The Language of Cosmogony
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
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
iii 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.
iv 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
v 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.
vi 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
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).
vii 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).
viii 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
1 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.
2 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).
3 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).
4 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”
5 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).
6 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
7 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).
8 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
9 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.
10 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
11 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
12 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.
13 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).
14 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
15 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
16 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.
17 18 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).
19 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).
20 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).
21 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
22 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.
23 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
24 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.
25 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.
26 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
27 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).
28 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)
29 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.
30 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
31 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.
32 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:
33 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).
34 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,
35 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).
36 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).
37 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).
38 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
39 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
40 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).
41 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).
42 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).
43 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
44 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).
45 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
46 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
47 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).
48 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
49 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).
50 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
51 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”.
52 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).
53 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).
54 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
55 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.
56 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.
57 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
58 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
59 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.
60 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
61 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).
62 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
63 Timaeus, we have seen, leads Plato to broaden the scope of philosophy, to allow it greater flexibility to explore new subjects in new ways.
64 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).
65 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.
66 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).
67 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
68 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.
69 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
70 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).
71 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.
72 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.
73 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
74 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.
75 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).
76 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.
77 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.
78 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).
79 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).
80 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.
81 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
82 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.
83 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,
84
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).
85
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
86 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’
87 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
88 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.
89 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.
90 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
91 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).
92 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
93 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).
94 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”.
95 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
96 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
97 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).
98 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).
99 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
100 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
101 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).
102 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).
103 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
104 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.
105 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.
106 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
107 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.
108 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.
109 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).
110 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.
111 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).
112 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.
113 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
114 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
115 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,
116 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.
117 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).
118 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
119 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:
120 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
121 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).
122 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
123 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
124 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.”
125 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).
126 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.
127
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.
128 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).
129 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:
130 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
131 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
132 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
133 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
134 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
135 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
136 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:
137 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
138 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
139 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).
140 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
141 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
142 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
143 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
144 (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.”
145 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
146 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).
147 (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.
148 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
149 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
150 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
151 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
152 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
153 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
154 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
155 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.
156 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
157 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).
158 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.
159 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.
160 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).
161 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).
162 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
163 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
164 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
165 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.
166 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.
167 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.
168 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
169 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.
170 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
171 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.
172 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)
173
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
174 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.
175 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).
176 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:
177 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.
178 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:
179 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
180 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.
181 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.
182 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.
183 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).
184 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
185 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.
186 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
187 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
188 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).
189 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.
190 “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)
191 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
192 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),
193 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.
194 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
195 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
196 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
197 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
198 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.
199 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).
200 “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
201 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
202 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).
203 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.
204 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.
205 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
206 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
207 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).
208 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).
209 210 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.
211 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.
212 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.
213 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).
214 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
215 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).
216 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,
217 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.
218 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).
219 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
220 (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
221 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
222 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
223 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.
224 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).
225 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.
226 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
227 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
228 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
229 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.
230 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.
231 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.
232 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.
233 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).
234 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
235 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).
236 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).
237 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
238 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.
239 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.
240 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).
241 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).
242 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
243 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
244 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).
245 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).
246 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.
247 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,
248 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.
249 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”,
250 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
251 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.
252 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
253 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-
254 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.
255 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.
256 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
257 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
258 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
259 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.
260 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
261 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
262 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.
263 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
264 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
265 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
266 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
267 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
268 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.
269 Works Consulted.
Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. 1953. New York: Norton, 1958.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by Marcus Lefebure. vol. 8. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964.
Augustine. The Problem of Free Choice. Translated by Mark Pontifex. Ancient Christian Writers. 22. New York: Newman Press, 1955. Translation of De Libero Arbitrio.
——. Concerning the City of God against the Pagans. Translated by Henry Bettenson. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972. Translation of De Civitate Dei.
——. The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Translated by John Hammond Taylor. Ancient Christian Writers. 41-42. New York: Newman Press, 1982.
——. Confessions. Translated with an introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
——. Confessions, Latin Text with English Commentary. Edited by James J. O’Donnell. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Available online at < http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/conf/>.
——. On Christian Teaching. Translated with an introduction and notes by R.P.H. Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Translation of De Doctrina Christiana.
——. De Doctrina Christiana [Website Database of Augustine’s works in Latin].
——. Expositions on the Book of Psalms. Edited by Philip Schaff. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Vol. 8. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956.
——. Enarrationes in Psalmos [Website Database of Augustine’s works in Latin].
270 ——. The Trinity. Translated by Stephen McKenna. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963. Translation of De Trinitate.
Barolini, Teodolinda. The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Berry, G. R, ed. The Classic Greek Dictionary: Greek-English and English-Greek, with an Appendix of Proper and Geographical Names. The Classic Series. Chicago: Wilcox & Follet, 1945.
Bertocci, Peter A. “Creation in Religion.” In Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener. New York: Scribner, 1973. 571-77.
The Bible, Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
The Bible, Clementine Latin Vulgate. [Website Database]. 2005 [accessed 25 November 2008]. Available from
Blake, William. Selected Poems. Edited by Peter Butter. London: Everyman, 1993.
Bloom, Allan David. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by V. E. Watts. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1969.
Botterill, Steven. “The Trecento Commentaries on Dante’s Commedia.” In The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Volume 2: The Middle Ages, edited by Alistair Minnis and Ian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 590-611.
Brown, Peter Robert Lamont. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
271 Burkert, Walter. “The Logic of Cosmogony.” In From Myth to Reason?: Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, edited by R.G.A. Buxton. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. 87-106.
Cantor, Paul A. Creature and Creator: Myth-Making and English Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Cary, Phillip. Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Chadwick, Henry, ed. Confessions. By Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Chiampi, James T. “The Fate of Writing: The Punishment of Thieves in the Inferno.” Dante Studies CII (1984): 51-60.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Orator. Translated by H.M. Hubbell. Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1939.
Clark, Gillian. Augustine: the Confessions. Landmarks of World Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Letters. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. Vol. 1. London: Heinemann, 1895.
Cornford, Francis Macdonald, ed. Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato, translated with a Commentary by F.M. Cornford. London: Kegan Paul Trench Teubner, 1937.
Coulter, James A. The Literary Microcosm: Theories of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition. Leiden: Brill, 1976.
Courcelle, Pierre. Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin. Paris: Boccard, 1950.
——. Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Crites, Stephen. “The Demiurgic Imagination in Art and Experience.” boundary 2 8, no. 1 (1979): 295-308.
272 Crouse, Robert. “Paucis mutatis verbis: St Augustine’s Platonism.” In Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, edited by Robert Dodaro and George Lawless. New York: Routledge, 2000. 37-50.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. 1953. Translated by Willard R. Trask. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
Dante Alighieri. Convivio. Translated by Elizabeth Price Sayer. Morley’s Universal Library. 49. London: Routledge, 1887.
——. Vita Nuova. Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Edited by Herman Oelsner. The King’s Classics. 46. London: Chatto & Windus, 1908.
——. The Divine Comedy. Edited, translated, and 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.
——. The Divine Comedy. Edited and translated by Robert M. Durling. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
——. De Monarchia. Edited and translated by Prue Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Davies, P. C. W. God and the New Physics. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984.
——. The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning. London: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Davis, Nick. Stories of Chaos: Reason and its Displacement in Early Modern English Narrative. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.
De Lubac, Henri. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Translated by Mark Sebanc and E.M. Macierowski. Vol. 1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.
Derby Chapin, D. L. “Io and the Negative Apotheosis of Vanni Fucci.” Dante Studies LXXXIX (1971): 19-31.
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. London: Athlone, 1981.
——. “Khõra”, in On the Name. Translated by Ian McLeod. Edited by Thomas Dutoit. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. 89-150.
273 Drobner, Hubertus. “Studying Augustine: An Overview of Recent Research.” In Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, edited by Robert Dodaro and George Lawless. New York: Routledge, 2000. 18-34.
Dronke, Peter. Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism. Mittellateinische Studien Und Texte. 9. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974.
——. ed. A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Durling, Robert M. and Ronald L. Martinez, eds. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1. Inferno. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Economou, George D. “The Pastoral Simile of Inferno XXIV and the Unquiet Heart of the Christian Pilgrim.” Speculum LI (1976): 637-46.
Ehrhardt, Arnold. The Beginning: A Study in the Greek Philosophical Approach to the Concept of Creation from Anaximander to St John. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968.
Einstein, Albert. The New Quotable Einstein. Edited by Alice Calaprice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Ferrante, Joan M. “Canto XXIV: Thieves and Metamorphoses.” In Lectura Dantis: Inferno, edited by Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn and Charles Ross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 316-27.
Finkelberg, Aryeh. “Plato’s Method in Timaeus.” American Journal of Philology 117, no. 3 (1996): 391-409.
Fitzgerald, Allan, and John C. Cavadini, eds. Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 1999.
Foster, Dennis A. Confession and Complicity in Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Frye, Northrop. Creation and Recreation. Canadian University Paperbooks. 254. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Gaut, Berys Nigel, and Paisley Livingston. The Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
274 Gilson, Etienne. The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine. Translated by L.E.M. Lynch. London: Gollancz, 1961.
Gould, John. “Plato and Performance.” In The Language of the Cave, edited by Andrew Barker and Martin Warner. Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1993. 13–26.
Green, R.P.H, ed. On Christian Teaching. By Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Gregory, Tullio. “The Platonic Inheritance.” In A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, edited by Peter Dronke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 54-80.
Grosz, Elizabeth. “Women, Chora, Dwelling.” In Postmodern Cities and Spaces. edited by Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. 47-58.
Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990.
Hankey, Wayne. “Re-Christianizing Augustine Postmodern Style: Readings by Jacques Derrida, Robert Dodaro, Jean-Luc Marion, Rowan Williams, Lewis Ayres and John Milbank.” Animus 2 (1997). Available from
——. “Stephen Menn’s Cartesian Augustine: A Review Article Devoted to Stephen Menn, Descartes and Augustine.” Animus 3 (1998). Available from
Hanning, R.W. “‘Ut Enim Faber…Sic Creator’: Divine Creation as Context for Human Creativity in the Twelfth Century.” In Word, Picture, and Spectacle, edited by Karl P. Wentersdorf and Clifford Davidson. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University, 1984.
Hawking, S. W. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988.
Hawkins, Peter S. “Virtuosity and Virtue: Poetic-Self-Recognition in the Commedia.” Dante Studies 98 (1980): 1-18.
275 Heller-Roazen, Daniel. “The Matter of Language: Guilhem De Peitieus and the Platonic Tradition.” MLN 113, no. 4 (1998): 851-80.
Hodge, M.J.S. Before and after Darwin: Origins, Species, Cosmogonies, and Ontologies. Surrey: Ashgate, 2008.
——. Darwin Studies: A Theorist and His Theories in Their Contexts. Surrey: Ashgate, 2009.
Human Genome Project. Press Release [Human Genome Project Information Website]. 2000 [accessed 3 December 2008]. Available from
Humphries, Michael L. “Michel Foucault on Writing and the Self in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and Confessions of St. Augustine.” Arethusa 30, no. 1 (1997): 125-38.
Hurd, Richard. Letters on Chivalry and Romance. English Literary Criticism of the Eighteenth Century. 84. New York: Garland Pub., 1971.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature; Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901- 1902. New York: Longmans Green and Co., 1902.
Johansen, Thomas K. “Truth, Lies and History in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias”. Histos: The Electronic Journal of Ancient Historiography at the University of Durham. 2 (1998). n. pag. Online. [accessed 25 November 2008]. Available from
Jowett, Benjamin, ed. Dialogues of Plato translated into English with analyses and introductions by B. Jowett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.
Kirwan, Christopher. Augustine. London: Routledge, 1989.
Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Knuuttila, Simo. “Time and Creation in Augustine.” In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, edited by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 103-15.
276 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Lederman, Leon. The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? 1993. New York: Mariner, 2006.
Lee, Henry Desmond Pritchard, ed. Timaeus and Critias. By Plato. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1977.
Lévy, Carlos. “Cicero and the Timaeus.” In Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon, edited by Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. 95-110.
Lewis, Charlton Thomas, and Charles Short, ed. A Latin Dictionary: Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Reflection on Cloning [Website]. 1997 [accessed 5 December 2008]. Available from
Lille, Alan of. The Plaint of Nature. Translated by James J. Sheridan. Mediaeval Sources in Translation. 26. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980.
MacCormack, Sabine. The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage. 26. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Macrobius, Ambrosius Aurelius Theodosius. The Saturnalia. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Percival Vaughan Davies. Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies. No. 79. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.
Markus, R.A. “St. Augustine on Signs.” In Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by R.A. Markus. New York: Anchor Books, 1972. 61-91.
Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony. “The Analogy of Creation in Dante.” Speculum 32, no. 4 (1957): 706-21.
277 McCabe, Mary Margaret. “Myth, Allegory and Argument in Plato.” In The Language of the Cave, edited by Andrew Barker and Martin Warner. Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1993. 47-67.
Menn, Stephen Philip. Descartes and Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Milbank, John. The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.
Miller, Mitchell. “The Timaeus and the ‘Longer Way’: ‘God-Given’ Method and the Constitution of Elements and Animals.” In Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon, edited by Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. 17-59.
Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. Aldershot: Scolar, 1988.
Murray, Penelope. “Inspiration and Mimesis in Plato.” In The Language of the Cave, edited by Andrew Barker and Martin Warner. Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1993. 27-46
——. “What Is a Muthos for Plato?” In From Myth to Reason?: Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, edited by R.G.A. Buxton. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. 251-62.
Nahm, Milton Charles. The Artist as Creator: An Essay of Human Freedom. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956.
——. “Creativity in Art.” In Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener. New York: Scribner, 1973. 577-589.
Nelkin, Dorothy, and M. Susan Lindee. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York: Freeman, 1995.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. Edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
Nightingale, Andrea Wilson. Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
278 Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. 1982. London: Routledge, 1991.
O’Connell, Robert J. St. Augustine’s Confessions: the Odyssey of the Soul. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.
O’Donnell, James J. Augustine. Twayne’s World Authors Series. 759. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.
——. ed. Confessions, Latin Text with English Commentary. By Augustine. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Available online at
——. Augustine: A New Biography. New York: Ecco, 2005.
Oldcorn, Anthony. “Canto XXV: The Perverse Image.” In Lectura Dantis: Inferno. edited by Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 328-47.
Olney, James. Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
O’Meara, John J. The Young Augustine: The Growth of St. Augustine’s Mind up to His Conversion. London: Longmans Green, 1954.
Osborne, Catherine. “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. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 179-211.
Østrem, Eyolf. “Deus Artifex and Homo Creator: Art between the Human and the Divine.” In Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation, edited by Nils Holger Petersen, Sven Rune Havsteen, Heinri Schwab, and Eyolf Østrem. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. 15-48.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Edited and translated by Frank Justus Miller. Loeb Classical Library. 42-43. London: Heinemann, 1916.
Owen, G.E.L. “The Place of the Timaeus in Plato’s Dialogues.” The Classical Quarterly 3, no. 1-2 (1953): 79-95.
Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
279 Plato. Timaeus. Edited and translated by R.D. Archer-Hind. New York: MacMillan and Co., 1888.
——. The Laws. Translated by Trevor J. Saunders. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
——. Phaedo. Translated by David Gallop. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
——. Timaeus and Critias. Translated by Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1977.
——. Phaedrus. Edited and translated by C. J. Rowe. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986.
——. The Republic. Translated by Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee. London: Penguin, 1987.
——. The Republic. Edited by Paul Shorey. Loeb Classical Library. vol. 2. London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1914.
——. Statesman. Translated by J. B. Skemp. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952. Translation of the Politicus.
——. Gorgias. Translated by E. R. Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.
Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by Stephen Mackenna. London: Faber, 1969.
Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie. Edited by Gladys Willcock and Alice Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.
Rad, Gerhard von. Genesis: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1973.
Reydams-Schils, Gretchen J., ed. Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
Rothfield, Lawrence. “Autobiography and Perspective in the Confessions of St. Augustine.” Comparative Literature 33, no. 3 Summer (1981): 209-23.
Rowe, Christopher. “Myth, History, and Dialectic in Plato’s Republic and Timaeus- Critias.” In From Myth to Reason?: Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, edited by R.G.A. Buxton. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. 263-78.
Runia, David T. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Philosophia Antiqua. 44. Leiden: Brill, 1986.
280 Rutherford, R. B. The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation. London: Duckworth, 1995.
Ruthven, K. K. Critical Assumptions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Saintsbury, George. A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1934.
Sallis, John. Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus. Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Sayre, Kenneth. “The Multilayered Incoherence of Timaeus’ Receptacle.” In Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon, edited by Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. 60-79.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1917.
Sidney, Philip. Defense of Poesy. Edited by Lewis Soens. Regents Critics Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998.
Silvestris, Bernard. Cosmographia. Translated by Winthrop Wetherbee. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.
Singleton, Charles S., ed. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Edited, translated, and with a Commentary by Charles S. Singleton. Vol. 1, Inferno. 2nd print., with corrections. Bollingen Series. 80. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Solignac, A, ed. Les Confessions. Oeuvres De Saint Augustin. 13-14. Texte De L’édition De M.Skutella. Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1962.
Sorabji, Richard. Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Southern, R. W. Medieval Humanism and Other Studies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970.
281 Spengemann, William C. The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.
Steiner, George. Real Presences. London: Faber, 1989.
——. Grammars of Creation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Stewart, Robert Scott. “The Epistemological Function of Platonic Myth.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 22, no. 4 (1989): 260-80.
Stock, Brian. Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Terdiman, Richard. “Problematical Virtuosity: Dante’s Depiction of the Thieves (Inf. XXIV-XXV).” Dante Studies XCI (1973): 27-45.
TeSelle, Eugene. Augustine the Theologian. London: Burns & Oates, 1970.
Thompson, Samantha. “The Confessions of Saint Augustine: Accessory to Grace.” In Autobiography as Philosophy: The Philosophical Uses of Self-Presentation, edited by Thomas Mathien and D. G. Wright. London: Routledge, 2006. 31-63.
Tissol, Garth. The Face of Nature: Wit, Narrative, and Cosmic Origins in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Utz, Richard. “Writing Alternative Worlds: Rituals of Authorship and Authority in Late Medieval Theological and Literary Discourse.” In Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation, edited by Nils Holger Petersen, Sven Rune Havsteen, Heinri Schwab, and Eyolf Østrem, Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. 121-38.
Vance, Eugene. Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages. Regents Studies in Medieval Culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
Vlastos, Gregory. Plato’s Universe. Las Vegas: Parmenides Pub., 2005.
Wetherbee, W. Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
——. “Philosophy, Cosmology, and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance.” In A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, edited by Peter Dronke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 21-53.
282 Zaslavsky, Robert. Platonic Myth and Platonic Writing. Washington, D.C: University Press of America, 1981.
283