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  • Chapter 2 - Plato’s Anthropogony and Politogony

  • Vilius Bartninkas, Vilniaus Universitetas, Lithuania
  • Book:
    Traditional and Cosmic Gods in Later Plato and the Early Academy
    Published online:
    06 April 2023
    Print publication:
    13 April 2023, pp 87-141
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  • Summary

    This chapter explores the role of traditional and cosmic gods in Plato’s narratives of human and social origins expounded in the Timaeus, the Critias and the Laws. It argues that Plato unifies the two divine families in terms of their common function to originate human beings, but differentiates the traditional gods from the cosmic gods in terms of their political role – Plato regards only the traditional gods as the makers of political communities, which indicates his mild support of the Greek foundation myths and civic stories. This may be the key to the puzzle of why the two families were kept apart in the first place: unlike the uniformity of the cosmic gods, the diversity of the traditional gods provides a good explanatory factor for such a complex, diverse and unpredictable phenomenon as politics. Consequently, Plato’s anthropogony and politogony should be viewed as discontinuous discourses.