Deus artifex and the missing world soul. The causalities of the creation of the world soul in Augustine and their neoplatonic preconditions

Basic data for this project

Description

In the sense of the metaphor of the world-creating God as an artist (δημιουργός/artifex) established since Plato (428 - 348 BC), the Platonist church father Augustine (354 - 430 AD) also understood the creation of the world as the expression of a divine art (ars). However, while pagan Platonism saw a world soul as a mediating authority between God and the world, Augustine, since he did not assume a world soul, initially gave the impression of having a different view of the structure of reality, according to which the Creator God directly influences the physical world. However, there are indications that close observation of how the ars of God is described by Augustine could lead to the conclusion that Augustine preserved the systemic position of the Platonic world soul in a modified form by shifting its functions to other ontological levels. Augustine's Christian doctrine and the Pagan-Platonic doctrine of the creation of the world would thus come much closer together than the verbal findings would suggest at first glance, without, of course, becoming completely identical. This result would not only be of particular interest for understanding Augustine and determining his relationship to contemporary Neoplatonism, but also for the further course of European intellectual history, as the discussion about the world soul persisted into the high Middle Ages. In the first chapter of the following proposal text (1.), the problem situation with Augustine, its factual prerequisites, the current research situation and the status of our own preliminary work achieved in the meantime are described. The following chapter (2.) will then present the objectives and approach of the planned project.