Demiurge, an anglicized form of δημιουργός, the ordinary Greek word for a workman, craftsman, or artificer, is commonly used in Greek literature from Homer onward. In Homer it is applied to heralds, soothsayers, and physicians as well as to manual workers; but in later Greek it primarily means a craftsman or maker, such as a carpenter or a smith. Its importance in the history of philosophy derives almost entirely from Plato's Timaeus, in which a Demiurge, or Craftsman, is represented as ordering and arranging the physical world and bringing it as far as possible into conformity with the best and most rational pattern. In two other places (Republic 530A and Sophist 265C) Plato uses the word δημιουργος, or the corresponding verb, in connection with divine creation; and it occurs in one passage in Xenophon's Socratic discourses (Memorabilia 1.4.9), but these are all casual and isolated references. For our understanding of Plato's conception of creation we must rely almost exclusively on the Timaeus.
The Timaeus is, in fact, Plato's only substantial essay in physical theory and cosmology. There is disagreement about the date of the dialogue and about its place in the chronological order of Plato's writings; but it is generally agreed to be later than the great group of middle dialogues, from the Phaedo and Symposium to the Republic and Phaedrus, in which Plato expounds his most characteristic metaphysical and ontological doctrines. The substance of these doctrines is repeated and underlined in the Timaeus itself, which makes a sharp division between the eternal, transcendent, intelligible, unchanging world of true being or reality and the temporal, phenomenal, sensible, unstable world of mere becoming. It was this very contrast between the world of Forms and the world of sense that had led Plato to neglect physical research and speculation; and when he does turn to this subject in the Timaeus, he repeatedly insists that even his own best efforts in this field cannot produce more than an εἰκὼς μυθός—a "likely tale"—falling far short of the certainty and exactness that can be sought in mathematics and pure philosophy. He speaks of the whole doctrine of the Timaeus in the provisional, tentative manner in which he presents the eschatological myths of the Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic, and Phaedrus.
Against this background it may appear surprising that Plato ventured on these topics at all. His motives become plainer if we remember his own comments in the Phaedo (97C–99D) on the cosmology of Anaxagoras. Socrates first praises Anaxagoras for holding that νου̑ς—Intelligence or Reason—ordered and arranged the world, imposing a rational plan on a preexisting chaos. He then complains that Anaxagoras did not pursue this line of thought to its proper conclusion: He uses Reason as a mere deus ex machina to explain the origin of the cosmic process as a whole but does not give detailed teleological explanations of particular things and events, showing that everything is arranged for the best. Anaxagoras resorts instead to the purely physical explanations that had been used by his Ionian predecessors, which is like trying to explain why Socrates does not escape from prison wholly in terms of bones and sinews, without reference to intelligence, intention, motive, and morality. Aristotle makes a similar comment in Metaphysics I,3: Anaxagoras stands out among his contemporaries and predecessors "like a sober man among drunkards," but he does not make proper use of his concept of cosmic νου̑ς.
The Timaeus is Plato's attempt to carry out the program of rationalist cosmology that Anaxagoras had promised but had failed to fulfill. The Demiurge is portrayed as the agent who turns the initial chaos into a cosmos. Like a human craftsman, he arranges existing materials and does not create them. The conception of creation ex nihilo is foreign to the whole tradition of Greek thought. The Demiurge shapes his materials to conform as much as possible to the eternal intelligible model of the Forms. First, he makes other gods, the world soul that the cosmos requires as its motive principle, and the immortal part of the human soul. The created gods then complete the work by making physical things, including human bodies. The Demiurge's success is necessarily limited: the Reason that constitutes his pattern is opposed by a recalcitrant Necessity (ἀνάγκη) that hinders his work in something like the way in which a human craftsman may be frustrated by intractable materials—and no material is perfectly tractable. This obstacle to a faultless achievement by the Demiurge is also the main reason why Plato cannot hope to give more than a "likely tale" of the Demiurge's work.
It has been widely believed, from ancient times to the present day, that the Demiurge is a mythical figure and that Plato did not believe in the literal existence of such a creator-god. He is a personification of the Reason whose requirements he is represented as trying to embody in the nature of the cosmos. Even if he is literally meant, he must still be sharply contrasted with the creator-god of the Judeo-Christian tradition, not only because he is not in that sense a creator, but also because he is in no sense an object of worship.
It is more difficult to decide whether the process of creation is also mythical; whether Plato believed that the imposition of order on the physical world was a definite event that took place at some time in the past, or whether the narrative of the Timaeus is a presentation in chronological form of Plato's views about the relative value and ontological priority of the various elements in the universe. According to this latter view, the story that bodies were created after souls would be a pictorial way of marking the inferiority of the body to the soul. Aristotle reports (De Caelo 279b33) that this was the tradition in Plato's Academy. The chronological picture is said to be used only for purposes of exposition, like a figure in geometry. Aristotle himself took the chronology literally, and he was followed in this by Plutarch; but the ancient authorities were nearly all on the other side.
Most modern scholars have disagreed with Aristotle, but he has had some notable supporters; and the question is still being debated. In support of the usual interpretation one may quote the parallel case of the Republic, where the building and dissolution of the ideal community is a pictorial means of presenting a logical analysis in chronological terms. Defenders of the opposite view point out that the word γέγουευ ("it came into being") gives an emphatic answer to the crucial question "Has the cosmos always been, or has it come to be, starting from some beginning?" (28B). However, the imagery of the Republic is equally emphatic. Once a man has chosen to represent one thing by painting a picture of another, the fact that he uses firm brush strokes and bright colors does not destroy its claims to be a picture.
The concept of the Demiurge was taken over by the Neoplatonists and by some Gnostic writers. To the Gnostics he was the evil lord of the lower powers, creator of the despised material world, and entirely separate from the supreme God. Their parody of the Demiurge as a clumsy imitator is blended with hostile satire of the Old Testament creator-God. Plotinus protested against their conception of the Demiurge as a source of positive evil in the world.
There is no clear case of any notable modern thinker whose teaching has been closely or directly influenced by the concept of the Demiurge, although there are hints of a similar idea in J. S. Mill's essay "Theism," where the word Demiurgos is applied to a God whose creative power is limited by the nature of his materials.
