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Neoplatonism

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Neoplatonism (or Neo-Platonism) is a modern term used to designate a tradition of philosophy that arose in the 3rd century AD and persisted until shortly after the closing of the Platonic Academy in Athens in AD 529 by Justinian I. Neoplatonists were heavily influenced both by Plato and by the Platonic tradition that thrived during the six centuries which separated the first of the Neoplatonists from Plato. Neoplatonism was an ancient Earth philosophy from the Mediterranean region. It was a mystical philosophy based partly on the works of Plato. In the Shakespearian play The Tempest, Prospero practiced neoplatonic rites in a room on Prospero's Island. (TNG: "Emergence" )

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Adolf Harnack; John Malcolm Mitchell

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Neoplatonism

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Neoplatonism (or Neo-Platonism) is a modern term used to designate a tradition of philosophy that arose in the 3rd century AD and persisted until shortly after the closing of the Platonic Academy in Athens in AD 529 by Justinian I. Neoplatonists were heavily influenced both by Plato and by the Platonic tradition that thrived during the six centuries which separated the first of the Neoplatonists from Plato. Collectively, the Neoplatonists constituted a continuous tradition of philosophers which began with Plotinus. In defining the term, it is difficult to reduce Neoplatonism to a concise set of ideas that all Neoplatonic philosophers shared in common. There are two reasons why. First, Neoplatonic philosophy is expansive in its scope. The work of Neoplatonic philosophy involved providing a systematic description of the derivation of the whole of reality from a single principle, "the One". Secondly, while the Neoplatonists generally shared some basic assumptions about the nature of reality, there were also considerable differences in their views and approaches. The variations of these views between thinkers within the school of thought thus make it difficult to summarize its philosophical content briefly. Thus, the most concise definition of Neoplatonism casts it as a historical term. It refers to the tradition itself: to the work of Plotinus, and to the thinkers who developed, responded to and criticized his ideas. There are multiple ways to categorize the differences between the Neoplatonists according to their differing views, but one way counts three distinct phases in Neoplatonism after Plotinus: the work of his student Porphyry, that of Iamblichus and his school in Calchis, and the period in the fifth and sixth centuries, when the Academies in Alexandria and Athens flourished. Thinkers of this final period include Syrianus, Olympiodorus the Younger, Proclus and Damascius. Later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus embraced a certain kind of spiritual exercise, called theurgy, as a means of developing the soul through a process called henosis. Neoplatonism has been very influential throughout history. In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonic ideas were integrated into the philosophical and theological works of many of the most important mediaeval Islamic, Christian, and Jewish thinkers. In Muslim lands, Neoplatonic texts were available in Persian and Arabic translations, and notable thinkers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna and Moses Maimonides incorporated Neoplatonic elements into their own thinking. Although the revitalisation of Neoplatonism amongst Italian Renaissance thinkers such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola is perhaps more famous, Latin translations of Late Ancient Neoplatonic texts were first available in the Christian West much earlier, in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, had direct access to works by Proclus, Simplicius and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and he knew about other Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus and Porphyry, through secondhand sources. The influence of Neoplatonism also extends into forms of culture beyond philosophy, and well into the modern era, for instance, in Renaissance Aesthetics, and in the work of modernist poets such as W. B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, among many more. Neoplatonism was an ancient Earth philosophy from the Mediterranean region. It was a mystical philosophy based partly on the works of Plato. In the Shakespearian play The Tempest, Prospero practiced neoplatonic rites in a room on Prospero's Island. (TNG: "Emergence" )

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