Dictionary:

Neo-Platonism

  (nē'ō-plāt'n-ĭz'əm)

1. A philosophical system developed at Alexandria in the third century A.D. by Plotinus and his successors. It is based on Platonism with elements of mysticism and some Judaic and Christian concepts and posits a single source from which all existence emanates and with which an individual soul can be mystically united.
2. A revival of Neo-Platonism or a system derived from it, as in the Middle Ages.

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Neoplatonism, a philosophical and religious system that both rivalled and influenced Christianity from the 3rd to the 6th century, and was derived from the work of the Greek philosopher Plato (427–347) BCE) along with elements of oriental mysticism. The founder of Neoplatonism was Plotinus (205–270 CE), who constructed an elaborate hierarchy of spiritual levels through which the individual soul could ascend from physical existence to merge with the One. Interest in Neoplatonic philosophy, often associated with magic and demonology, was revived in the Renaissance. See also Platonism.

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Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophy of the ancient pagan world from the time of Plotinus, mid-third century AD, to the closing of the schools of philosophy at Athens (because they were pagan) by the Christian emperor Justinian in AD 529. It exerted a strong influence on medieval and Renaissance thought. Plotinus is the greatest philosopher of Neoplatonism and is usually considered to be its founder, but there is much that foreshadows his thought in the philosophy of Antiochus of Ascalon (d. c.68 BC; see ACADEMY), Posidonius (d. c.50 BC), Philo the Jew (d. AD 45), and others nearer to Plotinus' own time. They all aimed at a comprehensive Greek philosophy, one that incorporated into Platonism the best of Aristotle, Pythagoras, and the Stoics, so as to make a synthesis of the collected wisdom of the ancient world. But Neoplatonism was not only a philosophy; it also met a religious need by showing how the individual soul might reach God. Thus it presented with traditional Greek rationalism a scheme of salvation comparable with those schemes offered by Christianity and the mystery religions. No one before Plotinus could either achieve the desired philosophical synthesis or convey as he did the inner mystical experience of the merging of the self into some larger life. After Plotinus and his pupil Porphyry the next notable Neoplatonist was the early fourth-century Syrian Iamblichus. He introduced into Neoplatonism the idea that the unity of the soul with the One could be achieved not by a man's own mystical efforts but by acts of magic correctly performed and by the power of symbols comprehensible only to the gods. The intellectual content of Plotinus' brand of mysticism was thus rejected.

During the fourth century Neoplatonism became the favoured pagan creed; Latin Neoplatonists included Macrobius. It also began to influence Christian thinkers, notably Augustine. It was widely taught, but its intellectual centres were Athens and Alexandria. In the latter school the mathematician Hypatia and her pupil Synesius of Cyrenē (c. AD 370–413) were both Neoplatonists. Synesius was a poet and orator rather than a thinker; he has left a collection of hymns and letters and a discourse entitled Diōn, a defence of learning and the cultivated life both against extreme forms of Christian asceticism and against the superstitious theurgy of the pagans. Nevertheless his Neoplatonism took the form also of an interest in the occult. In 410 he became bishop of Ptolemais in Libya somewhat reluctantly, not wishing to relinquish his wife, his country pursuits, and his philosophical beliefs, or to profess doctrines which seemed to him more symbolic than actual. The last important Neoplatonist at Athens was Proclus (AD 411–85), born at Constantinople. Many of the later Neoplatonists carried metaphysical speculation into the realm of fantasy, mingling magic with eastern superstitions. Demonology in particular was highly developed by them, and a complete hierarchy was devised of good and evil demons who were thought to pervade the universe and were the object of semi-religious, semi-magical rites. The teaching of Neoplatonism, ended at Athens by Justinian in 529, continued at Alexandria until the end of the sixth century.

Proclus' writings survived to influence early medieval thought by virtue of being reworked and Christianized soon after his death by someone unknown, who aimed to achieve a synthesis of Neoplatonism and Christian dogma. They were then promulgated under the name of ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’, who four centuries earlier had been a convert of the apostle Paul (see Acts 17: 34). Although their authenticity was challenged by some, in general they were accepted as the work of Dionysius and the texts commented upon by a succession of eminent theologians. They were translated into Latin by Erigena in the ninth century and became one of the bases of medieval theology, second only to the writings of St Augustine. Their authenticity was not finally disproved until the nineteenth century.

Neoplatonism itself was revived by the Byzantine scholar Psellus in the eleventh century and taken up by some humanists at the time of the Renaissance.

The term properly describes the thought of Plotinus (3rd c. ad) and his early disciples Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus, but loosely covers the influence of these writers, and any subsequent revival of Plato, more particularly in the 15th c. in Italy and the 16th c. in France. It is often difficult to separate the Plotinian tradition from a purer form of Platonism. In the Middle Ages Plato himself was not well known in the West, and scarcely at all in Greek. The Timaeus was known in Cicero's partial translation (and also in that of Chalcidius) and although the Phaedo and the Meno were translated into Latin in the 12th c. by Henry Aristippus, their impact was slight. Knowledge of Plato came through the Latin writings of Cicero, Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius, and Scotus Erigena, an Irishman living in Paris. In the 12th c. this Platonist tradition was further transmitted in Paris by Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and other Franciscans, and by the school of Chartres, in contrast to the Aristotelian approach of the Dominicans. It must be stressed that it was not Platonism but Scholastic Aristotelianism which was the dominant philosophy in France at least until 1600 [see Scholasticism]. In literature there are some superficial parallels between Platonist thought and the idealized love of the troubadours, as with the spiritual ideal of Petrarch; the true revival of Plato does not, however, take place until the 15th c. The presence in Italy of the Byzantine scholars Chrysoloras, Bessarion, George of Trebizond, and Gemisthus Pletho generated interest in Greek language and literature; in about 1460 Cosimo de' Medici founded a Platonic Academy at Florence and it was frequented by poets and philosophers.

One man above all is responsible for the spread of Neoplatonism in the west, and especially in France, Marsilio Ficino, (1433-99), a priest and humanist who edited and translated Plato, Plotinus, and other Neoplatonic and hermetic writings, and attempted a synthesis of Platonism and Christianity. His commentary on Plato's Symposium (published in Latin in 1484 and in Italian in 1544) is the direct source of many poems and treatises on love in Italian and French, among which are: the Asolani of Bembo (1505, French translation 1545), Mario Equicola's Libro di natura d'amore (written by 1496, published 1525), Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (1528, French translation 1537), Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore (written 1502, published 1535, two French translations, by Pontus de Tyard and Denys Sauvage, 1551). It was thus from Italy that Neoplatonism came to France, through these treatises or directly from Ficino, with the support of Greek or Latin editions or French translations of Plato.

Among the first works to show signs of this influence were Symphorien Champier's Ianua logice et physice (1498) and the fourth book of his Nef des dames vertueuses (1503), a partial commentary on the Symposium after Ficino. Lefevre d'Étaples, though predominantly Aristotelian, was influenced by Plato, as were Bovelles, Ramus, Rabelais, and Marguerite de Navarre in her mystical and spiritual works. Héroët's Androgyne (1542) is another Ficinian translation and commentary on part of the Symposium, his Parfaite Amie shows the same inspiration. Other poets acquainted with the tradition are Scève in his Délie (1544) and Microcosme (1562), Du Guillet (Rymes, 1545), Du Bellay (L'Olive, 1549, Treize sonnets, 1552), and especially Pontus de Tyard (Erreurs amoureuses, 1549, 1551, 1555). Mention should also be made of Charles Fontaine, Charles de Sainte-Marthe, and Gilles Corrozet. In the second half of the century Desportes's poems indicate a further revival.

The main impact of Platonism on French literature thus occurred in the 16th c. and concerned love-poetry. The philosophy of love was, however, grounded in epistemology (love as a kind of knowledge, or leading to self-knowledge), cosmology (love as producing the harmony of the world, man as a microcosm), and aesthetics or metaphysics (love as an ascent to the realm of ideas, the superiority of the ideal over the material world). French Renaissance writers, following Diotima's speech in the Symposium, described the poet-lover's ascent from the love of a beautiful woman (for the writer was usually a man and the Greek ideal of male homosexual love had been forgotten) to the contemplation and love of beauty itself and to an awareness of the union of beauty, truth, and goodness. The clearest expression of this comes in the closing sonnets of Du Bellay's Olive and in his Treize sonnets de l'honnête amour.

Yet in spite of this idealism, and whatever the theorists say, the poets often reject, almost simultaneously, the idealizing tendency with its implications of chastity and spirituality; Platonism, like Petrarchism, has obvious limitations, and the sensual appreciation of beauty prevails in Ronsard, Baïf, and Belleau. Aristophanes' humorous intervention in the Symposium also captured the Renaissance imagination: the myth of the Androgyne justified the search for one's original other half and symbolized (in Ficino, Héroët, and others) man's attempt to regain his lost innocence. Love is linked also to critical theory in the doctrine of divine madness, or enthusiasm, which came from the Phaedrus and the Ion through the intermediary of Ficino: the four furies (poetic, mystical, prophetic, and erotic) are all aspects of a divine force which inspire mankind and ultimately converge to lead it from disorder to the original unity it has lost and bring it to the generation of beauty. In France the leading exponents of this attitude were Sebillet, Du Bellay, Tyard, and Ronsard Platonism is also seen in the Socratic educational ideal in Rabelais and Montaigne, as well as in political theory. Since the 16th c. Platonism has reappeared sporadically in different authors and different domains (e.g. the Romantic movement and early 20th-c. philosophy) but it is seen at its most dynamic in the humanist union of philosophy and literature.

[Peter Sharratt]

Bibliography

• R. V. Merrill and R. J. Clements, Platonism in French Renaissance Poetry (1957):
• A. H. T. Levi, “‘The Neoplatonist Calculus’”, in Levi (ed.), Humanism in France (1970), and “‘The Role of Neoplatonism in Ronsard's Poetic Imagination’”, in T. Cave (ed.), Ronsard the Poet (1973)
• F. Joukovsky, Le Regard intérieur. Thèmes plotiniens chez quelques écrivains de la Renaissance (1982)

The fusion of Plato's philosophy with religious, Pythagorean, and other classical doctrines, originated by Plotinus in his Enneads. Plotinus conceived of the universe as an emanation or effulguration of the One, the omnipresent, transcendental Good derived from Plato's Parmenides. The One gives rise to the realm of nous (ideas, intelligence), and that in turn to soul, or souls, some of which sink into bodies (others remain celestial). For further detail, see Plotinus. Porphyry added Aristotelian elements. The school of Athens developed Neoplatonism in theological, but anti-Christian, directions, most notably in the work of Proclus in the 5th century. In Alexandria, however, a blend-ing of Neoplatonic and Christian elements took place, at its most developed in the work of Boethius. Neoplatonism had a profound influence on medieval and Renaissance philosophy (see, for example, Dante), whilst elements from Plotinus are also present in the tradition of the kabbala. However, eventually the God of the Neoplatonists is too remote from the world to serve satisfactorily as the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. He or it is like a pool that is the source of a river, but is separated from its lower reaches by all the intervening waterfalls; it is not accessible to prayer nor remotely cognizant of nor concerned with events further down. One of the principal problems of early scholastic philosophy was to define and defend a concept of a God that, while entirely self-sufficient, was not entirely self-absorbed. See also mover, unmoved.

Early modern Neoplatonism was a complex, syncretic phenomenon. It revived the thought of late antiquity but had deep roots too in the Greek Fathers, in medieval Augustinian spirituality, and in late scholastic Aristotelianism; it was also indebted to the Plato-Aristotle controversy among Renaissance Byzantines, notably to the speculative (and probably heretical) ideas of George Gemistos Pletho. Keyed to the revival of interest in, and renewed access to, Plato's texts that began with such early fifteenth-century humanists as the Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni, it culminated in the work of four distinguished if very different philosopher-theologians: the Greek émigré Cardinal Bessarion (1403–1472), the German conciliarist Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus (1401–1464), the Florentine cathedral canon, scholar, and teacher Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), and his "fellow Platonist," the eclectically brilliant Giovanni Pico, count of Mirandola (1463–1494), who ended his brief life as a devout follower of Savonarola.

Strictly speaking, Neoplatonism is the Platonism that originated with Plato's monistic third-century interpreter, Plotinus, and that attained its most scholastic elaboration in the work of the fifth-century Proclus. Dominated by metaphysical concerns, it was based on Plato's middle and later dialogues, preeminently the Parmenides, Timaeus, Sophist, Philebus, Republic, and Phaedrus, and on passages and arguments elsewhere, particularly in the Symposium, that addressed these concerns. From the onset, however, Plotinus and his followers claimed to be expounding not only Plato's Platonism but also the doctrines that Plato had learned from Pythagorean teachers, themselves the inheritors of proto-Platonic doctrines from the remotest Orphic, Egyptian, and Persian-Chaldaean pasts. All this came to be thought of by the Renaissance Neoplatonists as an ancient theology, a perennial gentile wisdom, bestowed and sanctioned by God, that was parallel to, and consonant with, the wisdom revealed to the Hebrews via Moses and the prophets, and that had been perfected in Christ, the new Zoroaster, the new Orpheus, the new Plato. This was not simply a declaration of faith. They could turn to the opening of St. John's Gospel and his First Epistle with their meditations on the descent of the Word, to various passages in St. Paul's Epistles, and above all to the treatises of one Dionysius the Areopagite, whom they identified with St. Paul's Athenian disciple (mentioned in Acts 17:34), but who was, we now realize, a late fifth- or early sixth-century follower of Proclus. These treatises incorporated many features of Proclus' Neoplatonic scholasticism, and propounded a dialectical theology centered on negation and analogy that was deeply indebted to the late ancient Neoplatonic interpretation of the second part of Plato's Parmenides. But their misdating to the first century had the dramatic effect of making St. Paul a Proclian Neoplatonist, and his teaching on the Hill of Mars, an exposition of the mysteries of Plato's supreme exercise in dialectic.

Other misdatings or misattributions—the notion for instance that Plotinus had been taught by a Christian, Ammonius Saccas, and had been a fellow disciple of the Christian Origen—helped to establish Christ and his disciples as the perfection of Platonism, and to validate Neoplatonism as the Christian philosophy. The seal to this interpretation was Augustine's acknowledgment of the role played by "certain books of the Platonists"—in all likelihood Marius Victorinus' Latin translations of extracts from Plotinus—in his reconversion to Christianity. Thus Augustine and the Areopagite, the two thinkers who had laid the foundations of medieval theology, were made central to the story of Christian Neoplatonism. Finally, to complicate matters still further, when the study of Aristotle was revived in the West in the thirteenth century, some of his governing notions had already been partially Neoplatonized by ancient commentators such as Themistius, and by Arab misattributions and mistranslations. Variously incorporated into Thomism and Scotism, these hybrids (the notion of participation is an example) persisted into the early modern period, despite scholarly controversy and elucidation. Additionally, parts of Proclus' works were already known in the medieval period (and were rendered into Latin), while those of Plato and Plotinus remained essentially unknown except for the first half of the Timaeus and the lemmata in Proclus' commentaries; this ensured a Proclian take on many issues that also persisted. It was a tangled situation that obviously lent itself to the revival of the ancient search for a Neoplatonic subordination of Aristotle to Plato, and of both to Christianity.

This was largely the work of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). Earlier humanists had already translated some of the dialogues, including the Republic, into Latin, but Ficino published the definitive Neoplatonic rendering of the entire canon in 1484 and went on to translate Plotinus' Enneads and a number of other dependent texts, and to furnish them with extensive, penetrating commentary. An original philosopher, teacher, medical theorist, and priest, he embraced the missionary goal of Neoplatonizing Christianity. In particular he argued on Neoplatonic grounds for the soul's immortality in the hope both of strengthening the faith of the intellectual elite and of initiating them into the mysteries (the psychology) of the soul's ascent into mind, into unity, into the highest of all metaphysical principles, the One. This captured the imagination of influential secular and religious figures, patrons, and artists throughout Europe, especially in Italy, France, and Hungary (though whether he was ever the head of a Platonic academy in Florence in any sense other than a circle of friends and admirers is doubtful). His arguments in Platonic Theology (1482) even contributed to the soul's immortality being declared an article of faith at the Lateran Council in 1512.

Though Jacopo Mazzoni and Francesco Patrizi eventually occupied newly created chairs of Platonic philosophy, Neoplatonism never managed to supplant the entrenched Aristotelianism of the universities, even as it attracted influential academic support in France, and eventually in England with such mid-seventeenth-century Platonists as Ralph Cudworth and Henry More. In fact, Ficino's Neoplatonized Latin Plato and Plotinus translations continued to be used well into the nineteenth century (we have Samuel Taylor Coleridge's notes, for instance, on Ficino's Plato); and they contributed to the revival of an interest in Plato's later metaphysics among German philosophers and theologians such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Neoplatonism's greatest impact, however, was on several speculative thinkers outside of, or merely on the fringes of, the universities. These included most notably Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Robert Fludd, men who were variously interested in magic, demonology, the occult, mystical mathematics, harmony and love theory, medical astrology, and the notions of the World Soul and of an ensouled nature. Such a rich medley of interests also accounted, predictably, for Neoplatonism's eclipse during the Enlightenment, and for the often harsh dismissal by historians like Johann Jakob Brucker of its Renaissance proponents. By the same token, the Romantics rediscovered in it a mystical, at times even a pantheistic, tradition that was opposed not so much to Cartesian rationalism as to scientific empiricism, and that had heretical if not explicitly anti-Christian aspects. Arguably indeed Plotinus and Neoplatonism had a profounder impact on early modern Europe, directly and by way of opposition, than the "pure" Plato and the dialogues themselves; certainly a non-Neoplatonic appreciation of the latter only peaked after the educational reforms of the nineteenth century had made an understanding and appreciation of Greek literary prose—the early and middle dialogues are wonderful examples—an integral part of the establishment's patrician education. Even so, poets and theologians continued to turn to Plotinus and his followers, as did a few scholars haunted by the possibility that they were in truth Plato's most luminous interpreters.

Bibliography

Allen, Michael J. B. Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation. Florence, 1998.

Cassirer, Ernst. The Platonic Renaissance in England. Translated by James P. Pettegrove. Edinburgh, 1953.

Copenhaver, Brian P., and Charles B. Schmitt. Renaissance Philosophy. Oxford and New York, 1992.

Hankins, James. Plato in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Leiden and New York, 1991.

Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and its Sources. Edited by Michael Mooney. New York, 1979.

Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. London, 1958.

Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. Rev. ed. New York, 1968.

Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London, 1964.

—MICHAEL J. B. ALLEN

A mystical philosophical system initiated by Plotinus of Alexandria in 233 C.E. that combined the Platonic philosophy of ancient Greece with later Gnostic spiritual cravings. Although to some extent founded on the teachings of Plato, it was undoubtedly sophisticated by a deep mysticism, which in all probability emanated from Greece. To a great extent, Neoplatonism colored the thought of medieval mysticism and magic. Plotinus, its founder, commenced the study of philosophy in Alexandria at the age of 28. He early experienced an earnest desire to reach the truth concerning existence, and to that end made a deep study of the dialogues of Plato and the metaphysics of Aristotle. He practiced severe austerities and attempted to live what he called the "angelic" life, or the life of the disembodied in the body.

He was greatly drawn to Apollonius of Tyana by reading his Life by Philostratus. The union of philosopher and priest in the character of Apollonius fired the imagination of Plotinus, and in his Pythagorean teachings the young student discovered the elements of both Orientalism and Platonism, for both Pythagoras and Plato strove to escape the sensuous and to realize in contemplative abstraction the tranquility, superior to desire and passion, that made men approach the gods. However, in the hands of the later Pythagoreans and Platonists, the principles of the Hellenic masters were carried off into popular magical speculations. Many of the Pythagoreans joined the various Orphic (mystery religion) associations, becoming little more than itinerant vendors of charms.

It is probable that even before he left Alexandria Plotinus began to absorb some of the gnostic mysticism circulating throughout the Mediterranean Basin. But everywhere he also found a growing indifference to religion as known to the more ancient Greeks and Egyptians. By this time, the pantheons of Greece, Rome, and Egypt had become fused in the worship of Serapis, and this fusion had been forwarded by the works of Plutarch, Apuleius, and Lucian. The position of metaphysical philosophy at this time was by no means a strong one. In fact, metaphysical emphases had given place to ethical teachings, and philosophy was regarded as a branch of literature, or an elegant recreation. Plotinus persuaded himself that philosophy and religion should be one, and that speculation should be a search after God. It was at this time that he first heard of Ammonius Saccas, who shortly before had been a porter in the streets of Alexandria, and who lectured upon the possibilities of reconciling Plato and Aristotle.

"Skepticism," stated Ammonius, "was death." He recommended men to travel back across the past, and out of the whole bygone world of thought to construct a system greater than any of its parts. This teaching formed an epoch in the life of Plotinus, who was convinced that Platonism, exalted into a species of illuminism and drawing to itself like a magnet all the scattered truths of the bygone ages, could alone preserve mankind from skepticism. He occupied himself only with the most abstract questions concerning knowledge and being.

"Truth," according to Plotinus, "is not the agreement of our comprehension of an external object with the object itself, but rather, the agreement of the mind with itself. For the philosopher the objects we contemplate, and that which contemplates are identical; both are thought." All truth is then easy. Reduce the soul to its most perfect simplicity, and we find it is capable of exploration into the infinite; indeed it becomes one with the infinite. This is the condition of ecstasy, and to accomplish it, a stoical austerity and asceticism was necessary.

The Neoplatonists were thus, like the Gnostics, ascetics and enthusiasts. Plato was neither. According to Plotinus, the mystic contemplates the divine perfection in himself; all worldly things and logical distinctions vanish during the period of ecstasy. This approach has some similarity with the stages of yoga meditation.

Plotinus regarded the individual existence as phenomenal and transitory, and subordinated reason to ecstasy where the Absolute was in question. It is only at the end of his chain of reasoning that he introduces the supernatural. He is first a rationalist, afterwards a mystic, and only a mystic when he finds that he cannot employ the machinery of reason. The following letter of Plotinus, written about 260 C.E. , embodies his conclusions:

"Plotinus to Flaccus. —I applaud your devotion to philosophy; I rejoice to hear that your soul has set sail, like the returning Ulysses, for its native land— that glorious, that only real country—the world of unseen truth. To follow philosophy, the senator Rogatianus, one of the noblest of my disciples, gave up the other day all but the whole of his patrimony, set free his slaves, and surrendered all the honours of his station.

"Tidings have reached us that Valerian has been defeated and is now in the hands of Sapor. The threats of Franks and Allemanni, of Goths and Persians, are alike terrible by turns to our degenerate Rome. In days like these, crowded with incessant calamities, the inducements to a life of contemplation are more than ever strong. Even my quiet existence seems now to grow somewhat sensible of the advance of years. Age alone I am unable to debar from my retirement. I am weary already of this prisonhouse, the body, and calmly await the day when the divine nature within me shall be set free from matter.

"The Egyptian priests used to tell me that a single touch with the wing of their holy bird could charm the crocodile into torpor; it is not thus speedily, my dear friend, that the pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self—affections as well as appetites, and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision.

"You ask me to tell you how we know, and what is our criterion of certainty. To write is always irksome to me. But for the continual solicitations of Porphyry, I should not have left a line to survive me. For your own sake, and for your father's, my reluctance shall be overcome.

"External objects present us only with appearances. Concerning them, therefore, we may be said to possess opinion rather than knowledge. The distinctions in the actual world of appearance are of import only to ordinary and practical men. Our question lies within the ideal reality which exists behind appearance. How does the mind perceive these ideas? Are they without us, and is the reason, like sensation, occupied with objects external to itself? What certainty could we then have, what assurance that our perception was infallible? The object perceived would be a something different from the mind perceiving it. We should have then an image instead of reality. It would be monstrous to believe for a moment that the mind was unable to perceive ideal truth exactly as it is, and that we had not certainty and real knowledge concerning the world of intelligence. It follows, therefore, that this religion of truth is not to be investigated as a thing external to us, and so only imperfectly known. It is within us. Here the objects we contemplate and that which contemplates are identical—both are thought. The subject cannot surely know an object different from itself. The world of ideas lies within our intelligence. Truth, therefore, is not the agreement of our apprehension of an external object with the object itself. It is the agreement of the mind with itself. Consciousness, therefore, is the sole basis of certainty. The mind is its own witness. Reason sees in itself that which is above itself as its source; and again, that which is below itself as still itself once more.

"Knowledge has three degrees—Opinion, Science, Illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known.

"There is a raying out of all orders of existence, an external emanation from the ineffable One [ prudos ]. There is again a returning impulse, drawing all upwards and inwards towards the centre from whence all came [epistrophe]. Love, as Plato in the Banquet beautifully says, is the child of Poverty and Plenty. In the amorous quest of the soul after the Good, lies the painful sense of gall and deprivation. But that Love is blessing, is salvation, is our guardian genius; without it the centrifugal law would overpower us, and sweep our souls out far from their source toward the cold extremities of the Material and the Manifold. The wise man recognises the idea of the Good within him. This he develops by withdrawal into the Holy Place of his own soul. He who does not understand how the soul contains the Beautiful within itself, seeks to realize beauty without, by laborious production. His aim should rather be to concentrate and simplify, and so to expand his being; instead of going out into the Manifold, to forsake it for the One, and so to float upwards towards the divine fount of being whose stream flows within him.

"You ask, how can we know the Infinite? I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer, in which the Divine Essence is communicated to you. This is Ecstasy. It is the liberation of your mind from its infinite consciousness. Like only can apprehend like; when you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self (aplosis), its divine essence, you realize this Union, this Identity [enosin].

"But this sublime condition is not of permanent duration. It is only now and then that we can enjoy this elevation (mercifully made possible for us) above the limits of the body and the world. I myself have realized it but three times as yet, and Porphyry hitherto not once. All that tends to purify and elevate the mind will assist you in this attainment, and facilitate the approach and the recurrence of these happy intervals. There are, then, different roads by which this end may be reached. The love of beauty which exalts the poet; that devotion to the One and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher; and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection. These are the great highways conducting to that height above the actual and the particular where we stand in the immediate presence of the Infinite, who shines out as from the deeps of the soul."

Plotinus appears to have been greatly indebted to Numenius for some of the ideas peculiar to his system. Numenius attempted to harmonize Pythagoras and Plato, to elucidate and confirm the opinions of both by the religious dogmas of the Egyptians, the Magi, and the Brahmans, and he believed that Plato was indebted to the Hebrew as well as to the Egyptian theology for much of his wisdom. Like Plotinus he was puzzled that the immutable One could find it possible to create the manifold without self-degradation, and he therefore (from Plato) posited a being whom he calls the Demi-urge, or Artificer, who merely carried out the will of God in constructing the universe.

Expressed in summary, the mysticism of Plotinus is as follows: One cannot know God in any partial or finite manner. To know him truly we must escape from the finite, from all that is earthly, from the very gifts of God to God himself, and know him in the infinite way by receiving, or being received into him directly. To accomplish this, and to attain this identity, we must withdraw into our inmost selves, into our own essence, which alone is susceptible of blending with the Divine Essence. Hence the inmost is the highest, and as with all systems of mysticism introversion is ascension, and God is found within.

Porphyry entered the school of Plotinus when it had become an institution of some standing. At first he strongly opposed the teachings of his master, but soon became his most devoted scholar. He directed a fierce assault on Christianity, and at the same time launched strictures at paganism, but both forces were too strong for him.

Porphyry modified the doctrine of Plotinus regarding ecstasy by stating that in that condition the mind does not lose its consciousness of personality. He called it a dream in which the soul, dead to the world, rises to a species of divine activity, to an elevation above reason, action and liberty. He believed in a certain order of evil genii, who took pleasure in hunting wild beasts, and others of whom hunted souls that had escaped from the fetters of the body, so that to escape them, the soul must once more take refuge in the flesh. Porphyry's theosophical conceptions, based on those of Plotinus, were strongly and ably traversed by the theurgic mysteries of Iamblichus, to whom the priest was a prophet full of deity. Criticizing Porphyry, Iamblichus stated: "Often, at the moment of inspiration, or when the afflatus has subsided, a fiery Appearance is seen—the entering or departing Power. Those who are skilled in this wisdom can tell by the character of this glory the rank of divinity who has seized for the time the reins of the mystic's soul, and guides it as he will. Sometimes the body of the man subject to this influence is violently agitated, sometimes it is rigid and motionless. In some instances sweet music is heard, in others, discordant and fearful sounds. The person of the subject has been known to dilate and tower to a superhuman height; in other cases, it has been lifted up into the air. Frequently, not merely the ordinary exercise of reason, but sensation and animal life would appear to have been suspended, and the subject of the afflatus has not felt the application of fire, has been pierced with spits, cut with knives, and been sensible of no pain. Yea, often, the more the body and the mind have been alike enfeebled by vigil and by fasts, the more ignorant or mentally imbecile a youth may be who is brought under this influence, the more freely and unmixedly will the divine power be made manifest. So clearly are these wonders the work, not of human skill or wisdom, but of supernatural agency! Characteristics such as these I have mentioned, are the marks of the true inspiration.

"Now, there are, O Agathocles, four great orders of spiritual existence—Gods, Demons, Heroes or Demi-gods, and Souls. You will naturally be desirous to learn how the apparition of a God or a Demon is distinguished from those of Angels, Principalities, or Souls. Know, then, that their appearance to man corresponds to their nature, and that they always manifest themselves to those who invoke them in a manner consonant with their rank in the hierarchy of spiritual natures. The appearances of Gods are uniform, those of Demons various. The Gods shine with a benign aspect. When a God manifests himself, he frequently appears to hide sun or moon, and seems as he descends too vast for earth to contain. Archangels are at once awful and mild; Angels yet more gracious; Demons terrible. Below the four leading classes I have mentioned are placed the malignant Daemons, the Anti-gods.

"Each spiritual order has gifts of its own to bestow on the initiated who evoke them. The Gods confer health of body, power and purity of mind, and, in short, elevate and restore our natures to their proper principles. Angels and archangels have at their command only subordinate bestowments. Demons, however, are hostile to the aspirant, afflict both body and mind, and hinder our escape from the sensuous. Principalities, who govern the sublunary elements, confer temporal advantages. Those of a lower rank, who preside over matter, often display their bounty in material gifts. Souls that are pure are, like Angels, salutary in their influence. Their appearance encourages the soul in its upward efforts. Heroes stimulate to great actions. All those powers depend, in a descending chain, each species on that immediately above it. Good Demons are seen surrounded by the emblems of blessing, Demons who execute judgment appear with the instruments of punishment."

We thus see how in the process of time the principles on which the system of Plotinus rested were surrendered little by little, while divination and evocation were practiced with increasing frequency. Plotinus had declared the possibility of the absolute identification of the divine with human nature—the broadest possible basis for mysticism. Porphyry took up narrower ground and contended that in the union which takes place in ecstasy, we still retain consciousness of personality. Iamblichus diminished the real principle of mysticism still farther in theory, and denied that man has a faculty, eternally active and in accessible, to passion; the intellectual ambition so lofty in Plotinus subsided among the followers of Iamblichus into magical practice.

Proclus was the last of the Greek Neoplatonists. He elaborated the Trinity of Plotinus into a succession of impalpable triads, and surpassed Iamblichus in his devotion to the practice of theurgy. With Proclus, theurgy was the art that gave human beings the magical passwords that carried them through barrier after barrier, dividing species from species.

Above all being is God, the Non-Being, who is apprehended only by negation. When we are raised out of our weakness and on a level with God, it seems as though reason were silenced for we are above reason. In short we become intoxicated with God.

Proclus was an adept in the invocation rituals of every people in the world, and a great magical figure. With the advance of Byzantinism, he represented the old world of Greek thought, and even those who wrote against him as a heathen show the influence he exercised on their doctrines. Thus Dionysius attempted to accommodate the philosophy of Proclus to Christianity, and greatly admired his asceticism. The theology of the Neoplatonists was always in the first instance a mere matter of logic. They associated universals with causes. The highest became with them merely the most comprehensive.

As has been said, Neoplatonism exercised great power among the scholiasts and magicians of the Middle Ages. In fact most of what medievalism knew of Plato was through the medium of the Neoplatonists. In Germany in the fourteenth century it became a vivifying principle, for although its doctrine of emanation was abandoned, its allegorical explanation and its exaltation of the spirit above the letter was retained, and Platonism and mysticism together created a party within the church—the sworn foes of scholasticism and mere lifeless orthodoxy.

Sources:

Brehier, Emile. The Philosophy of Plotinus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Gerson, Lloyd P. Plotinus. London: Routledge, 1994.

Hadot, Pierre. Plotinus; or, The Simplicity of Vision. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Mead, G. R. S. Essay Written as a Preface to a New Edition of T. Taylor's "Select Works of Plotinus." London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895.

Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Plotinus Amid Gnostics and Christians: Papers Presented at a Plotinus Symposium held at the Free University, Amsterdam, on January 25, 1984. Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1984.

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