Neoplatonism

“ Just as the Later Roman empire was at once the supreme effort of the old world and the outcome of its exhaustion, so Neoplatonism is in one aspect the consummation, in another the collapse, of ancient philosophy. Never before in Greek or in Roman speculation had the consciousness of man's dignity and superiority to nature found such adequate expression; never before had real science and pure knowledge been so undervalued and despised by the leaders of culture as they were by the Neoplatonists. ”

“ Judged from the stand-point of pure science, of empirical knowledge of the world, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle marks a momentous turning-point, the post-Aristotelian a retrogression, the Neoplatonic a complete declension. But judging from the stand-point of religion and morality, it must be admitted that the ethical temper which Neoplatonism sought to beget and confirm, was the highest and purest which the culture of the ancient world produced. ”

“ But as the Roman Byzantine Empire is at one and the same time a product of the final effort and the exhaustion of the ancient world, so also Neoplatonism is, on one side, the completion of ancient philosophy, and, on another, its abolition. Never before in the Greek and Roman theory of the world did the conviction of the dignity of man and his elevation above nature, attain so certain an expression as in Neoplatonism ”

“ The present world was a thing that men would neither enjoy nor master nor study. A new world was discovered, for the sake of which everything else was abandoned; to make sure of that world insight and intelligence were freely sacrificed; and, in the light that streamed from beyond, the absurdities of the present became wisdom, and its wisdom became foolishness.
Such is Neoplatonism. The pre-Socratic philosophy took its stand on natural science, to the exclusion of ethics and religion. ”

“ If we view Neoplatonism as the highest and only appropriate expression for the religious hopes and moods which moved the nations of Græco-Roman Empire from the second to the fifth centuries, the ecclesiastical dogmatic which was developed in the same period, may appear as a younger sister of Neoplatonism which was fostered by the elder one, but which fought and finally conquered her. The Neoplatonists themselves described the ecclesiastical theologians as intruders who appropriated Greek philosophy, but mixed it with foreign fables. ”

“ There is no parallel between Christian Science and Neoplatonism more striking and more fundamental than the theory that evil is a negation, the mere absence of reality. We have naturally touched upon this subject before, as it was unavoidable, but here we are to scrutinize it very carefully.
Let us recall that Neoplatonism and Christian Science are rigid monistic systems. They hold that there is harmony in the universe considered in its entirety. Sin or evil must be either discord in the universe or be no part of it. ”

“ But undoubtedly the victory of Christianity in the age of Valentinian and Theodosius had a purifying influence on Neoplatonism. Influence of Christianity. During the struggle for supremacy, the philosophers had been driven to make common cause with everything that was hostile to Christianity. But now Neoplatonism was thrust from the great stage of history. The church and church theology, to whose guidance the masses now surrendered themselves, took in along with them their superstition, their polytheism, their magic, their myths, and all the machinery of religious witchcraft. ”

“ Magic, astrology, alchemy, all of which were closely connected with Neoplatonism, gave an effective impulse to the observation of nature and, consequently, to natural science, and finally prevailed over formal and barren rationalism Consequently, in the history of science, Neoplatonism has attained a significance and performed services of which men like Iamblichus and Proclus never ventured to dream. In point of fact, actual history is often more wonderful and capricious than legends and fables. ”

“ The extinction of the Neoplatonists as a religious fraternity followed the compulsory closure of the Athenian school. The surviving members continued to work in seclusion at their favourite theses, and even produced some commentaries to which students still resort in order to elucidate the history of philosophy. [181] But, although Neoplatonism was objectively defunct, the soul of the movement was irrepressibly vital, and many of the Catholic ecclesiastics had long been in secret sympathy with the mystical tenets of the sect. ”

“ When that spirit finally turned away from all political life, and after having laboured for the ennobling of the empire, applied itself, in Neoplatonism, to the idea of a new and free union of men, this certainly was the result of the felt failure of the great creation, but it nevertheless had that creation for its presupposition. ”

“ There was no creed in Neoplatonism, and, therefore, what was believed has to be deduced from a study of the Enneads of Plotinus, so-called as consisting of a series of books, six in all, each containing nine treatises. The logical germ of the conception is that the One emits continually the Nous or intelligence ”

“ In Neoplatonism the psychological fact of the longing of man for something higher, is exalted to the all-predominating principle which explains the world. Therefore the religions, though they are to be purified and spiritualised, become the foundation of philosophy. The Neoplatonic philosophy therefore presupposes the religious syncretism of the third century, and cannot be understood without it. ”

“ These quotations teach as clearly as do those from Mrs. Eddy that creation is to be considered as an emanation from the creator and that the relation of creation to the creator is illustrated by the radiation of light from the sun. So it is established that the first and second propositions designated above are true also in Neoplatonism.
That the third proposition is also true in Neoplatonism is evident from certain quotations from Proclus already given, but I add this other from Plotinus: “All things are in their origin inasmuch as they may all be traced back to their source.” ”

“ The doctrines of the incarnation, the resurrection of the flesh and the creation of the world in time marked the boundary line between the church's dogmatic and Neoplatonism: in every other respect, theologians and Neoplatonists drew so closely together that many of them are completely at one. ”

“ By this conception, which is elaborated from the doctrine of the world-soul in the Timæus, Neoplatonism bridges the gap between appearance and reality, and also solves the paradox of multitude in unity. “We do not declare the Soul to be one in the sense of entirely excluding multiplicity. This absolute oneness belongs only to the higher nature. ”

“ In short, Neoplatonism seizes on the aspiration of the human soul after a higher life, and treats this psychological fact as the key to the interpretation of the universe. Hence the existing religions, after being refined and spiritualized, were made the basis of philosophy. ”

“ The Neoplatonists believed that man could intuitively know the absolute by a faculty called Ecstasy. Neoplatonism is a term which covers a very wide range of varying thought; essentially, it was a combination of philosophy and religion, arising from the intellectual movement in Alexandria. It covered a great deal of mysticism, magic and spiritualism, and the followers of the system, as it developed, became believers in the efficacy of certain exercises and symbols to cure diseases. ”

“ It will be seen from the above that Neoplatonism is not mystical as regards the faculty by which it claims to apprehend philosophic truth. It is first of all a system of complete rationalism; it is assumed, in other words, that reason is capable of mapping out the whole system of things. But, inasmuch as a God is affirmed beyond reason, the mysticism becomes in a sense the necessary complement of the would-be all-embracing rationalism. ”

“ The general doctrines of Neoplatonism, as a practical religion, had been fixed by Plotinus and his immediate successors, and nothing remained for later devotees but to elaborate the details of the system by analysis and disquisition. The execution of this task fell to the Athenian school, and for more than a century its members busied themselves in spinning a fine web of scholasticism around {428} the fundamental principles of their faith. ”

“ In Neoplatonism, in the many forms of mysticism, in certain aspects of Christian asceticism, and notably in the numerous phases of what calls itself "New Thought" to-day, what was for the most part latent in Plato, becomes frankly explicit. In general it is a loosening of the ties that hold us to drudgery and homely duty; a weakening of the bonds that bind us to the men and women by our side, in order to gaze more serenely on the ineffable beyond the clouds. This developed Platonism admits that we must live after a fashion in this very imperfect world ”

“ Ancient myths are admitted without undergoing analysis; the most naïve realism alternates with daring efforts at spiritualizing. Philosophically considered, therefore, the Gnostic systems are very unlike the rigorous self-consistency of Neoplatonism; although they certainly contain almost all the elements which enter into the Neoplatonic theory of the universe.
But were the oldest Neoplatonists really acquainted with the speculations of Philo, or Justin, or Valentinus, or Basilides? Did they know the Oriental religions, Judaism and Christianity in particular? ”

“ The older any religious tradition or mode of worship is, the more venerable is it, the richer in divine ideas. Hence the ancient religions of the East had a peculiar interest for the Neoplatonist. In the interpretation of myths Neoplatonism followed the allegorical method, as practised especially by the Stoa; but the importance it attached to the spiritualized myths was unknown to the Stoic philosophers. The latter interpreted the myths and were done with them; the later Neoplatonists treated them as the proper material and the secure foundation of philosophy. ”

“ And, besides the propaedeutic importance which thus belongs to it, another fact has to be taken into account in estimating the influence of Neoplatonism. It is to this day the nursery of that whole type of devotion which affects renunciation of the world, which strives after an ideal, without the strength to rise above aesthetic impressions, and is never able to form a clear conception of the object of its own aspiration. ”

“ Political affairs are at bottom as much a matter of indifference to Neoplatonism as material things in general. The idealism of the new philosophy was too high to admit of its being naturalised in the despiritualised, tyrannical and barren creation of the Byzantine Empire, and this Empire itself needed unscrupulous and despotic police officials, not noble philosophers. ”

“ This principle is not to be identified with the “idea” of Plato or with the “form” of Aristotle. Neoplatonism perceived that neither sense perception nor rational cognition is a sufficient basis or justification for religious ethics; consequently it broke away from rationalistic ethics as decidedly as from utilitarian morality. It had therefore to find out a new world and a new spiritual function, in order first to establish the existence of what it desiderated, and then to realize and describe what it had proved to exist. Man, however, cannot transcend his psychological endowment. ”

“ The most prominent characteristic of the first was its tendency to supersede the deductions of the reason by the intuitions of ecstasy. Neoplatonism, and the philosophies that were allied to it, were fundamentally pantheistic,618 but they differed widely from the pantheism of the Stoics. The Stoics identified man with God, for the purpose of glorifying man—the Neoplatonists for the purpose of aggrandising God. In the conception of the first, man, independent, self-controlled, and participating in the highest [pg 326] nature of the universe, has no superior in creation. ”

“ These same ideas—the transcendence of God, the existence of mediary powers between God and the world, the ascetic life as a means of growth, the dependence of man on God’s grace for his salvation, the possibility of the Beatific Vision—all are common in varying degrees to all the mystic philosophies of the day. In the third century Neoplatonism became the most popular and influential. ”

“ In the West, where, from the second century, we meet with few attempts at philosophic speculation, and where the necessary conditions for mystical contemplation were wanting, Neoplatonism only gained a few adherents here and there. ”

“ He has a good deal to say in favor of Mathematics, as a preparation for what to him is the supreme branch of education, Dialectics. But the tendency of his teaching is only too obvious, and the conclusions which he did not draw, time and succeeding generations drew for him. The effect of Neoplatonism was, in the long run, to make the super-civic part of man the whole man, to discredit political life and political effort, and to pave the way for the mystic, the ascetic, and the hermit. ”

“ Important and instructive, therefore, as the experiments are, which were made from time to time by the state and by individual philosophers, to unite the monarchy of the world with Neoplatonism, they could not but be ineffectual. ”

“ What was needed was the setting up of a pagan system which would meet the religious cravings of men in the same measure as Christianity with its supernaturalism, monotheism and universalism had done, and would have the absurdities and impurities that had disfigured the popular religion stripped off. Such a regeneration of paganism was undertaken in the beginning of the third century by Neoplatonism. ”