ДЕМИУРГ В АНТИЧНОЙ КОСМОГОНИИ
DEMIURGE IN THE ANCIENT COSMOGONY

Summary/Abstract: The article begins with a brief survey of the Early Greek cosmogonies of Pherecydes of Syros and of the Orphics (the latter, on the basis of the Derveni papyrus). My major concerns are the figure of Chronos and the demiurgic activity of Zeus. Ancient cosmogony is compared with the contemporary theory of time by I. Prigogine, who, not unlike the Ancients and in contrast with the standard cosmological theory of the Big Bang, thinks that Time did not originate with our world and will not end with it. Then I examine the kybernētēs metaphor and the ideas, associated with it in the Ancient philosophy against the background of a broader literary tradition. Having originated in the political context (Aeschylus and the Theognidea) the metaphor is usually traced back to Plato’s Republic (488a) and Politicus (296e), where Socrates compares a good helmsman with the wise philosopher-ruler, while in 298e and elsewhere the navigational tekhne is further compared with medical and musical skills. The image receives an ontological and, in a sense, eschatological, meaning in the Politicus 272e, where in a similar context a concept of an observational tower (periōpē) is introduced. The idea not only recurrently appears in its original form and meaning in later literature, but also undergoes various interpretations in the course of centuries, being recast, first, in metaphysical and, then, in psychological terms. These later re-interpretations were not readily accepted by everyone and are effectively limited to the Late Platonic tradition. One can hardly determines even a single relevant instance in the Stoic literature, although a limited number of interesting cases can be discerned in Lucretius’ De rerum natura. Being rethought in some details in the very fragmented works of Numenius and Iamblichus, the metaphor is not forgotten in Late Platonism and is frequently employed by Proclus. The concept of an observational tower (periōpē) is among the most favorite Proclan images (Theol. Plat. 2.71.20; 5.26.4, 33.12, 65.15, 76.25, 91.5; 6.32.20, etc.), while the kybernētēs’ metaphor is found in a number of instances, always in its metaphysical meaning (cf. Theol. Plat. 4.22.10, 4.43.1; In Tim. 3.334.3–28). On the contrary, already in his De anima 413a, in the context of a discussion of the question of inseparability of the individual soul from the body, Aristotle doubts “whether the soul is an entelechy of the body as a sailor (plōtēr) is to the ship”. According to his commentator Alexander of Aphrodisia (De anima 20.29) the ‘helmsman’ should be symbolically understood as referred to a special sort of tekhne, appropriate to the highest part of the soul alone, which as a wise governor determines the course and saves the whole organism from the external perils, or like a skillful physician anticipates and prevents all the external and internal threats to the health. The question is further developed in Plotinus (27 [Enn. 4.3] 21, etc.) and Porphyry...

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