More on the Word 'Neoplatonism'

18 February 2023

More on the Word ‘Neoplatonism’

In mid-January of this year I posted “Why I Don’t Use the Word ‘Neoplatonism.”  It was my quick take on why I think the word ‘Neoplatonism’ inherently distorts the history of the Platonic tradition as well as the teachings of Plotinus and other late classical Platonists.  Recently, I was rereading Pure by Mark Anderson and came across a passage where Anderson makes the same point, but with different emphases.  Anderson is much more adamant than I was in my post and more strongly emphasizes the history behind the introduction of the word ‘Neoplatonism’ into the discourse of modernity.  Here it is:

“Of Longinus Plotinus said, ‘He is a scholar, but he is not at all a philosopher.’ [I believe this is from Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus.]  We might say the same of those intellectual historians who insist upon distinguishing Platonism from Neoplatonism.  Plotinus, the supposed founder of ‘Neoplatonism,’ knew nothing of this distinction; he considered himself a loyal Platonist.  He may have elaborated Plato’s central themes; no doubt he illuminated what was only dimly implicit in the master’s written works; but he consistently maintained that he derived his ideas from the tradition that descended from Plato.  He was taken at his word for nearly two thousand years.

“Then came historicism.

“In the nineteenth century, certain German scholars claiming to have detected previously unperceived fissures separating Plotinus’ ideas from pure Platonism, declared Plotinus the unwitting founder of a new school of thought, inspired by but diverging from Platonism sufficiently to merit the prefix ‘Neo.’  Thus died a tradition that had sustained the greatest of Western minds, from Plotinus himself to Michelangelo.  It was not a natural death.  Platonism as a unified, living, inspirational tradition was assassinated by pedantry, drowned in an inkwell. . .

“The inferences one draws from this event depend upon whether one aspires to be a scholar or a philosopher.  From the perspective of the intellectual historian, the segregating of Plato from Plotinus is fecund, endlessly productive of the most minute research projects.  The philosopher seeks a different sort of fecundity.

“The labor of identifying and categorizing the varieties of Platonism and Neoplatonism – in a word, taxonomy – satisfied the instincts of the scholar.  The unity of Platonism nourishes the spirits of those who love wisdom.  If you long for what counts today as historical accuracy, accept the scholar’s distinction between Platonism and Neoplatonism.  If you long for wisdom, live the unity of Platonism.”

(Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, pages 30 & 31.)

 

1.  I think the difference between the scholar and the philosopher that Anderson refers to is that the philosopher is, from the Platonist perspective, a mystic whereas the scholar is not.  (It’s possible to be a scholar and a mystic, just like it’s possible for someone to be a cook and a mystic; but being a mystic is not part of the essence of scholarship whereas, from the Platonist perspective, it is the essence of being a philosopher.) 

2.  I would like to know when ‘German scholars’ introduced the word ‘Neoplatonism’ and the specific paper where the introduction occurred and who the author was.  I’m like that; I’m the kind of reader who will track down footnotes.  So far, I haven’t come across the specifics of this shift in terminology.  I suspect the specifics would be illuminating.

3.  Anderson refers to the truth that Platonism was considered a single tradition for a very long time.  I made the same point in my mid-January post.  There is a disturbing hubris inherent in the term ‘Neoplatonism’; it implies that many centuries of scholars got it wrong, but that we moderns all of a sudden got it right.  I refer to this way of thinking as ‘chronocentrism’, a word I made up to name the view that modernity has of itself, namely that modernity is more wise, more insightful, and better informed, as well as ethically superior, to those ancients.

I first experienced the hubris of modernist chronocentrism when I was deeply involved in Western Buddhism.  For example, modernist Western Buddhists do not hesitate to refer to the idea of rebirth as a ‘superstition’ that the progressive, materialist, and scientific West does not need and has every right to eject from the Buddhadharma.  Every single tradition of Buddhism, from Abhidhamma to Zen, has accepted the truth of rebirth, but that means nothing to ‘Secular Buddhism’ (trademarked).  Chronocentrism is the way modernity disposes of sources of possible alternatives to its basic world view; and it has done so successfully.

What I find helpful is that Anderson points out that long before there was Western Buddhism, the Chronocentrism of modernity was used to reconfigure Platonism in a manner that divested Platonism of its mystical foundation, so that it would become acceptable to materialist  modernity.  So when Buddhism arrived in the West, the West was already experienced at how to handle ideas alien to its current modernist beliefs.

4.  Anderson mentions that the ‘scholar’ and the ‘philosopher’ are searching for different kinds of fecundity.  For the scholar the analysis of things into different types, what Anderson calls ‘taxonomy’, produces many essays, conferences, and understandings compatible with their materialist assumptions.  The fecundity of the philosopher is the fecundity of The One, the primal source that gives rise to all things.  By nourishing our experience of The One we align ourselves with creation as such, as well as the unity which allows things to be things as opposed to jumbled heaps of random assemblages.  But this kind of unity is only accessible through the contemplation of the mystic.

5.  Anderson makes the point that if you are attracted to Platonism out of a love of wisdom, because you are seeking wisdom, meaning transcendental wisdom, then you will perceive the Platonist tradition as a unity.  One way of looking at this is that a lover of wisdom will tend to see all the dialogues of Plato and all the Enneads of Plotinus, as a single book, focused on a single project; that project being mystical union with The Good and The One.  In contrast, the ‘scholar’ will find multiplicity in the form of divergences, contrasts, and incompatibilities.  How does that happen?

Think of a musical form like the classical symphony.  One way of listening to symphonies from that period is to hear the common formal foundations that each composer uses.  Another way of listening to these symphonies is to hear the divergences of one composer from another.  But in the context of the classical symphony, these divergences are not considered to be separate schools; that is to say Mozart is not a ‘Neo-symphonist’ to Haydn the symphonist.

In a similar way, the Platonic Sages are presenting the symphony of the eternal using their own orchestration to do so.  But the later Platonists, such as Plotinus, Maximus, Porphyry, et al, are presenting the same truth, and pointing to the same mystical ascent to the transcendental source of all things.  And that is why the Platonic tradition is a singular tradition with a single teaching, the teaching of the eternal in the midst of this ephemeral and gossamer world.