Mind and Matter

There have many studies of theories of first principles in ancient Platonisms such as the Old Academy, Middle Platonism, and Neoplatonism, and in Platonically inclined religious thinkers such as Philo of Alexandria, Gnosticism, and Christianity.

As Monica Gale notes in the introduction to her edited volume of seminal articles on Lucretius, several studies in the past three decades have confirmed that “Analogy is perhaps the key tool in Lucretius’ argumentative armoury” (Gale 2007: 4). Yet when it comes to the celebrated dust-mote analogy of DRN 2.112-141, the consensus is that the analogy is illustrative, but not probative (Schiesaro 1990: 28–29; Schrijvers 1999: 183–84; Fowler 2002: 187, 190, 192–93, 202).

In doctrines of metempsychosis, the soul of an individual that passes through different bodies must preserve in some sense the personality of that individual. Otherwise, transmigration is meaningless (see Huffmann 2009). Yet Empedocles of Agrigento (fifth century BCE), who taught metempsychosis, does not seem to have had a concept of soul responsible for personality.

Despite widespread popularity in the ancient world and a long tradition of detailed exegeses, Plato’s Timaeus continues to elude straightforward interpretation. One particularly vexed issue is the ontological status of the δεξαμενή, or ‘Receptacle’ (48a-53c), said to nurse physical objects into being through the process of ‘becoming’. This Receptacle is described as a pre-cosmic ‘container’ filled with chaotic proto-elements that require further organization by a divine creator, but it is unclear how such elements can exist prior to the divine creation.