Título del libro: Causation And Creation In Late Antiquity
Título del capítulo: Two early stoic theories of cosmogony
RICARDO SALLES AFONSO DE ALMEIDA;
Autores externos:
Idioma:
Inglés
Año de publicación:
2015
Resumen:
Stoic thinking on the cosmogony is firmly grounded on the Platonic idea that the cosmos was created by a divine demiurge from pre-existing matter. In Stoic ontology this demiurge and this matter, called ?god? (????) and ?matter? (???), are in fact the two fundamental principles of corporeal reality. They are, unlike everything else, absolutely primitive entities in the sense that all else is ultimately produced by the action of the former on the latter. The Stoics devoted much attention to how particular kinds of bodies were created by the action of god on matter, and their theories of the cosmogony envisage a sequence of three different stages. The first is one at which (a) the simplest homogeneous bodies - the four elements: Fire, air, water and earth - come into being by the contraction and expansion of matter by god. The second is where (b) the complex homogeneous bodies - gold, flesh, wood and the like - are created out of the simple ones by mixture; and the third is the one at which (c) the heterogeneous bodies - e.g. animals and plants - are created by the assemblage of complex homogeneous bodies. There is a basic account of these three stages that was shared by nearly all major early Stoics. However, as I shall argue, there was also a great deal of polemic, especially in connection with stage (a). According to Stoic cosmology the present cosmos and its cosmogony were preceded by a conflagration that destroyed a previous cosmos. But if so, when exactly did stage (a) begin? Did it begin once the fire of the conflagration was extinguished? Or was it rather just before that? In other words, is there any overlap between the end of the conflagration and the beginning of the cosmogony? In what follows, I argue that these questions divided the early Stoics into two parties. © Cambridge University Press 2015.
Entidades citadas de la UNAM:
ISBN:
9781107447974
Editorial:
Cambridge University Press Nombre de la publicación:
Two early stoic theories of cosmogony
Página inicial:
11
Página final:
30
