Platonism

Platonism
Platonist, n., adj.
/playt"n iz'euhm/, n.
1. the philosophy or doctrines of Plato or his followers.
2. a Platonic doctrine or saying.
3. the belief that physical objects are impermanent representations of unchanging Ideas, and that the Ideas alone give true knowledge as they are known by the mind.
4. (sometimes l.c.) the doctrine or practice of platonic love.
[1560-70; < NL Platonismus. See PLATONIC, -ISM]

* * *

Any philosophy that embodies some major idea of Plato's, especially in taking abstract forms as metaphysically more basic than material things.

Though there was in antiquity a tradition about Plato's "unwritten doctrines," Platonism then and later was based primarily on a reading of the dialogues. It is characterized by an intense concern for the quality of human life
always ethical, often religious, and sometimes political, based on a belief in unchanging and eternal realities (the Platonic Forms), independent of the changing things of the physical world perceived by the senses. This belief in absolute values rooted in an eternal world distinguishes Platonism from the philosophies of Plato's immediate predecessors and successors and from later philosophies inspired by them. See also Neoplatonism.

* * *

Introduction

      any philosophy that derives its ultimate inspiration from Plato. Though there was in antiquity a tradition about Plato's “unwritten doctrines” (much discussed by German scholars since 1959), Platonism then and later was based primarily on a reading of the dialogues. But these can be read in many different ways, often very selectively, and it may be that all that the various kinds of Platonism can be said to have in common is an intense concern for the quality of human life—always ethical, often religious, and sometimes political, based on a belief in unchanging and eternal realities, independent of the changing things of the world perceived by the senses. Platonism sees these realities both as the causes of the existence of everything in the universe and as giving value and meaning to its contents in general and the life of its inhabitants in particular. It is this belief in absolute values rooted in an eternal world that distinguishes Platonism from the philosophies of Plato's immediate predecessors and successors and from later philosophies inspired by them—from the immanentist naturalism of most of the pre-Socratics (who interpreted the world monistically in terms of nature as such), from the relativism of the Sophists, and from the correction of Platonism in a this-worldly direction carried out by Plato's greatest pupil, Aristotle.

Greek Platonism from Aristotle through Middle Platonism: its nature and history
      Since Plato refused to write his own metaphysics, knowledge of its final shape has to be derived from hints in the dialogues and statements by Aristotle and, to a far lesser extent, other ancient authorities. According to these, Plato's doctrine of Forms was, in its general character, highly mathematical, the Forms being somehow identified with, or explained in terms of, numbers. Here may be seen the influence of the Pythagoreans, though, as Aristotle says, the details of Plato's views on the mathematical constituents of being were not the same as theirs. In addition Aristotle states that Plato introduced a class of “mathematicals,” or “intermediates,” positioned between sensible objects and Forms. These differ from sensible objects in being immaterial (e.g., the geometer's triangles ABC and XYZ) and from the Forms in being plural, unlike the Triangle itself.

Henry J. Blumenthal Ed.
      Aristotle himself had little use for this sort of mathematical metaphysics and rejected Plato's doctrine of transcendent eternal Forms altogether. Something of Platonism, nonetheless, survived in Aristotle's system in his beliefs that the reality of anything lay in a changeless (though wholly immanent) form or essence comprehensible and definable by reason and that the highest realities were eternal, immaterial, changeless self-sufficient intellects which caused the ordered movement of the universe. It was the desire to give expression to their transcendent perfection that kept the heavenly spheres rotating. Man's intellect at its highest was akin to them. This Aristotelian doctrine of Intellect (nous) was easily recombined with Platonism in later antiquity.

      Aristotle, however, was not reacting only against Plato but also against Plato's associates and immediate successors as head of the Academy, namely Plato's nephew Speusippus (c. 410–339 BC) and Xenocrates (396–314 BC). Speusippus, in particular, accented the mathematical tendencies of the late Plato and abolished Forms in favour of numbers. He also posited different principles for different sorts of entities and so was accused by Aristotle of breaking the connections in reality. Xenocrates identified Forms and numbers and began the long process of finding firm doctrines in Plato by laying down that Forms were only of those things that exist in nature. Xenocrates was also the first, as far as is known, to turn his attention to what continued to be a subject of controversy throughout the history of Platonism, namely whether the account of creation offered in the Timaeus was to be taken as chronological or merely expository. He took the latter view, which turned out to be the most favoured one in antiquity; Aristotle was on the other side. Whether Xenocrates' three successors as head of the Academy (Polemon, Crates, and Crantor) developed Platonism is uncertain. Crantor (c. 330–270 BC) was allegedly the first to write commentaries on Plato, particularly on the Timaeus. After Crantor the Academy was preoccupied for about two centuries with the serious questioning of man's claims to knowledge. This began with Arcesilaus (316/315–c. 241 BC), who is described as the founder of the Middle Academy. There was a genuine desire to recover the critical, questioning, and agnostic attitude of the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues as well as philosophical exasperation with the dogmatism of some of the contemporary Hellenistic philosophers, especially the Stoics (Stoicism). It is likely that Arcesilaus was influenced to some extent by Pyrrhon (Pyrrhon Of Elis) (c. 360–c. 272 BC), founder of the tradition to which the name Skeptic (Skepticism) was applied in antiquity. The Skeptical Academics denied that certainty on any subject was possible and worked out a sophisticated theory of probability as a guide to practical decision making. Their critical dialectic and probability theory were best expounded by Carneades (214/213–129/128 BC). Though he wrote nothing, he was regarded as the founder of the New Academy. A return to dogmatic and positive philosophical teaching was effected by Philo of Larissa (died c. 79 BC) and his pupil Antiochus Of Ascalon, who was head of the school in 79–78 BC.

      The next important phase of Platonism, Middle Platonism or pre-Neoplatonism, was significant through the influence that it exerted in more than one direction. In the direction of Jewish (Judaism) culture (further described in a later section), it formed the Greek philosophical background of the efforts of Philo Judaeus (Philo of Alexandria) to create a philosophical system on the basis of the Old Testament heritage. Though the origins of Middle Platonism are obscure, its main direction became clear in the 1st century AD. It seems to have been linked from the beginning with the closely related revival of Pythagoreanism (a philosophy holding that reality is number, and sometimes showing, after the revival, a tendency to superstitious occultism). The somewhat Platonized Stoicism of Poseidonius (c. 135–c. 51 BC), whose dualism of matter and reason enhanced the roles of emotion and will, may have influenced its beginnings, as did the Stoicized Platonism of Antiochus; and Stoic influence, especially in the ethical field, remained important in its later developments. There was also a strong Aristotelian (Aristotelianism) influence, though a minority of 2nd-century Platonists, notably Atticus and, to a lesser extent, Gaius Calvenus Taurus, objected to certain Aristotelian doctrines. Atticus was particularly offended by Aristotle's failure to provide for providence. The general characteristics of this revised Platonic philosophy (and the closely related Neo-Pythagoreanism) were the recognition of a hierarchy of divine principles with stress on the transcendence of the supreme principle, which was already occasionally called “the One”; the placing of the Platonic Forms in the divine mind; a strongly otherworldly attitude demanding a “flight from the body,” an ascent of the mind to the divine and eternal; and a preoccupation with the problem of evil, attributed either to an evil world soul or to matter. The best known of the Middle Platonists is the biographer and essayist Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. AD 46–120). More important philosophically were other 2nd-century figures: Gaius and two men possibly influenced by him, Albinus and Apuleius (better known as author of the prose narrative The Golden Ass); Atticus; and Numenius of Apamea. It was from the thought of these and other Middle Platonists, combined with his own reading of Alexander and other Peripatetic commentators on Aristotle, that the foremost Neoplatonist, Plotinus, started constructing his own interpretation of Platonism, which was both profoundly original and firmly rooted in an established school tradition.

Neoplatonism: (Neoplatonism) its nature and history
      Neoplatonism is the modern name given to the form of Platonism developed by Plotinus in the 3rd century AD and modified by his successors. It came to dominate the Greek philosophical schools and remained predominant until the teaching of philosophy by pagans ended in the second half of the 6th century AD. It represents the final form of pagan Greek philosophy. It was not a mere syncretism (or combination of diverse beliefs) but a genuine, if one-sided, development of ideas to be found in Plato and earlier Platonism—though it incorporated important Aristotelian and Stoic elements as well. There is no real evidence for Oriental influence. A certain Gnostic (Gnosticism) (relating to intuitive knowledge acquired by privileged individuals and immune to empirical verification) tone or colouring sometimes may be discerned in the thought of Plotinus. But he was consciously a passionate opponent of Gnosticism, and in any case there was often a large element of popular Platonism in the Gnostic systems then current. Moreover, the theosophical works of the late 2nd century AD known as the Chaldean Oracles, which were taken as inspired authorities by the later Neoplatonists, seem to have been a hodgepodge of popular Greek religious philosophy.

      Neoplatonism began as a complex (and in some ways ambiguous) philosophy and grew vigorously in a variety of forms over a long period; it is therefore not easy to generalize about it. But the leading ideas in the thought of philosophers who can properly be described as Neoplatonists seem always to have included the following:

      1. There is a plurality (pluralism and monism) of levels of being, arranged in hierarchical descending order, the last and lowest comprising the physical universe, which exists in time and space and is perceptible to the senses.

      2. Each level of being is derived from its superior, a derivation that is not a process in time or space.

      3. Each derived being is established in its own reality by turning back toward its superior in a movement of contemplative desire, which is implicit in the original creative impulse of outgoing that it receives from its superior; thus the Neoplatonic universe is characterized by a double movement of outgoing and return.

      4. Each level of being is an image or expression on a lower level of the one above it. The relation of archetype and image runs through all Neoplatonic schemes.

      5. Degrees of being are also degrees of unity; as one goes down the scale of being there is greater multiplicity, more separateness, and increasing limitation—until the atomic individualization of the spatiotemporal world is reached.

      6. The highest level of being, and through it all of what in any sense exists, derives from the ultimate principle, which is absolutely free from determinations and limitations and utterly transcends any conceivable reality, so that it may be said to be “beyond being.” Because it has no limitations, it has no division, attributes, or qualifications; it cannot really be named, or even properly described as being, but may be called “the One” to designate its complete simplicity. It may also be called “the Good” as the source of all perfections and the ultimate goal of return, for the impulse of outgoing and return that constitutes the hierarchy of derived reality comes from and leads back to the Good.

      7. Since this supreme principle is absolutely simple and undetermined (or devoid of specific traits), man's knowledge of it must be radically different from any other kind of knowledge. It is not an object (a separate, determined, limited thing) and no predicates can be applied to it; hence it can be known only if it raises the mind to an immediate union with itself, which cannot be imagined or described.

Plotinus and his philosophy
      As far as is known, the originator of this distinctive kind of Platonism was Plotinus (AD 205–270). He had been the pupil at Alexandria of a self-taught philosopher called Ammonius, who also taught the Christian Origen and the latter's pagan namesake, and whose influence on his pupils seems to have been deep and lasting. But Ammonius wrote nothing; there are few reports of his views, and these are unreliable so that nothing is actually known about his thought. A number of distinguished scholars have made attempts to reconstruct it, but their speculations go far beyond the evidence. Plotinus must thus be regarded as the first Neoplatonist, and his collected works, the Enneads (Greek enneas, “set of nine”—six sets of nine treatises each, arranged by his disciple Porphyry), are the first and greatest collection of Neoplatonic writings.

      Plotinus, like most ancient philosophers from Socrates on, was a religious and moral teacher as well as a professional philosopher engaged in the critical interpretation of a long and complicated school tradition. He was an acute critic and arguer, with an exceptional degree of intellectual honesty for his, or any, period; philosophy for him was not only a matter of abstract speculation but also a way of life in which, through an exacting intellectual and moral self-discipline and purification, those who are capable of the ascent can return to the source from which they came. His written works explain how from the eternal creative act—at once spontaneous and necessary—of that transcendent source, the One, or Good, proceeds the world of living reality, constituted by repeated double movements of outgoing and return (emanationism) in contemplation; and this account, showing the way for the human self—which can experience and be active on every level of being—to return to the One, is at the same time an exhortation to follow that way.

      Plotinus always insisted that the One, or Good, is beyond the reach of thought or language; what he said about this supreme principle was intended only to point the mind along the way to it, not to describe or define it. But though no adequate concept or definition of the Good is possible, it was, nonetheless, for Plotinus a positive reality of superabundant excellence. Plotinus often spoke of it in extremely negative language, but his object in doing so was to stress the inadequacy of all of man's ways of thinking and speaking to express this supreme reality or to clarify the implications of the claim that the Good is absolutely one and undetermined, the source of all defined and limited realities.

      The original creative or expressive act of the One is the first great derived reality, nous (which can be only rather inadequately translated as “Intellect” or “Spirit”); from this again comes Soul, which forms, orders, and maintains in being the material universe. It must be remembered that, to Plotinus, the whole process of generation is timeless; Nous and Soul are eternal, while time is the life of Soul as active in the physical world, and there never was a time when the material universe did not exist. The “levels of being,” then, though distinct, are not separate but are all intimately present everywhere and in everyone. To ascend from Soul through Intellect to the One is not to travel in space but to awake to a new kind of awareness.

      Intellect for Plotinus is at one and the same time thinker, thought, and object of thought; it is a mind that is perfectly one with its object. As object, it is the world of Forms, or Ideas, the totality of real being in the Platonic sense. These Forms, being one with Intellect and therefore with each other, are not merely objects but are living, thinking subjects, each not only itself but, in its contemplation, the whole. They are the archetypes and causes of the necessarily imperfect realities on lower levels, souls and the patterns or structures that make bodies what they are. Men at their highest are intellects, or souls perfectly conformed to Intellect; they become aware of their intellectual nature when, passing not only beyond sense perception but beyond the discursive reasoning characteristic of the life of Soul, they immediately grasp eternal realities.

      Soul for Plotinus is very much what it was for Plato, the intermediary between the worlds of Intellect and Sense and the representative of the former in the latter. It is produced by Intellect, as Intellect is by the One, by a double movement of outgoing and return in contemplation, but the relationship between the two is more intimate and the frontier less clearly defined. For Plotinus, as for Plato, the characteristic of the life of the Soul is movement (motion), which is the cause of all other movements. The life of the Soul in this movement is time, and on it all physical movement depends. Soul both forms and rules the material universe from above; and in its lower, immanent phase, which Plotinus often calls nature (nature, philosophy of), it acts as an indwelling principle of life and growth and produces the lowest forms, those of bodies. Below these lies the darkness of matter, the final absence of being, the absolute limit at which the expansion of the universe—from the One through diminishing degrees of reality and increasing degrees of multiplicity—comes to an end. Because of its utter negativity, such matter is for Plotinus the principle of evil; and although he does not really believe it to be an independent principle forming, with the Good, a dualism, his language about it often has a strongly dualistic flavour.

      He was not, however, really dualistic in his attitude toward the material universe. He strongly maintained its goodness and beauty as the best possible work of Soul. It is a living organic whole, and its wholeness is the best possible (though very imperfect) reflection on the space–time level of the living unity in diversity of the world of Forms in Intellect. It is held together in every part by a universal sympathy and harmony. In this harmony external evil and suffering take their place as necessary elements in the great pattern, the great dance of the universe. Evil and suffering can affect men's lower selves but can only exceptionally, in the thoroughly depraved, touch their true, higher selves and so cannot interfere with the real well-being of the philosopher.

      As souls within bodies, men can exist on any level of the soul's experience and activity. (The descent of souls into bodies is for Plotinus—who had some difficulty in reconciling Plato's various statements on this point—both a fall and a necessary compliance with universal law.) Man can ascend through his own intellect to the level of universal Soul, become that whole that he already is potentially, and, in Soul, attain to Intellect itself; or he can isolate himself on the lower level, shutting himself up in the experiences, desires, and concerns of his lower nature. Philosophical conversion—the beginning of the ascent to the One—consists precisely in turning away, by a tremendous intellectual and moral effort, from the life of the body, dominating and rising above its desires, and “waking to another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.” This, Plotinus insisted, is possible while one is still in an earthly body and without neglecting the duties of one's embodied state. But the body and bodily life weight a man down and hamper him in his ascent. Plotinus' language when speaking of the body and the senses in this context is strongly dualistic (mind–body dualism) and otherworldly. Platonists in general think much more dualistically about their own bodies than about the material universe as a whole. The physical world is seen positively as a noble image of the intelligible; the individual, earthly, animal body, on the contrary, tends to be regarded negatively as a hindrance to the intellectual and spiritual life.

      When a man's philosophical conversion is complete and he has become Intellect, he can rise to that mystical union in which the One manifests his continual presence, carried on the surging current of the impulse of return to the source (in its strongest and final flow), the pure love of Intellect for the Good from which it immediately springs. There is no consciousness of duality in that union; the individual is not aware of himself; but neither is he destroyed or dissolved into the One—because even in the union he is still Intellect, though Intellect “out of itself,” transcending its normal nature and activity. This mystical union for Plotinus was the focus of much of his effort and, for those of similar inclination, the source of the continuing power of his teaching. Philosophy for him was religion (religion, philosophy of), the effort to actualize in oneself the great impulse of return to the Good, which constitutes reality on all its levels; and religion for him was philosophy. There was no room in his thought and practice for special revelation, grace, and repentance in the Christian sense, and little for external rites or ceremonies. For him the combination of moral purification and intellectual enlightenment, which only Platonic philosophy as he understood it could give, was the only way to union with the Good.

The later Neoplatonists
       Porphyry (c. AD 234–c. 305), a devout disciple of Plotinus and a careful editor of his works, occupied a special position in the development of later Neoplatonism. In some ways his thought paralleled that of the later pagan Neoplatonists, but in others it quite opposed them. The most distinctive features of his thought seem to have been an extreme spiritualism, an insistence, even sharper than that of Plotinus, on the “flight from the body” and—more philosophically important—a greater sympathy with the less sharply defined vertical hierarchies of the Platonists who had preceded Plotinus. Porphyry did not always clearly distinguish the One from Intellect. On the other hand one may see in him the beginnings of the late Neoplatonic tendency to structure reality in both vertical and “horizontal” triads. Thus Being, Life, and Intellect are phases in the eternal self-determination of the ultimate reality. This triad became one of the most important elements in the complex metaphysical structures of the later Neoplatonists. But perhaps Porphyry's most important and influential contribution was the incorporation into Neoplatonism of Aristotle's logic, in particular the doctrine of the categories, with the characteristic Neoplatonic interpretation of them as terms signifying entities. Also of interest is his declaration of ideological war against the Christians, whose doctrines he attacked on both philosophical and exegetical grounds in a work of 15 books entitled Against the Christians.

       Iamblichus (c. AD 250–c. 330) seems to have been the originator of the type of Neoplatonism that came to dominate the Platonic schools in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. This kind of Neoplatonism sharpened and multiplied the distinctions between the levels of being. The basic position underlying its elaborations is one of extreme philosophical realism: it is assumed that the structure of reality corresponds so exactly to the way in which the mind works that there is a separate real entity corresponding to every distinction that it can make. In the fully developed late Neoplatonic system the first principle of reality, the ultimate One, was removed to an altogether ineffable transcendence, mitigated by two factors: the presence of the expressions or manifestations of its unifying power, the “henads”—identified with the gods of paganism—at every level of reality; and the possibility of return to absolute unification through the henad with which one is linked. Below the One a vast structure of triads, or trinities, reached down to the physical world; this was constructed by combining Plotinus' vertical succession of the levels of Being, Intellect, and Soul (much complicated by internal subdivision and the interposition at every stage of mediating hypostases, or underlying orders of nonmaterial reality) with another horizontal triadic structure, giving a timeless dynamic rhythm of outgoing and return, such as that already encountered in Porphyry.

      Nearly all of Iamblichus' works have been lost, and his thought must be recovered from other sources. At present the main authority for this type of Platonism, and also for some of the later Neoplatonists, is Proclus (AD 410–485). Proclus appears to have codified later Platonism, but it is often impossible to tell which parts of his thought are original and which derive from his teachers Plutarch and Syrianus on the one hand and Porphyry and Iamblichus, from whom he quotes copiously but not always identifiably, and other earlier Platonists on the other hand. A carefully argued summary of the basic metaphysics of this kind of Neoplatonism may be found in Proclus' Elements of Theology, which exhibits the causal relationships of the several hierarchies that constituted his intelligible universe.

      This later Neoplatonism aspired to be not only a complete and coherent metaphysical system but also a complete pagan theology, which is perhaps best seen in Proclus' Platonic Theology. The maintenance and defense of the old religion in a world more and more intolerantly dominated by its triumphant rival, Christianity, was one of the main concerns of the Platonists after Plotinus. By the study and sometimes forced exegesis of Aristotle and then Plato, culminating in the Timaeus and Parmenides, of which they offered a variety of highly metaphysical interpretations totally unacceptable to Plato scholars, they believed it possible to arrive at a complete understanding of divine truth. This truth they held to be cryptically revealed by the gods themselves through the so-called theologians—the inspired authors of the Orphic poems and of the Chaldean Oracles, published in the second half of the 2nd century AD. Porphyry first gave some guarded and qualified recognition to them, but they were inspired scripture to Iamblichus, who wrote a work of at least 28 books on the subject, and his successors. Their view of the human soul was a humbler one than that of Plotinus. It was for them a spiritual being of lower rank, which had descended altogether into the material world, while for Plotinus a part remained above; they could not therefore aspire, like Plotinus, through philosophy alone, to that return to and unification with the divine that remained for them the goal of human life. Help from the gods was needed, and they believed that the gods in their love for men had provided it, giving to all things the power of return in prayer and implanting even in inanimate material things—herbs and stones and the like—sympathies and communications with the divine, which made possible the secret rites of theurgy, through which the divine gave the needed spiritual help by material means. Theurgy, though its procedures were generally those of late Greek magic, was thus not thought of merely as magic; in fact a higher and more intellectual theurgy was also practiced. The degree of attention paid to external rites varied considerably from philosopher to philosopher; there seem to have been men even in the last generation of pagan Neoplatonists who had little use for or interest in such things and followed a mystical way much like that of Plotinus.

      The different schools of late Neoplatonism seem to have differed less from each other than has sometimes been supposed. The school of Pergamum, founded by Aedesius, a pupil of Iamblichus, made perhaps the least contribution to the philosophical development of Neoplatonism, but it was not entirely given over to theurgy. Its greatest convert was the emperor Julian, called by Christians the “Apostate”; in that capacity he achieved great notoriety, but philosophically he is of no importance. By the end of the 4th century AD the Platonic Academy at Athens had been reestablished and had become an institute for Neoplatonic teaching and research following the tradition of Iamblichus. It was particularly fervent and open in its paganism and attracted Christian hostility. Though maintaining itself for a surprisingly long time against this hostility, it eventually yielded to it and was probably closed by Justinian in AD 529. In the interim, however, it had produced the greatest and most influential systematic expositor of later Neoplatonism, Proclus (see above). The head of the school at the time of its closing, Damascius, was also a notable philosopher. Another centre of Neoplatonism flourished at Gaza during the 5th and early 6th centuries; it was already Christian in its inspiration, though some of its members studied with the pagan Ammonius (see below). The school of Alexandria in the 5th and 6th centuries does not seem to have differed very much from that of Athens, either in its fundamental philosophical outlook or in the main outline of its doctrines. In fact there was much interchange between the two. The Athenian Syrianus taught the Alexandrian Hermias, whose son Ammonius (Ammonius Hermiae) was taught by Proclus. Ammonius (died c. 520) was the most influential of the Alexandrian Platonists. His expositions of Aristotle were published mainly in the commentaries of the Christian heretic John Philoponus (late 5th to mid-6th century). Simplicius (Simplicius Of Cilicia), the other great Aristotelian commentator, worked at Athens but, like Damascius, had studied with Ammonius. The Alexandrian concentration on Aristotle, which produced a vast body of learned but Neoplatonically coloured commentary on his treatises, has often been attributed to Christian pressure and attempts to compromise with the church; it may equally well have been due to the quality and extent of Proclus' published work on Plato. Though Philoponus' later philosophical work contains important Christian modifications, an openly pagan (and very inferior) philosopher, Olympiodorus (Olympiodorus The Younger), was still teaching at Alexandria well into the second half of the 6th century. Finally, in the 7th century, under Heraclius, after philosophical teaching had passed peacefully into Christian hands, the last known Alexandrian philosopher, the Christian Stephanus, was called to teach in the University of Constantinople.

Platonism in the world of revealed (revelation) religions

Early Jewish (Judaism) Platonism
      Well before the beginning of the Christian Era, Jews with some Greek education had begun to make casual use of popular Greek philosophy in expounding their revealed religion: there are traces of this in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. In Paul's speech to the Areopagus in Acts 17, commonplaces of Stoic philosophy were employed for apologetic purposes. But, as far as is known, the first Jew who was really well-read in Greek philosophy and used it extensively in the exposition and defense of his traditional religion was Philo Judaeus (Philo of Alexandria [c. 15 BC–after AD 45]), an older contemporary of St. Paul. Philo expressed his philosophical religion in the form of lengthy allegorical commentaries on the Jewish Scriptures, especially on Genesis. In these he showed to his own satisfaction that the ancient revelation given to Moses accorded with the teaching of the best Greek philosophers, which, in his view, was later and derivative. The Greek philosophy that he preferred and found to be most in accordance with revelation was an early form of Middle Platonism. Philo was neither approved of nor read by later orthodox Jews, but his influence on Greek-speaking and Greek-educated Christians from the 2nd century AD was great; and in important ways he determined the tone of their religious speculation.

Ancient and medieval Christian Platonism
      Like Philo, the Christian Platonists gave primacy to revelation and regarded Platonic philosophy as the best available instrument for understanding and defending the teachings of Scripture and church tradition. But, also like Philo, they did not believe that truth could conflict with truth and were confident that all that was rationally certain in Platonic speculation would prove to be in perfect accordance with the Christian revelation. Their unhistorical approach and unscholarly methods of exegesis of texts, both pagan and Christian, facilitated this confidence. The general attitude of Christian Platonists was one of relatively moderate and humane otherworldliness (the cruder sorts of Christian otherworldliness and hatred of the body seem to derive from non-Platonic and non-Greek sources). They stressed the transcendence of God though, by insisting that it is a transcendence that is also the deepest immanence, they acknowledged his intimate presence within the world as well. They took a dualistic (dualism) view of soul and body (mind–body dualism) (though accepting bodily resurrection) and emphasized the primacy of the spiritual, while insisting on the goodness of God's material creation.

      From the middle of the 2nd century AD Christians who had some training in Greek philosophy began to feel the need to express their faith in its terms, both for their own intellectual satisfaction and in order to convert educated pagans. The philosophy that suited them best was Platonism. Though Stoicism had exerted a considerable influence on Christian ethical thinking (which has persisted to modern times), Stoic corporealism—the belief that God and the soul are bodies of a subtle and peculiar kind—repelled most Christians, and Stoic pantheism was incompatible with Christianity. The Platonism that the first Christian thinkers knew was of course Middle Platonism, not yet Neoplatonism. Its relatively straightforward theism and high moral tone suited their purposes excellently; and the influence of this older form of Platonism persisted through the 4th century and beyond, even after the works of Plotinus and Porphyry began to be read by Christians.

      The first Christian to use Greek philosophy in the service of the Christian faith was Justin Martyr (Justin Martyr, Saint) (martyred c. 165), whose passionate rejection of Greek polytheism, combined with an open and positive acceptance of the essentials of Platonic religious philosophy and an unshakable confidence in its harmony with Christian teaching, was to remain characteristic of the Christian Platonist tradition. This was carried on in the Greek-speaking world by Clement of Alexandria (Clement of Alexandria, Saint) (c. 150–c. 215), a persuasive Christian humanist, and by the greatest of the Alexandrian Christian teachers, Origen (c. 185–254). Although Origen was consciously more hostile to and critical of Platonic philosophy than either Justin or Clement, he was, nonetheless, more deeply affected by it. He produced a synthesis of Christianity and late Middle Platonism of remarkable originality and power, which is the first great Christian philosophical theology. In spite of subsequent condemnations of some of his alleged views, his influence on Christian thought was strong and lasting. The Greek philosophical theology that developed during the Trinitarian (Trinity) controversies over the relationships among the persons of the Godhead, which were settled at the ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), owed a great deal to Origen on both sides, orthodox and heretical. Its most important representatives on the orthodox side were the three Christian Platonist theologians of Cappadocia, Basil of Caesarea (c. 329–379), Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330–c. 389), and Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa (Gregory of Nyssa, Saint) (c. 335–c. 394). Of these three, Gregory of Nyssa was the most powerful and original thinker (as well as the closest to Origen). He was the first great theologian of mystical experience, at once Platonic and profoundly Christian, and he exerted a strong influence on later Greek Christian thought.

      At some time between the period of the Cappadocian Fathers and the early years of the 6th century, a new turn was given to Christian Platonism by the remarkable writer who chose to publish his works under the name of St. Paul's convert at Athens, Dionysius the Areopagite. The kind of Platonism that the Pseudo-Dionysius (Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite) employed for his theological purposes was the 5th-century Neoplatonism that is best represented by Proclus (see above The later Neoplatonists (Platonism)). Almost everything about this mysterious author is vigorously disputed by scholars. But there can be no doubt about the influence that his system of the hierarchic universe exerted upon later Christian thought; his vision of man's ascent through it—carried up by divine love, to pass beyond all hierarchy and all knowledge into the darkness of the mystical union with God—had its impact both in the East, where one of the greatest of Greek Christian Platonist thinkers, Maximus the Confessor (Maximus the Confessor, Saint) (c. 580–662), was deeply influenced by the Dionysian writings and commented extensively upon them, and in the West, where they became known and were translated into Latin in the 9th century. In the Latin West there was more than one kind of Christian Platonism. An impressive and extremely difficult philosophical theology, employing ideas approximating Porphyry's version of Neoplatonism to explain and defend the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, was produced in the second half of the 4th century by the rhetorician and grammarian Marius Victorinus. A strong and simple Platonic theism and morality, which had a great influence in the Middle Ages, was nobly expressed in the final work of the last great philosopher-statesman of the ancient world, Boethius (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus) (c. 470–524). This was the Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison while its author was under sentence of death. Boethius was also influential in the medieval West through his translations of Aristotle's logical works, especially the Categories together with Porphyry's Isagoge (“Introduction”), on which he in turn produced two commentaries. But the Christian Platonism that had the widest, deepest, and most lasting influence in the West was that of St. Augustine (Augustine, Saint) of Hippo (354–430).

Augustinian Platonism
      Each of the great Christian Platonists understood Platonism and applied it to the understanding of his faith in his own individual way, and of no one of them was this truer than of Augustine with his extremely strong personality and distinctive religious history. Augustine's thought was not merely a subspecies of Christian Platonism but something unique—Augustinianism. Nonetheless, the reading of Plotinus and Porphyry (in Latin translations) had a decisive influence on his religious and intellectual development, and he was more deeply and directly affected by Neoplatonism than any of his Western contemporaries and successors.

      In his anthropology Augustine was firmly Platonist, insisting on the soul's superiority to and independence of the body. For him, as for Plotinus and Porphyry, it was axiomatic that body could not act on soul, for soul was superior in the hierarchy of reality, and the inferior cannot act on the superior. This affected both his ethical doctrine and his epistemology. On the other hand, he differed from the philosophers who influenced him in his insistence that not only man (human being) but higher spiritual beings as well are mutable and peccable, liable to sin and fall, and in his consequent stress on the necessity of divine grace. His crucial doctrine that man's destiny is determined by the right direction of love, though profoundly original, was a development rather than a contradiction of Platonism. His very original theology of history and his view of human society, however, owed little to Plotinus and Porphyry, whose interests lay elsewhere.

      In his epistemology Augustine was Neoplatonic, especially in the subjectivity of his doctrine of illumination—in its insistence that in spite of the fact that God is exterior to man, men's minds are aware of him because of his direct action on them (expressed in terms of the shining of his light on the mind, or sometimes of teaching) and not as the result of reasoning from sense experience. For a Platonist, as has been said, body cannot act upon soul. Sense experience, therefore, though genuinely informative on its own level, cannot be a basis for metaphysical or religious thinking. This must be the result of the presence in the soul of higher realities and their action upon it. In Plotinus the illumination of the soul by Intellect and the One was the permanent cause of man's ability to know eternal reality; and Augustine was at this point very close to Plotinus, though for him there was a much sharper distinction between Creator and creature, and the personal relationship between God and the soul was much more strongly stressed.

      In his theology, insofar as Augustine's thought about God was Platonic, he conformed fairly closely to the general pattern of Christian Platonism; it was Middle Platonic rather than Neoplatonic in that God could not be the One beyond Intellect and Being but was the supreme reality in whose creative mind were the Platonic Forms, the eternal patterns or regulative principles of all creation. Perhaps the most distinctive influence of Plotinian Neoplatonism on Augustine's thinking about God was in his Trinitarian theology. He started with the unity of God and continually insisted upon it, unlike Greek Christian thinkers, who started with the Three Persons perfectly united; and because he thought that something like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was to be found in Plotinus and Porphyry, he tended to regard it as a philosophical doctrine and tried to make philosophical sense of it to a greater extent than the Greek Fathers did. His last and most important and influential attempt to do so was in his treatise On the Trinity, with its discovery of analogies to the divine mystery in the self-directed, internal activities of the soul.

Medieval (Middle Ages) Platonism
      With the gradual revival of philosophical thinking in the West that began in the Carolingian period (late 8th–9th centuries), the history of Platonism becomes extremely complex. Only a sketch distinguishing the main streams of a more or less Platonic tradition is given here.

      In the 4th century the Christian exegete Calcidius (Chalcidius) prepared a commentary on Plato's Timaeus, which exerted an important influence on the medieval interpretation of the Timaeus. A Christian Platonic theism of the type of which Boethius is the finest example thus arose; based on a reading of the Timaeus with Christian eyes, it continued to have a strong influence in the Middle Ages, especially in the earlier period. This kind of theism, issuing in a strongly positive view of God's creation and a nobly austere but humane view of man's duty and destiny, was particularly apparent in the Christian humanism of the School of Chartres (12th century).

      The widest, deepest, and most persistent Christian Platonist influence in the Latin West was that of Augustine (see above Augustinian Platonism). Augustinianism in a variety of forms—often stiffened, exaggerated, or distorted—persisted throughout the Middle Ages and survived the “recovery of Aristotle” (see below). In the later Middle Ages Augustine's influence was particularly strong in the Franciscan school, though not confined to it. But the greatest and most influential of medieval thinkers deeply influenced by Augustine was Anselm of Canterbury (Anselm of Canterbury, Saint) (1033/34–1109), the originator (probably on the basis of suggestions in Augustine) of the still much discussed “ontological argument” for the existence of God (see religion, philosophy of) and a philosopher whose humility, openness, and readiness to consider objections had a genuinely Socratic quality.

      One of the boldest and most original thinkers of medieval Europe was John Scotus Erigena (Erigena, John Scotus) (810–c. 877), who introduced to the West the Greek Christian Platonist tradition (see above Patristic Platonism), as it had been developed by Gregory of Nyssa, the Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus the Confessor. His views were much disapproved of by the Western church; and his great philosophical work, the Periphyseon (usually known as De divisione naturae [On the Division of Nature]), was not much read and ceased to be copied after his condemnation in 1210. But a considerable part of the text circulated in the form of anonymous glosses to the Latin translations of the Pseudo-Dionysius (of which the first adequate translation was by Erigena himself); and in this way his thought influenced both the tradition of Western mysticism, which derived from the Pseudo-Dionysius, and 13th-century Scholasticism, for which St. Paul's supposed disciple was still a major authority.

      There is no more superficial and misleading generalization in the history of philosophy than that which sharply opposes “Christian Platonism” and “Christian Aristotelianism.” To be sure, the recovery of the authentic thought of Aristotle through Latin translations of his works in the 12th and 13th centuries was indeed a major event in the history of philosophy. But Platonism and Aristotelianism have never been tidily separated in the history of European thought. There was already a strong Aristotelian element in Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. Byzantine theologians (in the East) from the 6th century AD onward were as Aristotelian as anybody in western Europe in the 13th century. Thirteenth-century “Aristotelian” Scholastics, though much preoccupied with the new translations of Aristotle and their philosophical and theological implications, were still deeply influenced by Augustine, Boethius, and the Pseudo-Dionysius (with glosses derived from Erigena). And the Islāmic philosophy (Arabic philosophy), to be mentioned below, with which they had to grapple, was as much Neoplatonist as it was Aristotelian. Further, they also were influenced by Latin translations of two pseudo-Aristotelian works in Arabic, based on Neoplatonic sources (see the section immediately below) as well as by those of some of the shorter works of Proclus (see above The later Neoplatonists (Platonism)). It has been said that “Aquinas is closer to Plotinus than to the real Aristotle,” and there is some truth in this judgment.

Islāmic and medieval Jewish (Judaism) philosophy
      After the Muslim conquest of Syria and Egypt, there began a great work of translation of the texts that had been studied in the late Greek philosophical schools—including a number of dialogues of Plato and Neoplatonic treatises, as well as the works of Aristotle and a number of the Alexandrian Neoplatonist commentaries on them. The translations—partly from Greek, partly from Syriac versions of the Greek texts—were made between about 800 and 1000. On the basis of these translated texts an impressive development of Islāmic theology and philosophy took place, strongly influenced by Neoplatonism, though Aristotelian influence also became increasingly important. An interesting feature of this Islāmic philosophy, which distinguished it from the familiar Neoplatonism, was the reappearance in al-Fārābī (Fārābī, al-) and Averroës of an interest in the political and social side of Plato's thought. The tradition may be seen in four great Muslim philosophers, the Arab al-Kindī (Kindī, Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq aṣ-Ṣabāḥ, al-) (c. 800–870), the Turk al-Fārābī (c. 878–c. 950), and two who deeply influenced the medieval West, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980–1037) from Persia and Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126–98) from Muslim Spain. Of these, Avicenna was perhaps the more Platonist, and Averroës, whose fame and influence rested primarily on his commentaries on Aristotle, was the more Aristotelian although the latter's commentaries were written on the basis of Greek ones, some of whose authors had used them as a vehicle for Neoplatonism. Medieval Jewish philosophy, which also developed within this Muslim intellectual tradition, reflected—at least in its earlier phases—strong Neoplatonic influence. This is especially true of the thought of the early figure Isaac Israeli (Israeli, Isaac ben Solomon) (mid-9th–mid-10th century), whose Platonism was pervasive, though derivative and less than fully coherent, and the first great Jewish philosopher of Muslim Spain, Avicebron ( Ibn Gabirol, c. 1022–c. 1058/70), whose Platonism may have been derived from Israeli's. Avicebron's Fons vitae (Fountain of Life) was also a major influence on scholastic philosophers.

Platonism from the Renaissance to modern times
      From the 15th century onward the dialogues of Plato and a large number of Middle Platonist and Neoplatonist works, above all the Enneads of Plotinus, became available in the original Greek in western Europe. As a result of this new acquaintance with the original texts, Platonic influences on Renaissance and post-Renaissance thought became even more complex and difficult to recognize than those on medieval thought. Older Neoplatonically influenced traditions (notably Augustinianism) persisted, and new ones developed from the direct reading of the Neoplatonic texts. And, at least from the time of Leibniz (1646–1716), European thinkers realized that the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato was in some ways a distorted and one-sided one; hence they sometimes developed their own allegedly more authentic understandings of Plato on the basis of direct readings of such of his varied works as they found to be philosophically congenial. Only a few of the more interesting Platonic influences can be indicated here.

      In spite of its deep influence on Greek Christian thinkers, Platonism was regarded with profound suspicion by the Byzantine Orthodox Church (Eastern Orthodoxy). The suspicion reflected its association in the Byzantine ecclesiastical mind with the militant paganism of the Athenian Neoplatonists (see above The later Neoplatonists (Platonism)). Nonetheless, it survived in the Byzantine world—generally underground but with an overt revival in the 11th century, in which the most notable figures were the broadly erudite Michael Psellus (Psellus, Michael), who did much to enhance the prestige of philosophy, and his rival, the syncretistic Aristotelian commentator John Italus (Italus, John). In the following century Eustratius, metropolitan of Nicaea, and Michael of Ephesus continued the tradition of writing Neoplatonic commentary on Aristotle, plugging some of the gaps left by the Alexandrian commentators. In the 15th century the last known Byzantine philosopher, George Gemistus Plethon (Gemistus Plethon, George), a passionate pagan Platonist in the manner of Proclus, traveled to Italy (1438–39) and persuaded Cosimo de' Medici to sponsor a Platonic Academy at Florence, of which the greatest figures to emerge were its founder, Marsilio Ficino (Ficino, Marsilio) (1433–99), who translated all of Plato and Plotinus into Latin, the first complete version of either in a Western language, and the humanist Pico della Mirandola (Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Conte Di Concordia) (1463–94), author of the influential Oration on the Dignity of Man. Ficino's Platonic Theology: On the Immortality of Souls contains not only Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy but also elements drawn from medieval Aristotelianism, Cicero, Augustine, and Italian humanist writers. In spite of the paganism of Plethon, the Platonism of the Florentine Academy was a Christian one of a humane and liberal kind. This was probably at least partly due to the influence in Italy of Nicholas Of Cusa (1401–64), who worked out his own very original version of Christian Platonism, influenced by the Pseudo-Dionysius, Erigena, and the German mystical tradition (as in Meister Eckehart).

      The influence of the Platonism of the Florentine Academy was quite extensive; it may be seen not only in the writings of later Italian philosophers but also in the iconography of Italian Renaissance painting and in 16th-century French literature and was particularly marked in England. Perhaps the most impressive development of this post-Renaissance movement lay in the works of the Cambridge Platonists (late 17th century). Since their time a tradition of liberal Christian Platonism has persisted in England. Moreover, there have been other notable traditions of Platonically influenced Christian thought in Europe. One that deserves to be better known is that of the outstanding French philosopher of “action” Maurice Blondel (Blondel, Maurice) (1861–1949), who found a prominent place in his system for the formation of ideas—interpreted as an important species of action that faithfully reflects the eternal order of reality. Blondel's philosophy has had a widespread influence, mainly among Catholic philosophers dissatisfied with Neoscholasticism. Another French philosopher much influenced by Platonism, in its Plotinian form, was Henri Bergson (Bergson, Henri) (1859–1941), whose thought attracted much attention during and just after his lifetime but has been largely neglected since.

      The rediscovery of Proclus by the great German Idealist G.W.F. Hegel (Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) (1770–1831) had an important influence on his thought and so on the whole history of 19th-century Idealist (Idealism) philosophy. His contemporary F.W.J. von Schelling (Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von) (1775–1854) was also strongly influenced by Neoplatonism, in his case that of Plotinus. Idealism, however, should not be interpreted as revived Neoplatonism, nor Neoplatonism as an anticipation of Idealism. But the historical influence of Neoplatonism on Idealist thought is indisputable. There was a strong reaction against Hegel's influence in some quarters, and this reaction led to a corresponding depreciation of Neoplatonism though the tradition of Idealism continued in the work of F.H. Bradley and John Ellis McTaggart in England and Josiah Royce in the United States. But 20th-century continental European philosophers and scholars were, until the 1960s, readier than English-speaking ones to take a serious interest in Neoplatonism. The latter, with some notable exceptions, maintained a hostile attitude toward that philosophy which they wrongly regarded not only as “decadent” but also as “mystical,” and thus outside the true tradition of Greek philosophy.

      The influence of the sort of Christian Platonism mentioned above on English literature, and especially on English poetry, has been wide and deep. But there has also been a strongly anti-Christian Neoplatonic influence, that of Thomas Taylor “the Platonist” (1758–1835), who published translations of Plato, Aristotle, and a large number of Neoplatonic works in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Taylor was as militant in his pagan Platonism as was Gemistus Plethon. His ideas had a strong influence on the English Romantics. In the poetry of William Blake (Blake, William), who eventually succeeded in reconciling Taylor's paganism with his own very original version of Christianity, much of the symbolism is Neoplatonic. The Platonism of the English Romantic poets Coleridge (Coleridge, Samuel Taylor) and Shelley (Shelley, Percy Bysshe) also derives from Taylor, although both were able to read the original texts. Taylor also deeply influenced Emerson and his circle in America. Later, in the early 20th century, the influence of Taylor's writings was again apparent in the Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats (Yeats, William Butler), who in his later poems made use of Stephen MacKenna's then new translation of Plotinus.

      The foremost process philosopher (process philosophy) (an adherent of a view emphasizing the elements of becoming, change, and novelty in experienced reality), Alfred North Whitehead (Whitehead, Alfred North) (1861–1947), perhaps because of his original and abiding concern with mathematical philosophy, was interested in Plato (though not, apparently, in the Neoplatonists); and his reading of the Timaeus in particular contributed something to the metaphysical system of his last period and especially to his concept of a God who does not timelessly transcend process but is in some way involved in it. Whitehead is an excellent example of a Platonically influenced thinker whose development of Plato's own thought proceeded along lines completely opposed to Neoplatonism.

Evaluation of Platonism
      The essential point at issue between Platonists and their opponents through the centuries has been the existence (in some sense) of a spiritual or intelligible reality that is independent of the world, and is the ultimate origin of both existence and values. This is a very rough generalization that does not apply to the Skeptical Academy (see above Greek Platonism from Aristotle through Middle Platonism (Platonism)) or do full justice to the thought of the modern skeptical Platonist George Santayana. Platonists have understood this central doctrine in a great variety of ways and defended it with a great variety of arguments. But whenever it has been strongly held, it seems to have been by a faith depending on some sort of experience rather than simply on the conclusion of an argument. Its opponents have generally followed the lines of attack laid down by Aristotle (and to some extent anticipated by Plato in the first part of his Parmenides), that the doctrine involves the duplication of reality and the postulation of entities for the existence of which no sufficient evidence or arguments can be offered and the relationship of which to the world of sense experience cannot be intelligibly stated. The argument continues and will perhaps never finally be settled, but there can be no doubt about the central importance of Platonism in the history of European thought.

A. Hilary Armstrong Henry J. Blumenthal

Additional Reading
There are few modern English translations of the basic works of Neoplatonism, though more will appear as a result of a project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. by Stephen Mackenna, 3rd ed. rev. by B.S. Page (1962), is not entirely satisfactory; it is being replaced by the Loeb Classical Library edition, A.H. Armstrong (trans.), Plotinus (1966– ), 5 vol. having appeared to 1986. Other basic works include Proclus, The Elements of Theology, trans. by E.R. Dodds, 2nd ed. (1963), A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, trans. by Glenn R. Morrow (1970), and Proclus: Alcibiades I, trans. by William O'Neill, 2nd ed. (1971). French translations of Proclus' commentaries have been made by A.J. Festugière, Commentaire sur le Timée, 2 vol. (1966–68), and Commentaire sur la République, 3 vol. (1970). See also Proclus, Théologie platonicienne, trans. by H.D. Saffrey and L.G. Westerink (1968– ), 4 vol. having appeared to 1986; Julianus, Oracles chaldaïques, trans. by Édouard des Places (1971); and Iamblichus, Les Mystères d'Egypte, trans. by Édouard des Places (1966). A good source of information on the Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophers up to and including Anselm is The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. by A.H. Armstrong (1967; reprinted with revised bibliographies, 1970). The bibliographies of this work include a list of the editions of ancient and medieval sources (complete and fragmentary), with the more important translations and modern works. Paul Shorey, Platonism, Ancient and Modern (1938), remains an excellent introduction, but much of the important work on the period between Plato and Plotinus is still confined to technical articles; this is also true of later Neoplatonism. J.N. Findlay, Plato and Platonism: An Introduction (1978), argues that Plato developed a complete metaphysical system. John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (U.K. title, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220, 1977), offers a clear and comprehensive account of its subject; it gives the background to the best general book on ancient Neoplatonism, R.T. Wallis, Neo-Platonism (1972). Many of the important problems in Plotinus are discussed by J.M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (1967, reprinted 1977). Certain key ideas are traced in Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (1983). James A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm: Theories of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists (1976), is a study of Neoplatonic literary theory. A collection of articles on pagan and early Christian Neoplatonism may be found in H.J. Blumenthal and R.A. Markus (eds.), Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought (1981); a similar collection, extending to modern times, is Dominic J. O'Meara (ed.), Neoplatonism and Christian Thought (1982). For the earlier Judeo-Christian tradition, see Erwin R. Goodenough, An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, 2nd ed. rev. (1963); and Harry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (1966, reprinted 1984). An excellent short summary of the thought of St. Augustine, with due attention to the Platonist elements, is Chadwick's Augustine (1986), and his Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (1981), gives an account of the further development of Western Neoplatonism and includes a study of the development of Neoplatonic logic. For medieval Platonism, see Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2, Die patristische und scholastische Philosophie, ed. by Bernhard Geyer, 12th ed. (1951); Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955, reissued 1980), with valuable bibliographical material; David Knowles, The Evolution of Mediaeval Thought (1962); Gordon Leff, Mediaeval Thought: St. Augustine to Ockham (1958, reprinted 1983); and Werner Beierwaltes (ed.), Platonismus in der Philosophie des Mittelalters (1969), a collection of important articles. All these works to some extent cover the later medieval period. On Islāmic philosophy see the brief account in W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An Extended Survey, 2nd ed. (1985). There is no satisfactory longer treatment in English, but for Avicenna, see Soheil M. Afnan, Avicenna: His Life and Works (1953, reprinted 1980). A sample of the Platonist contribution to Islāmic thought may be seen in Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (1975; originally published in German, 1965). The best survey of Platonism in medieval Jewish philosophy is Georges Vajda, “Le Néoplatonisme dans la pensée juive du moyen âge,” in G.E. Weil (ed.), Mélange Georges Vajda (1982), pp. 407–422. For Neoplatonic movements in Jewish Hellenistic and medieval philosophy, see Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig, trans. from Hebrew (1964, reissued 1973). D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (1972), reviews the Christian apologetic tradition of the Renaissance.On Byzantine Platonism, see J.M. Hussey, Church & Learning in the Byzantine Empire, 867–1185 (1937, reissued 1963); and Basile Tatakis, La Philosophie byzantine, 2nd ed. (1959). A good short general account of Renaissance Platonism in English is that by Frederick C. Copleston, History of Philosophy, vol. 3, ch. 12 and 15 (1953); see also the essays in Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanistic Strains (1961, reprinted 1980). A good short introduction to Renaissance Platonism in England is Ernst Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England (1953, reissued 1970; originally published in German, 1932). Gerald R. Cragg (ed.), The Cambridge Platonists (1968, reprinted 1985), is an excellent anthology, with good introductions and notes; see also C.A. Patrides (ed.), The Cambridge Platonists (1969, reissued 1980). On English Christian Platonism, see William Ralph Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought (1926, reprinted 1977). On the influence of Thomas Taylor, see Thomas Taylor, the Platonist: Selected Writings, ed. by Kathleen Raine and George Mills Harper (1969); and F.A.C. Wilson, W.B. Yeats and Tradition (1958). Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Plato and Socrates: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1958–1973 (1978), contains 4,600 unannotated entries.A. Hilary Armstrong Henry J. Blumenthal

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • platonism — PLATONÍSM s.n. Concepţie filozofică idealist obiectivă a lui Platon şi a adepţilor săi, după care lumea ideilor ar fi singura realitate adevărată, iar lumea materială o copie sensibilă şi schimbătoare a celei dintâi. – Din fr. platonisme. Trimis… …   Dicționar Român

  • Platonism — Pla to*nism, n. [Cf. F. Platonisme.] 1. The doctrines or philosophy by Plato or of his followers. [1913 Webster] Note: Plato believed God to be an infinitely wise, just, and powerful Spirit; and also that he formed the visible universe out of… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • Platonism — [plāt′ n iz΄əm] n. [ModL platonismus] 1. the philosophy of Plato or his school; esp., the doctrine holding that objects of perception are real insofar as they imitate or participate in an independent realm of immutable essences, ideas, or logical …   English World dictionary

  • Platonism — Part of a series on …   Wikipedia

  • Platonism — After the death of Plato (347 BCE), his philosophical teachings were continued into the Hellenistic era by his followers and were an influence on Judaism in the Book of Wisdom. Mankind is given immortality because human beings are made in the… …   Dictionary of the Bible

  • Platonism — the school of philosophy founded by Plato. Often used to refer to Platonic idealism, the belief that the entities of the phenomenal world are imperfect reflections of an ideal truth. In metaphysics sometimes used to mean the claim that universals …   Mini philosophy glossary

  • Platonism in the Renaissance — Platonism underwent a revival in the Renaissance, as part of a general revival of interest in Classical antiquity. Interest in Platonism was especially strong in Florence under the Medici. During the sessions at Florence of the Council of Ferrara …   Wikipedia

  • Platonism — noun Date: circa 1570 1. a. the philosophy of Plato stressing especially that actual things are copies of transcendent ideas and that these ideas are the objects of true knowledge apprehended by reminiscence b. Neoplatonism 2. platonic love •… …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • Platonism — noun The philosophy of Plato …   Wiktionary

  • Platonism — The view taken especially from the middle dialogues of Plato that abstract objects, such as those of mathematics, or concepts such as the concept of number or justice, are real, independent, timeless, and objective entities. Numbers stand to… …   Philosophy dictionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”