School of thought

Neoplatonism

School

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Classification

Period
c. 244-529 CE
Regions
Europe (origin), Africa
Domains
Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion

Overview

Neoplatonism, systematized by Plotinus, describes reality as emanating from a transcendent, ineffable source — the One — through successive levels: the Divine Mind (Nous), the World Soul, and finally the material world. The philosopher's goal is to reverse this emanation through contemplation and achieve mystical union (henosis) with the One.

Key ideas

  • The One: The ultimate principle beyond being and thought — absolutely simple, infinite, and the source from which all reality emanates, as light radiates from the sun.
  • Emanation: Reality flows outward from the One in a necessary, eternal process: One → Nous (Intellect) → World Soul → Nature → Matter, each level less perfect than its source.
  • Contemplative Return: The soul can ascend back through the levels of reality via philosophical contemplation and purification, ultimately achieving mystical union with the One.

Key figures

Plotinus · Porphyry · Iamblichus · Proclus

Questions engaged

  • The Existence of God

    Plotinus answers with the One: an ineffable first principle beyond being and intellect, the source from which all reality emanates and to which the soul ascends — the divine understood as absolute unity rather than a being among beings.

Influenced by

  • Pythagoreanism

    Iamblichus placed Limit and the Unlimited, the paired principles of Philolaus's Pythagoreanism, at the top of his system just below the One, and treated mathematics practised in a Pythagorean manner as a purifying ascent of the soul.

  • Stoicism

Synthesizes

  • Peripatetic School

    Plotinus made Aristotle's self-thinking divine intellect the model for Nous, the second level of reality, and used the matter-and-form analysis throughout, while denying that the first principle could be an intellect at all.

  • Platonism

    Plotinus read the Good beyond being of the Republic and the first hypothesis of the Parmenides as one and the same first principle, and placed Plato's Forms inside Intellect rather than in a realm of their own.

Later connections

  • Renaissance Hermeticism Influenced by this tradition
  • Medieval Islamic Philosophy Influenced by this tradition

    Arabic versions of Plotinus and Proclus, circulating under Aristotle's name as the Theology of Aristotle and the Book on the Pure Good, gave falsafa the hierarchy of One, Intellect, and Soul, and al-Farabi built on it his account of the world arising from the First by necessary, eternal emanation.

  • Kabbalah Influenced by this tradition

    Absorbed Neoplatonic emanation theology through Islamic and Jewish intermediaries: the sefirot echo Plotinus's hypostases, though Kabbalah, unlike Neoplatonism, gives the divine life a personal and morally charged character.

  • Medieval Mysticism Influenced by this tradition
  • Patristics Influenced by this tradition

    The engagement is that of the later Fathers, Augustine above all: Confessions VII.9 records that the books of the Platonists, read in Latin translation, taught him to conceive God as incorporeal and gave him the eternal Word, though not the Incarnation.

  • Sufism Influenced by this tradition

    Ibn Arabi drew on Neoplatonic terminology to support his teaching of the unity of being.

    Uncertain: How far this makes his thought Neoplatonic is disputed: his account of the world as a series of divine self-manifestations does not follow a Plotinian scheme of emanation.

References