NEOPLATONISM

NEOPLATONISM is the Platonic philosophy interpreted by Plotinus (205–270 ce), systematized in his Enneads and further developed by others through the sixth century. From the first century bce, the "divine Plato" had been revived as the supreme religious and theological guide by pagan Middle Platonists; simultaneously Neo-Pythagorean philosophers were active. Plotinus was receptive to both these theistic and apophatic (negative) schools. He liked the Middle Platonist teaching of the transcendence of a Supreme Mind and Being called theos (God) possessing the Platonic Forms as divine Ideas. These Ideas became the basis for kataphatic (positive) theology and a doctrine of divine providence for a later period, not for Plotinus.

Realizing that unity must always precede plurality, however, Plotinus taught that the First Principle of reality, the One, or Good, transcends being and thought and is ineffable, indefinable, thereby contradicting Middle Platonism. This theory, original with Plotinus, was repeated by his pagan successors, especially Iamblichus and Proclus, but not by Porphyry.

Conflict between Christians and pagan philosophers began in the second century with an anti-Christian treatise of the Platonist Celsus, to which the Christian theologian Origen responded in the third century; the opposition continued with Porphyry's fourth-century treatise Against the Christians. Yet Origen considered philosophy and Plato as natural defenders of some Christian doctrines. By openness to Greek culture but not to Classical Greek religion, the Cappadocian fathers who succeeded Origen fruitfully related Hellenism to Christianity, with increased ability to discuss Christianity with educated pagans.

The Neoplatonic One, or Good, was the object of religious aspiration. It was described as transcendent, infinite, overflowing goodness and spiritual freedom, and reachable through mystical experience. The One pours love (eros ) into all souls, a love leading each soul, aided by intellectual and moral effort, to mystical union with their Source. The One is present everywhere, and whenever one turns within to identify with one's higher, true self, there is opportunity for a mystical union. Plotinus had frequent mystical experiences (IV.8.1). Neoplatonists separated their pagan philosophy from pagan worship, allowing intellectual Christians to be philosophically educated and yet remain orthodox believers. Nevertheless, one cannot assume that all borrowing between Christians and pagans came from the Christian side. Plotinus's teacher, Ammonius, was reputed to have once been a Christian. In the third century ce the goal of philosophy became more explicitly religious, but according to human reason. The philosopher's role was to guide his followers, without using religious myths and oracles as premises, to the experience of the divine. Christians thereby found in Neoplatonism a purer notion of God than was available in Classical Greek religion.

The Enneads present an ordered structure of living reality eternally proceeding from the One and descending in continuous stages from the Divine Intellect, with its living forms, intelligences, through Soul, ruling through World Soul to the forms of bodies, made from formless matter. No dualism here.

Development of Neoplatonic Theories

Post-Plotinian Neoplatonism developed in four stages, largely through modifying the Plotinian structure.

1. The first stage is the teaching of the disciples, Porphyry, Amelius, and Eustochius. Most influential was Porphyry (c. 234–c. 305), who taught a more monistic philosophy than that of Plotinus by conflating the hypostases into a unity of being, life, intelligence, thus departing from Plotinian subordinationism.
2. The fourth-century Syrian and Pergamene schools were influenced by the teaching of Iamblichus (d. 326) that theurgy (ritual magic), invoking demons rather than philosophizing, was the way to God. Iamblichus and followers rejected Plotinus's doctrine of the undescended part of the soul and stressed a need for divine help to reach the Intelligible World. Julian the Apostate (332–363) sought to downgrade Christianity when as a two-year sole Roman emperor he declared Iamblichus's version of Neoplatonism to be the State religion.
3. During the predominance of the fifth and sixth century Athenian school, Neoplatonism became the official teaching of Plato's Academy, the chief member being Proclus (410?–485), who continued pagan worship against imperial policy. For Proclus, theurgy, rather than philosophy, brought salvation to souls. The last head of the Academy when Justinian closed it in 529 was Damascius.
4. The Neoplatonism of the Athenian school was influential over the Alexandrian school (fifth and sixth centuries) of commentators on Plato's and Aristotle's psychology and logic. Both schools depended on Iamblichus. The Alexandrians, however, preferred philosophical scholarship to theurgy.

Early Christian Thought

Plotinus and the Christian Origen, who studied under Ammonius (Saccas), influenced the Cappadocian fathers—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa—who saw Christianity and its mission as the fulfillment of Classical Greek education (paideia ). Reading the Bible rather than classical Greek literature, they believed, would mold humankind into the form of Christ. Like Neoplatonists, the Eastern Church valued the material world as a theophany, or manifestation of the divine.

Proclus influenced the fifth-century thinker known under the name of the apostle Paul's first Athenian convert, Dionysius the Areopagite, as well as Michael Psellus (1018–1078?), who stimulated the eleventh-century Byzantine renaissance. At the Council of Florence (1438), called to unite Eastern and Western churches, George Plethon (1360–1450), from the Platonic school at Mistra, inspired Cosimo de' Medici to open a Platonic academy in Florence. Its head, Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), translated Platonic dialogues and the Enneads into Latin and wrote commentaries to harmonize Platonic and Chaldean traditions with Christianity. Some scholars consider the Renaissance to have been more Neoplatonic than Platonic, with Aristotle also influential. After the fall of Constantinople (1453), the literary tradition of the Byzantine East was brought to Italy by Greek scholars. The Christian humanism of Erasmus is rooted in the theology of the Greek fathers.

Islamic Neoplatonism

The Alexandrian School, moving to Antioch in 720 ce and to Baghdad in 900, was active with commentaries on Plato and Aristotle. The Arabic interpretation of these two thinkers was affected by two works, purported to be by Aristotle but actually based on the writings of Plotinus and Proclus. The so-called Theology of Aristotle was mainly composed of extracts of Enneads IV–VI; the Liber de causis, attributed to Aristotle, reproduced parts of Proclus's Elements of Theology. Accepting the two pseudo works of Aristotle as authentic led the Arabic philosophers to interpret Neoplatonically the actual texts of Aristotle. They interpreted Aristotle's First Principle as an efficient as well as final cause of the world. This helped Muslims to harmonize philosophy with the Qurʾān. Later, under the influence of Ibn Rushd (Averroës), some Muslim philosophers separated philosophy from religion, holding that one could contradict the other. This is the so-called double-truth theory.

Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages

Marius Victorinus (fourth century) in his work on the Trinity against the Arian heresy conflated the Porphyrian triad of Being, Life, Intelligence into Absolute Being at rest and in motion, expressed infinitively as to einai (Esse) (To Be), a triad discoverable in the Sentences of Porphyry and in the anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides, considered by Pierre Hadot (Porphyre et Victorinus, 1968) to be authored by Porphyry. Both the Sentences and the Parmenides Commentary were influenced by the Chaldaean Oracles as well as by Middle Platonism. Through Victorinus's translation of some Neoplatonic works (Plotinus/Porphyry) into Latin, Augustine became aware of the spirituality of human souls and of God, thus freeing him from Manichaean materialism. Some Porphyrian positions on the divine triad and on the body-soul union impressed Augustine. In the City of God Augustine seems to take Porphyry's version of Neoplatonism as the empire's main pagan philosophy. Boethius was familiar with texts of both Victorinus and of Proclus.

Until Plato's dialogues Meno and Phaedo were translated into Latin in the twelth century, the western medieval world had a Middle Platonic view of Platonism, their awareness of Platonism coming only from Chalcidius's fourth-century commentary on the Timaeus, greatly influenced by Numenius. An indirect influence of Neoplatonism upon medieval thought came through Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Boethius.

In medieval Jewish thought, Neoplatonism is evident in the Qabbalah and in the teachings of Shelomoh ibn Gebirol (Avicebron) (1021–1058), who developed Plotinus's views on intelligible matter. Maimonides (1135/8–1204) accepted Neoplatonic negative theology while remaining predominantly Aristotelian.

Only in the twelth century also did the West recover the complete Aristotle through translations of the Arabic texts into Latin. But among these texts was the Theology of Aristotle (Enneads ) and Liber de causis (Proclus's), attributed by the Arabs to Aristotle. In translating Aristotle's texts, these translators would assume a harmony between them and these two pseudo-texts. Therefore, in the thirteenth century William of Moerbeke translated from the original Greek Aristotle's works. But he also translated Proclus's Elements of Theology and his commentaries on the Parmenides and Timaeus. These translations enabled Thomas Aquinas to identify the Liber de causis as non-Aristotelian. This freed Aristotle from the Neoplatonic additions and interpretations of the Muslims. Neoplatonism reached Thomas Aquinas chiefly through Augustine, Dionysius, Boethius, and Proclus. Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1327) embraced Neoplatonism, as indicated by his distinction between God and the unknowable godhead as well as by his doctrine of the uncreated element in the soul. Also influenced by Neoplatonism and Dionysius were the other Rhineland mystics, Tauler (c. l300–1361) and Suso (1295–1366), as were Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno.

Neoplatonism in Modern Thought

Neoplatonism may be lurking in the background of Descartes's philosophy of consciousness, although Plotinus made room for a subconscious and superconscious activity as more significant than ordinary consciousness. Neoplatonism is present in the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More (1614–1687) and Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), as well as in Berkeley's Siris. It is detectable in Spenser, Coleridge, Blake, and Yeats. It is evident in Spinoza's monism and in Leibniz's monadism. In the nineteenth century Schelling learned from Plotinus, and Hegel from Proclus. In the twentieth century Bergson attempted the reconciliation of Plotinus's philosophy of soul with modern science.

Only in the nineteenth century was Plato recognized for his authentic thought and clearly distinguished from Plotinus and his followers who were henceforth called Neoplatonists. Neoplatonism was the first philosophical theology based on religious experience. Although it gave mixed messages regarding the value of the body and the material world, its cosmic religion—the veneration of star-gods—entailed respect for the sensible world. Neoplatonism benefited religion by adocating interiority, negative theology, and both God's transcendence and immanence as ground for mystical experience. Christians and Jews freely borrowed Neoplatonic principles to express revealed truths, those accessible to reason. This made possible dialogue with educated nonbelievers. The presence of an intellectual Greek culture in the empire gave to Christian teaching, expressed in contemporary philosophical concepts, some universality. Christians saw human wisdom as God's own natural revelation before divine Revelation through the Law and the prophets and the teachings of Christ.

Christianity was not Hellenized, but with divine Revelation guiding the choice of Greek concepts, Christianity, at first a Jewish sect, became a world religion. Christians respected the Greek classical tradition, as did the Romans. Through the Christian classicists of the fourth century, such as Augustine in the West and the Cappadocians in the East, classical culture and literature survived and was made available to the future. Philosophy was enriched by Neoplatonic reasoning, but philosophy as a human activity was without saving power. Neither does it even claim to give positive knowledge of an ineffable God. But since "faith seeks understanding," philosophy, and especially Neoplatonic philosophy, contributes greatly to that understanding.

See Also

Plotinus.

Bibliography

Armstrong, A. Hilary, ed. The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K., 1957, 1970.

Armstrong, A. Hilary, and Robert A. Markus. Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy. London, 1960. The tension and interplay of revealed doctrine and philosophical ideas, a dialogue that continues.

Blumenthal, Henry J., and Robert A. Markus, eds. Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of A. H. Armstrong. London, 1981. Emphasis on Plotinus's dialogue with his contemporaries, the Neoplatonic background of Augustine, and the encounter between later Neoplatonism and the Christian tradition.

Dodds, E. R. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety. Cambridge, U.K., 1965.

Gersh, S. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition. 2 vols. Notre Dame, Ind., 1986.

Hadot, Pierre. Porphyre et Victorinus. Paris, 1970.

Harris, R. Baine, ed. The Significance of Neoplatonism. Albany, N.Y., 1976.

Harris, R. Baine, ed. Neoplatonism and Indian Thought. Albany, N.Y., 1982.

Lloyd, A. C. The Anatomy of Neoplatonism. Oxford, 1990.

O'Meara, Dominic J., ed. Neoplatonism and Christian Thought. Norfolk, Va., 1981.

Smith, A. Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition. The Hague, 1974.

Victorinus, Marius. Theological Treatises on the Trinity. Translated by M. T. Clark. Washington, D.C., 1984.

Wallis, Richard T. Neoplatonism. London, 1972. Discusses the interrelationships of all the Neoplatonic schools of thought.

Wallis, Richard T., and J. Bregman, eds. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Albany, N.Y., 1992.

Whittaker, Thomas. The Neo-Platonists: A Study in the History of Hellenism, 4th ed. Hildesheim, 1928, 1968. Before Wallis's book, this was the only survey of Neoplatonism.

Mary T. Clark (1987 and 2005)