Platonism

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PLATONISM

PLATONISM . Taken in its broadest sense, Platonism refers to the influence of Plato in Western philosophical, religious, and political thinking. In the Hellenistic world, the vehicle of this influence was the Academy, but from the time of Athens' destruction by the Romans, accomplished by Sulla in 86 bce, the Academy had ceased to exercise any real influence on Platonic thought. Thereafter, Platonic schools were founded in the most famous cities of the Roman Empire, including Pergamum, Athens, and Alexandria. A Platonic (i.e. Neoplatonic) school continued to exist in Athens until 529 ce, when it was dissolved by the emperor Justinian, but it cannot be called "Academy." Conveyed not only by the writings of Plato himself, but also by the works of later disciples and interpreters belonging to the so-called Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic schools, Platonism influenced Christian and Islamic philosophy in the late classical and medieval eras and underwent revivals not only at the time of the Renaissance but also in modern European philosophy.

The Old Academy

The immediate successors of Plato as heads of the Academy were his nephew Speusippus (410–339 bce) and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (396–314 bce), who carried on discussions held in the last period of Plato's life, when Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. Speusippus denied the existence of the Forms and the numerical Forms, and he reduced Plato's intelligible world to a complex of mathematical entities that represented the lowest level in Platonic metaphysics. He dismissed the opinion that reality depended on a First Principle (The One Which Is the Good), as taught by Plato in his "unwritten doctrines." Both Good and Beautiful exist as a derivation from the First Principle. Xenocrates, however, turned back to Plato, though not without distinguishing his thought from Plato's. He was the first to divide philosophy into physics (which included the so-called metaphysics), ethics, and logic, as later philosophers also did. Xenocrates abandoned Speusippus's mathematical metaphysics and re-proposed Plato's numerical Forms, together with other kinds of Forms. These various kinds of forms (numerical and other) constitute the intelligible world and are the production of the two basic Principles, the One and the indefinite Dyad. Xenocrates called the One "Zeus" (i.e., the highest male god, the father, and the ruler of universe). In contrast, the indefinite Dyad was the female goddess, the mother of All, the cosmic soul. Therefore Xenocrates interpreted in a religious way the highest ontological principles, and his interest in a religious philosophy is manifested also by his demonology. The daimon is an intermediate being between gods and humans. Active in shrines and oracles; he may be either good or bad, like humans, but he is immortal. Xenocrates' demonology and, as a whole, the ancient Academy's doctrines were taken up by second-century ce Platonism. Aristotle might well be added to this list of Plato's direct followers, even though he founded his own school, the Lyceum, in 335, after Xenocrates had succeeded Speusippus. Aristotle was notoriously critical of Plato's way of understanding Form and of his identification of Form with being. Further, he was contemptuous of Speusippus's devotion to Pythagorean number theory. Nevertheless, Aristotle's works pursued, in their own way, the agenda of Plato's Academy, and his account of the First Principle as self-thinking Intellect (nous ) was early adopted in the Platonic tradition, and Pythagorean doctrines continued to be discussed in the Platonic school.

The Skeptical Academy

With the succession of Arcesilaus (d. 241 bce) as its head, the Academy took a fresh turn. The so-called New Academy—frequently labelled "sceptical"—maintained that neither Socrates nor Plato had taught any settled, dogmatic system but had pursued arguments on both sides of every question without seeking to reach definitive conclusions. Indeed, Arcesilaus's approach was not completely unsound, since Socrates had taught students to doubt traditional certainties. So, Arcesilaus maintained that the epoche (suspension of judgement) in which this procedure resulted represented the true philosophical position of Plato, but Arcesilaus's devotion to it was largely evoked by Stoic dogmatism, with its assertion of the existence of "indubitable perception" (kataleptike phantasia ). Against this Stoic view the New Academy emphasized the doubtfulness and subjectivity of both perception and judgment. In response to the charge that such a stance left people without guidance for the conduct of life, Carneades (d. 129 bce) developed his theory of pithanon (the "persuasive" or "probable"), holding, as Cicero sums it up (Academica 2.10), "that there is something which is probable and, so to speak, like the truth" and that this provides a "rule both for the conduct of life and for inquiry and discussion."

It was not, however, in scepticism that Platonism was to find its future. Even in the time of Carneades and his successor Philo of Larissa (d. about 80 bce), Platonists were beginning, though solely in defense of their own position, to employ Stoic ideas and terminology; and at the same time, in the teaching of the Stoic Posidonius of Apamea (d. about 51 bce) there are traces of Plato's influence. This incipient eclecticism became stronger in Antiochus of Ascalon (d. about 68 bce), and with it came a repudiation of scepticism and a new, dogmatic Platonism—so-called Middle Platonism—that eventually set the stage for the work of Plotinus and his successors.

Antiochus of Ascalon

The split between Antiochus and his teacher Philo of Larissa, a skeptic, had its basis in Antiochus's belief that the authentic tradition of Plato's teaching must be sought in the Old Academy and that this tradition embraced the contributions of Aristotle and the Stoics. Antiochus himself was substantially a Stoic in his assumption of Stoic logos spermatikòs, which he considered quite similar to the Platonic ideas and thus untypical of the later Middle Platonist tradition. Nevertheless his rebellion opened the way for the growth of a school of thought that treated the Platonic corpus as an authoritative text even while it brought other points of view—Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic—to the interpretation of that corpus. The influence of Antiochus was overestimated by critics of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century who considered him the founder of Middle Platonism, but now it is thought more probable that Antiochus simply proposed a "return" to the Old Academy (including Aristotle) but was not able to give a new impulse to Platonism.

Eudorus and Philo, the Middle Platonists

According to most authoritative critics, Eudorus and the Jewish philosopher Philo, both active in Alexandria between the first century bce and the first century ce, should be considered Middle Platonists. Eudorus influenced those who, during the first and second century, were interested in the theology of a First Principle, such as Plutarch of Chaeronea and Numenius of Apameia. Eudorus introduced the Pythagorean principle (the One), distinguishing between the absolutely transcendent One and the One that is correlated to the indefinite Dyad. This second One is the principle of limit (understood as form, "eidos ") and is opposed to matter, from which disordered movement originates.

On the other side, Philo, whose imposing bulk of works was dedicated to a Greek exegesis of the Old Testament, employs many of the doctrines that were then considered Platonic, such as the "three principles theology" (Dreiprinzipienlehre, as it is called by German scholars). The first Principles, according to Philo, were not the first or the second One, but God, the Logos, who has in himself the ideas as his thoughts; and matter, out of which the Logos "created" the world, just as the platonic Demiurge "created" the world out of matter by contemplating the ideas. Philo also employed Stoic tenets, such as the doctrine of pathos.

The first and second centuries ce were the heyday of Middle Platonism. Once studied as preparation for Plotinus, the philosophers of the Middle Platonism are now considered worth studying in themselves, and their doctrines must be reconsidered as a more or less "organic building" (a coherent philosophical system). Therefore the word "eclectisism" must be excluded, since it means an assembly of doctrines from various schools, excluding the foundation of a coherent system of thought. On the contrary, the historical development of Platonism involved from its beginning confrontation with other philosophies, such as Pythagoreanism, Aristotelism, and, later, Stoicism, and it must appear neither an oddity nor a mark of eclecticism if Middle Platonists employed (and occasionally rejected) Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines. These philosophers did not by any means represent a uniform point of view but presented various interpretations of Platonic thought. Since the Academy had been dissolved long ago, they didn't represent a continuity, but only a loose "tradition." Platonic doctrines, in their new reassessment, were articulated by Areius Didymus, another scholar of the Augustan Age (like Eudorus and Philo), who was a doxographer more than a philosopher. His collection of Platonic doctrines took up many Antiochean tenets, which reappeared some decades later in the Stoic philosopher Seneca. For all their differences, however, these thinkers had much in common. In particular, they shared the corpus of Platonic dialogues, among which special attention was reserved for the Timaeus. Its interpretation, however, was not unanimous. Plutarch and Atticus took the view—which commended them to Christian readers—that the story of the Demiurge's "creation" of the cosmos was to be taken literally. Others, like Albinus and Calvenos Tauros, saw the story as a proper Platonic muthos, a tale intended not to explain how the cosmos came to be but to suggest how it is eternally structured.

In spite of such differences, however, all agreed (against traditional Stoicism) that the First Principle was transcendent and should be equated with the Good of Plato's Republic, the self-thinking Intellect of Aristotle's Metaphysics, or the One of Pythagorean cosmology. The Platonic realm of Forms appeared in Middle Platonism as the content of divine Intellect, and thus as the truth that actuated the World Soul in its work of ordering the visible cosmos. This scheme, in which the ultimate god was sometimes distinguished from a second "demiurgic" Intellect, foreshadowed the Neoplatonic hierarchy of three divine hypostases. At the same time, the human ideal became the contemplative life in which the soul achieves that "likeness to God" (homoiosis theoi ) that Plato had commended in the Theaetetus (176b). Apart from the school philosophers, there are a number of individuals (e.g. the physician Galen, the mathematician Theon of Smyrna, and the rhetor Maximus of Tyre) who, while not quite philosophers themselves, give good evidence for contemporary Platonic schools.

The new form of Platonism appeared in an organic structure for the first time in Plutarch's (before 50–after 120 ce) works, and perhaps already in the doctrine of his teacher, Ammonius, who was an Egyptian like Eudorus and Philo. In physics, Plutarch was influenced by Pythagoreanism, whence he took the doctrine of the indefinite Dyad and number mysticism. In his interpretation of the Timaeus he insists on the temporal creation of the world as the result of God's intervention on matter, which is moved by a preexistent, disorderly, bad World Soul. He asserts the existence of the daemons, as Xenocrates had done, and he identifies them with the human soul, bad or good. In ethics, he abandoned Stoicism and, like Antiochus, returned to the peripatetic doctrines of the "moderation of affects." Apuleius (125–180), an important Sophist (i.e., orator) in the Latin-speaking West, is similar in some aspects to Plutarch. Apuleius was the author of a novel (Metamorphoseon libri ) and of various orations (Pro se de magia liber; Florida ) that show his interest in other problems, such as magic and literature, though without abandoning Platonic ideas (indeed, he was called philosophus platonicus ). Apuleius followed the "doctrine of the three principles" and, in ethics, the Stoic apatheia and the Platonic "assimilation to god." More interesting is his practice of the Isiac cult, as it appears in the last book of the Metamorphoses, and of many other cults to which he adhered in his youth. So Apuleius's Platonism possesses a kind of henotheistic flavor; besides, he professed, like Plutarch, the Xenocratean daemonology.

Previously confused with Albinus, the author of a handbook of Platonic philosophy (Didaskalikòs ), Alkinoos is not an original thinker, for his doctrines derive in great part from Areius Didymus's doxography. The three principles of Stoic origin (the oikeiosis, the innate ideas or physikai ennoiai, and the distinction between natural and perfected virtues) are also present in Apuleius (For this reason Alkinoos was supposed to be, like Apuleius, the pupil of the little-known Platonic philosopher Gaius). More than other Middle Platonists, Alkinoos represented the Aristotelian tradition, since his First principle is the nous.

As to the "rediscovered" Albinus, he wrote an Introduction to Platonic Philosophy (Eisagoge ), which contains a discussion on nature, as well as characteristics of Platonic dialogues. In other works he was principally devoted to the Timaeus exegesis.

In contrast, Severus and Nicostratus fought against Aristotle and his doctrine of the Categories. Since, it seems, they had friends in Athens, scholars have proposed an "Athenian school," which John Dillon dismisses (like the school of Gaius) as "an empty name" (1977, p. 265). More important, Nicostratus's polemic against Aristotle fits very well with the philosophy of his contemporaries, Calvenus Taurus and Atticus. The first had some kind of school in Athens, and his ethics are akin to those of the Stoics in his doctrine of oikeiosis and his assumption that nothing is good unless virtuous. Taurus was interested in the interpretation of the cosmogony in the Timaeus, which he interpreted as an allegory and not according to the Aristotelian principle of the eternity of the world.

Atticus is distinguished by a lack of toleration, and his interpretation of Aristotle is substantially distorted. His polemic against Aristotle concentrated on cosmogony and ethics. He rejected the Aristotelian exegesis of the Timaeus and, following Plutarch, asserted the temporal creation of the world and the existence of an evil world soul. In ethics, he refused any peripateticism, considering it a moral weakness.

But the most interesting figure of Middle Platonism was surely the Syriac Numenius of Apameia. His doctrine shows an intermingling of Platonism and Pythagoreanism (and therefore he had often been considered as a Neopythagorean); but from Xenocrates and Eudorus onward, Platonic philosophy was often shadowed with Neopythagoreanism. Numenius was interested in Hermetism, Gnosticism, and Zoroastrian and Hebrew cultures. His Pythagorizing Platonism, perhaps through Ammonius Saccas, the master of Plotinus, exercised a powerful influence over Neoplatonism and Plotinus himself. Numenius is a radical dualist, taking the Pythagorean Dyad as the passive principle in opposition to One-god. The Dyad is the origin of matter, which is eternal and unorganized, like the evil Soul of Plutarch and Atticus, though put in an organized state by the Demiurge. As such, the Dyad was not produced by the Monad. Matter is fluid and without quality, but possesses an intrinsic evil force. The Demiurge is the second god. Above him is the first god, called "Father," and under him is the world. So the Demiurge is double, being both the first and the second god, and there is a triad of divine entities, perhaps corresponding to the triad of the second Platonic epistle (312e), which is now regarded a Pythagorean forgery.

The first and second centuries ce saw the growth and diffusion of Gnosticism and Hermetism. Middle Platonic doctrines are present to some degree in these philosophical-religious movements, mingled with and transformed by other doctrines of various origins. This is a large field, which Dillon has defined as "the underworld of Platonism" (1977, p. 384).

Gnosticism

The relationship between Gnosis and Platonism should begin with an examination of the concept of dualism, specifically, Platonic dualism. If by dualism we mean a doctrine of two principles, from which the whole universe derives and on which it depends, then Plato's Timaeus, with its doctrine of coeternal Demiurge (at a higher ontological level than ideas) and chora (interpreted as matter), is certainly dualist. However, such a dualism is pre-cosmic, since the created world is characterized by harmony and eternity, and chora is not a negative entity. Besides, Plato's anthropogony in Timaeus 42d and 69c, which describes the intervention of the inferior gods, who, obeying the Demiurge, create the human soul and body in order not to involve God in the responsibility for evil, foreshadows some Gnostic tenets. If the chief characteristic of Gnosticism is its negative depiction of world, Gnostic dualism, though of quite different origin, may be paralleled with Platonic dualism as it is expressed in Plutarch and Numenius. Among Gnostic schools, one of the most representative was that of Valentinus, who was a contemporary of Albinus and Numenius; Valentinus was considered platonicus by Christian writers. Some of his doctrines derive in part from certain forms of contemporary Platonism, where a relatively nondualistic position is present. For Valentinus, the creation of the world is not the result of the struggle between the principle of Good and the principle of Evil, as it is for Barbelognostics and Mani, but is rather the result of the corruption of a previously perfect system, just as for Neoplatonism the existence of evil is the corruption of perfection. Valentinus created an elaborate myth in order to explain the existence of the material world. The basic framework of his system is reminiscent of Pythagorean metaphysics, which had penetrated also into Middle Platonism. It has been supposed that Valentinus had interpreted the aeons of his metaphysics as a kind of Platonic idea. Tertullian was perhaps the first to interpret aeons as the thoughts and motions of the divine Being, whereas Ptolemaeus, one of Valentinus's followers, interpreted them as real persons. From the primordial reality new entities come out in a kind of "emanation" (probole ). The new entities retain, in a depotentiated way, the essence of the original reality, just as in the Neoplatonic system. Initially there are a monadic and a dyadic figure, the latter being subordinated to the former. Their secondary, derived Principle has the titles of the Platonic supreme god, Father and First Principle, while the real supreme principle is called Forefather and Pre-first Principle. The name Ennoia, in the Valentinian system, is reminiscent of Philo's Sophia, which is the same as the Logos of God. Sophia, the aeon who originate last, was a female principle. Her sin is her desire to know her origin and the Forefather's nature, which leads her to try to bear a child without a syzygos, or partner. She has the function of the indefinite Dyad, which introduces evil at the highest level. Horos, the "limit" in the Valentinian myth, perhaps is akin to the Pythagorean peras, and his function is analogous to the regulating activity (for instance, in Philo) of divine Logos.

Before Valentinus lived Basilides (end of first century ce), who held views similar to those of Plotinus. He professed apophatism about divine Being as the natural consequence of the doctrine of divine transcendence. According to Basilides, both original Principles, light and darkness, originally were distinct, but when darkness saw the light, it longed for union with it, just as light desired to see darkness. In the beginning there was the absolute naught, which is perhaps identified with God (Hippolytus says that God was "not existing")—such is the conclusion of "negative theology," which was quite common in Platonic and Pythagorean schools. Basilides discussed, as Platonists did, the problem of the creation of the world, which, according to him, is created out of "seeds." These seeds are derived from the Stoic doctrine of logos spermatikos, which states that the cosmic Logos contains the logoi spermatikoi, and in this primordial seed is contained all that will be developed thereafter. Basilides' cosmic seeds also contain all that will happen. Like Plato (Tim. 73c), Basilides employs the word panspermia. God creates the world thanks to his free will, and cosmic seeds don't come out of preexistent matter. Middle Platonists, in contrast, considered God to be a craftsman. So, Basilides was the first Christian philosopher to consider the same problems as contemporary Middle Platonism. Valentinian cosmogony also took up some Middle Platonic doctrines, such as: Matter in itself is not body but possesses the fitness to become every kind of body.

Hermetism

The treatises of the Corpus hermeticum were composed during the second and third century ce. Hermetism was influenced by Middle Platonism, which can be seen, for example, in the first and most important treatise of the Corpus hermeticum, the Poemandres (this name is perhaps a translation from Egyptian). Poemandres describes himself as the nous of the Supreme Power. It is open to interpretation whether the Supreme Power is above the nous, as God is above Mind, or whether nous possesses the Supreme Power. The description of the creation of the world owes something to the concept of the Platonic Demiurge. The Hermetic writer distinguishes between nous and logos in a manner similar to Philo of Alexandria. Like Philo, the Hermetic writer defines Logos as "son of God." The supreme Nous generates another nous demiourgos, who is the creator of fire and pneuma, the seven planetary gods, and other entities, such as the cosmic soul and physis, the archetypal man (borrowed perhaps from Philo). Also in ethic, the ideal of apatheia found its way into Hermetic doctrines.

Christian Middle Platonists

Middle Platonism had a strong influence on Christian thought, beginning in the second century ce. Apologists such as Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, and Theophilus of Antioch identified the Son of God with the Logos, or the second god of contemporary Middle Platonists, while the Father was considered the origin of the Logos and even superior to him, just as first nous is above second nous. Christian Middle Platonism was developed by much more representative thinkers, like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, who went deep into the question of the nature of God and of the relation between the Father and the Son, both being eternal and divine entities, but personally differentiated. In ethics, Clement of Alexandria and Origen recognized the Middle Platonic "assimilation to god" as the ideal implicit in the doctrine that God created Adam "in our image, after our likeness" (Gn. 1:26). The interpretation of Genesis 1:2 that the world was created out of shapeless matter is the Christian accommodation of Old Testament cosmogony to Middle Platonic philosophy. Philo of Alexandria had already proposed this, and it clearly appears in Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenaeus of Lyon (second century ce). As soon as Apologists considered the biblical narration of the creation of the world, the problem of a philosophical interpretation became cogent, since the text of the Bible was not compatible with Platonic philosophy. The solution was a creatio ex nihilo, which developed at the end of second century ce, but Christian authors who were educated in the Middle Platonic philosophy, such as Justin, Athenagoras, and Clement of Alexandria, found it difficult to accept such a solution, and the contemporary heretic Hermogenes returned to the Middle Platonic doctrine of creation out of existing matter.

Platonism and Neoplatonism

From the beginning of the Plotinian school in Rome (244 ce onward) and the research of Porphyry of Tyros (middle third century ce), we usually speak no more either of Middle Platonism or of Platonism, but of Neoplatonism. Of course, original Platonic doctrine mingled with Neoplatonic elaborations, and their influence can be traced in the writing of Christian and, later, Islamic theologians and philosophers. Plotinus (205–270) is normally considered the founder of Neoplatonism, though the evolution of Platonism is not so linear and direct as it was supposed in the nineteenth and twentieth century, such as in Eduard Zeller's strong Hegelian interpretation of the history of ancient philosophy. Plotinus wasn't the "schoolmaster of Neoplatonism," and Platonism from the third to sixth century had many peculiarities not derived from Plotinus. The essays Plotinus wrote for circulation among his pupils were collected by his disciple Porphyry (d. c. 305) in six sets of nine texts known collectively as the Enneads. In these terse and often difficult papers, Plotinus sets out a system according to which all reality issues spontaneously, coordinately, and timelessly from a single transcendent and inexpressible source called the One or the Good. This process of emanation produces a hierarchical world order in which each successive form of reality (hypostasis ) images its superior at a lower level of unity. Thus Intellect—the unity of intuitive awareness with its intelligible objects (the Forms)—images the One. Soul, the third hypostasis, images Intellect, although its being and knowing are distended in time, and although, as "nature," it approaches division in space by giving rise to the corporeal, visible cosmos. The limit of this expansion of reality from the One is primal matter, which, Plotinus teaches, is in itself mere privation. To the emanation of reality from the One there corresponds a converse and simultaneous movement of "return" (epistrophe ), by which each level of being seeks itself in its source and original. From this point of view, the structure of Plotinus's cosmos corresponds to the route that consciousness takes in contemplative activity as it moves from dispersion to integration. The highest normal level of consciousness is the unified awareness that belongs to Intellect, but in moments of mystical ecstasy the soul—as Plotinus records from his own experience—achieves a loss of particular selfhood in union with the One.

Porphyry was a commentator on Plato and Aristotle and the author of a lengthy treatise titled Against the Christians. In Porphyry's writings the scholastic tone and religious interests of later Neoplatonism are foreshadowed. He produced not only commentaries but also summary interpretations of Plotinian ontology and ethics, as in his Sentences and Letter to His Wife Marcella. Porphyry seems to be responsible for reviving the repute of a late-second-century collection of revelations known as the Chaldaean Oracles. Although sceptical of the claims that this collection made for the ritual-magical practice of theurgy, Porphyry apparently initiated the practice of interpreting the Oracles in the light of a Plotinian metaphysic.

Porphyry's disciple Iamblichus (d. c. 325 ce) wrote a commentary (now lost) on the Chaldaean Oracles and in his treatise On the Mysteries defended theurgy (against Porphyry) as necessary for the soul's union with the divine. He was also a speculative philosopher of great originality, and his system opened the way for the elaborate metaphysics that marked the thought of the later Platonic school at Athens. There, from about 400 until 529, a series of distinguished teachers developed both the philosophical and the religious positions that Iamblichus had defended. Most notable among these was Proclus (c. 412–485), whose Elements of Theology and Commentary on the Timaeus are monuments to the learning and dialectical skill of the Academy in its last days. Proclus saw his task as carrying Iamblichus's principles to their logical conclusion and filling any gaps he left in the metaphysical hierarchy. Therefore Proclus admitted within the First Hypostasis a series of Unities (Henads ) in addition to the One itself. He establishes complete symmetry between that Hypostasis and lower orders by extending to it Iamblichus's distinction of Unparticipated and Participated Terms. The Henads thus constitute the Participated intermediaries linking lower realities to the One, which now becomes the First Hypostasis Unparticipated Monad. But the Henads are not simply aspects or attributes of the First Cause, but substantial, self-subsistent entities derived from the One and dependent on it. Hence arise their functions—one metaphysical, the other religious. The former function was that of bridging the gulf between Unity and Plurality. In particular, although the One is absolutely unknowable, the Henads, unknowable in themselves, can be known by analogy from their products. Fundamental is the basic Neoplatonic doctrine that the same attribute can exist under an appropriate mode on successive levels. Proclus emphasizes that such attributes are present perfectly only on the level of the Henads. Each order of reality, even the Henads, represents an appropriate combination of Limit and Infinity, whose cosmogonic roles can be traced back to early Pythagoreanism and to Plato's Philebus.

In the Latin West, Platonism and Neoplatonism were transmitted through Marius Victorinus (end of third century–360) and Augustine of Hippo (354–430). "Victorinus shows how lively, how original, how pulsating, how stimulating and, yea, how attractive was Platonism in the fourth century. Together with Augustine, Victorinus represents the best example that, for an intellectual, the reception of Christian doctrines was possible only through Neoplatonism, the dominating spiritual trend at the time" (Baltes, 2002, p.125). Victorinus's theology develops a rich metaphysical system, attributing to the Father the majority of the qualifications characterizing the Neoplatonic One, which are, of course, negative ones, according to apophatic trends widely developed by Greek philosophy and Christian culture (oneness, pureness, simpleness, invisibility, unutterability, motion, passions, corruption, and lack of body). Moreover, Victorinus's deep philosophical background shows in the majority of his doctrines. For example, his Trinitarian speculation is an attempt to join the triadic schemes already attested in Platonic texts, particularly in the Enneads. The relationship between the three Persons of the Trinity is in fact explained by means of Neoplatonic schemes, thus equating Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to the hypostatical moments of being-life-intellect (or being-intellect-life, in a reversed order), or introducing the more complex concept of predominance, according to which each Person of the Trinity is best characterized by the prevalence of one of these aspects (being-life-intellect), in order to preserve and reassert their mutual relationship. The Son's generative process is described in philosophical terms, such as stillness and movement, form and act, dynamis and activity, to which must be added the conversion, represented by the Spirit.

Augustine's conversion to Christianity accompanied his discovery of Neoplatonic thought, as represented by writings of Plotinus and Porphyry (writings probably translated into Latin by Marius Victorinus). His doctrine was permeated by Platonic themes, however revised and recast in the light of his Christian beliefs. Boethius (c. 480–c. 524), a Roman aristocrat in the service of the Ostrogothic king Theoderic, and an orthodox Christian, did as much as Augustine to transmit the heritage of Hellenic philosophy to the medieval West. Aiming to provide Latin versions of the major works of Aristotle and Plato, he succeeded, before his execution at the hands of Theodoric, in rendering certain of Aristotle's logical works as well as Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories, the book that originally stimulated medieval philosophical debate. His Consolation of Philosophy, widely read during the Middle Ages, presented a simplified Neoplatonist outlook consistent with the structures of Christian doctrine.

It was largely through Augustine, whose influence is seen in thinkers as diverse as Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109), Hugh of Saint–Victor (c. 1096–1141), the School of Chartres, the Franciscan Bonaventure (c. 1217–1274), and the Dominicans Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) and Johannes Eckhart (c. 1260–1327?), that Platonist themes influenced medieval Latin philosophy and spirituality. Of the works of Plato, only the Timaeus was known (in the fourth-century Latin version of Calcidius). Plotinus and his successors were scarcely known at all, save through Boethius's translation of Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories. What the Latin Middle Ages eventually harvested from the work of the late Platonists were the writings of Aristotle on natural philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics, which, during and after the thirteenth century, became standard texts in the liberal arts curricula of medieval universities.

Muslim Neoplatonism

Parallel to the Platonic tradition during the Middle Ages is the spread of Platonic thought among Muslims. Indeed, medieval Western interest in, and knowledge of Plato was stimulated and in part made possible by the labors of Islamic philosophers who worked on ninth- and tenth-century Arabic versions of the works of Aristotle, Plato, and their Neoplatonic commentators. But Neoplatonic thought didn't reach the Arabs only through translations from the Greek; Syriac translations of Greek texts were another major source. A major role was played by a remarkable forgery, the so-called Theology of Aristotle, which in fact consists of extracts from Plotinus's Enneads IV–VI augmented by supplementary or explanatory material perhaps derived from Porphyry's lost commentary. In 832 ce in Bagdad, Califf al-Mamoun founded the "House of Wisdom," whose direction was committed to famous and clever translaters, including Honayn ibn Ishaq (809–873 ce), who was famous for translating Greek books into Syriac and Arabic. Therefore the whole terminology of Arabic theology and philosophy was prepared during the ninth century, and the "hellenistic philosophers" (falasifa is the Arabic word for philosophos ) could use the translation of Aristotle and his commentators, Plato and Galen. The "peripatetic reaction" by Averroes opposed the Neoplatonism of these thinkers. Al-Kindi (796–d. after 870) was interested not only in mathematics and geometry, but also in metaphysics, astronomy, and music. He tried to reconcile philosophy with prophetic revelation and distinguished between human science (which included logic, the arts of quadrivium and philosophy) and a divine science, which was the prophetic revelation. He accepted the creatio ex nihilo, which he interpreted as an act of God's will, not as an emanation. God creates the first Intelligence, from which the other are derived, as Neoplatonists taught. The structure of his worldview was essentially that of later Neoplatonism, and his thought derived from John Philoponus's works and the Neoplatonic school in Athens.

This Arab philosophical enterprise was continued by al-Fārābī (872–950), a great religious and mystical thinker. He wrote a work to demonstrate the agreement of Plato and Aristotle. In his opinion, wisdom began among the Chaldaeans in Mesopotamia and then spread to Egypt and Greece. According to his teaching, the cosmic Intelligences are derived from the One, but only through the first Intelligence, because ex Uno non fit nisi unum. The works of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, 980–1037), and al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) were also influenced by Neoplatonism.

Platonism in the Renaissance

It was not until the fifteenth century and the work of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), and others that Plato himself, read through the eyes of his Neoplatonic interpreters, was rediscovered. Nicholas, in On Learned Ignorance, presents a view of the world that owes much to Proclus, as well as to certain Platonic dialogues. Ficino translated Plato and Plotinus's Enneads into Latin and made a start on Porphyry and Iamblichus. Even Aristotle, in this new age, began to be read as the ancient Neoplatonists had read him. Platonic writings and ideas accompanied the spread of Renaissance humanism and went on to influence modern philosophy.

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Claudio Moreschini (2005)

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