhat cautious with regard to the

poet-creator analogy, especially its implication that the poet is in some ways “divine”,

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Puttenham expresses a positive statement that poets are in a sense divine because they

create by means of language.

It could be argued that Renaissance criticism engineered a significant change of

focus. Whereas earlier discussions of cosmogony use the image of the artisan or the

writer in order to elucidate the nature of divine creation, literary criticism from the

Renaissance onwards uses the inherited model of the divine creator to conceptualise the

nature of poetic creation. However, my discussion of twelfth-century writers such as

William of Conches and Alan of Lille demonstrates that some earlier thinkers also

broached ideas about the poet’s resemblance to a divine creator, even though these ideas

are only speculative in philosophy or literary criticism and only implicit in poetic

imagery. This indicates that in the Renaissance parallel between poet and divine creator,

the change of emphasis from God to poet also built on concepts which are tacit in

previous engagements with cosmogony. In turn, this suggests that we need to rethink

aspects of the intellectual tradition relating poet and divine creator, a tradition called the

“Great Analogy” by Milton C. Nahm (1956). The similarities between English

sixteenth-century theorisations of the poet and earlier discussions of literature underline

my argument that the Renaissance merely elaborates on ideas which were already tacit

in earlier periods.

Similar parallels between late antique or medieval responses to cosmogony and

literary theory from after the Renaissance are evident in the concept of the poem as an

objective heterocosm. Neoplatonic discussions of literature such as Macrobius’ study of

Virgil, we have seen, reflect on the affinity between the world described in the literary

work and the world created by a Demiurge. Similar concepts are evident in English

literary theory of the seventeenth century which, building on earlier Renaissance

theories, postulates that the poem is an objective heterocosm or “secondary world”. In

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this period, the theory of the literary heterocosm, which is based on parallels between

poetic and divine creation, is often postulated as a means of explaining the fantastic

aspect of literature. Addison’s description of “the fairy way of writing”, in which he

explains the creation of a second world of “fairies, witches, magicians, demons” by a

poet who ignores or exceeds nature, was a pivotal and influential example (quoted in

Abrams 1958, p.275). Similarly, Shaftesbury argues that if God is a Maker, then the

poet, Prometheus-like, is also a maker able to produce a distinct second nature (Ruthven

1979, p.1). The eighteenth-century English writer Richard Hurd also celebrates the

poet’s capacity to exceed nature, stating that “the poet has a world of his own, where

experience has less to do, than consistent imagination” (Hurd 1971, p.93). German

philosophy and criticism of the eighteenth century parallels English literary criticism at

that time. Baumgarten coined the term we use today, “heterocosm”, to describe the

poem as an “other world”, while Leibniz writes about the experience of literature as an

experience of “possible worlds” (Ruthven 1979, p.2).

The impact of the Timaeus and the Confessions on the history of Western literary

theory therefore suggests that we need to rethink its narrative of influence and the

accepted periodisation of particular authors.173 The anticipation of Renaissance ideas

about the “poet’s world” in much earlier discourses of the fifth and sixth centuries

demonstrates how the direct impact of the Timaeus on Neoplatonic thought prompted

innovative concepts, concepts which were only fleshed out with greater explicitness in a

much later period when divine creation was an assumed concept. In addition, the model

173 In arguing that the impact of cosmogony on Western thought demands a more detailed assessment of a particular writer’s specific engagement with cosmogony, I am thinking in particular of Richard Utz’s argument that Chaucer uses ideas about cosmogony in order to experiment with different authorial modes (2007). While Chaucer, Utz argues, writes in an intellectual context which negates authorial autonomy because of the assumed omnipotence of a divine creator, this periodisation fails to recognise alternative ideas about authorship which are evident in his poetry and which result from his engagement with inherited models of divine creation.

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of the literary heterocosm which emerges from a parallel between divine and poetic

creation also consolidates ideas about the constitutive nature of language and literature

which are evident in the Timaeus and the Confessions.

However, by the nineteenth century we can see a tendency to question the models

of cosmogony which had been accepted since the Middle Ages (Frye 1980, p.53), a

tendency which is evident in Romantic literary theory and practice (Cantor 1984, pp.ix-

xi). In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (plate 11), for example, William Blake writes

about “ancient Poets” who animated the world with Gods, but whose system was

abstracted and systematised by a critical “Priesthood”:

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc’d that the Gods had order’d such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

(Blake 1993, p.51)

Blake’s assertion that stories of divine creation are a projection of inner experience

highlights the constitutive nature of poetic expression, especially when it comes to

imaginative stories such as cosmogony. This tendency in Romantic thought gives

Coleridge’s famous statement that the poetic imagination is a “dim analogue of

creation”, and that the mind is made in the “Image of the Creator” (Coleridge 1895,

pp.450, 352) an anachronistic tone. Whereas Blake and later Romantic poets critique

accepted models of cosmogony, Coleridge’s argument resembles earlier parallels which

situate poetic creation within a divine order.

Although this period in many ways signals the erosion of accepted models of

divine creation, critiques of cosmogony performed in Romantic poetry and literary

criticism demonstrate that divine creation nonetheless remained a vital concept by

which poetic creation was conceptualised. Paul A. Cantor (1984) argues that one effect

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of the Romantic yearning for aesthetic and social revolution was a renewed interest in

cosmogony and in the analogy between poet and creator-divinity. Romantic poetry and

theory, he argues, attempted to redefine accepted cosmogonies which gave the poet a

limited and subordinate status (Cantor 1984, pp.ix-xiii). To differing degrees, Cantor

writes, many of the major Romantic poets became concerned with rewriting the story of

creation out of an interest, “not just in revolutionizing poetry, but in revolutionizing the

world” (Cantor 1984, p.xiii). Where the cosmogonies analysed in this thesis only imply

ideas about literary creativity in the process of portraying a model of divine creation,

this situation is essentially reversed by the Romantic period, in which “myths” of divine

creation are attacked in order to celebrate human creativity.

v. Contemporary Discourses of Divine Creation

While the philosophical and conceptual influence of the divine creation model of

cosmogony wanes in the nineteenth century onward, the persistence of ideas about

literature which are formed in light of a model of divine creation is evident in some

modern literary critical assumptions. This continued impact of divine creation has been

shown by M.H. Abrams (1958, pp.272-85), who surveys the development of ideas about

artistic and poetic “creation” in order to identify the origins of modern literary critical

perspectives. Objective theories about the art object, those aesthetic philosophies such

as New Criticism which regard the poem as a world of its own, Abrams shows, are in

part a product of the “generative analogue of the Deus Creator” via the Renaissance and

eighteenth-century notion that the poet creates a secondary world (Abrams 1958,

p.284). This analogue, Abrams notes, is also recognizable in the attitude that literature is

an expression of personality — the parallel between God’s relation to his creation and

the poet’s relation to the poem originates the notion that the poem is a sort of self-

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revelation. Abram’s argument demonstrates that the impact of cosmogony on literary

theory persists not only where it is an overt theme, as in Romantic literary criticism, but

also because it is intrinsic to Western conceptions of artistic “creation” and to

assumptions about the nature of literature and literary creation.

Nonetheless, in the contemporary secular-scientific outlook, the notion of artistic

or poetic “creation”, which previously marked a sometimes controversial link between

human and divine actions, is set adrift from its transcendent element.174 Without the

context of divine creation, the idea of artistic creation has undergone a dilution of its

significance, as M.H. Abrams comments: “The word ‘create’, applied to literary

invention, has become a colorless, almost a dead metaphor” (Abrams 1958, p.272).175

Yet this dilution of creativity as a category of aesthetics does not signal a similar

dilution of the significance or relevance of the Timaeus or the Confessions with regard

to the themes they address and the literary methods they adopt. Not only are many of

the questions addressed and methods used in both the Timaeus and the Confessions still

pertinent today, but the discourse of divine creation which pervades these early

cosmogonies is also used, if only metaphorically, in contemporary discussions of

cosmogony.

One theme discussed in both Plato’s and Augustine’s account of the creation

which is particularly active today is the formation of human beings and their role within

the created cosmos. Although the creation of human beings is only discussed briefly in

174 The controversy of describing poetry as a form of “creation” is observed by Alan Bloom (1987, p.180), and M.H. Abrams (1958, p.272). For a discussion of the term “create” in religion and art, see Østrem (2007), pp.15-16. 175 Some critics have recently argued for a renewal of the transcendent conception of art and literature. A recent collection of essays by Gaut and Livingstone (2003) focuses on ideas of artistic “creation” and “creativity” as a way of assessing art. George Steiner’s Real Presences (1989) and Grammars of Creation (2001) both assert that there is a necessarily transcendent element in language and especially art, and invoke myths of divine creation as a way of thinking about art.

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each cosmogony, both thinkers suggest that human existence is purposive, that it has a

necessary role in the created order. In the Timaeus, I demonstrated in chapter two, Plato

describes the formation of human beings from “leftovers” of the primal material from

which the cosmos is made (41), and argues that human experience of the ordered

harmony of the cosmos enables the development of reason within (47). The idea that the

individual is a microcosm of the universe, as I argued in chapter three, is a key feature

of Augustine’s Confessions. For Augustine, experience of the ordered universe enables

the soul, which is in the image of the divine (XIII.xxii.32), to better comprehend its

divine origin (V.i.1).

Today, the issue of the formation of human beings and the relation of humans to

the cosmos recurs in debates about DNA research, biotechnology, and cloning.176 The

phenomenon where new discoveries in biology prompt appeals to a discourse of divine

creation and indeed to a model of cosmogony based on the concept of divine creation is

especially evident in conservative discussions of biology. In a Vatican statement on

cloning, for example, the reality that “natural” reproduction might be replaced by the

laboratory results in an appeal to “man’s creaturely status”:

It cannot be forgotten that the denial of man’s creaturely status, far from exalting human freedom, in fact creates new forms of slavery, discrimination and profound suffering. Cloning risks being the tragic parody of God’s omnipotence. Man, to whom God has entrusted the created world, giving him freedom and intelligence, finds no limits to his action dictated solely by practical impossibility: he himself must learn how to set these limits by discerning good and evil. Once again man is asked to choose: it is his responsibility to decide whether to transform technology into a tool of liberation or to become its slave by introducing new forms of violence and suffering. (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1997)

176 The work of M.J.S. Hodge underlines the contemporary importance of models of divine creation through their discursive relationship with modern theories of science, especially biology. See his Before and after Darwin: Origins, Species, Cosmogonies, and Ontologies (Surrey: Ashgate, 2008) for a historical survey of theories about the origins of the earth, and his forthcoming Darwin Studies: A Theorist and His Theories in Their Contexts (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), for an analysis of Darwin’s theories in relation to his intellectual milieu.

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The continued impact of the Timaeus and especially the Confessions is evident here in

that the recourse to a discourse and model of divine creation in the Vatican statement

marks an attempt to conceptualise, critique, and set limits on human action, just as the

same discourse was sometimes used to describe the limits of art in the Middle Ages.

Cloning has replaced literary creation as a new area of human activity perceived to be

transgressive. Note that the statement does not deny that the power is available, rather it

frames the moral argument that man should not experiment with cloning in the form of

a theological-metaphysical assumption that man is a created being and hence should not

create in the same way God creates.

Indeed the tendency to invoke the concept of a divine creator in order to

conceptualise new research in biology is more pervasive than statements from Christian

orthodoxy. Perhaps the most famous instance of this tendency to describe biological

research according to a model of divine creation occurred when Bill Clinton

paraphrased Galileo’s statement that mathematics represents the “language in which

God created the universe” to describe the knowledge gained by the Human Genome

Project as “the language in which God created life” (Human Genome Project 2000).

Biologist Lee M. Silver suggests that some discussions of biology repeat myths, such as

the Tower of Babel and Prometheus, that warn against the consequences of gaining

forbidden knowledge or abilities: “there is a commonly held sense that genetic

engineering crosses the line into God’s domain” (Silver 1998, pp.233-34; author’s

emphasis). Indeed sociologists Nelkin and Lindee elaborate on this idea, arguing that

“[t]he similarity between the powers of DNA and those of the Christian soul, we

suggest, is more than linguistic or metaphorical. DNA has taken on the social and

cultural functions of the soul” (Nelkin and Lindee 2004, pp.41-42). These discussions

suggest that just as an inherited model of divine creation was used to conceptualise the

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notion of poetic creativity, so concepts and terms based on an “anachronistic” model of

divine creation will continue to influence, and perhaps cloud, debates about modern

biology.

On the subject of cosmogony itself, both the Timaeus and the Confessions raise

and attempt to answer questions about the universe which are still pertinent today, and

indeed some of the concepts, language, and methods used in these early cosmogonies

continue to be deployed in contemporary discussions. These modern discussions, based

on increasingly detailed insights into the organisation and origin of the universe, merely

intensify problems of knowledge and metaphor which also pervade the earliest accounts

of cosmogony. As physicist Paul Davies asks: “Is it possible to conceive of a creation

without God? Does modern astronomy inevitably expose the limits of the physical

universe and compel us to invoke the supernatural” (Davies 1984, p.25).

This year (2008), the completion of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland

offers potentially radical new insights into the formation of the universe, especially the

nature of matter and of gravity. So far, much of the speculation about its findings

centres on the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle which, if evidence for it is found,

could explain how particles acquire mass. In his book about the Higgs boson, physicist

Leon Lederman (on advice from his editor) changed the book’s working title from That

Goddamn Particle, in reference to how notoriously difficult it has so far been to detect

it (Lederman 2006, p.22), to the published title The God Particle, because the Higgs

boson “may well provide the mechanism that reveals a simple world of pristine

symmetry behind our increasingly complex standard model” (Lederman 2006, p.63).

Lederman is by no means alone in his reference to “God” as a term or concept

which explains new areas of scientific knowledge or a unifying simplicity. In a famous

statement concluding his Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking asserts that a unified

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theory explaining both what the universe is and why it is would represent “the ultimate

triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God” (Hawking 1988,

p.175). The phrase “the mind of God” became a key quote in discussions of science and

metaphysics; indeed Paul Davies used it as a title for one of his books (1992).

To a degree, these references to an underlying simplicity and unifying explanation

as “God” recalls Plato’s method in the Timaeus. As he embarks on his account of

cosmogony, Plato seems less concerned to explicate the nature of the Demiurge than to

use the model of an artisan deity to explore the possible reasons behind the apparently

rational construction of the universe. To be sure, Plato’s Demiurge may have a more

literal dimension than Lederman’s ideal of a unifying “God”, especially given Plato’s

discussion of the Demiurge’s direct role in crafting the world. Nonetheless, inasmuch as

the Demiurge plays a functional role enabling speculation on the cosmos, Plato’s

method recurs in metaphors of “God” used today in physics.

Whereas Plato’s Demiurge and the “God” of modern physics correspond to the

degree that they play a functional ideal enabling discussion of the universe, the

theorisation of cosmogony for Augustine, as I argued in chapter three, is more about

enabling better understanding of its divine origin. Augustine’s consistent deployment of

Romans 1:20 — the theory that understanding of the divine might be reached through

experience of the divinely created cosmos — is testament to this emphasis on

cosmogony not as an end in itself, but rather as a means of better conceptualising of the

divine “behind” the cosmos. While the Confessions represents a much more “religious”

focus than we would expect from modern science, similar sentiment can be found in

comments by perhaps the most famous modern scientist, Albert Einstein. Of course

Einstein’s career is testament to a constant investigation into the nature of the universe

itself. However, in some of his statements it seems that the “God” element is not a

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background metaphor for a unified theory, but rather a constant point of reflection: “I

want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that

phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The

rest are details” (Einstein 2005, p.194). Einstein is clear in his terms; he consistently

rejects religious models of a “personal” God related to human morality, and instead

states that he conceives of “God” in a pantheistic sense: “I believe in Spinoza’s God

who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns

himself with the fate and actions of human beings” (Einstein 2005, p.197). This

definition reveals a clear distinction between the “God” of theoretical physics and the

“God” of the Confessions. However, a similar principle underlies both thinkers’

methods. Augustine’s engagement with cosmogony in the Confessions, and Einstein’s

comments about the search for a unifying “God” principle, both treat better

understanding of the cosmos as a means of gaining better understanding of an ineffable

divine origin.

More generally, we can see how the ineffability of cosmogony continues to both

trouble and enable modern discussions of the cosmos, as it did when Plato and

Augustine were writing about it. Biology and physics represent two of the primary

fields of knowledge today which contribute to the dismantling of the monotheistic,

primarily Christian worldview of the universe centred on God’s creation of the universe

and humanity. The persistence of “God” terms and of references to divine creation in

these fields suggests not only how deeply ingrained are the models of cosmogony

described by Plato and Augustine in Western thought, but also that a myth and a

discourse of divine creation will continue to enter discussions of these and perhaps new

fields which represent the limits of knowledge and creativity.

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Conclusion.

This thesis has demonstrated how the problem of ineffability inherent in philosophical

and theological accounts of cosmogony requires the use of experimental literary

methods. A primary cause of this phenomenon is cosmogony’s status as a “threshold”

subject which occupies a boundary between different types of knowledge and different

discursive practices. In the Timaeus, for example, Plato draws on both myth and rational

argument to postulate the existence of a third genos as a space within which the order of

becoming and the order of being can relate. Augustine’s cosmogony in the Confessions,

similarly, seeks to explain the intersection between the divine and the created world. A

principal effect of the literary innovation deployed in order to describe the “threshold”

nature of cosmogony is that it prompts authorial reflection on the nature of language

and how it relates to knowledge. In particular, the constitutive function of metaphor, as

a literary device for portraying orders beyond the everyday, is brought into focus. In

portrayals of subjects such as the Forms, formless matter, and the divine in the Timaeus

and the Confessions, metaphors are revealed as constitutive rather than merely reflective

of knowledge.

The Timaeus bears witness to how cosmogony requires experimental literary

methods, for it sees Plato abandon his customary literary style — philosophical dialogue

— in favour of narrative. Indeed the innovation of the Timaeus extends to a new way of

engaging with a new style, in that Plato’s usual means of engaging with and critiquing

other genres, such as overt criticism or intertextual incorporation of other styles within

dialogue, are replaced by implicit critique and irony. Plato, I argue, uses the ineffability

of cosmogony to try out and assess narrative, and also uses narrative to discuss a new

type of knowledge “safely”, keeping any failures of his account clear of the philosophic

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method. This implicit critique of narrative in the cosmogony of the Timaeus suggests

that Plato seeks to broaden the scope of philosophy to the discussion of new subjects,

and also experiments with applying philosophic ideas and methods in the use of new

styles.

The analysis of literary experimentalism in the Timaeus sheds new light on

ongoing debates about Plato’s engagement with other literary genres and with other

thought systems, and it also suggests we need to rethink an aspect of Plato’s philosophic

system. My demonstration that a dialectical model can be effectively applied to Plato’s

use of different literary styles, combined with my identification of the generally

speculative tone of the Timaeus as a whole, suggests that Plato’s engagement with other

genres is less to do with a “contest” in which a fixed model of philosophy is invariably

the “winner”, and more an experimental testing of possible methods to see what could

work for a new philosophic system which was still in its infancy. That the account of

cosmogony in the Timaeus not only evades definition according to one of Plato’s

categories of knowledge and discourse, but also calls into question the very efficacy of

these rigid distinctions, underlines the flexibility of Plato’s philosophy.

Augustine, like Plato, mobilises the ineffability of cosmogony as a way of testing

new literary forms; indeed he takes the opportunity for experimentalism offered by the

“problems” of describing cosmogony even further. His exegesis of Genesis 1 in the

Confessions draws our attention to a different way in which the portrayal of cosmogony

requires literary innovation, for where an account of cosmogony requires Plato to

deploy a new style, Augustine’s discussion of cosmogony is part of a broader syncretic

form that blends diverse subjects, styles, and genres. Consistent reflection on the

world’s creation and its divine origin, especially parallels between the soul and the

cosmos, underpins this syncretism. The threshold nature of cosmogony, which for

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Augustine meant an account of how the created and divine orders relate, is crucial to his

construction of an innovative literary form that attempts to narrate and perform a quest

for divine wisdom.

One of the main implications of my argument about the Confessions and its

account of cosmogony is that we need to rethink long-held categorisations of the work

as an early instance of autobiography or self-writing, and in particular avoid applying

modern assumptions about self-writing to the Confessions. Augustine would accuse

self-narrative on its own of narrow introspection. The only way Augustine can write

about his self is to relate self-narration to the history of the universe.

Augustine discusses cosmogony in the Confessions, I suggest, precisely because it

marks the threshold between the created, physical realm and the spiritual realm of the

divine creator. Cosmogony enables an experimental literary structure which begins with

an account of self-knowledge but describes the ascent of knowledge beyond the self-

enclosed concerns of the individual. This focus on cosmogony as a means of

conceptualising the ascent of knowledge to the divine highlights one of the principal

contrasts between the discussions of cosmogony in the Timaeus and in the Confessions.

While cosmogony causes much of the literary experimentalism and discursive

ambiguity of the Timaeus, the disparate subjects and styles of the Confessions result

from an underlying quest for wisdom, a quest in which Augustine mobilises the

threshold nature of cosmogony. The subject of the world’s creation provides Augustine

with a means by which he can describe a divine origin. For Plato, by contrast, the

reverse applies: the idea of a divine creator provides a way of conceptualising the cause

of the world’s construction. Plato’s story of the Demiurge in the Timaeus enables a

speculative, “inventive” discourse which will explore the possible reasons behind the

apparently rational construction of the universe.

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My analysis of the Timaeus and the Confessions in this thesis demonstrates not

only that cosmogony requires and enables innovative literary methods, but also that new

ideas about language and how it can generate knowledge are revealed by the portrayal

of the world’s creation. Cosmogony, we have seen, requires the discussion of subjects

which are beyond the range of everyday language and thought. These subjects include

eternity, the divine creator, and non-sensible orders such as the Forms, the divine, and

formless matter. The problem of ineffability in describing these subjects brings into

focus the role language and metaphor play in constituting knowledge. Plato and

Augustine need metaphor and literary images to conceptualise in words the nature of

orders beyond the ordinary and experiential.

Plato’s attempt to describe the origins of the cosmos consistently reveals the

primacy of language as the only possible “beginning” of the discussion and

conceptualisation of such origins. When Plato confronts the vexed problem of “the

beginning”, (άρχή), the idea that knowledge precedes and is independent of language is

troubled by his criticism of the idea that the known elements of the world are its origins.

His subsequent portrayal of khõra as the formal but ineffable principle representing the

world’s beginning only underlines how the concept of beginning must start with a

linguistic experiment. Plato’s discussion of khõra as a third genos, as the “space” where

the Forms and the created world intersect, highlights another way in which language

constitutes knowledge: the primacy of metaphor in describing orders such as the Forms

and khõra which are beyond the everyday. Knowledge of these orders, it seems in light

of the Timaeus cosmogony, begins with and is based on metaphorical language.

The constitutive as opposed to merely reflective role of language and metaphor in

conceptualising orders beyond the everyday, a role which is highlighted in the Timaeus

cosmogony, holds some important implications for Plato’s philosophical system

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generally. It troubles some of the arguments in Plato’s works about the primacy of the

Ideas over their sensible copies and of knowledge over language. If the Timaeus reveals

that the Forms are in fact only accessed through metaphors, then it seems that the

sensible order, and the language representing the sensible order, is the basis, and not the

derivative copy, of the Forms.

The concept that language is constitutive of knowledge when it comes to

imaginative subjects such as the Ideas and the third genos is mostly an implication or

discursive effect of the account of cosmogony in the Timaeus. When Augustine

attempts to conceptualise creation ex nihilo in the Confessions through an exegesis of

Genesis 1, he acknowledges the necessarily constitutive role of language and metaphor.

This acknowledgement is evident in his discussion of Scriptural imagery in book XII.

Moreover, while Augustine defines creation ex nihilo by contrasting it with the limited

actions of the human craftsman (Confessions XI.v.7), his account of the process of

divine creation uses linguistic analogues, which has the effect of valorising the unique

creative and constitutive status of language.

A principal implication arising from this thesis is that ideas about the ontological

and epistemological superiority of an intelligible or divine order, ideas which are often

presented by both Plato and Augustine, become problematic when describing the actual

creation of the sensible order. The constitutive role of language highlighted in the

account of cosmogony in the Confessions suggests that we need to rethink Augustine’s

comments about the primacy of the spiritual order over the sensible, just as the

constitutive role of language evident in the Timaeus suggests we need to rethink Plato’s

assertions about the primacy of the intelligible Forms over the sensible order of created

things. This need to reappraise both writers in light of their experimental cosmogony

suggests that there is a tension between theory and literary practice, between the

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assumptions on which a cosmogony is based and the actual portrayal of that

cosmogony. For instance, Augustine might assert that the experiential world is “fallen”

and denigrate the carnality of language, but nonetheless his literary practice in

describing the intersection between the sensible and the spiritual shows how the idea of

a divine order begins with and is made possible by language and metaphor.

One concept expressed in both the Timaeus and the Confessions which was to

have a significant impact on later thought is that of a hierarchy of creation relating

lesser acts of creating or making to the primary act of divine world making. In both

works, this concept extends to a reflexive consideration of human authorship, of the

status of cosmogony as a discourse as well as a divine act. Timaeus describes the

creation of human beings by “lesser” gods who imitate the primary act of the Demiurge,

and likewise sets up his own narrative portrayal as a “likely story” imitating the world-

making it describes. The self-reflective tone of the Confessions means that Augustine

considers with even greater explicitness the ontological status of craftsmanship and

especially his own act of authorship in relation to creation ex nihilo. Both Plato and

Augustine, moreover, describe human beings as microcosms which are created in

imitation of the cosmos. This common tendency to reflect on other acts of creation

when describing the world’s creation, and to consider the creation and the role of human

beings within the cosmos, demonstrates how cosmogony is often not an enclosed

subject, but rather leads to reflection on other creative processes and to philosophical

questions about the ontological status of human beings.

If literary experimentalism and metalinguistic consciousness are evident in both

Plato’s and Augustine’s cosmogonies, then we might expect similar phenomena in

considering the reception of these cosmogonies. In surveying some key periods in

which the concepts analysed in this thesis are sustained in Western thought, I argue that

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literary critical periods should be considered with greater contextualisation than has

sometimes been the case. In particular, works which engage with cosmogony sometimes

posit ideas which are in conflict with some of the general theories about cosmogony and

creativity which literary criticism has sometimes taken as though typical of that period’s

thought.

One implication of the endurance of both the Timaeus and the Confessions and

some of the concepts analysed in this thesis throughout Western thought is that we need

to give greater prominence to some understudied periods of literary theory. Neoplatonic

literary criticism which engages with the Timaeus, for example, anticipates some

significant themes which appear later in literary theory, although this is rarely

acknowledged. For instance, the seventeenth-century theory of the literary heterocosm,

which itself influences modern theories of the objectivity of the art object, is anticipated

by Neoplatonic writers of late antiquity who postulate that there is an affinity between

the cosmos created by a Demiurge and the lesser cosmos created by the writer. The

proliferation of translations and commentaries on the Timaeus, moreover, underlines its

importance in the history of literary criticism precisely because it prompts significant

critical reflection on its model of cosmogony and the way that model is portrayed.

Both medieval theories of literature and medieval explications of philosophy

which engage with cosmogony show a heightened awareness of the literary element of

philosophy and the philosophical possibilities of literature. Medieval poetry, moreover,

uses concepts from inherited models of cosmogony to experiment with ideas about

authorship. In Dante’s Commedia, reflection on poetry during the portrayal of divine

creation is a constant and vital theme. This tendency in some medieval discourses to

rethink human creativity and the creative aspect of language in light of inherited

concepts of cosmogony suggests that we need to rethink long-held assumptions about

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medieval thought. Although some of the most influential and well-known medieval

discussions of cosmogony suggested the negation of human creativity in relation to

divine creation, new research into medieval literature shows that concepts such as solus

creator est Deus were by no means universally accepted and applied in all medieval

discourse.

In turn, these ideas about literature and authorship evident in some medieval

engagements with cosmogony suggest we need to rethink the assumption that

Renaissance humanism marks the emergence of authorial self-consciousness. A vital

concept in Renaissance literary theory is the explicit comparison of the poet to a divine

creator. However, Renaissance literary models such as the poet-creator and the literary

heterocosm are not so much wholly new ideas than explicit elaborations on ideas about

authorial creativity which circulate in earlier discourses that engaged with cosmogony.

The waning of the divine creation model of cosmogony in the modern era, which

is reflected in the critique of established cosmogonies by Romantic poetry and literary

criticism, does not signal the conclusion of its influence. Some contemporary

assumptions about artistic creation and creativity are inherited from the historic

association of human and divine creation, while some modern literary critical concepts

such as expressiveness and the objectivity of the literary text represent the afterlife of

the divine creation model in literary theory. Moreover, many discussions of science

today show how a divine creation model of cosmogony underlies many of the

assumptions, arguments, and metaphors which are used to elucidate or critique new

techniques and new discoveries. In discussions of modern biology, for instance, a model

of divine creation is sometimes used to conceptualise the ontological and spiritual

“essence” of human biology and also to prescribe limits on new research and new

possible fields of experimentation. Biotechnology has replaced poetry as a human

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capability which is perceived to “transgress” the rightful field of human action, and thus

we see the resurgence of a model of divine creation as a way of conceptualising new

areas of knowledge and of restating the limits of human creativity.

This discursive migration from literature to science is also evident in

contemporary discussions of cosmogony. Even though it is scientists rather than

philosophers who now investigate the creation and organisation of the universe, the

nature of the subject matter requires many writers to use metaphors based on a divine

creation model. The upshot of this is to suggest that a discourse of divine creation will

continue to influence discussions of new fields of human action and the limits of human

knowledge. The impact of the Timaeus and the Confessions on Western thought,

therefore, persists not only in the ideas they broach and the questions they ask, but also

in the literary methods by which they attempt to express these ideas and answer these

questions.

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