CREATIO EX NIHILO– A GENUINELY PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHT DERIVED FROM PLATO AND ARISTOTLE? SOME NOTES ON THETREATISE ON THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE TWO SAGES

Abstract

AbstractThe article aims at demonstrating that in attributing thecreatio ex nihiloto both Plato and Aristotle as their unanimous philosophical conviction theTreatise on the Harmony between the Two Sagesdeeply depends upon the Neoplatonic reading of those two philosophers. The main obstacles for such a view in the works of the two sages are Plato's assumption of a precosmic chaos in theTimaeusand Aristotle's denial of any efficient causality to the unmoved mover in theMetaphysics. Both of these points had been, however, done away with by the Neoplatonist commentators already, especially by Ammonius in his lost treatise on efficient and final causality in Aristotle the use of which in theHarmonyis shown by a comparison with Simplicius. Christian and Muslim readers just had to transfer those arguments and hermeneutical techniques into an anti-eternalist context in order to make the two philosophers agree with one of the basic tenents of their face, a hermeneutical technique considerably different from the one employed by al-Fārābī in his exposition of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy which is compared to theHarmonyin a briefly sketched concluding section.