Abstract
The present paper focuses on some aspects of the Neoplatonist literary-metaphysical theory, which has clearly been expressed in the anonymous Prolegomena to Plato’s philosophy and further confirmed in Proclus’ exegesis of the Timaeus. Thus, this contribution, examines and compares several passages from the Prolegomena and from Proclus’ Commentary on the Timaeus with a view to showing that it is legitimate to speak of a certain cosmogony of the Platonic dialogue that is analogous to that of the macrocosm. Moreover, the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm makes it possible to further investigate the similarity between the λόγος-ζῷον of the Demiurge and that of Timaeus, on the one hand, and the reality which the λόγος expresses, on the other. This similarity turns out to be both structural/morphological and content-related/semantic. Thus, by combining the natural and theological science, the analysis of the “generation” of the macrocosm and microcosm brings out the strongly analogical nature of Plato’s dialogues, which is particularly visible in the Timaeus.
Highlights
When Cicero speaks in favour of analogy, he argues that no writer is capable of expressing everything in a written text, and that, if a reader comes across a text by a good writer, he or she can pass from the written to the unwritten.[1]
Well removed from the exegetical wave that had already engulfed literature and philosophy in the early centuries of the Empire, Cicero becomes the unwitting theoriser of an interpretative criterion that commentators were to make their own
The Demiurge of the cosmos, the Demiurge Plato, and Timaeus make their own inner λόγοι visible, albeit in different ways: in the Platonic Theology we read that discourse engenders “images put into motion by inner visions.”
Summary
When Cicero speaks in favour of analogy, he argues that no writer is capable of expressing everything in a written text, and that, if a reader comes across a text by a good writer, he or she can pass from the written to the unwritten.[1] Well removed from the exegetical wave that had already engulfed literature and philosophy in the early centuries of the Empire, Cicero becomes the unwitting theoriser of an interpretative criterion that commentators were to make their own. Regarded as a conveyor of obscuritas, ambiguities and reticence – ever since Plato’s criticism of writing expressed in the Phaedrus – the written text does not prevent the exegete from passing to the unwritten, as Cicero would put it; rather, it persuades him of the need to go beyond the written word
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