Demiurge

The demiurge (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English" title="Help:IPA for English" >/</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >ˈ</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >d</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >ɛ</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >m</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >i</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >ˌ</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >ɜr</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" >dʒ</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English" title="Help:IPA for English" >/</a>) is a concept from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism" title="Platonism" >Platonic</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopythagorean" title="Neopythagorean" class="mw-redirect" >Neopythagorean</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Platonism" title="Middle Platonism" >Middle Platonic</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism" title="Neoplatonism" >Neoplatonic</a> schools of philosophy for an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was subsequently adopted by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism" title="Gnosticism" >Gnostics</a>. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily thought of as being the same as the creator figure in the familiar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism" title="Monotheism" >monotheistic</a> sense, because both the demiurge itself plus the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are considered either uncreated and eternal, or the product of some other being, depending on the system.

The word "demiurge" is an English word from a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latinised_names" title="List of Latinised names" >Latinized</a> form of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language" title="Greek language" >Greek</a> δημιουργός, dēmiourgos, literally "public worker", and which was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually it came to mean "producer" and eventually "creator". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_(dialogue)" title="Timaeus (dialogue)" >Plato's Timaeus</a>, written c. 360 BC, in which the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. This is accordingly the definition of the demiurge in the Platonic (c. 310–90 BC) and Middle Platonic (c. 90 BC – 300 AD) philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms" title="Theory of Forms" >Ideas</a>, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good" title="Form of the Good" >the One</a>". In the arch-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualist" title="Dualist" class="mw-redirect" >dualist</a> ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. Accordingly, the demiurge is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misotheism" title="Misotheism" >malevolent</a>, as linked to the material world.

Demiurge

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