Dangerous Liaisons: Plutarch’s Appropriation of the Stoic Biological Model for Divine Causation

What is it about?

The Platonists of the Imperial age grapple with the challenge of explaining how an incorporeal and transcendent cause can act effectively upon the cosmos. Plutarch offers an innovative solution to this issue by appropriating the Stoic use of the biological model to explain divine causation. The Stoic version of this model enables Plutarch to account for how a fragment of god’s intellect can enter the cosmos without god becoming contaminated by matter—just as, in biological generation, a fragment of the father’s soul enters the offspring without the father coming into contact with the body of the offspring. This model also ensures that the fragment of god’s intellect that enters the cosmos is not a mere copy or an inferior version of god’s intellect, but rather god’s own intellect. However, by adopting this approach, Plutarch comes dangerously close to Stoicism in giving prominence the biological model over the demiurgic model. This preference appears to stem from his concerns about providence and his emphasis on the cosmos as a living being—both of which are more effectively addressed through the biological model.

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