The World
idea · 4 works · 5 mentions · 11 anchored passages
also in the atlas: The World the place
the world · the cosmos · the universe · This our world · adornment · kosmos · sky and earth · the Sum · the present life
in the texts
On the Nature of the Gods
The cosmos as a whole, argued by the Stoics to be a living, rational, wise being and therefore divine.
Now the remaining, fourth part of the world:
likewise that what is best in the whole world must reside in something perfect and complete;
For it cannot be said that in any ordering of things there is not something final and perfect.
Barlaam and Josaphat
Present worldly life, personified as a deceitful friend who betrays those who trust it.
For it is an enemy of its friends, and a plotter against all who do its will, and it dashes down terribly those who lean upon it, and unnerves those who trust in it.
small and brief is their charm, and not even a charm, but a kind of wandering and deceit of the world's wickedness, which we have been taught not to love at all, but rather to hate from the heart.
Those, then, who serve such a cruel and wicked master, who have in their madness removed themselves from the good and loving God, and stand gaping after present things and cling fast to them, taking no thought at all for the things to come,
De Rerum Natura
The totality of earth, sky, and sea, argued throughout the passage to be a mortal, born, and perishable body like any other compound thing.
The nature of our universe, and had
Established itself as earth and sky,
Must be conceived as perishable too.
Adversus Hermogenem
The ordered universe, whose Greek name 'adornment' is used to argue it cannot mirror unadorned Matter, and whose making is the subject of the creation dispute.
Certainly, if by appearing and approaching Matter God made the world out of it, then he made it from the time he appeared, and from the time he approached.
Since among the Greeks the world bears the name of "adornment," how does it present the image of unadorned Matter, so that you may say its whole is recognized from its parts?
But these are his invisible things, which, according to the apostle, from the foundation of the world are perceived through the things he made — not some Matter or other, but his own sensible attributes.