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School · 204 CE–485 CE

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism is a scholarly name for several late-antique Platonist projects, not an unbroken single institution; its thinkers developed layered accounts of the first principle, intellect, soul, and return to the divine.

Shared questions

  • How do the many levels of reality proceed from a first principle and return toward it?

Internal disagreements

  • Whether philosophical ascent requires discursive reasoning alone or also theurgical and ritual practices.

Key texts

  • Enneads — Plotinus wrote without revising, and the text comes to us through Porphyry's editing and arrangement.
  • On the Mysteries — Iamblichus' defence of theurgy against Porphyry, and the point at which the school divides.