PLATONISM

A term with a variety of meanings in the history of philosophy. In its original imposition, it refers to the doctrines of plato himself, and by extension includes the teachings of others who developed characteristic Platonic themes such as (1) the teaching on forms or ideas, with its accompanying absolute realism, emphasis on mathematical intelligibility, and mistrust of sense knowledge;(2) the accent on recollection and use of a priori method;(3) the doctrines of a demiurge, participation, world soul, and the relative nonbeing of matter; (4) the notion of the human soul as immaterial and endowed with various powers and virtues; and (5) the concept of the good and its associated ethical idealism, theory of the state, and theory of education.

In more specialized senses, Platonism refers first to the succession of philosophers of the Academy in Athens, and their associates, continuing—with some interruptions and possibly a loss of records—to the scholiarchate of Damascius, when an edict of the Emperor Justinian in 529 prohibited the teaching of philosophy in Athens. It is also used by some for Neoplatonism, although this is more commonly considered a separate philosophical movement closely related to Platonism. Among patristic, medieval, and modern scholars, the term is generally used to designate currents of thought of Platonic origin that flourished among the Greek and Latin Fathers, among medieval schoolmen, in the Platonic Academy of the Renaissance, or among the Cambridge Platonists. Not infrequently, Platonism has also influenced the elaboration of religious doctrines, and on this account is variously called Jewish, Islamic, or Christian.

This article is concerned mainly with the meaning of Platonism in the more specialized senses and is divided into two parts: the first treats of Plato's disciples and the schools they founded, under the title of Early and Middle Platonism; the second considers the use made of Platonic doctrines by Christian philosophers and theologians, under the title of Christian Platonism.

Early and Middle Platonism

Plato's thought continued to exert its influence after his death, particularly in the Academy he had founded. Although scholars are not unanimous on the status of the Academy's development, they usually speak of the Old Academy and the Middle and New Academies. Doctrinally, the Old Academy more or less maintained Plato's teachings intact, although it placed special emphasis on the Pythagorean elements that it contained. The Middle Academy was given over to skepticism, while the New Academy was more eclectic in its tendencies as it sought to develop a Platonic position in opposition to that of the Stoics (see stoicism).

Old Academy. Speusippus (c. 407–339 b.c.), head of the Academy from 347 to 339 b.c., wrote numerous memoirs and dialogues of which only fragments remain. Favorinus related in the second book of his Memorabilia that Aristotle purchased Speusippus's writings for three talents (Diogenes Laertius, 4.5). His successor as head of the Academy was Xenocrates (396–314 b.c.), who served from 339 to 314 b.c. Xenocrates's writings were treasured in the Academy and presumed lost when the building was destroyed by fire in Sulla's siege and sack of Athens in 86 b.c. Polemon was then head of the Academy from 314 to 269 b.c.; he and Crantor were fellow pupils of Xenocrates.

A comparison between the teaching of these men and that of Plato is contained in the Metaphysics of aristotle (1028b 19–27). There the Stagirite says that Plato posited two kinds of substance—the forms and the mathematicals, and also a third kind, the substance of sensible bodies; that Speusippus posited several more kinds of substance, starting with the One, and assumed that there was a principle for each kind—one for numbers, one for configurations, and another for souls; and that other philosophers, presumably followers of Xenocrates, held that forms and numbers have the same nature, and that other things, e.g., lines and planes, and eventually the substance of the world and sensible bodies, are derived from these.

Middle and New Academies. Crates, pupil of Polemon, was head of the Academy in the 3d century b.c. One of his pupils was Bion; another was Arcesilaus, who was also a pupil of Crantor and the first to reject the traditional doctrine of Plato in favor of skepticism, being thereby named the founder of the Middle Academy by Diogenes Laertius (4.28). Lacydes was his successor (c. 242–216 b.c.), and, for Diogenes, founder of the New Academy (4.59).

Cicero has given a history of the chief persons in the New Academy (Acad. prior. 2.1–16). He starts his account with Arcesilaus, teacher of Lacydes, and says that Lacydes taught Evander, and Evander, Hegesinus. Carneades, "fourth in line from Arcesilaus," was then the pupil of Hegesinus, and served as head of the school for a long time, living to be 85 years old. Clitomachus succeeded him as head in 129 b.c. Then came Philo of Larissa (c. 140–c. 77 b.c.), and then Antiochus of Ascalon (c. 128–68 b.c.), both teachers of Cicero (De nat. deor. 1.6). Among the Roman Academicians, in addition to Cicero, should also be enumerated Atticus and Varro.

cicero (106–43 b.c.) himself acknowledged that he was an Academic (De nat. deor. 1.11), and stated that sufficient reason for his allegiance had been given in the four books of his Academics; this survives in two editions, both incomplete, the first known as the Lucullus, and the second as the Catulus, after the leading interlocutor in each. Cicero also named the ambulatio, or place of exercise, in the lower level of his Tusculan villa near Rome the "Academia" (Disp. tusc. 2.9; 3.7). His Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, Concerning the Last Object of Desire and Aversion, Laws, and Republic are his important philosophical writings. At the end of the sixth book of the Republic (6.9–2.9) is a passage known as "Scipio's Dream," reminiscent of the story of Er at the end of Plato's Republic (614B–621D), upon which macrobius commented at the end of the 4th century. Titus Pomponius Atticus (99–32 b.c.) was a fellow student and lifelong friend of Cicero; he edited the letters Cicero sent him, and these reflect his own philosophical opinions.

Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 b.c.) also studied at Athens under Antiochus of Ascalon. A voluminous writer, he is reported as saying that up to the day he had entered upon his 12th hebdomad of years he had written 70 hebdomads of books, many of which were lost when his library was plundered at the time of his proscription. Among his books was one called Images or Hebdomads, fragments of which survive. His Logistoricus, a collection of philosophical and historical treatises, is lost.

Both Varro and Cicero were eclectic philosophers. Apart from his concern with the cult of the State, Varro was influenced by the number mysticism of neo pythagoreanism and also by the teachings of the cynics. Cicero himself was hardly an original thinker, but his flair for expression enabled him to transmit a variety of Greek doctrines to Roman readers. His arguments against skepticism were not speculative but practical and based mainly on his personal intuition of moral consciousness. In his ethical teaching, he borrowed elements from the Stoics and from the Peripatetics, while in matters of religion he urged belief in divine providence and the immortality of the soul.

Middle Platonism. The Middle Platonists, as opposed to the earlier members of the Academies, were a group of writers of Greek who flourished from the beginning of the reign of Hadrian in a.d. 117 to the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus in 180. They continued the interest of the New Academy in eclecticism, while attempting to effect a fundamental synthesis between Platonism and Peripatetic thought, using Aristotelian logic to this end. Again, they were influenced by the mysticism of the Neo-Pythagoreans. In keeping with the practice of the times, they commented more than their predecessors on the Platonic Dialogues, and in so doing sought to develop an orthodox Platonist doctrine in opposition to the Peripatetics and the Stoics. The resulting tensions between orthodoxy and eclecticism left this intermediate stage of Platonism in a state of flux, from which a true synthesis was to be effected only with the emergence of Neoplatonism at the end of the middle period.

Plutarch of Chaeronea in Boeotia (c. a.d. 46–120) is the best known of the Middle Platonists, chiefly for his Parallel Lives of the Greeks and the Romans. His principal philosophical work is the Moralia. The 13th book contains Platonic questions, especially about the origin of the soul as expounded in the Timaeus and arguments against the Stoics. The 12th book includes a short treatise (945E–955C) dedicated to Favorinus (a.d. 80–150), from the city of Arelatum (Arles) on the Rhone River, who himself wrote on the tropes of Pyrrho.

Tiberius Claudius Herodes Atticus (a.d. 101–177), a student and protégé of Favorinus, also studied the doctrines of Plato with Calvisius Taurus of Tyre (2d century a.d.). The latter was scholiarch of the Academy in Athens during the rule of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. His probable successor as scholiarch was Atticus, an Athenian philosopher, who is known to have written a commentary on the Timaeus, and another treatise quoted at length without title by Eusebius Pamphili of Caesarea (c. a.d. 260–399), both works surviving in fragments.

At Pergamum in the 2d century a.d. influence was exerted by a Platonist named Gaius (b. c. a.d. 75). In a.d. 144 Galen (c. 130–c. 200) attended the lectures of a "pupil of Gaius" at Pergamum, and in 151 or 152 went to Smyrna to make the acquaintance of the Platonist Albinus. The catalog in Codex Parisinus Graecus 1962 mentions that Albinus edited the lectures of Gaius on the doctrines of Plato. All Gaius's writings have been lost, although some of his treatises were among those read in the school of Plotinus. Two writings of Albinus survive: a short prologue to the Dialogues of Plato, the introductory lecture of his course on Plato; and a much longer epitome of the doctrines of Plato, entitled Didaskalikos and usually published under the name of Alcinous. An unnamed Platonist, probably another pupil of Gaius, wrote a commentary on the Theaetetus that is extant (Papyr. 9782 ). Characteristic of the school of Gaius is esteem for the logic of Aristotle, in that this offered a respectable alternative to the tropes of Pyrrho.

Diogenes Laertius (3d century a.d.), it should be noted, has been thought an Epicurean because of his life of epicurus, which constitutes Book 10 of the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers and ends with 40 major maxims of Epicurus. However, Diogenes spoke approvingly of "an enthusiastic Platonist" (3.47), devoted Book 3 of the Lives to Plato, and in Book 4 wrote lives, many of high literary merit, of the important persons of the Academy from Speusippus to Clitomachus.

It is impossible to detect any systematic unity in the teachings of the Middle Platonists. Their attempts at synthesis, however, were incorporated into the movement that was later to be known as Neoplatonism, which had its proximate origin in Alexandria during the 3d century a.d. and its more remote beginnings at Apamea in Syria in the writings of the Stoic philosopher Poseidonius (c. 135–c. 51 b.c.) and the Neo-Pythagorean Numenius (2d century a.d.). For further details of this movement, see neoplatonism.

Christian Platonism

Neoplatonism, in the view of one historian, "was the last breath, the last flower, of ancient pagan philosophy; but in the thought of St. Augustine it became the first page of Christian philosophy" (F. C. Copleston, History of Philosophy [Westminster, Md., 1946–75] 1:506). Apart from influences that are now recognized as Neoplatonist, however, Christian writers found much in the older Platonism that helped them in their understanding of Christian theology and much that helped them answer philosophical questions without compromising their theology. They found evidence for the unity of God, preexistence of the forms of things in the mind of God, creation of the world, providence, God the true and highest Good, memory as a way to know God, the virtuous life, and the spirituality and immortality of the human soul. Their main points of criticism, though not the only ones, are doctrines that they found to be irreconcilable with Christian theology.

Each period in history in which there occurs a movement identifiable as Christian Platonism is marked by a confrontation of Christian theologians with some newly available Platonic materials. As already noted, these periin most cases they showed involvement with writings other than Plato's, especially those more recently classified as Neoplatonic. For purposes here, they may be divided roughly into periods corresponding to those of the Greek and Latin Fathers and the Middle Ages, and the special movements of the Platonic Academy, the Cambridge Platonists, and modern Platonism.

Greek and Latin Fathers. The Greek apologists during the reign of the Antonines were educated in the pagan schools of philosophy. They used their knowledge to point out to the emperors, themselves philosophers, that Christian doctrine was reconcilable with philosophy, and therefore not to be condemned, and also to furnish an answer to questions about God, life, and death, to which philosophers had found no satisfactory solution. aristides, a "philosopher of Athens," wrote an apology to Hadrian (117–138), while justin martyr wrote one to Antoninus Pius (138–161) and another to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (161–180) and his imperial partner, Lucius Verus (161–169). athenagoras, "the Athenian, a philosopher and Christian," addressed his Embassy for the Christians to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and his son, Lucius Aurelius Commodus (161–192). These apologies were written in Greek and are extant.

In Alexandria Christian scholars adapted Platonic thought to religious instruction and scriptural exegesis. Titus Flavius Clemens, or clement of alexandria, taught in the Christian catechetical school. He knew Greek philosophy and considered Plato to be the greatest of philosophers (Paedagogus 2.11). In his Exhortation to the Greeks he showed the acuteness, and yet the limitations, of the teachings of philosophers on the nature of God (6.59P–61P; cf. also Miscellanies 1.14). His pupil was origen, of whom eusebius quotes Porphyry as saying that he "was most celebrated, and is still celebrated by the writings that he has left," and that "he was always in company with Plato," but also read works of other philosophers (Hist. eccl. 6.19).

Somewhat more than a century later, after plotinus and porphyry, several of the Greek Fathers in Cappadocia continued the work of instruction in homilies. Thus gregory of nyssa wrote a dialogue De anima et resurrectione, modeled on Plato's Phaedo, in which Gregory's sister on her deathbed states the Christian doctrine of resurrection and of the restoration of the world (13). He said, after Plotinus, that the human mind is capable of direct experience of God, "a divine and sober inebriation" (Beatitudes 6; In Canticum Canticorum 10). About the same time, palladius (fl. 408) modeled his Dialogue concerning the Life of Chrysostom on Plato's Phaedo; and Methodius, the Symposium or A Treatise on Chastity on Plato's Symposium. Methodius wrote an answer, no longer extant, to Porphyry's attacks on the Christians. Under Porphyry's influence, nemesius of emesa (fl. c. 400) wrote the Nature of Man, which was available in the Middle Ages in a Latin translation of Alfanus I, archbishop of Salerno 1058–85, under the title Prennon Fisicon (Codex Abrincensis Bibl. Municipalis 221, saec. XII).

In the Latin West, the predominant influences on Christian writers were Plato's Timaeus and Porphyry's Isagoge or introduction to Aristotle's logic. Cicero had translated the Timaeus in 45 or 44 b.c. after he had written the Academics. Four centuries later, calcidius translated the Timaeus anew, and wrote an elaborate commentary on it, dedicated to Ossius (c. 256–357 or 358), bishop of Cordoba. marius victorinus translated the Isagoge into Latin before 355, the year of his conversion to Christianity late in life, and also parts, if not all, of Plotinus's Enneads. augustine of hippo told the story of Victorinus's conversion as he had heard it from Simplicianus (Conf. 8.2–5).

The scene of the confrontation of the Latin Fathers with Platonism was in northern Italy: at Milan, where Augustine listened to Ambrose's homilies, and about 20 miles farther south at Pavia, where boethius was imprisoned. Ambrose later worked his homilies into treatises, some of which, notably the Hexameron and the Funeral Orations, indicate the use of Plotinus's "On the Beautiful" (Enn. 1.6). Augustine himself mentions in his City of God some books of Platonists he had read: Apuleius, The God of Socrates (8.14); Porphyry, De philosophia ex oraculis haurienda (19.23) and the letter to the Egyptian Anebo (10.11). In one chapter he lists those whom he means by the term "Platonists" (8.12): Plato, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Apuleius.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius held high governmental positions under Theodoric the Ostrogoth (c. 454–526) but fell into disfavor. While imprisoned at Pavia, he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, which includes autobiographical details. In his commentary on Aristotle's On Interpretation (comm. 3, proem.), he says that it is his intention to make available to his countrymen translations of all the works of Plato and Aristotle and a reconciliation of the seemingly different doctrines of the two. (see patristic philosophy.)

Medieval Platonism. The Benedictine Abbey of saint-denis in the environs north of Paris, burial place of many kings of France, is the site of the next major development in Christian Platonism. Michael Bekkos, "The Stammerer," emperor at Constantinople, sent a copy of the Greek writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (Codex Parisiensis Bibl. Nat. grec. 437 ) to Louis the Pious (778–840), son of Charlemagne and emperor in the West, who received it at Compiègne in 827 and deposited it in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, where hilduin was abbot. Hilduin, on orders from Louis, translated the writings into Latin with the help of several collaborators (825–835). A few years later, in the reign of Charles the Bald, king of France from 840 to 877, john scotus eriugena made, on the king's order, a new translation (c. 867) from the same manuscript. These writings consisted of four treatises: On the Divine Names, On the Celestial Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and On Mystical Theology, and ten letters, with an eleventh letter that Hilduin wrote and included. Their author, pseudo-dionysius, in effect presented summaries or quotations from proclus (411–485): Elements of Theology (2.9–10), Ten Doubts concerning Providence (4.1–4), On Providence and Fate (4.15–17), On the Subsistence of Evil (4.18–35). He also showed the conformity of the doctrines to Sacred Scripture.

In the 12th century an interest in Platonism was maintained in the cathedral schools of chartres, a town about 55 miles southwest of Paris. The chief Platonic document was the Timaeus in the partial translation of Calcidius (17A–53C), together with his commentary. john of salisbury was chronicler in his Metalogicon. The sequence of chancellors of the schools in the period was: bernard of chartres, gilbert de la porrÉe, and thierry of chartres. The first named was called by John of Salisbury "the foremost Platonist of our time" (Metalogicon, 4.35); he explained Porphyry (4.35), followed Plato in the doctrine of ideas (2.17), and tried to reconcile the teaching of Plato and Aristotle, "a vain effort to reconcile in death ones who had disagreed in life" (2.17).

william of conches, "most accomplished grammarian since Bernard of Chartres" (Metalogicon 1.5), wrote a commentary on the Timaeus, of which fragments survive. He identified the "soul of the world" with the Holy Spirit. The Timaeus was read in the faculty of arts in Paris, along with explanations from his commentary, until 1255 or earlier, when it was superseded in the official curriculum by the works of Aristotle.

Several Latin translations of Plato and Proclus, from the Greek, were made in Sicily in the middle of the 12th century. Although they survive in a dozen manuscripts, they were known by few scholars before the Renaissance. Their production was a result of the enterprise of henricus aristippus, a Greek in the service of the king of Sicily. Henricus began a translation of Plato's Phaedo into Latin at the siege of Benevento in the spring of 1156 and completed it a short time later at Palermo; he also translated the Meno between 1154 and 1160. These are the only dialogues of Plato that name an Aristippus, and each has the name in the beginning of the dialogue (Phaedo, 59C; Meno, 70B).

Thus, toward the beginning of the 13th century a considerable collection of Platonic writings in Latin had been assembled. It included Calcidius's work on the Timaeus; works by Augustine, Boethius, Dionysius, al-kindĪ, alfarabi, and avicenna; Eriugena's De divisione naturae, the liber de causis, and the Fons Vitae of avicebron. The Phaedo and Meno of Plato and the Elementatio physica of Proclus had also been translated.

This material had been exploited by theologians at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, particularly by suger of saint-denis; at the Abbey of Saint-Victor, by hugh of saint-victor; at Cîteaux, where alan of lille remonstrated with the Albigenses; and at Toledo in the original writings of dominic gundisalvi. The wealth of material and its wide dispersion led to the use of it in a variety of ways. As a result, the Platonism of the 13th century was a many-sided jewel, with facets that were labeled Augustinian, Avicennian, Franciscan, Dionysian, Albertist, and mystical. (see augustinianism; scholasticism.)

An important achievement toward the end of the century was the translation of Proclus from the Greek by william of moerbeke. The latter's translation of the Elements of Theology in 1268 was taken by St. thomas aquinas as the occasion for his commentary on the Liber de Causis and for a treatise De substantius separatis. Aquinas's commentary is practically also a commentary on the Elements of Theology. Before Thomas's death in 1274, William made a partial translation of Proclus's Commentary on the Timaeus, and in February of 1280 he completed at Corinth, where he was archbishop from 1278, the translation of the "three little works" that traditionally were together since the days of Dionysius: Ten Doubts concerning Providence (February 4), On Providence and Fate and That which is in our Power, to Theodorus, the Mechanist (February 14), and On the Subsistence of Evil (February 21). William also completed the translation of Proclus's commentary on the Parmenides just before his death at Corinth in 1285 or 1286 and before he could send a copy to his friend, Henry (Bate) of Mecheln, as he had promised. These translations were in harmony with the metaphysical disposition of St. albert the great. Their influence was felt where his was greatest, among the German Dominicans.

Platonic Academy. In 1439 Gemistos plethon came from Mistra in Greece to Italy to attend the Council of Florence as a representative of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He met Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464), leading citizen of Florence, who was so attracted by his enthusiasm for Plato's philosophy that he decided to have young Marsilio ficino, native of Figline near Florence, trained by Plethon in philosophy and Greek with a view to translating Plato's complete works into Latin. Cosimo founded the Platonic Academy in 1459 in Florence and made Marsilio its first director.

Marsilio completed the translation of Plato, a translation of the Enneads of Plotinus, of Albinus's Didaskalikos, and of Proclus's Elementatio physica, Elements of Theology, Hymns, and part of the Commentary on the First Alcibiades. An original work of his, Platonic Theology (1482), was dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–92).

Cardinal bessarion was a pupil of Plethon and his defender (In calumniatorem Platonis ), from charges made in George of Trebizond's (1396–1484) comparative study of Aristotle and Plato, that Plethon's philosophy was unchristian and that it was a new religion, neither Christian nor Muslim, but Platonic and heathen. Bessarion also defended Plethon in De natura et arte against Theodorus Gaza's (c. 1400–75) De fato.

Giovanni pico della mirandola proposed in 1486 his readiness to defend in a public disputation in Rome 900 theses; he based 55 of them on Proclus's Platonic Theology. Later he came to Florence and joined the Academy. He wrote Of Being and Unity (1492), part of a prospective treatise on the harmony of Plato and Aristotle.

In the early 16th century, a translation into Latin, perhaps the first, of the Theology of Aristotle was made from the Arabic by Francesco Rosi of Ravenna, putting it into Greek at Damascus, and Pier Niccolo Castellani, putting the Greek into Latin in Rome, where the Latin text was published in 1519. Fifty years later, Jacques Charpentier (1521–74) designated the earlier translation as bad, corrected it, and published the revision with notes in Paris in 1571. A translation by Geoffrey Lewis from the Arabic into English about 1959 was the occasion for Paul Henry's (1906–) establishing the work as that of al-Kindī, who excerpted it in large part from the Enneads of Plotinus.

Spiritus Martinus Cuneas made a Latin translation of Proclus's Elementatio physica (Paris 1542). Francesco Patrizzi translated the Elementatio physica and Elements of Theology into Latin (Ferrara 1583). Aemilius Portus (1550–1612) had his Latin translation of the Platonic Theology and the Elements of Theology published posthumously alongside the Greek text in Hamburg in 1618.

Giordano bruno and Jakob bÖhme were influenced by the writings of the Platonists; the former especially by Plotinus and Raymond lull, the latter by Proclus and nicholas of cusa.

Cambridge Platonists. In the 17th century, a group of Christian philosophers, most of them at the University of Cambridge, united in opposition to corpuscular physics and the mechanism of Thomas hobbes as appropriate foundations for philosophy. They sought to reconcile science and religion in a Platonic framework and to establish ethics as law of nature. Their founder was Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83). The chief members were Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), Richard Cumberland (1631–1718), Joseph Glanvill (1636–80), Henry More (1614–87), and John Norris (1657–1711). see cambridge platonists.

G. W. leibniz developed his philosophy in conscious opposition to the Cambridge Platonists, as he said in his Discourse on Metaphysics (10). He did not thereby accept a mechanist approach but simply pointed out that there was much more to Plato than the doctrines of world soul, subsistence of the ideas, and purification of the soul. He preferred Plato's teachings on virtue, justice, and the state; on the art of defining and classifying concepts; and on knowledge of the eternal verities and the innate principles of the mind.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), styled Lord Ashley from January of 1683, was sympathetic to the Cambridge Platonists. In 1698 he published the first edition of the Sermons of Dr. Whichcote, for which he wrote the preface; in The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody, published in 1709, he spoke of Cudworth as "that Pious and Learned man" (2.3).

Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736), in his capacity as publisher, was in correspondence with Cudworth, Leibniz (whose philosophy he did not approve), Shaftesbury, and John locke. He had great influence through his Bibliothèque universelle et historique (25 v. Amsterdam 1686–93), begun with J. C. de la Croze; Bibliothèque choisie (28 v. Amsterdam 1703–13); and Bibliothèque ancienne et moderne (29 v. Amsterdam 1714–26). In volumes 6 and 7 of Bibliothèque choisie he gave a sympathetic exposition of Cudworth's philosophy.

Modern Platonism. Unique among moderns is the philosophical position of Thomas Taylor, "the Platonist" (1758–1835). He abjured the Christianity of his day, openly avowed belief in the Greek gods, and wrote as a religious exercise hymns in their worship. He translated the complete works of Aristotle into English; and, with Floyer Sydenham (1710–87), the complete works of Plato. His chief interest was in the later Platonists, whose doctrine he approvingly designated, in their words, "the Platonic theology." He translated much of Plotinus, Porphyry, Apuleius, Iamblichus, and Proclus.

The Platonism of the recent past is closely related to Platonic studies. Thus Victor cousin published unedited works of Proclus. G. F. Creuzer (1771–1858) edited Proclus and Plotinus. Clemens Baeumker edited Platonic writings of the Middle Ages. Constantin Ritter (1859–1936) edited Plato. Edward Caird (1835–1908) and F. M. Cornford (1874–1943) were interested in the evolution of theology in Greek philosophy. Charles Huit (1845–1914) and Ernst Hoffmann (1880–1952) took a scholarly interest in the history of Platonism.

Other names that must be mentioned are George Burges (1786–1864), George Grote (1794–1871), Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), Walter Pater (1839–94), Charles Bigg (1840–1908), Thomas Whittaker (1856–1935), Stephen MacKenna (1872–1934), A. E. Taylor (1869–1945), William Temple (1881–1944), Émile Bréhier (1876–1952), Wincenty Lutoslawski (1863–1954), W. R. inge, and C. S. lewis.

In the United States, a group of enthusiasts fostered Platonic studies in the Midwest as an antidote to the pre-occupation with science and an alternative to Hegelianism. Their inspiration was Thomas Taylor, whose writings they carefully collected, but the spirit of their philosophy was consciously that of R. W. emerson and the Concord School. Leaders in the group were H. K. Jones (1818–1903) of Jacksonville, Ill., "the Athens of the West," and T. M. Johnson (1851–1919) of Osceola, Mo. They associated with Thomas Davidson (1840–1900), Alexander Wilder (1823–1908), and K. S. Guthrie (1871–1940), translators of Platonic writings into English.

At the universities, Paul Shorey (1857–1934) and P. E. More (1864–1937) worked mostly with Plato; E. K. Rand (1871–1945), with Cicero and Boethius; C. S. peirce, Josiah royce, and A. N. whitehead with human values in a universe of science.

See Also: plato; neoplatonism; scholasticism; augustinianism.

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[j. o. riedl]