In his Commentary on the Timaeus Proclus says that in some occasions Plato speaks of a model (from which the world is created) that is identical to the Demiurge while in other occasions he suggests that the model is distinct from the Demiurge. Here, identity and difference refer to the similarity with or dissimilarity from the intelligible One, identified with eternity (stability; fixedness). However, Plato also speaks in the Timaeus that the Cosmos is pretty and its Constructor (the Demiurge) is good inasmuch as He fixed his sight in the perpetual model. If we ask what is produced when the Demiurge fixed his sight in a model that it is not identical to Himself, we find the reply in the Timaeus: envy, defects, disorder, limitation regarding intelligence and the soul, incompleteness, ugliness, and imperfection. Plotinus, on his turn, mentions (Enneads, II.4) the existence of two types of matter, intelligible and sensible. The intelligible or divine matter is equivalent to the "indefinite Dyad", identified with the procession of the Noûs. For Plotinus, though the intelligible matter is eternal and invariant, its archê is constituted by difference and movement - conditions that prepare the naturation of sensible matter. For Proclus, the Soul, an unfolding of the Noûs, mediates between the Intellect, intelligible matter and sensible matter. Many interpreters seem to have understood inteligible matter as the matter of the Soul, and to explain the interaction between the intelligible and the sensible many theories have appeared regarding the constitution of intelligible matter and about the nature of the "vehicle" or "vehicles" that would be associated with the Soul's "descent" and incarnation.
demiurgy; ontogenesis; intelligible matter; sensible matter; ochêma; ochêmata