Neoplatonism

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Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists. Neoplatonists considered themselves simply "Platonists", and the modern distinction is due to the perception that their philosophy contained enough unique interpretations of Plato to make it substantively different from what Plato wrote and believed.

Neoplatonism took definitive shape with the philosopher Plotinus, who claimed to have received his teachings from Ammonius Saccas, a dock worker and philosopher in Alexandria. Plotinus's student Porphyry assembled his teachings into the six Enneads.

Subsequent Neoplatonic philosophers included Hypatia of Alexandria, Iamblichus, Proclus, Hierocles of Alexandria, Simplicius of Cilicia, and Damascius, who wrote On First Principles. Born in Damascus, he was the last teacher of Neoplatonism at Athens. Neoplatonism strongly influenced Christian thinkers (such as Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Bonaventura). Neoplatonism was also present in medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as al-Farabi and Maimonides, and experienced a revival in the Renaissance with the acquisition and translation of Greek and Arabic Neoplatonic texts.

Teachings

Neoplatonism is a form of idealistic monism. Plotinus taught the existence of an ineffable and transcendent One, from which emanated the rest of the universe as a sequence of lesser beings. Later Neoplatonic philosophers, especially Iamblichus, added hundreds of intermediate gods, angels and demons, and other beings as emanations between the One and humanity. Plotinus' system was much simpler in comparison.

Neoplatonists believed human perfection and happiness were attainable in this world, without awaiting an afterlife. Perfection and happiness— seen as synonymous— could be achieved through philosophical contemplation.

They did not believe in an independent existence of evil. They compared it to darkness, which does not exist in itself, but only as the absence of light. So too, evil is simply the absence of good. Things are good insofar as they exist. They are evil only insofar as they are imperfect, lacking some good that they should have. It is also a cornerstone of Neoplatonism to teach that all people return to the Source. The Source, Absolute or One, is what all things spring from and as a superconsciousness is where all things return. It can be said that all consciousness is wiped clean and returned to a blank slate when returning to the source.

Early Christian and Medieval Neoplatonism

Ideas of Neoplatonism such as evil as the privation of good influenced Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo, upon learning about it, to abandon dualistic Manichaeism and convert to Christianity. When, three or four years after his 387 baptism, he wrote his treatise On True Religion, he was still thinking of Christianity in Neoplatonic terms. However, after he was ordained priest and bishop and had acquired greater familiarity with Scripture, he noted contradictions between Neoplatonism and Christianity.

Nevertheless, many Christians were influenced by Neoplatonism. They identified the One as God. The most important and influential of them was the fifth century author known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. His works were significant for both Eastern Orthodox and Western branches of Christiantiy. John Scotus's ninth century Latin translation of the writing of pseudo-Dionysius was widely studied during the Middle Ages. Neoplatonism also had links with the belief systems known as Gnosticism. Plotinus, however, rebuked Gnosticism in the ninth tractate of the second Enneads: "Against Those That Affirm The Creator of The Kosmos and The Kosmos Itself to Be Evil" (generally quoted as "Against The Gnostics"). Being grounded in platonic thought, the Neoplatonists would have rejected the gnostic vilification of Plato's demiurge, a deity discussed in Timaeus.

In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonist ideas influenced the thinking of Jewish Kabbalists, such as Isaac the Blind. However, the Kabbalists modified Neoplatonism according to their own monotheistic belief. A famous Jewish Neoplatonic philosopher from the early Middle Ages was Solomon ibn Gabirol. During this period, Neoplatonist ideas also influenced Islamic and Sufi thinkers such as al Farabi and through him Avicenna.

Neoplatonism survived in the Eastern Christian Church as an independent tradition and was reintroduced to the west by Plethon.

Renaissance Neoplatonism

In western Europe, Neoplatonism was revived in the Italian Renaissance by figures such as Marsilio Ficino, the Medici and Sandro Botticelli. Thomas Taylor, "The English Platonist", wrote extensively on Platonism and translated almost the entire Platonic corpus into English.

Modern Neoplatonism

In the essay "Inner and Outer Realities: Jean Gebser in a Cultural/Historical Perspective", Integral philosopher Allan Combs claims that ten modern thinkers can be called Neo-Platonists: Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, Emerson, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, Jean Gebser and the modern theorist Brian Goodwin. He sees these thinkers as participating in a tradition that can be distinguished from the empiricist, rationalist, dualist and materialist Western philosophical traditions^*.

Commentary on Parmenides

As Plotinus claimed that, since the academy and Plato taught via dialectical interaction between student and teacher, his works were the writing down of a long oral tradition. This remark has been given renewed attention due to some scholars calling into question The Anonymous Commentary on Plato's 'Parmenides' as being authored after Plotinus by his student Porphyry. It has recently been presented that the text is pre-Plotinian and pre-Porphyryian in origin by Kevin Corrigan of the University of Saskatchewan and this conclusion is supported by Dr John D Turner. This text contains a great many ideas that have been attributed to Plotinus and his students exclusively if the text was pre Plotinus then much of what is considered Neo Platonic would indeed be pre Plotinus.

Publications

Ruelle, an edition of On First Principles, (Paris, 1889)
Whittaker, The Neo-Platonists, (Cambridge, 1901)
Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Ed. L.P. Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Neoplatonic Philosophy. Introductory Readings. Trans. and ed. by John Dillon and Lloyd P. Gerson, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2004)

External links