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Neoplatonist Reader

Neoplatonism
On the outlook for wisdom
"Sensible, critical reviews seem to enrich a literary circle or group. But in our search for greater opportunities than greater meanings, we have to know how to deal with many falsifying establishments as well. And besides, intellectual chatting is far from doing.
At times truth and fiction seem to merge. Good art can be for that. Neoplatonic teachings may give you the impression that they are important. But they may not feel significant to Jack and Jill all the same, and why? Things depend in part on what Jack and Jill are taught in Kindergarten and onwards through public education, and little less."

Neoplatonists - an introduction
Primer

Supporting "well medleys" are presupposed throughout:

Neoplatonist lore in a nutshell

- None wrote anything - whoa!

THE NEOPLATONISTS formed schools of thinking - they drew their inspiration from early Greek philosophy, and Plato was rather essential for them.
   This is what Encyclopedia Britannica says:
Neoplatonism began with Ammonius Saccas (first half of the 200s AD). He had been brought up as a Christian, studied Plato and developed his own kind of Platonic philosophy.
   And he wrote nothing.
   His philosophy is known only through his famous disciple, Plotinus. That one didn't publish anything either.

It is easier to raise the Devil than to lay him. [British proverb: Op 156]

Plotinus: The Enneads online. The complete text

Primer

Roots and traces

Plotinus

Neoplatonism began as a complex thinking enterprise (philosophy). In some ways it was ambiguous. It developed into many and varied forms over a long period. But it's leading ideas seem to have included later doctrines of Plato, especially those in the Timaeus, which goes into things the ancient Athenian law-giver Solon was told in Egypt, in the district of Sais. We can also trace other elements of ancient mystical thinking in Neoplatonism.

Ammonius Saccus

Neoplatonism was developed in the 200s AD by the Hellenistic thinker Plotinus (c. 204-70 AD). He was born in Egypt and lived in Rome from AD 244. The theories of Plotinus were at bottom like those of Plato but included elements of other Greek philosophies. Although Plotinus is the central figure of Neoplatonism, his teacher, Ammonius Saccus, who was a self-taught labourer of Alexandria, could have been the actual founder.
When Plotinus was 27, he wanted to study philosophy and went to Alexandria. He attended the lectures of the most eminent professors there at the time. They reduced him to a state of complete depression. Then a friend took him to hear the self-taught philosopher Ammonius "Saccas." When he had heard Ammonius speak, Plotinus said, "This is the man I was looking for," and stayed with him for 11 years.
Ammonius is called "the most mysterious figure in the history of ancient philosophy". It is not quite certain he was a lapsed Christian (cf. above). He may also have been the philosophical master of the great Christian theologian Origen. Exactly what he had to offer his pupils apart from what looks like commonplace Platonic thinking, is not known. However, there are some clues: The grand aim of thinkers at the time was the ultimate liberation of the spirit.

Visions

The major, extant Neoplatonic work is called the Enneads. It was collected and published after the death of Plotinus by his student Porphyry, a Phoenician. Porphyry, living in Rome, made skilled use of allegory in expounding Plotinus' rationalistic thought. Apart from editing and arranging the Enneads into six groups with nine treatises in each of them, (put down in writing after 253), Porphyry wrote lives of Pythagoras and of Plotinus.
Many philosophical elements in the Enneads came from earlier philosophies; the existence of the Incomprehensible One, or to hen, and the attendant theory of ideas were parts of later writings of Plato. Ddistinctive in Plotinus' system was the unified, hierarchical structuring of these elements and the theory of emanation.
Plotinus saw reality as a vast hierarchical order containing all levels and kinds of existence. At "bottom" is to hen, which is taken to remain incomprehensible - an all-sufficient unity that flows out in a radiating process called emanation. Thus it keeps giving rise to the Divine Mind, or Logos. The Logos contains all intelligent forms of all individuals. This in turn generates the World Soul, which links the intellectual and material worlds. What is in the Divine Mind, as he saw it, constitutes a multiple reflection of the unitary perfection of to hen.

Developments

Plotinus' method was peculiarly rational, he was skilled in logical traditions of Greeks. His followers took different paths.
   In Rome, Porphyry was a front figure. Lamblichus (c. AD 250-c.330) taught in Rome for a time and then returned to Chalcis in Syria to found a Neoplatonic centre there. He seems to have been the originator of the type of Neoplatonism that came to dominate the Platonic schools in the 400s and 500s AD. Nearly all of Iamblichus' works have been lost.
   In Athen another development took place - Plutarch the Younger (350-433), Proclus, Simplicius and Damascius were there. Proclus, the most influential systematic expositor there, produced a carefully argued summary of the basic metaphysics of this kind of "Athenian Neoplatonism" in his Elements of Theology, which exhibits the causal relationships of the several hierarchies that constituted his intelligible universe. Also, by the end of the 4th century AD the Platonic Academy at Athens had been reestablished and had become an institute for Neoplatonic teaching and research following the tradition of Iamblichus.
   Another centre of Neoplatonism flourished at Gaza during the 400s and early 500s AD.
   And in Alexandria was the most scholarly of the developments. The Alexandrian school of Neoplatonism does not seem to have differed very much from that of Athens, and it survived into the 600s.

Later impact

As for impact, Neoplatonism was widespread till the 600s AD. and influenced early Christian theologians such as Clement of Alexandria and his pupil Origen, and also medieval Jewish and Arab philosophers. According to Porphyry, Origen attended lectures given by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neoplatonism. And a letter of Origen mentions his "teacher of philosophy". Neoplatonism was firmly joined with Christianity by St. Augustine. That one was a Neoplatonist before his conversion. It was through Neoplatonism that Augustine conceived of spirit as being immaterial and viewed evil as an unreal substance. Neoplatonism has had a lasting influence on Western metaphysics.
Philosophers whose works contain elements of Neoplatonism include St. Thomas Aquinas, John Scotus Erigena, Boethius, and Hegel. As for the first two of these thinkers, they identify the One with God and the Divine Mind with the angels.
Neoplatonic aesthetics also influenced the German Romantics, the 17th-century English metaphysical poets, including William Blake. Many mystical movements in the West, including those of Meister Eckhardt and Jacob Boehme, owe something to the Neoplatonists.

Adjoined

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