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Topic: Middle Platonism

	Renaissance Neo-Platonism
		In addition, Platonism never really faded out of the Western tradition nor was the Italian Renaissance a rediscovery of Plato; rather, the Italian Renaissance forged new philosophies from Plato and the Platonic tradition in antiquity and the Middle Ages.
		The most significant and far-reaching innovation of the Middle Platonists was the development of the view that the eternal forms or ideas that underly the world of appearances are the thoughts of some single god or divinity.
		For this resaon, the soul is called the center of creation and the middle term of all things in the universe, the entirety of the universe, the face of all things, and the binding and joining center of the universe.
	www.wsu.edu:8080 /~dee/REN/NEOPLATO.HTM (2801 words)

	Middle Platonism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		This final section will be devoted to a brief discussion of a branch or offshoot of Middle Platonic thought that I hesitantly labelled 'esoteric', in spite of the fact that these schools of thought or sects (or whatever one should call them) were quite widespread during this period, Gnosticism especially.
		Platonism, therefore, should not be thought of a simple elucidation of Plato's doctrines, but rather as a creative engagement with Plato's texts and with certain doctrines handed down by the Academy as belonging to Plato.
		Middle Platonism ends with Origen of Alexandria and his younger contemporary Plotinus, both of whom were deeply indebted to many of the philosophers discussed in this article, yet moved in directions uniquely their own.
	www.iep.utm.edu /m/midplato.htm (8719 words)

	Bryn Mawr Classical Review 94.10.14
		Middle Platonism includes the doctrines of a group of philosophers in Athens, Rome, and elsewhere often connected among themselves by little more than a devotion to Plato, the font of wisdom.
		The two most influential chapters of the work are 9 and 10 where Alcinous expounds the doctrine of Platonic Forms as ideas in the mind of God and where he discusses the Middle Platonic theology that ultimately served to establish Platonism as a legitimate source for early Christian philosophical thinking.
		Dillon does not, however, show how the Middle Platonic readings of the dialogues are not crazy, based as they are in part on the reasonable position that Aristotle is an accurate interpreter of Plato, and therefore on the assumption that the middle dialogues do not represent Plato's final views.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /bmcr/1994/94.10.14.html (993 words)

	Neoplatonism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonist ideas influenced the thinking of Jewish Kabbalists, such as Isaac the Blind.
		A famous Jewish Neoplatonic philosopher from the early Middle Ages was Solomon ibn Gabirol.
		It has recently been presented that the text is pre-Plotinian and pre-Porphyryian in origin by Kevin Corrigan of the University of Saskatchewan and this conclusion is supported by Dr John D Turner.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Neo-Platonism (1019 words)

	Medieval Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
		It ends … with the fall of Constantinople, or with the invention of printing, or with the discovery of America, or with the beginning of the Italian wars (1494), or with the Lutheran Reformation (1517), or with the election of Charles V (1519).
		This would be incomprehensible from a Platonic viewpoint, for which "the body is the prison of the soul," and for which the task of the philosopher is to "learn how to die" so that he might be free from the distracting and corrupting influences of the body.
		For logical developments in the Middle Ages, see the articles insolubles, literary forms of medieval philosophy, medieval semiotics, medieval theories of analogy, Medieval Theories of Demonstration, medieval theories of modality, medieval theories of Obligations, medieval theories: properties of terms, medieval theories of singular terms, medieval theories of the syllogism, and sophismata.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/medieval-philosophy (9041 words)

	CalendarHome.com - - Calendar Encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		This commentary is one of the most valuable sources we have for the history of ancient mathematics, and its Platonic account of the status of mathematical objects was very influential.
		The Platonic Theology is a systematisation of material from Platonic dialogues, showing from them the characteristics of the divine orders, the part of the universe which is closest to the One.
		It was mistakenly thought in the Middle Ages to be a work of Aristotle, but was recognised by Aquinas not to be so.
	encyclopedia.calendarhome.com /cgi-bin/encyclopedia.pl?p=Proclus (3270 words)

	"Faith and Philosophy in the Early Church" by Roy Kearsley
		The Son of God of the NT soon lay under threat of becoming a being from a middle territory somehow in place to bridge the deep gulf between Eternal and Corruptible, between Being and Becoming, between the One and the Many.
		The march of the Niceans weakened Middle Platonist preoccupation with the Logos as a secondary order of being, yet in fact strengthened the Trinitarian doctrine that is supposed by Lampe to rest upon it.
		Platonism lived in the heads and the hearts of the early thinkers.
	www.earlychurch.org.uk /article_faith_kearsley.html (5417 words)

	Hellenistic Philosophy (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		At 102 Platonism is defined as 'the belief that Plato's philosophy was Dogmatic and authoritative.' In view of much recent work on what dogma means in this period the definition appears ambiguous, but the capital D suggests to me that the author is proposing a stronger definition than one should accept.
		It is of importance that Platonism now shared with its rivals the belief in some primitive age in which humans had access to the truth and that the truth was seen to be embodied in the rather more recent corpus of Plato's writings.
		Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity by Dominic J. O'Meara (Oxford University Press) Conventional wisdom suggests that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity, from Plotinus (third century) to the sixth-century schools in Athens and Alexandria, neglected the political dimension of their Platonic heritage in their concentration on an otherworldly life.
	www.wordtrade.com /philosophy/ancient/hellenisticphilosophy.htm (7195 words)

	Christian History Handbook: Ancient: Lecture Five (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		When the communities in the middle of the third century were trying to defend themselves against repeated confiscations by competing governmental agencies and the occasional barbarian pillaging party, they built walls again for the first time in centuries.
		His solution in the Christian property dispute may indicate that he recognized the Bishop of Rome as the head of Christianity, and it may further indicate that he understood Christianity as one of the several legitimate cults of the Unconquerable Sun.
		By the middle of the third century the religious sentiments of the educated urban population have become much more refined and sophisticated than those of the rural uneducated masses which the city dwellers called the "pagans".
	www.sbuniv.edu /~hgallatin/ht3463le05b.html (3520 words)

	Platonic realism Information
		Platonic realism is a metaphysical theory of universals, maintaining that universals have a mode of being that is independent of the experiential mode of being.
		In Platonic realism, universals do not exist in the way that ordinary physical objects exist, but were originally thought to have a sort of ghostly or heavenly mode of existence.
		Although some versions of Platonic realism regard Plato's forms as ideas in the mind of God, most take forms not to be mental entities at all, but rather archetypes (original models) of which particular objects, properties, and relations are copies.
	www.bookrags.com /wiki/Platonic_realism (1267 words)

	Plato and Platonism
		The rise of Middle- and Neoplatonism corresponds with the decline of Greek science, the displacement of original research by a tradition favoring commentary and compendia, and the growth of Christianity as an intellectually respectable alternative to paganism.
		Drawing on Platonic and Stoic views, these thinkers distinguished between what is created directly by God and what results from interactions among things God has endowed with causal properties of their own.
		While the Platonic cosmology typically yielded to the Aristotelian when the two diverged, it had the virtues of affirming God's role as creator and the creation of the world in time and of not suggesting a rigorously deterministic world.
	www.plosin.com /work/PlatoPlatonism.html (3968 words)

	Bookyards.com » Authors
		This theory holds that in so-called middle dialogues, Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's own philosophy, and the question-and-answer style is more pro forma: the main figure represents Plato and the minor characters have little to say except "yes", "of course" and "very true", or "by Zeus, yes".
		What becomes most prominent in the middle dialogues is the idea that knowledge comes of grasping unchanging forms or essences, paired with the attempts to investigate such essences.
		The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centrepieces of Plato's middle period.
	www.bookyards.com /biography.html?author_id=315&author=Plato (4168 words)

	Encyclopaedia Britannica: Platonism
		From the middle of the 2nd century AD Christians who had some training in Greek philosophy began to feel the need to express their faith in its terms, both for their own intellectual satisfaction and in order to convert educated pagans.
		A Christian Platonic theism of the type of which Boethius is the finest example thus arose; based on a reading of the Timaeus with Christian eyes, it continued to have a strong influence in the Middle Ages, especially in the earlier period.
		The influence of the Platonism of the Florentine Academy was quite extensive; it may be seen not only in the writings of later Italian philosophers but also in the iconography of Italian Renaissance painting and in 16th-century French literature and was particularly marked in England.
	www-rcf.usc.edu /~sbriggs/Britannica/neoplato2.htm (5587 words)

	Renaissance Platonism
		Marsilio Ficino, in whom the medieval philosophic and religious heritage and the teachings of Greek Platonism are brought together in a novel synthesis.
		Platonizing poetry had among its successors in the sixteenth century Michelangelo and Spenser...
		Ficino’s doctrine of Platonic love was repeated and developed not only in many sonnets and other poems of the sixteenth century, but also in a large body of prose literature which grew up around the literary academy...
	phoenixandturtle.net /excerptmill/Kristeller2.htm (1100 words)

	Christian Platonism and Augustine
		It is the Platonic representation of a universe on two levels, of which the higher, that of the divine, is the model of the lower, its symbol, where the world of the senses is to be found.
		Platonism and Cartesianism in the Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth by Lydia Gysi.
		The terms of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism are usually applied to the revived Platonism of the Roman Imperial period before Plotinus and to Platonism from Plotinus onwards respectively.
	www.augustinian.villanova.edu /AugustinianStudies/armstrng.htm (14201 words)

	Mormon Philosophy & Theology
		Middle Platonism offers a lot of similarities to neoPlatonism and in a sense the difference is due to categorizing in the 19th century.
		It seems to me, however, that Ostler's critique of both middle Platonism and neoPlatonism, while frequently technically accurate, overlooks the way time is conceived of in those movements.
		However, I agree that the idea of creation ex nihilo (which I believe arose with the Middle Platonist Christians Theophilus and Tatian at the end of the second century) is a water-shed idea.
	www.lextek.com /clark/10101.html (1922 words)

	Platonism - Encyclopedia.com
		Platonism in Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.'
		His principal work was about platonism and mystical theology.
		On whether Aquinas's ipsum esse is "platonism" (1).(Aquinas on Being by Anthony Kenny)(Critical essay)
	www.encyclopedia.com /doc/1O999-platonism.html (455 words)

	[No title]
		G. traces the evolution of the "school of Gaius" theory from Freudenthal's claim that the Didaskalikos was actually written by the known Albinus (a student of the known Platonist Gaius) rather than by the otherwise unknown Alcinous to whom it is attributed by the manuscripts.
		There are, thus, two main lines of argument in G.'s book: the critical re-examination of middle Platonism, which is the logical result of carefully thinking through the results of Whittaker's conclusions about Alcinous, and the radical reassessment of Arius Didymus.
		And once that identification is doubted, the range of dates possible for the common author of B and C is now very wide indeed, anywhere "between the middle of the first century B.C. and the end of the second century A.D., perhaps as late as the third century A.D." (p.216).
	www.infomotions.com /serials/bmcr/bmcr-9512-inwood-transformations.txt (2543 words)

	Journal of the International Plato Society
		Since the Neoplatonists were focused on Platonism and not on Plato, they were eager to draw out the implications of the basic Platonic position.
		With respect to the ‘twin pillars’ of Platonism, as Francis Cornford called them, namely, the theory of Forms and the immortality of the soul, surely, common wisdom has it, Aristotle is anti-Platonist, and anyone who says otherwise relegates himself to the darkness.
		We need not, I think, exaggerate the similarity of Aristotelianism and Platonism in order to allow that the Neoplatonic commentators were engaged in a profound debate at a high level based on their enormously impressive knowledge of the texts.
	www.nd.edu /~plato/plato2issue/gerson.htm (3014 words)

	Christian CADRE--Myth Makers
		The book's use of purported Middle Platonism to undercut seeming references to Jesus' human life in Paul's letters and Hebrews is especially clever (not the least because so few readers will have any understanding of what Middle Platonism is).
		A continuing flaw in Doherty's argument is his rush to explain things in terms of Middle Platonism, while ignoring obvious Jewish influence, parallels, and beliefs.
		Finally, the dismissive classification of the Gospels as midrash is so brief and so uninformed that it is of almost no worth (and his radically late dating of them unsupported by the evidence).
	christiancadre.org /member_contrib/cp_doherty.html (770 words)

	How Deep the Platonism? - FARMS Review
		A radical Hellenization of Christianity began in the middle of the second century, but it should not be understood that with the introduction of Middle Platonic philosophy, Christians did not retain many of their distinct theological roots.
		Christians, therefore, continued to believe in a literal resurrection of the body, despite the lingering belief in Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism that one's duty was to escape from the corrupting influences of the body and exist as an immaterial soul in a quasi-divinized state for eternity.
		Any further influence of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism should be seen as secondary in importance, for all further imports of Platonic thought were adjustments to the basic synthesis of Christian and Greek thought developed by the earliest Hellenized Christians.
	farms.byu.edu /display.php?table=review&id=323 (11982 words)

	[No title]
		Christian writers found much in the older Platonism that helped them in their understanding of Christian theology and much that helped them answer philosophical questions without compromising their theology [Riedl is overly optimistic here!].
		Neoplatonism is the Platonic philosophy systematized in the Enneads of Plotinus (205-270 CE), whose thought was further developed by others through the sixth century.
		opposed Middle Platonism in holding that the First Principle and source of reality, the One, or Good, transcends being and thought and is naturally unknowable.
	www.lycos.com /info/neoplatonism.html (647 words)

	Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.08.19
		Not all Hellenistic Academics were sceptics, but the majority were, and all of them after Arcesilaus were deeply concerned with the questions of whether (or to what extent) to suspend judgment, and whether (or to what extent) human beings are capable of katalêpsis, of the certain grasp of an object.
		However, his book is better taken not as an argument that "Academic" concerns remained alive for some middle Platonists (which no longer needs to be argued) but as an exploration of some interesting ways that some middle Platonists develop these concerns in their philosophizing and in their attitudes toward Socrates, Plato, and the Academy.
		In general, while the attempt to use the Anonymous Commentary in reconstructing the history of Platonism is praiseworthy and while the Commentary does suggest an environment without a sharp line between "Academics" and "Platonists," the evidence may be too patchy to allow the kind of reconstruction that Opsomer wants.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /bmcr/2003/2003-08-19.html (4445 words)

	Neoplatonism \| Encyclopedia of Philosophy
		The term Neoplatonism was coined in the late eighteenth century and was used (in a rather pejorative sense) to distinguish authentic Platonism (as found in Plato's dialogues) from the later systematization and transformation(s) it underwent in the third through fifth centuries, starting with Plotinus.
		This Platonic philosopher is considered to be so similar to Plato that one could believe that they had lived together; but as there is so much time between them, one should think that Plato revived in him." (XVIII 41).
		Plotinus came after two centuries of Platonic revival (in handbooks since Karl Praechter (1858–1933), this period is commonly called Middle Platonism).
	www.bookrags.com /research/neoplatonism-eoph (445 words)

	Theology WebSite: Church History Study Helps: Middle Platonism: General Characteristics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		The Platonism from the first century B.C. to the second century A.D. is called Middle Platonism.
		Middle Platonism provided the intellectual background for the work of the Christian apologists of the second century -.
		Middle Platonsim was Platonsim influenced by Stoic ethics, Aristotelian logic, and Neopythagorean metaphysics and religion.
	www.theologywebsite.com /history/midplato.shtml (481 words)

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