Lucas Álvarez-Maldonado

Timaeus, the main interlocutor in the eponymous Platonic dialogue, at one point (76e7–77c5) suggests that plants are animals (ζῷα), a provocative assertion given that this term is usually used to cover those living things around us that are precisely not plants. Timaeus defends his statement by defining ζῷον broadly as anything that participates in life, and by arguing that plants are alive because they have a soul. Since Plato sometimes grounds predication in a relation between an object and a Form, it may be asked whether the ultimate reason for calling plants animals is that they are the image of some intelligible Animals (νοητὰ ζῷα), as is the case with other beings in the Timaeus. In this article, I will argue that plants cannot be the images of intelligible Animals, and that therefore they are not called ζῷα because of this. On the one hand, the predication of the term ζῷον throughout the Timaeus does not necessarily imply a relation between an object and a νοητὸν ζῷον. On the other hand, plants do not fulfil the conditions for being visible copies of the intelligible Animals, because their existence does not complete the animality of our universe. Plants are ζῷα only because they are ensouled, and they are ensouled only because they are meant to always provide food and shelter to the other mortal animals. The conclusion that plants are not related to intelligible Animals may raise further questions about the ontology of plants, the structure of the intelligible world, and the basis of the Academic taxonomic divisions.