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Chapter 17 - Introduction to later Neoplatonism

from Part IV - THE LATER NEOPLATONISTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Edited by
A. H. Armstrong
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Summary

The philosophers who are the subject of this Part make a sufficiently identifiable group. On the scale of this history all are adherents of Plotinus' version of Platonism although in some cases this may have to be argued and certainly the system was developed in directions which would not all have been approved by Plotinus. The survey runs from Porphyry, who was born in about the year when Plotinus started studying at Alexandria, to the last professors in Alexandria and Greece who were not concerned primarily to apply philosophy to Christian theology—that is from the middle of the third century a.d. to about the end of the sixth.

It is as well to have signposts even if they turn out, as signposts sometimes do, to need a little correcting. A century and a half from Plotinus' death (270) to the middle of Constantine's reign will be dominated by the figures of Porphyry and the Syrian Iamblichus (died 326). Pupils of Iamblichus continued to teach in Syria; but there is almost no trace of their contribution to philosophy; they probably made none. We therefore move to Athens where his influence was also very strong. The School at Athens had a continuous history from Plato, but we know nothing of its philosophy for some time before the great century of Athenian Neoplatonism. This begins with a man called Plutarch towards the end of the fourth century but consists substantially of the trio Syrianus, Proclus and Damascius; in fact their teaching seems sufficiently static for it to be examined only as it appears in Proclus, at least four of whose major works have survived.

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The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy , pp. 269 - 282
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1967

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