Coin with image of Zeus

From the environmentalist point of view one of the most disturbing things about Greek philosophy is its tame acceptance of the view that we humans differ enormously from all so-called ‘non-rational’ animals. Other barriers exit between us and the gods, and between animals, plants and their inanimate environment. Yet something is saved by philosophic systems that see the world overall as animated whether by world-soul or cosmos pneuma, and hence see the universe as an organic whole. Though Apuleius can at times look rather like an ordinary Platonist, allowing for a world-soul but perhaps not allowing it to make so much difference, his 42-line summary of the Timaeus (Expos. 32) describes the world itself as animal … rationale, sapiens, unum, leaving little room for unintelligent life, while the De Platone affirms connections between the physical elements and living things including stars and plants as well as animals, and fills the metaphysical space between humans and gods with daemones (203-206; cf. de Deo Socratis). Furthermore, the world soul is itself the fons animarum omnium, and a subsidiary demiurgic force (199), thus perhaps given quite a lot more work than the Timaean world-soul.

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