Biological metaphor and cosmology. The reception of Plato's artificialism by the middle Platonists and Plotinus

In a comparative and diachronic analysis of Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato’s Timaeus, this paper examines how and why “artificialist” exegeses of the dialogue – i. e., exegeses according to which the Timaeus describes the cosmos as the result of the artisanal activity of a divine demiurge – give way to naturalistic, or properly “biological” readings. The focus is on Plutarch’s Quaestio Platonica Secunda, a fragment by Numenius of Apamea, and Plotinus’s Enneads.