Ask A Word

Encyclopedia: Neoplatonism, Talk:Neoplatonism, Category:Neoplatonism, Hypostasis (Neoplatonism), Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, Talk:Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, User:Bmorton3/First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

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 was also influenced by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius. 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.

Platonism and Neoplatonism

The concept of the One was not as clearly defined in Plato's Timaeus as it later was by Plotinus' Enneads. The afterlife of a philosopher as defined by Socrates in Phaedo is also different than the afterlife of the person or soul in the Enneads. The soul returns to the One in Plotinus. Whereas in Phaedo there are different afterlifes one could be re-incarnated, one could receive punishment, one could go to Hades to be with the heroes of old (Socrates' ideal afterlife for philosophers).

Teachings

Neoplatonism is generally a religious philosophy, and some neoplatonists such as Pseudo-Dionysius can be considered mystics. A form of idealistic monism also called theistic monism and combines elements of Polytheism (see Monistic-polytheism). 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.

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

Central tenets of Neoplatonism, such as the absence of good being the source of evil, served as a philosophical interim for the Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo on his journey from dualistic Manichaeism to Christianity. When writing his treatise 'On True Religion' several years after his 387 baptism, Augustine's Christianity was still tempered by Neoplatonism, but he eventually decided to abandon Neoplatonism altogether in favor of a Christianity based on his own reading of Scripture.

Many other Christians were influenced by Neoplatonism, especially in their identifying the Neoplatonic monad or One as God. The most influential of these was the fifth-century author known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, (whose works were translated by John Scotus in the 9th century for the west) and proved significant for both the Eastern Orthodox and Western branches of Christianity. Neoplatonism also had links with Gnosticism, which Plotinus rebuked in his ninth tractate of the second Enneads: "Against Those That Affirm The Creator of The Kosmos and The Kosmos Itself to Be Evil" (generally known as "Against The Gnostics").

Due to their belief being grounded in Platonic thought, the Neoplatonists would have rejected gnosticism's vilification of Plato's demiurge, the creator of the material world or cosmos discussed in the Timaeus. Furthermore, although Neoplatonism has been referred to as orthodox Platonic philosophy by scholars like Professor http://www.unl.edu/classics/faculty/turner/triadaft.htm John D. Turner, this reference may be due in part to Plotinus' attempt to clarify certain misinterpretations of Platonic philosophy, through his Enneads. Teaching which Plotinus had believed where corrupted by the followers of gnosticism.

In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonist ideas influenced Jewish thinkers, such as the Kabbalist Isaac the Blind, and the Jewish Neoplatonic philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol, who modified it in the light of their own monotheism. Neoplatonist ideas also influenced Islamic and Sufi thinkers such as al Farabi and 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 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, the Medici, Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli. Thomas Taylor, "The English Platonist", wrote extensively on Platonism and translated almost the entire Platonic and Plotinian corpora 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 traditionshttp://www.cejournal.org/GRD/Realities.htm.

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 http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/BMCR-L/2001/0050.php 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 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/courses/535/reviews/Turner-CP.htm Kevin Corrigan of the University of Saskatchewan and this conclusion is supported by Professor 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 Neoplatonic 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)