/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13314718]

Why did western thought move away from Neoplatonism? I'm trying to understand where it all went wrong and I want to know why the Neoplatonism was largely abandoned. Can any anons who are familiar with all the intellectual history and back and forth give me a quick run-down? I'm aware that for much of the middle ages large segments of Europe were unaware of Plato (and by extension I guess Plointus). Is it because of it being mostly forgotten and the remainder being absorbed in Christianity? There seems to have been a brief revival with German Idealism but that had little lasting effect. Are there any famous or influential western thinkers who critiqued Neoplatonism heavily and if so what were their criticisms?

[Anonymous No.13314761]

Your history is wrong.

Blame protties

[Anonymous No.13314830]

The first 100 pages or so of Copleston's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Medieval Philosophy are a good crash course in how Neoplatonism, Middle Platonism, and late Aristotelianism constituted the conceptual background of medieval Christian thought, even if they didn't have much direct access to Plato's texts. Emanationist Platonism is definitely one of the default positions well into Scholasticism and beyond.

The very basic, standard story is that the Renaissance recovery of and philological obsession with classical texts causes a renewed interest not only in Plato but in materialism, associated more with post-Platonic schools like the Stoics and Epicureans. The most important thing is not the abstruse metaphysical theories, but the need for new theories of matter, to accommodate the rapid rise of mathematics and the fascination with measurement in burgeoning natural science. Understandably Platonists don't often deal much with matter except abstractly and qualitatively. It was the Aristotelian and Scholastic frameworks of matter theory that most of the "natural philosophers" (what we would call scientists) were interested in straining against, or took themselves to be straining against.

Modern natural science is basically a strange fusion of Epicurean and Stoic theories of matter, classical scepticism, and Platonic math-worship. By the end of the Enlightenment when German idealism comes into play, you have the apotheosis of these tendencies, first visible in the 16th century with Kepler Galileo etc., in the figure of Newton. You are correct that German idealism attempts to rehabilitate platonism/neoplatonism as a countermeasure against the mechanical determinism of natural science, and there are both metaphysical variants of this (Schelling etc.) and esoteric variants (the various "theosophical" movements of the 19th-20th centuries).

As with everything else now though, we're just sort of stuck with the dialectic of enlightenment. Academia is chock full of people pretending ot be naturphilosophen and neoplatonists, trying to be trendy and "post-Cartesian" etc., but they're all basically just dabblers.

[Anonymous No.13314836]

>>13314761
I have seen some book posted on /lit/ before about how Protestant theologians and academics sort of wrote western esoterism/mysticism and Neoplatonism out of the public consciousness, is that what you're referencing? Also, that doesn't fully explain why it declined because it had long been mostly dead by that point.

[Anonymous No.13314839]

>>13314718
My theory is that the old gods were actually aliens. Prometheus was a rogue "God" who bestowed on the human form the means to access abstract thought and that the previous iteration of humans were either slaves to the gods or simply base animals capable of tool use.
Following this "gift" to humanity, the old gods in a way lost control of the situation. As human thought approached the truth which would invariably lead to liberation, the old gods came up with a monotheistic ploy to distract the humans from liberation by way of the abrahamic faiths. This is so they could continue exerting soft power over the masses while no longer being able to show themselves.

[Anonymous No.13314842]

>>13314839
And, it's not really "my" theory, but a conglomeration of other theories I've heard, obviously

[Anonymous No.13314864]

Aristotles was considered superior in Europe and curb-stomped platonism intellectualy.

No but seriously, I don't really know.

[Anonymous No.13314872]

>>13314718
Christianity obviously. They shut down the academies, outlawed philosophy and persecuted the philosophers. They did try and appropriate some of it to Christianity but it never really took since Neo-Platonism is so clearly on its face contradictory to everything found in Christianity.

[Anonymous No.13314877]

>>13314830
good post. thank you anon, will read Copleston.

[Anonymous No.13314879]

>>13314872
Christians never did this. Stop with the disinfo

[Anonymous No.13314882]

>>13314872
Oh, how are they contradictory?

[Anonymous No.13314890]

>>13314879
Christianity quite literally did all of it. Time to study some history, buddy. And it wasn't done by some fringe radicals semi-heretical groups either. It was advocated by all the greatest "saints" of the Church such as Shenoute, St Basil, Cyril, Benedict of Nursia, Chryostom, Augustine etc etc

[Anonymous No.13314895]

>>13314890
Kek. You pagans are literally as bad as Jews. Grow up

[Anonymous No.13314901]

>>13314895
>anti-semitic semite
You better remember this sin you've just committed and confess it next sunday.

[Anonymous No.13314907]

>>13314901
Fuck you and your lies. God bless you

[Anonymous No.13314921]

>>13314718 (OP)

What if I told you French philosophy today was still Neoplatonic???

>I wish to show that a central aspect of twentieth-century French philosophy, theology, and spiritual life is not only the retrieval of Neoplatonism but specifically of the variety which the Anglo-American world finds most foreign: the theurgical and strongly apophatic Neoplatonism which arises with Iamblichus and of which the most influential figure is Proclus. That Neoplatonism should be a moving force in contemporary philosophy will no doubt shock those whose educations have been strictly censured in accord with what Anglo-American Protestant and secular academe defines as reason.

https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/fass/Classics/Hankey/Neoplatonism%20and%20Cont%20French%20Philosophy%20for%20Dionysius.pdf

[Anonymous No.13314925]

>>13314890
Unironically based

[Anonymous No.13315023]

>>13314830
>materialism
>Stoics
>logos spermatikos
huh?

[Anonymous No.13315033]

>>13314895
>it's a lie that Christian authorities heavily suppressed Neoplatonism! We wuz best bros 4 lyfe!

[Anonymous No.13315045]

>>13315033
Kek. Seething pagkang

[Anonymous No.13315165]

>>13314907
What a confused person you are. Shame that you'll change, eh?

[Anonymous No.13315195]

Yeah I'm not very well read but seem to be grappling with this strange disconnect with gnosticism and neoplatonism versus Christianity. More and more I'm thinking Satan pulled a fucking switcharoo and the church is the biggest accumulation of sin that has ever been seen on Earth. The threat of eternal damnation has essentially been used to pressure people into sucking some old person cock

[Anonymous No.13315252]

>>13314890
Augustinus WAS a neo-platonist, most of his stuff is just platonistic ideas merged with early Christian theology.

>t. has a 1000 words Augustinus essay due tomorrow but decided to go on /lit/ instead

[Anonymous No.13315560]

>>13314890
This book is about platonists in Byzantium, and about how some of them had to go underground and conceal their ideas because there were being executed as heretics by the Christian Byzantine authorities.

[Anonymous No.13315599]

>>13315560
Almost like Christianity isn't a homogenous culture, and hasn't ever been since that guy died on the cross.

[Anonymous No.13315647]

>>13314718
>Why did western thought move away from Neoplatonism?
Christening of the Roman Empire, very few people speaking or reading in Greek in what came after the Western Roman Empire even in the intellectual elite.

Medieval philosophy utterly dominated by Aristoteilianism, the Corpus Aristotelicum was available to all and translated in Latin.

Meanwhile, The Corpus Platonicum was not translated to Latin nor available in Greek until the 1460s, Western Europe had to restart with the Greeks during Umanesimo, before that all it had was just a piece of the Timaeus.