Woher kommt das Übel?: Platonische Psychogonie bei Plutarch

Abstract

According to Plutarch, the cause of evil is not the demiurge’s will, that is the divine, nor is it matter or the World-soul, but the precosmic, ungenerated evil soul which is at the origin of the World-soul. This very original interpretation of a passage from the Timaeus in which Plato describes the formation of the soul (Tim. 35a) is not merely supported by a partisan interpretation of the famous pages of the Laws (X 896 E-898 D). Its origin can be situated in a version of Plato’s text circulating in the Old Academy since Xenocrates. The paper aims at throwing some light on the way in which this exegesis of Timaeus 35a — possibly inheriting from an already rewritten text — enables Plutarch to develop his views on the origin of evil: on the cosmic as well as on the human levels, evil is always first, innate and already here, whereas the good, whose origin is divine and intelligible, is a gift coming from the outside. In the process, the paper also intends to give credit to Plutarch against Proclus and his attacks aimed at his exegesis.