Neoplatonism. The philosophy of Plotinus and his followers, derived (remotely) from Plato. After Plotinus, its most outstanding proponents were Porphyry, Iamblichus (3rd/4th cent. CE), Eunapius of Sardis, and Proclus. The major aim of Neoplatonism was to provide a satisfactory account of the relationship of the One to the many. Between the One at the summit of the hierarchy of beings and the material world, it proposed a series of intermediaries. The progressively less perfect intermediaries are constituted by procession from their respective sources. Through abstractive thought, the soul can return to its source and be mystically united with it.

In this way, God is abstracted into absolute transcendence, and is protected from involvement in the material and evil; and human beings (who have in them some aspect of the divine) can return upwards to God, the ‘flight of the alone to the Alone’.

In Islam, falsafah (philosophy) made no particular distinction between Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism, since it was concerned only with the opportunity of philosophy, not its history. The translation of what was taken to be Aristotle began in the reign of al-Maʾmūn (d. 833 (AH 218)), and through these endeavours, Greek philosophy and its texts were effectively rescued for the world, with many texts surviving only because of this Muslim interest. Neoplatonism entered Muslim thought in this way, though often attributed to Aristotle (e.g. when books iv and vi of Plotinus' Enneads were translated); al-Kindī and al-Farābī were key figures in the establishing of this way of thought, though the major figures were ibn Sīnā and ibn Rushd, and ibn ʿArabī on the mystical side.