  The Neoplatonic concept of causality is therefore quite different from that of the Peripatetics, even if both share the same terminology, such as final or efficient cause. Aristotle’s causes are primarily intended to explain how things move and change, come to be and cease to be, but also offer to explain what given things are. For the Neoplatonists, generalizing a principle formulated in the Philebus — “that everything that comes to be comes to be through a cause” (26e, cf. Tim. 28a) — causality is of much wider application than the explanation of change and motion, it is not only about what things are, but about what constitutes (hupostatikos) their being, and it can be, analogously, used to explain relations between all levels of being. Thus we can say of the One that it is the cause of Intellect, and of Intellect that it is cause of Soul. In the Timaeus, however, the main interest is to understand what is the cause of the sensible world and all the cosmic beings: this is primarily the demiurge or creator of the world (the One is not the ‘creator’ of Intellect).