Neoplatonism
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Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists. The term was first coined by Thomas Taylor in his translation of Plotinus' Enneads. Taylor, though not a scholar, was the first to translate Plotinus' works into English 1. 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. The Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Porphyry has been referred to as really being orthodox (neo)Platonic philosophy by scholars like Professor John D. Turner. To contrast it to later movements of Neoplatonism like the movements of Iamblichus and Proclus with embraced magical practices or theurgy as part of the souls development and return to the source. This could also be due to one possible motive of Plotinus, being to clarify some of the traditions in the teachings of Plato that had been misrepresented before Iamblichus (see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism).
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 of Apamea. 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.
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[edit] Platonism and Neoplatonism
The philosophers called Neoplatonists did not found a school as much as attempt to preserve the teachings of Plato. They regarded themselves as Platonists, pure and simple. 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 Monad or One in the Plotinus' works. 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).
[edit] Teachings
Neoplatonism is generally a religious philosophy, and neoplatonists can be considered mystics. Neoplatonism is 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 beings such as Gods, angels and demons, and other beings as mediators between the One and humanity. The Neoplatonist Gods are omni-perfect beings and do not display the usual amoral behaviour associated with their representations in the myths.
The Celestial Hierarchy
The One - God, The Good. Transcendent and ineffable.
The Hypercosmic Gods - Those which make Essence, Life and Soul
The Demiurge - The creator.
The Cosmic Gods - Those who make Being, Nature, and Matter. These include the Gods known to us from classical mythology.
Salvation
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. All things have energy as their essence. When people return to the Source, their energy returns to the One, Monad, or Source and is then recycled into the cosmos, where it can be broken up and then amalgamated into other things.
[edit] The Philosophers
Ammonius Saccas
Ammonius Saccas (birth unknown death ca. 265 AD) is a founder of Neoplatonism and the teacher of Plotinus. Little is known of the teacher other than both Christians (see Eusebius, Jerome, and Origen) and Neoplatonists (see Porphyry and Plotinus) claim him a teacher and founder of the Neoplatonic system. Porphyry stated in On the One School of Plato and Aristotle, that Ammonius' view was that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were in harmony. Eusebius and Jerome claimed him as a Christian until his death, where as Porphyry claimed he had renounced Christianity and embrace pagan philosophy.
Plotinus
Plotinus (Greek: Πλωτῖνος) (ca. 205–270) was a major philosopher in the ancient world and is widely considered the father of Neoplatonism. Much of our biographical information about him comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads. His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics.
Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity or distinction; likewise it is beyond all categories of being and non-being. The concept of "being" is derived by us from the objects of human experience, and is an attribute of such objects, but the infinite, transcendent One is beyond all such objects, and therefore is beyond the concepts that we derive from them. The One "cannot be any existing thing", and cannot be merely the sum of all such things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents".
Porphyry
Porphyry (Greek: Πορφύριος, c. A.D. 233– c. 309) was a Neoplatonist philosopher. He wrote widely on astrology, religion, philosophy, and musical theory. He produced a biography of his teacher, Plotinus. He is important in the history of mathematics because of his Life of Pythagoras, and his commentary on Euclid's Elements which was used by Pappus when he wrote his own commentary. [1]
Porphyry is also known as an opponent of Christianity and defender of Paganism; of his Adversus Christianos (Against the Christians) in 15 books, only fragments remain. He famously said, "The Gods have proclaimed Christ to have been most pious, but the Christians are a confused and vicious sect."
Iamblichus
Iamblichus, also known as Iamblichus Chalcidensis, (ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek: Ιάμβλιχος) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.
In Iamblichus' system the realm of divinities stretched from the original One down to material nature itself, where soul in fact descended into matter and became "embodied" as human beings. The world is thus peopled by a crowd of superhuman beings influencing natural events and possessing and communicating knowledge of the future, and who are all accessible to prayers and offerings.
Iamblichus had salvation as his final goal. The embodied soul was to return to divinity by performing certain rites, or theurgy, literally, 'divine-working'. Some translate this as "magic", but the modern connotations of the term do not exactly match what Iamblichus had in mind, which is more along the lines of religious ritual.
Proclus
Proclus Lycaeus (February 8, 412 – April 17, 485), surnamed "The Successor" or "diadochos" (Greek Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος Próklos ho Diádokhos), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Greek philosophers (see Damascius). His set forth one of the most elaborate, complex, and fully developed Neoplatonic systems.
The particular characteristic of Proclus' system is his insertion of a level of individual ones, called henads between the One itself and the divine Intellect, which is the second principle. The henads are beyond being, like the One itself, but they stand at the head of chains of causation (seirai or taxeis) and in some manner give to these chains their particular character. They are also identified with the traditional Greek gods, so one henad might be Apollo and be the cause of all things apollonian, while another might be Helios and be the cause of all sunny things. The henads serve both to protect the One itself from any hint of multiplicity, and to draw up the rest of the universe towards the One, by being a connecting, intermediate stage between absolute unity and determinate multiplicity.
Julian the apostate
Flavius Claudius Iulianus (born c.331–died June 26, 363), was a Roman Emperor (361–363) of the Constantinian dynasty. He was the last pagan Roman Emperor, and tried to reform the traditional worship paganism under unifying the remnants of Pagan worship in the Byzantine empire under the form of Neoplatonism developed by Iamblichus. Julian sought to do this after the legalization of Christianity and it's widespread success within the Eastern Roman Empire.
Gemistus Pletho
Gemistus Pletho (born c. 1355–died 1452) remained the preeminent scholar of Neoplatonic philosophy in the Eastern Roman Empire. He introduced his understand and insight into the works of Neoplatonism during the failed attempt to reconcile the East-West schism at the council of Florence.
[edit] Early Christian and Medieval Neoplatonism
Central tenets of Neoplatonism, such as the absence of good being the source of evil, and that this absence of good comes from human sin, 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 would be Origen, the pupil of Ammonius Saccas and 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 John D. Turner, this reference may be due in part to Plotinus' attempt to clarify certain misinterpretations of Platonic philosophy, through his Enneads. Teachings which Plotinus had believed were 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.
[edit] Renaissance Neoplatonism
In western Europe, Neoplatonism was revived in the Italian Renaissance by figures such as Nicholas Cusanus, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, the Medici, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli and later Giordano Bruno.
[edit] The Cambridge Platonists
In the seventeenth century in England, Neoplatonism was fundamental to the school of the Cambridge Platonists, whose luminaries included Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Benjamin Whichcote and John Smith, all graduates of Cambridge University. Coleridge claimed that they were not really Platonists, but "more truly Plotinists": "divine Plotinus", as More called him.
[edit] 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[1].
Other notable modern Neoplatonists include Thomas Taylor, "the English Platonist," who wrote extensively on Platonism and translated almost the entire Platonic and Plotinian corpora into English, and the Belgian writer Suzanne Lilar.
[edit] 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 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. Even possibly pre-Ammonius Saccas.
[edit] See also
- Ammonius Saccas
- Antiochus of Ascalon
- Atticus (c. 175)
- Plutarch of Chaeronea
- Augustine of Hippo
- Alexander of Aphrodisias
- Julian the Apostate
- Origen
- Plotinus
- Porphyry
- Peripatetics
- Numenius of Apamea
- Proclus
- Iamblichus
- Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
- First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
- Cambridge Platonists
[edit] 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)
[edit] External links
- Prometheus Trust
- International Society for Neoplatonic Studies
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Neoplatonism
