Middle Platonism
Encyclopedia
Middle Platonism is the modern name given to a stage in the development of Plato
's philosophy, lasting from about 90 BC, when Antiochus of Ascalon
rejected the scepticism
of the New Academy, until the development of Neoplatonism
under Plotinus
in the 3rd century. Middle Platonism absorbed many doctrines from the rival Peripatetic
and Stoic
schools. The pre-eminent philosopher in this period was Plutarch
(c. 45-120), who defended the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul. He sought to show that God, in creating the world, had transformed matter, as the receptacle of evil, into the divine soul of the world, but where it continued to operate as the source of all evil. God is a transcendent
being, which operates through divine intermediaries, which are the gods and daemons
of popular religion. Numenius of Apamea
(c. 160) combined Platonism with Neopythagoreanism
and other, eastern, philosophies, in a move which would prefigure the development of Neoplatonism.
(c. 125-68 BC), was the pupil of Philo of Larissa
, and the teacher of Cicero
. Through his influence, Platonism made the transition from Scepticism
to Eclecticism. Whereas Philo had still adhered to the doctrine that there is nothing absolutely certain, Antiochus returned to a pronounced dogmatism. Among other objections to Scepticism, was the consideration that without firm convictions no rational content of life is possible. He pointed out that it is a contradiction to assert that nothing can be asserted or to prove that nothing can be proved; that we cannot speak of false ideas and at the same time deny the distinction between false and true. He expounded the Academic, Peripatetic
, and Stoic
systems in such a way as to show that these three schools deviate from one another only in minor points. He himself was chiefly interested in ethics, in which he tried to find a middle way between Zeno
, Aristotle
and Plato
. For instance, he said that virtue
suffices for happiness, but for the highest grade of happiness bodily and external goods are necessary as well.
This eclectic tendency was favoured by the lack of dogmatic works by Plato. Middle Platonism was promoted by the necessity of considering the main theories of the post-Platonic schools of philosophy, such as the Aristotelian logic and the Stoic psychology and ethics (theory of goods and emotions). On the one hand the Middle Platonists were engaged like the later Peripatetics in scholarly activities such as the exposition of Plato's doctrines and the explanation of his dialogues; on the other hand they attempted to develop the Platonic theories systematically. In so far as it was subject in this to the influence of Neopythagoreanism
, it was of considerable importance in preparing the way for Neoplatonism
.
The most important of the Middle Platonists was Plutarch
(45-120), who also won fame as an historian. Although he was a Platonist, he was open to the influence of the Peripatetics, and even, in some details, to the Stoics, despite his polemics against their principles; he rejected absolutely only Epicureanism
. In opposition to Stoic materialism and Epicurean "atheism," he cherished a pure idea of God that was more in accordance with Plato. Nevertheless he adopted a second principle in order to explain the constitution of the physical world. This principle he sought not in any indeterminate matter, but in the evil world-soul which had from the beginning been bound up with matter, but in the creation was filled with reason and arranged by it. Thus it was transformed into the divine soul of the world, but continued to operate as the source of all evil. He elevated God above the finite world, but he believed that God comes to our aid by direct revelation
s; this enabled Plutarch to justify popular belief in prophecy
. The gods of popular religion are merely different names for one and the same divine Being and the powers that serve them. Daemons
were for him agents of God's influence on the world. Plutarch defended freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul
. Platonic-Peripatetic ethics were upheld by Plutarch against the opposing theories of the Stoics and Epicureans.
Among later Middle Platonists there were Theon of Smyrna
, who wrote a mathematical introduction to Plato, and Gaius
(2nd century) who was a teacher of Platonist philosophy. His pupil, Albinus
, wrote an account of his lectures, of which we possess the introduction. Around the same time, Alcinous
wrote an extant treatise on Platonism, in which he postulated three principles: the first God, the ideas
, which are regarded as thoughts of this "first God", and matter. Apuleius
(c. 125), a popular writer, expounded an eclectic Platonism in his books On the God of Socrates and On Plato and his Doctrine which are written in Latin
. Maximus of Tyre
(c. 180), like Plutarch, endeavoured to bridge the gulf between a transcendent God and matter by the assumption of numerous daemons as intermediaries. Atticus (c. 175) opposed the eclecticism which had invaded the school and contested the theories of Aristotle as an aberration from Plato. He was an uncompromising supporter of Plato and regarded the theory of immortality as the basis of his whole system. Nevertheless in this theology he approached more closely to the Stoic idea of immanence.
Numenius of Apamea
(c. 160) combined both Neopythagoreanism
and Platonism. He exhibited a far-going syncretism. Like Plutarch he supposed that an evil soul was combined with matter. From this the mortal part of the human soul is derived, which he described as the second irrational soul. Because of its guilt the soul had to descend from its bodiless life into the body, and after its departure from the body, if it does not need to undergo further incarnation, it becomes indistinguishably united with God. A gift of God is the wisdom which is the highest good, and this gift is only granted to those who devote themselves to the ultimate good to the exclusion of all other thoughts.
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's philosophy, lasting from about 90 BC, when Antiochus of Ascalon
Antiochus of Ascalon
Antiochus , of Ascalon, , was an Academic philosopher. He was a pupil of Philo of Larissa at the Academy, but he diverged from the Academic skepticism of Philo and his predecessors...
rejected the scepticism
Academic skepticism
Academic skepticism refers to the skeptical period of ancient Platonism dating from around 266 BC, when Arcesilaus became head of the Platonic Academy, until around 90 BC, when Antiochus of Ascalon rejected skepticism. Like their fellow Pyrrhonists, they maintained that knowledge of things is...
of the New Academy, until the development of Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...
under Plotinus
Plotinus
Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
in the 3rd century. Middle Platonism absorbed many doctrines from the rival Peripatetic
Peripatetic
The Peripatetics were members of a school of philosophy in ancient Greece. Their teachings derived from their founder, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers. The school originally derived its name Peripatos from the peripatoi of the Lyceum gymnasium in...
and Stoic
STOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
schools. The pre-eminent philosopher in this period was Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
(c. 45-120), who defended the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul. He sought to show that God, in creating the world, had transformed matter, as the receptacle of evil, into the divine soul of the world, but where it continued to operate as the source of all evil. God is a transcendent
Transcendence (religion)
In religion transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature which is wholly independent of the physical universe. This is contrasted with immanence where God is fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways...
being, which operates through divine intermediaries, which are the gods and daemons
Daemon (mythology)
The words dæmon and daimôn are Latinized spellings of the Greek "δαίμων", a reference to the daemons of Ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy...
of popular religion. Numenius of Apamea
Numenius of Apamea
Numenius of Apamea was a Greek philosopher, who lived in Apamea in Syria and flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century AD. He was a Neopythagorean and forerunner of the Neoplatonists.- Philosophy :...
(c. 160) combined Platonism with Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism was a Graeco-Alexandrian school of philosophy, reviving Pythagorean doctrines, which became prominent in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE...
and other, eastern, philosophies, in a move which would prefigure the development of Neoplatonism.
History
Antiochus of AscalonAntiochus of Ascalon
Antiochus , of Ascalon, , was an Academic philosopher. He was a pupil of Philo of Larissa at the Academy, but he diverged from the Academic skepticism of Philo and his predecessors...
(c. 125-68 BC), was the pupil of Philo of Larissa
Philo of Larissa
Philo of Larissa, was a Greek philosopher. He was a pupil of Clitomachus, whom he succeeded as head of the Academy. During the Mithradatic wars which would see the destruction of the Academy, he travelled to Rome where Cicero heard him lecture. None of his writings survive...
, and the teacher of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
. Through his influence, Platonism made the transition from Scepticism
Academic skepticism
Academic skepticism refers to the skeptical period of ancient Platonism dating from around 266 BC, when Arcesilaus became head of the Platonic Academy, until around 90 BC, when Antiochus of Ascalon rejected skepticism. Like their fellow Pyrrhonists, they maintained that knowledge of things is...
to Eclecticism. Whereas Philo had still adhered to the doctrine that there is nothing absolutely certain, Antiochus returned to a pronounced dogmatism. Among other objections to Scepticism, was the consideration that without firm convictions no rational content of life is possible. He pointed out that it is a contradiction to assert that nothing can be asserted or to prove that nothing can be proved; that we cannot speak of false ideas and at the same time deny the distinction between false and true. He expounded the Academic, Peripatetic
Peripatetic
The Peripatetics were members of a school of philosophy in ancient Greece. Their teachings derived from their founder, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers. The school originally derived its name Peripatos from the peripatoi of the Lyceum gymnasium in...
, and Stoic
STOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
systems in such a way as to show that these three schools deviate from one another only in minor points. He himself was chiefly interested in ethics, in which he tried to find a middle way between Zeno
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher from Citium . Zeno was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, which he taught in Athens from about 300 BC. Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics, Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of virtue in...
, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
and Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. For instance, he said that virtue
Virtue
Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality subjectively deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being....
suffices for happiness, but for the highest grade of happiness bodily and external goods are necessary as well.
This eclectic tendency was favoured by the lack of dogmatic works by Plato. Middle Platonism was promoted by the necessity of considering the main theories of the post-Platonic schools of philosophy, such as the Aristotelian logic and the Stoic psychology and ethics (theory of goods and emotions). On the one hand the Middle Platonists were engaged like the later Peripatetics in scholarly activities such as the exposition of Plato's doctrines and the explanation of his dialogues; on the other hand they attempted to develop the Platonic theories systematically. In so far as it was subject in this to the influence of Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism was a Graeco-Alexandrian school of philosophy, reviving Pythagorean doctrines, which became prominent in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE...
, it was of considerable importance in preparing the way for Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...
.
The most important of the Middle Platonists was Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
(45-120), who also won fame as an historian. Although he was a Platonist, he was open to the influence of the Peripatetics, and even, in some details, to the Stoics, despite his polemics against their principles; he rejected absolutely only Epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
. In opposition to Stoic materialism and Epicurean "atheism," he cherished a pure idea of God that was more in accordance with Plato. Nevertheless he adopted a second principle in order to explain the constitution of the physical world. This principle he sought not in any indeterminate matter, but in the evil world-soul which had from the beginning been bound up with matter, but in the creation was filled with reason and arranged by it. Thus it was transformed into the divine soul of the world, but continued to operate as the source of all evil. He elevated God above the finite world, but he believed that God comes to our aid by direct revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
s; this enabled Plutarch to justify popular belief in prophecy
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
. The gods of popular religion are merely different names for one and the same divine Being and the powers that serve them. Daemons
Daemon (mythology)
The words dæmon and daimôn are Latinized spellings of the Greek "δαίμων", a reference to the daemons of Ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy...
were for him agents of God's influence on the world. Plutarch defended freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
. Platonic-Peripatetic ethics were upheld by Plutarch against the opposing theories of the Stoics and Epicureans.
Among later Middle Platonists there were Theon of Smyrna
Theon of Smyrna
Theon of Smyrna was a Greek philosopher and mathematician, whose works were strongly influenced by the Pythagorean school of thought. His surviving On Mathematics Useful for the Understanding of Plato is an introductory survey of Greek mathematics.-Life:Little is known about the life of Theon of...
, who wrote a mathematical introduction to Plato, and Gaius
Gaius the Platonist
Gaius the Platonist was a Greek or Roman philosopher, and a representative of Middle Platonism. Very little is known about him except that he was the teacher of Albinus, who is known to have published a now lost nine-volume summary of Gaius' lectures on Plato...
(2nd century) who was a teacher of Platonist philosophy. His pupil, Albinus
Albinus (philosopher)
Albinus was a Platonist philosopher, who lived at Smyrna, and was teacher of Galen. A short tract by him, entitled Introduction to Plato's dialogues, has come down to us. From the title of one of the extant manuscripts we learn that Albinus was a pupil of Gaius the Platonist...
, wrote an account of his lectures, of which we possess the introduction. Around the same time, Alcinous
Alcinous (philosopher)
__FORCETOC__Alcinous , or Alcinoos, or Alkinoos, was a Middle Platonist philosopher. He probably lived in the 2nd century AD, although nothing is known about his life. He is the author of The Handbook of Platonism, an epitome of Middle Platonism intended as a manual for teachers...
wrote an extant treatise on Platonism, in which he postulated three principles: the first God, the ideas
Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
, which are regarded as thoughts of this "first God", and matter. Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
(c. 125), a popular writer, expounded an eclectic Platonism in his books On the God of Socrates and On Plato and his Doctrine which are written in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. Maximus of Tyre
Maximus of Tyre
Cassius Maximus Tyrius Cassius Maximus Tyrius Cassius Maximus Tyrius (Maximus of Tyre; was a Greek rhetorician and philosopher who flourished in the time of the Antonines and Commodus. His writings contain many allusions to the history of Greece, while there is little reference to Rome; hence it...
(c. 180), like Plutarch, endeavoured to bridge the gulf between a transcendent God and matter by the assumption of numerous daemons as intermediaries. Atticus (c. 175) opposed the eclecticism which had invaded the school and contested the theories of Aristotle as an aberration from Plato. He was an uncompromising supporter of Plato and regarded the theory of immortality as the basis of his whole system. Nevertheless in this theology he approached more closely to the Stoic idea of immanence.
Numenius of Apamea
Numenius of Apamea
Numenius of Apamea was a Greek philosopher, who lived in Apamea in Syria and flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century AD. He was a Neopythagorean and forerunner of the Neoplatonists.- Philosophy :...
(c. 160) combined both Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism was a Graeco-Alexandrian school of philosophy, reviving Pythagorean doctrines, which became prominent in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE...
and Platonism. He exhibited a far-going syncretism. Like Plutarch he supposed that an evil soul was combined with matter. From this the mortal part of the human soul is derived, which he described as the second irrational soul. Because of its guilt the soul had to descend from its bodiless life into the body, and after its departure from the body, if it does not need to undergo further incarnation, it becomes indistinguishably united with God. A gift of God is the wisdom which is the highest good, and this gift is only granted to those who devote themselves to the ultimate good to the exclusion of all other thoughts.
Further reading
- Dillon, John, M.John M. DillonJohn Myles Dillon is an Irish classicist and philosopher who was Regius Professor of Greek in Trinity College, Dublin between 1980 and 2006. Prior to that he taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens on 15 June 2010...
(1977), The Middle Platonists, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.