Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists

Abstract

Plato’s philosophical legacy was not a rigid system of dogmas. It could in consequence accept elements from other schools and, on the contrary, other schools in their turn could receive elements from it. The history of Platonism from the 1st century B. C., beginning with Antiochus of Ascalon, is marked by repeated attempts at a synthesis of Plato’s philosophy with other philosophies, especially with the Stoic and Peripatetic school. These attempts led in times of deeper religious feeling to the creation of religious-philosophic systems that satisfied the yearning of educated people. Plato’s words “to become most like god” were understood in a purely religious sense and they were accepted in this sense as the purpose and aim of all philosophizing. The road leads from Antiochus to Philo, then to the so-called Middle Platonism and finally to the Neo-Platonist philosophy, the last great system of Antiquity, the last word of the pre-Christian Graeco-Roman culture.