Rares I. Marinescu

In this paper I show that Aristotle’s widely criticised exclusion of Platonic efficient causes at Metaph. A 6.988a7–17 is defensible as an interpretation of Plato, and that alternative accounts are unpersuasive. I argue that Aristotle is only interested in – what he supposes to be – Plato’s first principles and that the usual candidates that are brought forward in scholarship as possible first principles and efficient causes (e.g. from the Timaeus and the Philebus) all fall short in crucial respects according to Aristotle. This reading has the dual benefit of illuminating Aristotle’s strategy in book A and of letting him appear as a more trustworthy doxographer of his predecessors’ views.

In this paper I argue that Proclus’ criticism of the causality of Aristotle’s intellect is part of a general attack on Aristotle’s metaphysics. I show how Proclus criticises Aristotle for rejecting the One as a metaphysical principle and the metaphysical confusion that arises from this. Additionally, I claim that for Proclus Aristotle’s understanding of efficient causality differs from Plato’s and I discuss two of his arguments that Aristotle should have accepted the intellect as an efficient cause. As I show throughout, Proclus differs in his approach to Aristotle from the harmonising agenda of Ammonius and Simplicius.

In this paper I focus on Proclus’ concept of the instrumental cause in his commentary on the Timaeus (In Tim.). Unlike earlier Neoplatonists who do not make much use of this type of causality, Proclus relates the instrumental cause to the hypostasis of nature (φύσις). The Demiurge uses nature as an instrument in his ordering and creation of the cosmos. How does Proclus arrive at this understanding of nature? I argue that the definition of nature as an instrumental cause is in part based on his critical reception of Aristotle who identifies nature with the formal, efficient, and/or final cause. That is, Proclus did not develop his views on the causality of nature only by looking at the Timaeus (and other Platonic sources), but also by engaging with Aristotle’s rich – and, to a certain extent, authoritative – reflections on this issue.

In this paper, I argue that Plato conceives self-motion as non-spatial in Laws X. I demonstrate this by focusing on the textual evidence and by refuting interpretations according to which self-motion either is a specific type of spatial motion (e. g. circular motion) or is said to require space as a necessary condition for its occurrence. Moreover, I show that this non-spatial understanding differs from the identification of the soul’s motion with locomotion in the Timaeus. Consequently, I provide an explanation for this difference between the Timaeus and Laws X by considering developmentalist and contextualist viewpoints.