Plato’s Demiurge and the Failure of Beginnings

Introduction

This essay presents a reading of how beginnings seem to fail in the early propositions regarding the nature of the cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus. A reading that poses skepticism about the notion of a reliable genesis of Timaeus’ account of history qua sequential order will be done. This reading will be informed by the notions of cardinality and ordinality that appear in the very first line of the text and supported by the introductory sections where the cosmological laws of Being and Becoming are first explicated and the demiurge is first introduced.
Plato’s Timaeus is a text in the same way that a secret treasure map is a text: in a loose metaphorical sense where the meaning to be extracted from it is the promise of a greater reward available to whoever is actually able to figure out where it’s pointing. How trustworthy that promise actually is must be left to the reader’s discretion. Even still, the subsequent process of actually decrypting the document often leaves more questions than answers.

One such question that has personally piqued my interest is Timaeus’¹ whole situation with beginnings in his account of cosmic creation. For an account that attempts to serve as the most all-encompassing story of genesis, there are notable oddities in the ‘likely’ story’s start. Most strikingly, the demiurge, he who crafts the cosmic animal in which all animals reside, seemingly just shows up without preamble or context. “Now, then, to the extent that the demiurge…”² and that’s what’s given as an introduction. Noted in a footnote by Peter Kalkavage, “He is introduced without fanfare, almost in passing.”³
If reading this account in any theatrical capacity, I can’t help but feel narratively unsatisfied with the grand genesis that Timaeus seems to present to us. There’s perhaps reasonable coverage of the creation of the cosmos we’re familiar with;⁴ Okay, but where did the demiurge come from? Who even invited that guy? How long has he been here? Of course, he is not necessarily the subject of the genesis, but it seems generally true that he is a critical presence, one of only a few characters with a role to play in the drama of the account. Timaeus does give a brief gloss of the demiurge’s moral character as justification for why he crafts the cosmos in the first place⁵, but that’s a diminutive portion in comparison to the space spent on accounting for the internal construction of the cosmos. This isn’t to say that an account of genesis in particular is needed for the demiurge, especially given his plausible eternality⁶ that precludes them from such things as beginnings, but to have something to contextualize his presence seems nevertheless a reasonable ask.

There are explanations for this lack of attention to the demiurge’s character. Kalkavage posits that by portraying the demiurge so mysteriously, Timaeus meaningfully piques our suspicions, such that the demiurge is more of a “practical postulate that fills the gap of our theological ignorance … who ought to be believed if we are to affirm the best of possible worlds[,]”⁷ rather than an extra-cosmic presence that’s actually available to our observation. But to explain the reasoning internal to the metaphysics doesn’t alleviate the dissatisfaction that in our likely account there is a crucial player of whom we’re allowed knowledge but no context. Timaeus begins his speech by indicating that he is “intending to make logoi about the all [meaning the whole, everything] in some way, in what way it has come to be or even <in what way> it is [without birth].”⁸ We can therefore assume that this aims to be a speech of truly ambitious nature, that aims to account for everything in existence*.* How, then, is it possible that the demiurge’s story is told in media res in a story about creation of all? Or, a more general phrasing of the question would be: why is it that our story of grand beginning seems to have antecedents that render our beginning as not so grand? My suggestion is that in the demiurge’s conspicuously modest entrance corresponds to how in the practice of accounting for a history or chronology, a beginning that is posed in such an account⁹ always seems to be insufficient in some way or another, such that there is something unaccounted for or a critical detail preceding the starting point that is occluded.

Diverging from some traditional readings of the text treating the Timaeus as a treatise on Plato’s formal metaphysics, my reading will be more in line with scholarship that reads the text as concerned not strictly with cosmic speculation, but the affairs of day-to-day life. Per F. M. Cornford, “Plato intends to base his conception of human life, both for the individual and for society, on the inexpugnable foundation of the order of the universe. The parallel of macrocosm and microcosm runs through the whole discourse.”¹⁰ The dialogue then is not to be taken as a strict account earnestly attempting to reflect the cosmic construction of the world, but is rather an account that analogizes the construction of the world and the construction of political and organized life. Similarly, Kalkavage’s take on Plato’s preoccupations portrays him not as a thinker of grand architectonics in line with Timaeus’ cosmogony, but rather as a thinker of higher metaphysics in conversation with ordinary affairs.

“The dialogues were written, I believe, with this twofold intention: to preserve the growth of philosophy from the soil of everyday life and discourse, and to prevent the aspiring philosopher from restricting philosophy to the systematic study of general topics, thus forgetting himself and the human beings around him.”¹¹

The methodology performed here for the study of the Timaeus will generally follow the same sentiment, focusing more on the implications of the dialogue on such everyday affairs, rather than the logical structure of the stated system.

Ordinality and Cardinality as Operative in Chronology

The very first line of the Timaeus, spoken by Socrates, is “One, two, three: and indeed where <is> the fourth for us, dear Timaeus[?]”¹² What’s notable is Socrates’ switching between the use of cardinal numerals for the first three attendees and an ordinal numeral for the absent fourth.
Cardinality refers to ‘counting numbers’ so to speak. They represent numbers that imply no meaningful distinction between each other, purely the grouping of equal units together. In his first words, Socrates renders the others in the room as an impersonal quantity. Per Kalkavage, “for the purposes of a count, the hosts are just so many monads.”¹³ In contrast, ordinality is an order of numerals that carry a meaning in their distinction from each other. First place gets first prize because first is best, whereas second place gets something worse because second is worse. A quality is implied in the numerals in such a way that gives the order meaning. In this sense, ordinality implies a relational (or ‘social’) quality to it, where a single ordinal element picked out of a set implies in the background other ordinal elements to which it’s related. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to have an ordinal set with only one element inside it–it doesn’t happen ordinarily, but there could be such a thing as a competition where the competitor in first place is in that position due to being the only competitor present. But in order to make that monad make sense in an ordinal capacity, one needs some sort of comparative observation. I can recognize that first place is first place because it is higher (in number, esteem, etc.) than second place, even if there is no second place in the particular instantiation of a ranking.

These concepts are then useful for making sense of how an chronological sequence of events is articulated. When attempting to account for a chronology, it seems immediately true that the account articulates itself as an ordinality of sequentially placed events. Each event becomes relationally significant to the surrounding events when attempting to place them in a sequence, such that one can position events in specific places to get starting points, middles, and finales to the accounts that we give. However, this isn’t to say that something can be fully ordinal or cardinal. Complicating the distinction, ordinality and cardinality seem to blend into each other in strange ways, such that they appear co-constitutive.

Cardinality seems to require an ordinal structure in order to be put to use in any actual practice of counting. When counting like elements in a set, one cannot count above one without having to call back to the seemingly ordinal structure of numerals, ordinal in the sense that they have a ranking present. Something like the ordered set of numerals 3 > 2 > 1, must be true in order to count a sum of like elements. As such, getting the cardinality of a set of elements requires an understanding of how some numbers are ordered after others on the basis of unitary magnitude.

Conversely, in equal measure does ordinality seem to require some sense of cardinality in order to function. When assembling an ordinal structure, say a historical account or story, one has to pose them as pieces that are similar enough to be assembled together, as if of a like category. In order to chain together a sequence of events, they must all be ‘events’ in such a way that they become cardinal, all equivalent in type to each other such that they can be placed in sequence. They become modular parts that can be made exchangeable with each other, any chunk of a historical document is sort of ‘equal’ to any other chunk, such that they can be placed into an order that tells a specific story. It’s this phenomenon that becomes the focal point of how a beginning can be understood in the construction of an account. The notion of a beginning has notable ordinal significance in a sequence, as it represents the start, the earliest event in an assembled chronology. But at the same time that is something that must be decided by the author of the account. The fundamental question any author must ask before putting pen to paper is “where does our story start?” In order to answer that question, one must assemble a cardinal structure that is then made ordinal through its careful assembly.

It should be noted that cardinality and ordinality as operative here moreso adduce a model of how time is made legible as opposed to more continuous notions of time itself separated from our observation, which assumedly might be thought of as continuous in such a way that they aren’t demarcated into discrete units that are then assembled. Movement is a useful example here to consider: if I were to wave my hand back and forth, there is no one point in time which would be the deciding factor of whether my hand would be moving. Rather, it’s the non-discrete succession of my hand being in one place and progressing to another, melded together into a continuous changing of space, that my hand can be considered moving. However, once one attempts to describe or assemble an account of how such movement transpires, a discrete ordinal/cardinal structure is necessarily imposed in order to describe it. I have to say that my hand starts in one place (first section), moves to the right (second section), and then returns to where it started (third section).¹⁴ Movement is continuous, but the way we make it legible in an account is through the application of ordinality.

As a result, this ordinality of successive events used to create a temporal account of something is an imposition on time, rather than time itself. In equal measure, a beginning is not something to be found but rather something to be posited, where we instantiate a beginning where necessary in the articulation of a chronological order by way of utterance. To find a beginning is to speak it.

Composition on the Basis of Δόξα

To further justify this point’s reflection in the text, I look at another moment in the dialogue. In the proper introduction of Timaeus’ speech, he introduces two concepts that prefigure and influence the following work done for his system. His assertion to start with is that of the abstract distinction between Being and Becoming. Being corresponds to that which always is, “not having a genesis,” which ought to be grasped noetically alongside λόγος. Becoming, contrastingly, is that which has a genesis, a beginning, but never truly is, does not have the same determinacy. It is fluid, subject to change, and grasped by δόξα, rather than λόγος.¹⁵ This seemingly establishes a typical Platonic distinction between Being and Becoming: Becoming pertains to the world of passing appearances, opinions and mercurial observance, whereas Being applies to the unchanging forms, graspable by reasoned λόγος and the higher intellectual capacity of νοῦς, of which the appearances are imperfect reproductions.
However, there is a peculiarity in how Timaeus presents this distinction. In his establishment, he prefaces by saying “Well then, it is according to my opinion (doxa) a must to distinguish the following things first: What <is> being (to on) always … and what <is> the coming to be (to gignomenon)[?]”¹⁶ When Timaeus instantiates the dichotomy, its instantiation is done as δόξα, in a way that this rule–a rule by which it is decided what is found by dubious opinion versus what is found by reliable intellect–is made by dubious opinion. Stranger still, this δόξα is what the demiurge adheres as if it actually were a reliably immutable law of the cosmos.

What’s critical to the present inquiry is that this distinction, between the eternal Being without any genesis to speak of and the Becoming that has a specific starting point, is stated to be δόξα. The notion of a beginning as adduced in the Timaeus is not something that comes from some sort of λόγος of cosmic law, but rather beginnings seem to appear in a distinction that only exists due to its assertion on the basis of opinion. It is an opinion, an act of accounting for something on the basis of appearance, that brings the distinction between that which has a beginning and that which lacks one.

It then makes sense that the demiurge must be posited by way of philosophical obligation, why even if it’s without theatrical context, a craftsman must be present in the formulation in order for the next steps to make sense. If the distinguishing between Being and Becoming must be done by way of δόξα, then you need a subject to articulate (opine, specifically) that distinction. It’s only once this distinction is established that new things can be born, such that things can come, or more appropriately for the demiurge, become, into the world. With this parallel between Timaeus opining upon the distinction between things with and without genesis and the demiurge actively composing the universe based on that distinction, the formulation starts to become clear. The idea of a beginning isn’t something to be found in the world, which is then accounted for by observation, but rather something asserted. The moment of its articulation and instantiation are one in the same. To speak it is to speak it into existence, very demiurgic of anyone who thinks they know where something starts.

Once again, it is affirmed that a beginning must be posited (possibly even demiurgically constructed) rather than discovered. This is the prerequisite that allows something like a beginning to fail. Its utterance being the source of its presence leaves open the possibility that, in being an utterance, it can be insufficient in what it seeks to establish. I want to know when a country was started, when something amazing happened, when I started wanting to get my ears pierced. There are answers available to me, but they only get the job done to an extent. It’s not like a class on American history begins with the declaration of independence, for there’s no document in history responsible for the birth of the United States ex nihilo–the content leading up to any of the specific milestones of the country’s history are just as important. And the best I can do to identify when I wanted to pierce my ears is a rough period of time loosely associated with a couple of relevant memories, without a terribly satisfying genesis that I can truly adduce. The beginning gets us somewhere, far enough along that it provides use, that it can emphasize, perhaps even illuminate specific events or moments. But it doesn’t hold, not for long, before it begins to crack, before one starts asking questions that extend beyond the history that we’re given.

Becoming with Being as its Shadow

When emphasizing the distinction between Being and Becoming, Timaeus specifies how Becoming is something that is without presence, always “perishing, and in reality (ontos) never being (on).”¹⁷ In this specific line, the word όντως is used to emphasize how Becoming lacks the lasting and determinate character normally attributed to its inverse. Given the dual implication of όντως as present in the text here, we are given one meaning that is generally obvious, and one that might be more difficult. When taken as an adverb indicating emphasis, it can simply indicate that becoming never truly or actually is. Kalkavage ostensibly runs with this interpretation in his translation as indicating that being “never genuinely [presumably όντως] is.”¹⁸ The more complex reading would take όντως not exclusively in its emphatic capacity but additionally in its direct and literal meaning as ‘being.’ As a result, we get something more akin to “in being never being” or as an adverb “beingly never being.”¹⁹ Through the subtle reading of this line, rather than widening and clarifying the gap between the being/becoming dichotomy, Timaeus instead seems to blur the distinction. Oxymoronically, Timaeus seems to ascribe a quality to Becoming of Being, or at least some kind of being that is determinate and unchanging. As such, Becoming is given an ostensible being in a characteristic that eternally holds for it, even if that being is a negation of Being itself. Therefore, Being is implied in the notion of Becoming since the content of Becoming’s being is to never be. My suggestion would be the same move made in regards to Timaeus’ δόξα*,* which is to read this dichotomy in terms of how Being is stated to be without a starting point, it is “always, having no beginning or genesis,” while Becoming “has come to be, having begun from some beginning.”²⁰

Viktor Ilievski's account on Plato’s metaphysics of eternity and time makes the parallel between the two dichotomies clear, in which while Being is an eternal concept beyond any notion of duration or passing time, Becoming is a ‘sempiternal’ concept, perhaps endless, yet still admitting of a beginning that it moves away from through time. “The life of Being is eternity (αίων), and it does not know of before and after, of aging and change, while the life of
Becoming is sempiternity, which knows of no end, but passes through various phases[.]”²¹

With this parallel in mind, between the eternal and the sempiternal, one simply needs to carry the formulation of Becoming implying Being to this subordinate dichotomy. For Being to be implied in Becoming is for the eternal to be implied in the sempiternal. That which has a beginning seems to have that which is without beginning lurking in its precession. As Becoming grammatically has Being as its shadow, that which is given a beginning always has that which is without such beginnings nestled in the hollow of its chest. This, I think, is representative of the fundamental problem with beginnings and how they fail. Outside the boundaries of the beginning that an account instantiates is the eternal behind it that has no beginning. There is no start to the eternal that we can use as the first sentence of our story.

With the understanding of the imminent failure of a proposed beginning, the dissatisfaction that one feels towards the passing instantiation of the demiurge in the story begins to carry philosophical import. The demiurge cannot be elaborated in the story, plausibly due to him being posed by the obligation of requiring a subject to articulate the cosmic composition, a necessary presence posited by axiom rather than a fully accountable character in the drama of the story. But critically, he also can’t be elaborated because he is representative of the eternal antecedent, such that all beginnings must come after him. His eternality is that which always lies in the precession of a beginning to which no beginning can be instantiated prior. Furthermore, not only must there be a demiurge, a composer who acts as the agent of creation, but there must also be a model, a source of inspiration and reference for the design. The cosmos that the demiurge creates must be made in accordance with a παράδείγμα*,* roughly meaning model, example, or pattern*.* “[T]he visible world, of which an account is to be given, is a changing image or likeness (eikon), of an eternal model. It is a realm not of being, but of becoming.”²² As such, the world must be made in accordance with the παράδείγμα in order to ensure that it is built well and good. It then further contextualizes how Becoming holds the echo of Being, for the eternality of Being must be the blueprint for the world of Becoming to be modelled after. That which has a beginning must always have an antecedent not simply in terms of a creator, but also in terms of the information that serves to prefigure its structure. “Indeed, it’s greatest to have begun everything with regard to a beginning according to nature.”²³ This is why the creation of the cosmos is chosen as where the story starts, not out of a failure to account for the preceding figure, but rather because there is no other choice. Neither the demiurge nor the παράδείγμα have beginnings of which to speak, and thus they cannot be made the center of the creation story. And yet the actual centerpiece of the story, the cosmos, has not one but two preceding elements that are required for it to enter the stage.

I take this to be in conversation with the general problem of antecedents and causality. Per Kalkavage, “The Timaeus is Plato’s most extensive treatment of causality.”²⁴ This notion of causality is integral to the question of generation, as when specifying the nature of all generated things, Timaeus clearly states that “in turn, having come to be, we claim some cause <it> to be necessary <for it> to come to be.”²⁵ The problem of beginnings is thus relevant to the discussion of causality. If everything has an antecedent, then the causal infinite regress makes a grand beginning impossible, bringing to mind why the invocation of the unmoved mover has been a cosmological necessity in many arguments throughout the history of philosophy. Here, Plato gives us a possible suggestion towards dealing with this problem of infinite regression. In these cases of trying to end such regresses, the answer is often to adduce a preceding cause that itself does not operate on laws of causality or genesis. By Cornford’s account, “the ‘cause’ of this becoming must be a perpetually sustaining cause.”²⁶ As a result, the eternal demiurge and παράδείγμα are the persistent references that perpetually sustain the cosmos, acting as the eternal Being in the background that sustains the Becoming of the cosmos. Per Timaeus, it must be that Becoming comes “by some cause from necessity; for it’s impossible for anything to have a genesis apart from a cause.”²⁷ The things that become must necessarily come from some antecedent. I take this to be not strictly an argumentative answer to the problem of infinite regression, as “Plato, in fact, does not pretend to have solved the mystery of the universe[.]”²⁸ Rather, keeping in context the analogy between cosmic construction and lived life, I take this to be a recognition of how the constant presence of an antecedent makes beginnings fail, and yet how we need to pose beginnings constantly in everyday life. Every story we write, every history we document, every account posed, must start somewhere, no matter how insufficient and unsatisfactory the resulting beginning may be; we have no choice but to place the starting point nonetheless. A beginning is both impossible and necessary at the same time, such that we have no right to pose one and yet have no choice but to do so.

In addition to the metaphysical eternity of the demiurge implicating the impossibility of a reliable beginning, I also think that the dramaturgical disappointment of not allowing a more vivid picture of the demiurge is a contributive aspect to the picture of the beginning destined for failure. It’s not like we don’t get any information about the demiurge, we even get to hear him speak at length to his progeny that he tasks with the generation of mortals.²⁹ “Addressing his star-god sons (the gods of Homer and Hesiod are summoned, it seems, only to be disregarded), he entrusts them with the completion of his work.”³⁰ So it’s not simply by metaphysical commitment that he’s not expanded upon, given that Timaeus indicates a clear willingness to furnish his character with personality when necessary. Rather, it’s a theatrical commitment to the fact that he can never be the full subject of the story. The demiurge is the critical detail we always miss when posing a beginning to something, the moment we forgot or left in the background. We want to account for him, such that his placement is fully accounted for, and yet we are left with less than we hoped. This is the fate of all beginnings, to never satisfy the desire for full context, and unfortunately the greatest beginning of all, the genesis of the cosmos, is inexorably included in that category.

Bibliography

Cornford, Francis Macdonald. Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub. Co, 1997.

Ilievski, Viktor. “Eternity and Time in Plato’s Timaeus.” Antiquite Vivante 65 (2015): 5-22.

Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Peter Kalkavage. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated, 2016.

Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Gwenda-lin Grewal. 2024.