Neoplatonism

With Plotinus (c. 204/5–270 CE), Neoplatonism gave ancient philosophy its last great synthesis: the ineffable One, from which all things emanate and to which all things return. But the story did not end there. In the following generations, disciples and successors transformed that vision into an ever vaster and more articulated system — and, at the same time, one ever more bound to religion and ritual. This late Neoplatonism, from Porphyry to Proclus, was the form in which Platonism reached the Latin, Arabic, and Byzantine Middle Ages. This article traces its three great names. (For the starting point, see the article on Plotinus and the emanation of the One.) ...

When the Goths of Alaric sacked Rome in 410 — the city that for eight centuries had thought itself eternal — the ancient world felt the ground give way beneath its feet. It was in that climate of disorientation that a bishop from North Africa undertook, between intimate meditation and a theology of history, the work that would make him the greatest intellectual figure of late antiquity. Aurelius Augustinus of Hippo (354–430) lived on the frontier between two ages: trained in classical Greco-Roman rhetoric, he converted to Christianity and transformed the legacy of Plato and Plotinus into the philosophical idiom of the medieval West. In him, the search for truth ceased to be merely contemplation of the cosmos and became exploration of the inner life of the soul. ...

Few concepts traverse the history of Western philosophy with such persistence as nous (νοῦς). The Greek word designates, depending on context, mind, intellect, intelligence, or reason — but its philosophical reach exceeds any of these translations taken alone. From the moment Anaxagoras elevated it to a cosmic ordering principle, through Plato’s elaboration and Aristotle’s analysis of intellect in the De Anima, to the emanationist metaphysics of Plotinus and the intense medieval debates between Averroes and Thomas Aquinas, nous constitutes a guiding thread that links cosmology, psychology, and theology in a single conceptual arc. ...

At the turn of the third century CE, when the philosophical schools of Antiquity seemed to have exhausted their possibilities, a thinker born in Roman Egypt undertook the most ambitious metaphysical synthesis the ancient world had ever seen. Plotinus (c. 205–270 CE) did more than comment on Plato: he transformed Platonism into a complete ontological architecture centered on the idea that all of reality emanates from an absolute principle — the One — and that the destiny of the human soul is to return to that primordial unity. ...

Marsilio Ficino Italian philosopher and Catholic priest. Leader of the Platonic Academy of Florence under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici. He translated the entire works of Plato into Latin for the first time, as well as the Corpus Hermeticum and Plotinus. Key Concepts Christian Neoplatonism: synthesis between Plato, Plotinus and late Neoplatonism with Christianity; human souls participate in the divine One through a hierarchy of being The soul as copula mundi: the human soul occupies the center of the hierarchy of being — between the superior angelic world and the inferior material world; it unites heaven and earth Platonic love (Commentarium in Convivium Platonis, 1469): love is the cosmic force that elevates the soul from sensible beauty to intelligible beauty and to God himself; he coined the expression amor platonicus Platonic theology (Theologia Platonica): the immortality of the soul proven philosophically — his principal philosophical project; demonstrates that Plato and Christianity agree on immortality Natural magic and astrology: the wise magus can attract beneficial astral influences; magic is natural philosophy (not demonological) Prisca theologia (ancient theology): there exists a perennial revelation that runs from Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus to Plato and Christianity — all reveal the same divine truth Influenced by Plato — dialogues (central translator and interpreter) Plotinus — Enneads (translator) Corpus Hermeticum — hermeticism (translated at Medici’s request) Saint Augustine — Christian neoplatonism Influenced Pico della Mirandola — direct disciple Giordano Bruno — magic, infinity and neoplatonism Renaissance humanism throughout Europe Western hermetic and esoteric tradition Works Theologia Platonica (1482); De Vita (1489); Commentarium in Convivium Platonis (1469); translations of Plato, Plotinus and Hermes Trismegistus. ...

Nicholas of Cusa German cardinal; transitional figure between Scholasticism and the Renaissance. Used mathematics as a philosophical analogy (not as a method in the technical sense) to express the relationship between divine infinity and human finitude. Key Concepts Learned Ignorance (docta ignorantia): the human mind (finite) does not attain divine infinity; the pursuit of truth is asymptotic — we approach without ever reaching Coincidence of Opposites (coincidentia oppositorum): in God all opposites coincide — like expanding a circle until it becomes a line; in God maximum and minimum are identical Complication/Explication/Contraction: God complicates all things in himself; the universe is the explication of God; each thing is a local contraction of the whole Man as microcosm: image of God in the finite Influenced by Plotinus — the ineffable One Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite — negative theology Thomas Aquinas — but goes beyond Influenced Marsilio Ficino — Florentine Neoplatonism Giordano Bruno — infinite universe and coincidence of opposites Schelling — identity of opposites Hegel — dialectic as overcoming opposites Works On Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia, 1440); On Conjectures; The Game of Spheres. ...

Pico della Mirandola Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Italian prodigy philosopher; knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. Proposed to hold a debate in Rome with 900 theses from all philosophical traditions — Pope Innocent VIII condemned some of them. Died at age 31. Key Concepts Dignity of Man (Oration on Human Dignity, 1486): man is the only being without a fixed nature — God placed him at the center of the world without determined form so that he might shape himself; it is the highest expression of human freedom and creativity; text considered the “manifesto of the Renaissance” Philosophical eclecticism: attempt to synthesize Plato, Aristotle, Jewish Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Christian theology, and Arabic philosophy; truth is one and all traditions participate in it Kabbalah: first Christian to use the Kabbalah as a theological argument — sacred letters and numbers confirm Christianity Concordism: Plato and Aristotle agree when correctly interpreted (against the Platonic-Aristotelian dispute of the time) Magic and astrology: natural magic (mastery of the forces of nature) is the noblest of sciences; distinguishes natural magic from goetia (witchcraft) Influenced by Marsilio Ficino — master and mentor in Florence Plato and Aristotle — seeks to reconcile both Jewish Kabbalah — Elia del Medigo Hermeticism — Corpus Hermeticum Influenced Late Renaissance humanism Tradition of philosophia perennis (perennial philosophy) Giordano Bruno — philosophical syncretism and magic Debate on human dignity in modernity Works Oration on Human Dignity (1486); Heptaplus (1489, Kabbalistic interpretation of Genesis); On Being and Unity (1492); 900 Conclusions (1486). ...

Plotinus Born around 205 CE, probably in Roman Egypt, Plotinus studied for years in Alexandria under the enigmatic master Ammonius Saccas and later settled in Rome, where he founded a school and led a life of remarkable asceticism. His lessons were gathered and organized by his disciple Porphyry in the Enneads. He is the founder of Neoplatonism and the greatest philosopher of late antiquity, making Plato the starting point of one of the most grandiose metaphysics ever conceived. ...

Porphyry Porphyry of Tyre — in Greek Porphýrios, a name adopted in place of his Semitic birth name Malchus (“king” in Phoenician) — was born around 234 CE in Tyre (on the coast of present-day Lebanon) and died around 305 CE. A caveat: he should not be confused with Porphyry of Gaza (5th century), a Christian bishop with the same name, nor with other late-antique figures bearing it. After studying in Athens with Cassius Longinus, in around 263 CE he joined the circle of Plotinus in Rome, of whom he became the most celebrated pupil. He served as editor of the Enneads (posthumously published c. 301), arranging the master’s writings into six groups of nine treatises and prefacing them with the Vita Plotini (Life of Plotinus) — a fundamental biographical source on Plotinus. His influence, however, reaches far beyond his editorial work: through the Isagoge, Porphyry shaped the entry of Aristotelian logic into the medieval world. ...

Proclus Proclus Lycaeus Diadochus (in Greek Próklos Lýkios Diádokhos, “Proclus the Lycian, the Successor”) was born in Constantinople in 412 CE and died in Athens on 17 April 485 CE. A caveat: he should not be confused with Proclus Procopius (an orator of the 5th century) or other homonymous late-antique figures. The son of a wealthy family from Lycia (in the south of present-day Turkey), he was educated in Alexandria and soon moved to Athens, where he studied with Plutarch of Athens (not to be confused with the essayist of Chaeronea) and with Syrianus, whom he succeeded as head of the Academy — hence his title Diádokhos, “the Successor.” He was the last great systematizer of pagan Neoplatonism before the closure of the Academy by Emperor Justinian in 529 CE. His work organizes the Plotinian inheritance into a rigorous network of propositions and triads, in a project comparable, in ambition, to Aquinas’s Summa — but in an entirely pagan key. ...