Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism is the name given by historians of philosophy to the revival and elaboration of Plato's philosophy which began in the middle of the third century CE and became the dominant influence on non-Christian philosophers in the Roman Empire until in 529 the emperor Justinian (reigned 527-565) banned the public teaching of philosophy.

Neoplatonism owes its distinctive features to Plotinus (205-270 CE), though his teacher, Ammonius Saccas (3rd cent.), and his devoted pupil, Porphyry (c232-c305), were also significant figures in the early history of Neoplatonism: it was Porphyry who posthumously edited and published Plotinus' Enneads and wrote a life of Plotinus..

Although Plotinus claimed his philosophical system was no more than an exposition of the philosophy of Plato (427-347 BCE), it was in fact a synthesis of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic elements. Its main features - and, more generally, those of Neoplatonism - are:

• a contrast between the material or physical world accessible to the senses and an immaterial or intelligible world accessible to the mind, the latter being regarded as in some way more basic or fundamental than the former.

• a hierarchical picture of the universe: the supreme or most fundamental entity, the One, which is utterly transcendant and beyond human comprehension, is the source by a series of 'emanations' or 'irradiations' of all lower beings, including humankind.

• a belief that human beings, like all lower beings, desire to return to their source and aspire to union with the One, an aspiration which can be achieved, at least to some extent, by meditation and mystical practices.

Although, in view of its claims about the existence and nature of the One, Neoplatonism may reasonably be characterised as a 'religious' philosophy, Neoplatonists were at pains to distance themselves from their Christian and Gnostic contemporaries: Plotinus, in particular, was contemptuous of their anthropocentric accounts of the universe and their related conceptions of human 'salvation'.

In the fourth century Neoplatonism became widely accepted in pagan philosophical circles throughout the Roman Empire, and was taught in the philosophical schools of Athens and Alexandria and in the main centres of learning in Syria. It was also an influence on Augustine of Hippo (365-430) and, through him, on other Christian thinkers of that and later periods.

Many Neoplatonists wrote commentaries on Plato and Aristotle. Among the best known are:

• Iamblichus (Ἰάμβλιχος, Iamblichos), (c250-c325), who taught at Apamea (near Antioch) in Syria, and whose extremely tendentious commentaries on Plato and Aristotle survive only in fragments. He also composed the Collection of Pythagorean Doctrines in ten books, of which four have survived.

• Proclus (Πρόκλος, Proklos), (412-487), who was born in Constantinople, studied in Athens and Alexandria, and became head of the Academy in Athens. As well as commentaries on Plato, he wrote the very influential Platonic Theology and Elements of Theology.

• Simplicius (Σιμπλίκιος, Simplikios) (c490-c560), who, like Proclus, studied in Athens and Alexandria. He wrote commentaries on some of Aristotle's works and on the Encheiridion of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. When in 529 the emperor Justinian banned the public teaching of non-Christian philosophy, he along with a number of other Neoplatonists travelled to Ctesiphon in Persia to the court of king Chosroes I.

Justinian's closure of the philosophical schools in the Roman Empire contributed to the diffusion of Neoplatonist thought beyond the Empire's eastern borders - though even before this, in the fifth century, a number of Greek philosophical texts had already been translated into Syriac. After the spread of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries the 'Abbasid dynasty, which ruled from their capital Baghdad (founded 762) from the eighth to the thirteenth century, sponsored the translation into Arabic of many Greek philosophical and scientific works, among them many Neoplatonic texts. In this way Neoplatonism became assimilated into Islamic culture and shaped the interests of the great Arabic philosophers of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries.

In the Christian West Neoplatonism exercised an influence on medieval thought; on many Renaissance thinkers such as the Florentine Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and his friend and rival Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494); and, in seventeenth century England, on the Cambridge Platonists (e.g., Henry More (1614-1687) and Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688)).