Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism, a philosophical and religious system, combining Platonic ideas with oriental mysticism, which originated at Alexandria in the 3rd cent. and is especially represented in the writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus. This system of thought, through Augustine, left a deep mark on Christianity, combined in the 5th and 6th cents ad with survivals of Gnosticism and persisted in this form through the Middle Ages. It experienced a notable revival in the 15th cent., associated with Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, and Paracelsus. The conglomeration of ideas found in the works of these writers extends well beyond Neoplatonism, but is often given that name, and it influenced literature in a number of distinct ways. (1) The ‘Neoplatonic’ theory of love rested on the beliefs that earthly beauty was an image of absolute beauty and that spiritual graces in a beloved were even more important than bodily ones. These beliefs find frequent expression in the poetry of the Renaissance and recur in Shelley. (2) Belief in the existence of airy creatures that could be invisible, and that served or crossed mankind, appears in Dr Dee's familiar, Prospero's Ariel in The Tempest, or on a humorous level the sylphs of The Rape of the Lock. (3) The attempt to bring together all systems of belief—Christian, Neoplatonist, Cabbalistic—that maintained the power of spirit over matter appears in poets like T. Vaughan and in the writings of the Cambridge Platonists. (4) There was the view that both Art and Nature are copies of the same supersensuous reality and that Art could be the better copy, a view that appealed to Sidney and Spenser.