/neoplatonism/

This is a rather abrupt comment, but I'm inclined to agree. Neoplatonism seems so much less influential when compared to Platonism and Aristotelianism that I don't understand why you'd want to jump past two of the main threads of philosophy only to jump into a relatively minor one.

Neoplatonism directly influenced Augustine of Hippo, who in turn influenced Heidegger's own philosophy. I'm interested in understanding this genealogy.

Remember that Neoplatonism is more of a historical term, and that the Neoplatonists (as well as Middle Platonists) all saw themselves more as a continuation of the Platonic tradition.

So here's the thing.

You got to read ALL of the Platonic dialogues. Like the above user said, repeatedly is the ideal. But if you want the minimum, then read them all once, and then take good notes, or review their corresponding Stanford Encyclopedia articles. Half of the most important Neoplatonic works end up being commentaries on this or that random dialog, and they write with the idea that their readers are deeply familiar. I wish a summary of each would be apt, but the way some of these guys write is about subtle shifts in the dialogues, and exact wording of here and there that you just won't appreciate if you haven't wrestled with them yourself.
If you aren't familiar at all with the Platonic dialogues, read a good introduction. Any basic one will do since you seem to be familiar with reading Philosophy what with namedropping Hegel and all. So you only need the briefest of intros to give you the "lay of the land" so to speak.

Once done steeping yourself in the dialogues, you're gonna have to read some Aristotle. Not all of Aristotle (jesus christ only do that if you are a literal autist). The nonmaximalist, yet thorough approach consists of:

The Organon (his logical works, important because they heavily impacted the way ALL writers following Plato wrote)
Physics (you need this to truly understand the Metaphysics)
Metaphysics (woven throughout the corpus of Plotinus, aka, the most important Neoplatonist and perhaps 3rd most influential philosopher of all time, is the metaphysics of Aristotle. You don't get away with understanding Neoplatonism at all without reading this thing)
De Anima (ditto here, its Aristotle on the Soul. You better believe this is relevant too)

Finally, though his most "fun" and "practical" today. I'm not sure as necessary for what you're interested in is
Nicomachean Ethics
Politics (the Neoplatonists werent as explicitly practical as say your average Stoic. Say, speaking of which.

Stoicism
You need to understand the tenets as early Greek stocisim played an influential role as well, if not reading any of the major works. That's because when Neoplatonists write about Stoicism, they tend to refer to the main ideas rather than quoting the philosophers directly (and even when they do, they're typically quoting from works which we've lost). The main surviving 'classic' stoic texts are the Roman ones, and seeing as Plotinus was a roman himself, you could do with reading Epictetus as Seneca and Marcus weren't as influential.

Once done with these, you move on the main works

Plotinus, 'Enneads', as well as his commentaries
Proclus
Porphyry

Thank you. I'm assuming you're the PhD student. What school, and how is the program? Would you recommend any one specifically? I'm unsure where to apply since Neoplatonism seems like a pretty niche subject.

plato-dialogues.org/email/950404_1.htm

That's philosophy. That's the structure of thought. Doesn't matter if you're an atheist or what. You say you can appreciate theism and deism aesthetically... why not symbolically?

Because I came to realize long ago that symbols are BS and using them for anything other than aesthetics is willful distortion or even delusion.

Fucking hell. Atheists are the worst.

I'm not an atheist. Tho I see how that could have been read as tipingfedoradawkinsismyhero meme.

What I mean is that using spiritual symbolism of any kind simply invites you to super-impose shit, distort relations and expand meaningless shit without realizing it.
Just look at what happens to Buddhist sects that start counting Buddhas and Bodhisattva and assign specific archetypal meanings. Their temples might as well be Hindu. The result is usually deity-worship, absolutely contrarian to any of the core tenets of Buddhism.

And the same applies here. Monotheism/monism my ass. It's the same polytheism of old, just slightly less naturalistic and more psycho-conceptual.
I might as well be reading Jung.

I didn't mean to give you the impression that I was interested in anything you had to say.

BUMP

someone save this thread

isns.us/texts.htm

Just jump right into with the Enneads if you want to read Plotinus. There's not much he assumes you know from Plato, though you might need to check an occasional SEP page

Neoplatonism brings some insights to Hegel, too, depending on how you're interpreting him

Tell me more.

A Neoplatonic cirriculum proper could easily become a time consuming affair spanning volumes over several centuries, so I'll keep things short and sweet.

The problem with "Neoplatonism" is that it's a deregatory term coined by 19th century academia, with the agenda, fueled by Enlightenment polemics, of seperating the mystical juju of Plotinus from the clean cut rationality of Plato. Of course, Plato has his own fair share of mystical juju that just so happens to form the entire groundwork for his inheritors. It is just that his image has been groomed quite selectively, for which reason you should be careful with Plato being whitewashing by secondhand sources.

For more or less two millenia, the followers of Plato were simply known as Platonists. Now, in the Seventh Letter of Plato and Aristotle's Metaphysics, we are introduced to the notion of the Unwritten Doctrines – the entire programme of "Neoplatonism" can in many respects be considered an original, ecclectic exposition of these.

In other words, all of Plato's dialogues are vital for any meaningful engagement with the writings of his followers. Short and sweet it is: if you want the essential Neoplatonism of Late Antiquity, there are four philosophers you should study, in the given order – Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus.

Plotinus was a Scholarch, who scribbled several private musings down during the years of his teaching, for which reason they have a strong poetical flavor – the task of compiling and organizing these nearly unreadable and unrevisable notes was given to his favorite pupil Porphyry, of whom he once praised as "poet, philosopher and hierophant".

As a lecturer and debater, these notes, which were given the title "The Enneads" by Porphyry, were essentially a defence and exposition of Plato's true doctrines against the various philosophies of the day. Plotinus is generally given a high historical rank due to a Christian bias – in the first place because his teacher, Ammonius Saccas, was the same as that of Origen, and in the second, because Augustine praised him highly.

Plotinus and Porphyry both favored a contemplative, meditative path to the One, but for Porphyry's student, Iamblichus, this alone was not sufficient – writing under the pseudonym of an Egyptian priest in response to a critical letter from his teacher, in a treatise we know today as On the Mysteries, he introduced the praxis of Theurgy: polytheistic ritual magic.

Much can be said about Iamblichus, but I'll keep it brief – unlike his predecessors, who had a give-or-take relationship with Aristotle, he advocated a complete concord between their teachings, introducing Aristotle, the Organon in particular, as a preliminary to Plato's dialogues. But he went even further and esteemed Pythagoras higher than Plato himself, culminating his cirriculum with the Orphic mysteries and the Chaldean Oracles, the latter being the operative framework of Theurgy.

Proclus is a heavyweight, but the essential thing to understand is that he in many ways united the meditative mysticism of Plotinus and Porphyry with the Theurgy of Iamblichus.

However, Plotinus and Porphyry were no strangers to ritual either, nor was their predecessors – in his Life of Plotinus, Porphyry recounts a curious incident when an Egyptian priest offered to reveal the personal daemon of Plotinus: during the summoning, the priest was shocked to find that the daemon was no other than the god Apollo himself.

Likewise, Porphyry wrote a now lost treatise entitled "Philosophy from Oracles" – in fact, Porphyry was a noted daemonologist of his time, with some of these teachings remaining in his Abstinence From Animal Food.

Apuleius, a Middle Platonist, wrote a didactic novel entitled The Golden Ass, where Lucius the protagonist gets saved from his miseries at the end by becoming initiated into the mysteries of Isis. Very tellingly, a manuscript of the Hermetic Asclepius - which should be read in conjuction with On the Mysteries by Iamblichus- was found appended to it.

Hell, Plato was no stranger to ritual himself. For example, he makes a curious pun, as the word he uses for rhetoric in the Phaedrus - psychagogia - means soul leading, but was also the title borne by the Greek Goes, or "Shamans" if you will, of which breed includes two Presocratics in particular: Parmenides and Empedocles. Indeed, one of the four divine frenzies in the Timaeus, the Telestic, is presided over by Dionysus, the god of theater.

Plato's dialogues are essentially a conglomation of the Mediterrenean and Near Eastern mystery traditions, systematized, refined and presented in a rational whole suitable for the Greek intellectual milleu.

I understand you m8, fuck these priestly evolian reactionary magicians and their retarded romantically willed ignorance

Aye, lets get to the sources.

Homer was considered an inspired prophet speaking truths in veiled allegories by Plato in general and the Neoplatonists in particular. If you haven't already, you should read the Iliad and Odyssey.

Various playwrights are referenced occasionally in the dialogues, but they're not essential – Greek mythology is, however. Theoi dot com is an excellent resource for this, as is the Roman mythos in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Theogony by Hesiod and the Library of Apollodorus.

For the Complete Dialogues of Plato, you'd want to get the five volume edition issued by Prometheus Trust, translated by the English Platonist Thomas Taylor. I have it on good word from an academic that Taylor's terminology is consistent and reliable throughout all of his translations. These volumes contains several valuable Neoplatonic commentaries on the dialogues, as well as those which modern academia considers spurious, but which the Neoplatonists considered genuine.

For the Enneads, get MacKenna's translation. The Larsson edition compares the translation of MacKenna with those of Taylor (partial), Guthrie and Armstrong in difficult places. It also contains the Life of Plotinus by Porphyry as an introduction.

For Porphyry, get his introduction to Aristotle's Categories – the Isagoge, translated by Edward Warren. Besides being the first logical treatise to be studied in the Medieval cirriculum, you will need it, as post-Iamblicean Neoplatonists utilized Porphyry's revision.

For his distillation of Plotinus, being the Sententiae, his Abstinence From Animal Food and his symbolic interpretation of Homeric lore, On the Cave of the Nymps, see Thomas Taylor.

For Iamblichus, start with his Exhortation to Philosophy by Thomas Moore Johnson. It's out of print but you can either buy it secondhand, find a PDF online or buy the Collected Works of Thomas Moore Johnson by Prometheus Trust. Keep in mind that Iamblichus was notorious for his dry prose. It's an excellent introduction to Platonism though and is actually based on a lost treatise of Aristotle. Proceed to Thomas Taylor, as you'll get his Life of Pythagoras, On the Mysteries and various Pythagorean fragments, such as those of Archytas and Philolaus. You do not want to miss The Theology of Arithmetic translated by Robin Waterfield.

In between Iamblichus and Proclus, you should get the Aclepius translated either by Clement Salaman or Brian Copenhaver. Do not get Taylor's version of Apuleius as he censored the naughty bits, though his does contain On the God of Socrates and On the Platonic Philosophy. My prefered translation of The Golden Ass is by Joel C. Riel.

For Pythagoreanism, which plays a vital role in post-Iamblichean Neoplatonism, we have few sources left. The most important is the Introduction to Arithmetic by Nicomachus of Geresa, who inspired Iamblichus to take up the banner of Pythagoras and of whom Proclus considered himself a reincarnation of. This treatise was translated and improved upon by Boethius in his De Institutione Arithmetica, translated by Michael Masi in his Boethian Number Theory. The Theology of Arithmetic mentioned before can get quite heavy – read either of these or both before. Another valuable treatise is Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato by Theon of Smyrna, which deals with arithmetic, music and astronomy.

Julian the Emperor was an avid admirer of Iamblichus. It is believed that he commisioned an introductory treatise, which was written by Sallustius. It goes by various names, but the edition I have is called On the Gods and the Universe by Arthur Darby Knock and explores the various possible sources for the doctrines contained therein.

For Proclus, all by Taylor, start with the Elements of Theology. Essays and Fragments contains many interesting musings, but most importantly The Life of Proclus by his student Marinus. Most of his remaining commentaries on the Alcibiades, Republic, Timaeus, Parmenides and Cratylus are included in Taylor's five volume edition, but I'd recommend skipping them until you have Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus under your belt. The vast majority of the fragmented Chaldean Oracles is from his Timaeus, issued as a seperate two volume set, and his magnum opus, The Theology of Plato. You can get the fragments out of context in Ruth Majerick's edition or read them in the context of Proclus.

For Middle Platonism, there is the Handbook of Alcinous, the Moralia and Lives of Plutarch, various works of Apuleius and fragments from Numenius of Apamea, the latter also being issued by Prometheus Trust.

Both Taylor's translation of Plato and Aristotle contains the commentaries of various post-Iamblichean Neoplatonists: Julian, Olympiodorus, Syrianus, Hermias, Simplicius and Damascius, the latter being the last head of the Platonic Academy before it was shut down for good by Justinian. His treatise, Doubts and Solutions Concerning First Principles, has been translated by Sara Rappe.

Synesius of Cyrene is an oft overlooked figure, but his treatise, On Prophecy, Dreams and Human Imagination, formed the backbone of Renaissance magic, along with Al Kindi's On the Stellar Rays and the anonymous Picatrix.

Should you be interested in this area, the essentials are Three Books on Life by Marsilio Ficino, 900 Theses by Pico Mirandola and Three Books on Occult Philosophy by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.

For Christian Platonism, see Dionysius the Areopagite, likely a student of Proclus and Aquinas' most quoted authority.

Neoplatonism during the Medieval Ages boiled down to the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella, Consoltation of Philosophy by Boethius, Commentary on the Timaeus by Calcidus, The Theology of Aristotle (Arabic paraphrase of Enneads IV-VI) and Liber di Causis (paraphrase of the Elements of Theology by Proclus). A synthesis of all these is found in the Cosmographia by Bernadus Silvestris.

According to Plutarch, Aristotle told his student Alexander the Great that he was obscure on purpose. If you don't feel like ploughing through the writings of Aristotle, consider getting the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, a work that deals with Neoplatonic cosmology, Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy, amongst other things. For logic, either translation of Roger Bacon or Lambert of Auxerre by Thomas Maloney.

The rabbit hole goes much deeper, but I'd spoil all the fun. I hope these suggestions have been helpful.

Great posts, god damn.

This was incredibly helpful. Thank you.

someone give me the run down on neoplatonism. central ideas and their implications?

The philosophy that taught Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Gnostics and all manner of Western metaphysicians, theologians and mystics about the One God, how its perfect and united Good, Beauty, Truth, Being and Reason would come to manifest themselves into this plural and divided world populated by lesser beings, and how to live so we can reunite ourselves to the One.

>prometheustrust.co.uk/html/tts_catalogue.html
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:c

Openingmind dot net slash shop

Is this the neopets thread?

Plato influenced every philosopher and yes even Eastern philosophy no matter what the yellows say don't let them tell it otherwise

Thanks for the posts user.

Does anyone here practice theurgia or goetia?