La psichicità dell’anima del mondo e il divenire precosmico

Abstract

Plutarch’s treatise On the Generation of the Soul in Plato’s Timaeus can be considered as the most important philosophical work in the Moralia. It is dedicated to the interpretation of Timaeus’ passage on the ontological generation and numerical division of the world-soul (35A ss.). According to the fi rst interpreters (Xenocrates and Crantor), in order to understand the signifi cance of Plato’s words, it is very important to clarify the meaning of the two fundamental ingredients of the world-soul, i.e. the indivisible and ever invariable being and the divisible being that comes to pass in the case of bodies. In the fi rst section of his work Plutarch critizises the interpretations proposed by Xenocrates and Crantor because they are not capable to indicate among the components mentioned by Plato the psychic ingredient of the world-soul. According to Plutarch this psychic element must be identifi ed with the divisible being, which is a reference to a precosmic soul. This irrational soul moves the precosmic body (matter) from eternity. It is the same soul mentioned by Plato in the 10 book of the Laws. The precosmic soul, as the soul itself, is the cause of chaotic movement of the matter and also the principle of evil. This irrational soul is responsable for all psychic elements present in the world-soul, i.e. the kinetikon, the phantastikon, and the kritikon. The generation of the world-soul consists in the fact that the precosmic irrational soul receives a partecipation in the intelligible, i.e. in the indivisible being, so that it becomes ordered. The hypothesis of this precosmic soul as substrat of the worldsoul allow to Plutarch to solve a set of exegetical problems in Plato’s text.