NeoPlatonism in its dffferent Phases

Neoplatonism I: Antiquity

Neoplatonism was a philosophical school based on Platonic doctrines whose founder, Plotinus (205-270 C.E.), claimed only to be an exegete of the teachings of Plato (Enn. V.1.8.10-14) and, before him, of the “ancients”, including the Pythagoreans. In the more than seven centuries after Plato, however, several philosophical schools – the Stoics and Aristotelians especially – had attained a powerful influence among thinkers in the Hellenic world, and Plotinus' writings, collected and edited by his student Porphyry (c. 232-c. 305 C.E.), reflect his effort to defend the teachings of Plato and the ancients against the materialism of the Stoics and the biologically limited view of the human soul seen in Aristotle. In this, Plotinus appropriated and reshaped Stoic cosmology and Aristotelian metaphysics into the service of a spiritual Platonism. The Plato that Plotinus championed was the author of mystical doctrines that deified the soul by lifting it into the ineffable erotics of the One. According to Jean Trouillard, the fundamental intuition of the Neoplatonists derived from their reflection on the second part of Plato's Parmenides, transforming its dialectics of the One into apophatic initiations. It is this emphasis on the soul's capacity to be unified with the One that marks the distinctive contribution of Plotinus and the later Neoplatonists, yet they claimed that this was not an innovation but a traditional teaching already understood by Plato.
It is precisely as a defender of ancient and Platonic teachings that Plotinus attacked the Gnostics . Although this term has been misunderstood and misused by contemporary scholars as a label for virtually all dualist and anti-cosmic worldviews in antiquity – thus overlooking the complexity of the various gnostic schools both dualist and monist – Plotinus himself clearly portrayed the Gnostics as anti-cosmic dualists, and his great treatise (Enn. III.8; V.8; V.5; II.9) is devoted to refuting their beliefs. Porphyry reports (VP 16; cf. Enn. II.9.10.3-4) that among the “friends” of Plotinus were those who had previously adopted gnostic revelations of Allogenes and Zostrianos, and it was for their benefit that Plotinus criticized these teachings as distortions of Plato and the ancients. Specifically, Plotinus argued against gnostic anti-cosmicism and the myth of the fall of Sophia as cause for creation and the embodiment of souls. He also characterized their exaltation of the particular soul to the status of World Soul as nothing more than “wishful thinking” (Enn. II.9.9.49) and insisted that the human soul should coordinate itself with the order of the visible cosmos rather than trying to escape it. For Plotinus, the soul's deifying contact with the Nous and the One is attained only by first aligning itself with the sensible cosmos, and he maintains that all creation is good and rooted in a mysterious “contemplation” (theōria) that pervades the spiritual and material realms (Enn. III.8.1). Porphyry reports (VP 16) that both he and Plotinus' senior pupil, Amelius, were encouraged by their master to continue this polemic against the Gnostics and they wrote many treatises, now lost.
Plotinus' positive assessment of the material cosmos and his profound intuition of an active theōria creating and sustaining the material cosmos were due, in large part, to his effort to refute the Gnostics' anti-cosmicism and their insistence that theōria was removed from the cosmos. Some of Plotinus' most profound insights were forged in the heat of his polemic against the Gnostics and influenced several trajectories of his thought. In response to gnostic views of matter, evil and the soul Plotinus employed Aristotelian terminology to give a positive account of the material world and the soul's capacity for theōria. On the other hand, his encounter with the Gnostics left its mark, seen especially in Plotinus' description of the human soul and its embodied experience. Acknowledging his divergence from Platonic tradition on this issue, Plotinus maintained that the human soul does not fully descend into a body but something of it remains in the intelligible world (Enn. IV.8.8.1-4; cf. IV.3.12.1-5; I.1). Thus, despite his polemic against the Gnostics, there was an ambiguity in Plotinus on the value of the material world and the status of the embodied soul.
Porphyry's student Iamblichus (c. 240-c. 325 C.E.) criticized Plotinus' doctrine of the undescended human soul for the same reason that Plotinus had criticized the Gnostics: it diverged from the teachings of Plato and the ancients, among whom Iamblichus included Pythagoreans and theurgists. Although Plotinus had argued for the divinity of the world against the Gnostics, he nevertheless characterized sensible matter as ‘primal and absolute evil’ (Enn. I.8.3.38-40). Consequently, salvation for the soul required an escape from material evil by withdrawing into its unfallen essence. The imagery and terms employed by Plotinus to portray the soul's fall into material reality were the same that Gnostics had used to describe the descent of Sophia. The soul's inclination to the body is, for Plotinus, not a genuine descent but only an illumination (ellampsis) to what is below while its essence remains above the shadows of the material world (Enn. I.1.12.25-29). In the same way, Plotinus says that the gnostic Sophia did not descend into matter ‘but only illuminated (ellampsai) the darkness….’ (Enn. II.9.10.25-27). Thus, the dualism Plotinus perceived in the Gnostics remained – at least in residual form – in his own thought, and his view of salvation as the recovery of the soul's unfallen condition might easily be construed as correlate to this. It is significant that Iamblichus' theory of the completely descended soul was complemented by his view of sensible matter as entirely good, a material expression of the One itself. Iamblichus thus exorcised the residue of Plotinian dualism with a Pythagorean interpretation of matter as rooted in the divine and indefinable dyad, thereby transforming material “obstacles” into icons capable of uniting the soul with the gods. It should be noted that Iamblichus' critique of Plotinus follows a trajectory of thought initiated by Plotinus himself in his polemic against the Gnostics.
Because the Iamblichean soul was fully embodied, it suffered an alienation unexplored by Plotinus. Following the Pythagorean cosmology of the Timaeus, Iamblichus maintained that the soul, made up of divinely numbered proportions (logoi), collaborates with the Demiurge and projects these logoi outside itself during embodiment, sewing itself into the fabric of the material world. Although immortal, the embodied soul becomes mortal, separated from its own divinity and unable to regain its place in the divine hierarchy without the aid of the gods. To recover its divinity, the soul must perform god-empowered rituals using elements from nature that correspond to the divine logoi projected in its embodiment. Because of this alienation, the soul's salvation was no longer to be found in theōria and withdrawal from the world but in theourgia: divine action that transforms both the soul and the world. The theurgist possessed practical knowledge of how to bring the soul into resonance with material or immaterial elements proportionate both to the degree of its alienation and to the presence of the god in each element. Among these elements were stones, plants, animals, and aromatics (DM V.23) and less material elements such as prayers and chants (DM VII.4-5). Because Neoplatonic theurgists employed ritual techniques also used by Gnostics and late antique magicians, modern scholars, until recently, dismissed Iamblichus as irrational and superstitious, representing a decline in Platonic philosophy. Yet Plotinus already had acknowledged that wise men know how to tap the divine powers hidden in stones and plants (Enn. IV.4.35), and he, like Iamblichus, praised the Egyptians for building their temples in proportions designed to secure the presence of the gods (Enn. IV.3.1). Iamblichean theurgy was a development of this trajectory of Plotinus' thought: a vision of unbroken continuity from the One to sensible matter, and with a more thorough application of Pythagorean teachings to the alienation of the soul combined with his reading of the Chaldean Oracles, Iamblichus worked out its practical consequences. The soul was not to be saved by escaping an evil world but by ritually transforming it in theurgy, thus completing its collaboration with the Demiurge.
Barbarian invocations and unintelligible sounds were used by theurgists to evoke the presence of gods, but these practices were not uncommon in late antiquity and are also evident in both gnostic prayers and magical spells. Plotinus had condemned the Gnostics for trying to manipulate gods with magical invocations and saw no value in such rites (Enn. II.9.14), while Porphyry afforded them only the provisional value of purifying the lower soul. Yet for post-Iamblicheans, including Proclus and Damascius, theurgical chants were understood to awaken the divine presence in the soul. Iamblichus' theory explained the function of theurgical invocations, but their presence in gnostic and magical literature was not due to Iamblichus; he simply provided a philosophical rationale. The soul that chants the sacred sounds does not call the god down but is united with the divine activity (theia energeia) of the god through its audible expression. Theurgic tokens (sunthēmata), from stones to sounds, functioned as portals of the ineffable magnetism of the One, which is why Iamblichus insisted that theurgical rites surpass human understanding.
The Gnostics did not produce an Iamblichus to explain their ritual practices, but his theory might profitably be used to explain the rites of gnostic communities that shared metaphysical tenets with Neoplatonists. An Iamblichean – or Neopythagorean – influence can be discerned in both metaphysical and ritual elements of the late “Sethian” treatise Marsanes which presents a remarkably positive view of the material cosmos. Having announced his knowledge of the boundaries of both spiritual and material worlds the prophetic narrator states: ‘in every respect the sense-perceptible world is [worthy] of being saved entirely’ (NHC X.5.24-26), a striking description in a gnostic text, possibly reflecting Iamblichus' positive view of matter. As Iamblichus posited an ineffable principle above the One of his predecessors, so Marsanes adds an Unknown Silent One above the highest principle of the other “Sethian” texts (X.4.19-22), although it is unclear whether these principles functioned in the same way. Perhaps more significantly, the soul's descent into matter – exemplified in Marsanes' Self-Begotten One (Autogenes) – fulfills a demiurgic function, precisely as described by Iamblichus (DM VIII.3), and with similar soteriological consequences: in order to ascend, the soul must learn to descend like Autogenes or, in Iamblichus' terms, like the demiurgic Nous (cf. Steles Seth, 127,20-21). In Marsanes, these ascents were effected through the ritual use of seals that functioned like theurgic sunthēmata, and Marsanes' complex instructions for chanting vowels, diphthongs, and consonants to lift the soul into its original spherical body is explained in the context of a Pythagorean reflection on numbers where ‘the [decad revealed] the whole place’ (X.25-33.1). Iamblichus similarly explained that theurgical invocations have affinities with the gods and place the soul in its original spherical body – the “shape of the gods” (DM IV.2) – designed by the Demiurge. Despite these similarities, the De Mysteriis appeared no earlier than ca. 280 – and Iamblichus' other writings as late as 325 – which leaves little time for a direct influence on Marsanes (late 3rd or early 4th century). Yet both reflect a Syrian provenience, and a direct influence is not impossible.
The “Sethian” texts (Allogenes, Zostrianos, Three Steles of Seth, and Marsanes) all reflect a strong Platonic influence seen, for example, in the prominence of a triune first principle: Being-Life-Intellect and in the introduction of Power (dynamis) as a mediating principle of the One, formulations clearly derived from Middle Platonic, Neopythagorean, and possibly Neoplatonic texts. Michel Tardieu has shown that the author of Zostrianos (NHC VIII, 1) and Marius Victorinus (Adversus Arium) both made use of the same philosophic source, which, he argues, is a Middle Platonic treatise. If gnostic texts such as Zostrianos were drawing from the same philosophic sources as Plotinus, it is not surprising that their philosophical concepts and terminology were shared by the Neoplatonists. It is unlikely that Plotinus would have bothered to criticize them otherwise. The presence of Platonic conceptual structures and the virtual exclusion of all the Jewish and Christian elements of the earlier “Sethian” corpus suggest that the later “Sethians” were seeking intellectual credibility among pagan philosophers or, more simply, that they appropriated these teachings as being anagogically effective. The Chaldaean Oracles, Neopythagorean and Middle Platonic texts, and the anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides have been identified as sources for Sethian metaphysics. The concepts and terms of the Commentary, in particular, influenced these texts, but despite recent discoveries and scholarship there remains significant disagreement on the identity of its author. Pierre Hadot has argued for Porphyry, who was trying to harmonize the teachings of Plotinus with the revelations of the Chaldean Oracles, and consequently, as Ruth Majercik has argued, the Zostrianos and Allogenes of the Nag Hammadi collection would have to be 4th century revisions of the texts criticized by Plotinus. Cogent and persuasive arguments have been marshaled both for and against Hadot's thesis and for different chronologies of influence on the “Sethian” texts; there is, however, agreement among scholars that “Sethian” Gnostics conformed their revelations with the teachings of pagan philosophers. If, as Plotinus and Iamblichus maintained, the Neoplatonists were simply passing on older teachings, elements of which can be seen in Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Hermetic texts, then perhaps these Gnostics were simply drawing from the same sources. Whether they dipped into this traditional wisdom upstream or downstream is a question that has not yet been answered definitively.

Neoplatonism II: Middle Ages

Platonism is a complex and problematic historiographic category, especially with regard to the Middle Ages. To begin with, only very few original texts by Plato were known to the Latin West: the first part of the Timaeus, which was only supplemented by the Meno, the Phaedo and parts of the Parmenides in the middle of the 12th century. The image of Plato cherished by medieval authors was thus to a considerable degree filtered by Middle-Platonic and Neoplatonist lenses. The main channels by which Platonic philosophy was transmitted to the Middle Ages were Calcidius' translation of and commentary on the Timaeus, Macrobius' Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis, the works of Boethius and Apuleius, Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, → Pseudo-Dionysius, Proclus and of course Patristic authors, most importantly → Augustine. The African bishop not only provided extensive quotes and paraphrases of Plato's work, but, together with Boethius and others, inaugurated an interpretation of Platonism as a spiritual philosophy that was essentially in agreement with Christianity. For the Middle Ages the name Plato thus implied a syncretistic blend of pagan and Christian sources, ranging from Aristotelian, Stoic and Neopythagorean to Middle-Platonic and Neo-Platonist currents. An additional complicating factor is that a significant part of medieval Platonism did not go under the name of Plato but under that of his pupil Aristotle. From the middle of the 12th century pseudo-Aristotelian works introduced the Neo-Platonism of thinkers like Proclus (the Liber de Causis) and Plotinus (the Theologia Aristotelis) under the guise of Aristotle's secret teachings. Finally, medieval Platonism was not a static phenomenon but underwent profound transformations in the course of time. With the advent of Latin translations of Aristotle's works in the West from the 12th century onwards Aristotle's star rose while Plato receded to the background, especially with regard to natural philosophy, where commentaries on Aristotle's libri naturales replaced discussions of Plato's Timaeus. Nevertheless, the picture of an exclusively Platonic domination of the early Middle Ages and a subsequent Aristotelian domination of the later Middle Ages has proved to be too simplistic, not least because the Aristotelianism that the Latin West inherited from Arab commentators such as → Avicenna was deeply tainted by Neoplatonism. Moreover, late medieval theology and metaphysics, for instance that of Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest champions of medieval Aristotelianism, were heavily influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius and other Neoplatonist sources. There are thus a number of serious difficulties standing in the way of an all-encompassing study of the relation between medieval “Platonism” and → Hermetism, itself a multi-dimensional phenomenon. For this reason we have chosen to investigate the ties between Platonic and Hermetic elements in a limited number of authors that represent three different models of dealing with Hermetism, namely a fusion with Platonism without much relation to Aristotelianism (12th century Platonism), a blend of Platonism, Aristotelianism and Hermetism (→ Albertus Magnus), and finally a mixture of Platonism and Hermetism with anti-Aristotelian overtones (Berthold of Moosburg).
The first group has often been referred to as the “Platonists of the 12th century”, comprising authors such as William of Conches (ca. 1080-ca. 1154), Thierry of Chartres (= after 1156), → Bernard Silvester (ca. 1080-1167), and Alan of Lille (ca. 1128-1203). Against the traditional picture of a common Platonic “School of Chartres”, which most of these authors were claimed to be a member of, scholars such as Southern and Marenbon have tried to make a case for the richness and complexity of their philosophy and theology, downplaying the importance of Platonism as a common philosophical ideology. Nevertheless, the fact remains that these authors underwent a considerable influence of Platonic philosophy. The most conspicuous characteristic of their reception of Plato was the fusion between the cosmology and natural philosophy of the Timaeus with Christian theology. The leading idea here was that by means of a detailed investigation of the natural world, the philosopher would be able to gather the power, goodness and wisdom of its Creator. The mythical and allegorical elements of Plato's cosmology were seen as integumenta and involucra, words that concealed a deeper, hidden meaning that had to be dug up by the philosopher. This hermeneutical programme not only led to a free interpretation of ancient texts but also inspired a range of cosmologies and cosmogonies that themselves had a poetical and allegorical style that was tributary to the Platonic tradition (see e.g. Bernard Sylvester's Cosmographia and Alan of Lille's De Planctu Naturae).
Following Quodvultdeus, Lactantius and other conciliatory sources, 12th century Platonists saw Plato and Hermes [→ Hermes Trismegistus] as protagonists of the same tradition of Oriental-Greek wisdom. Peter Abailard (1079-1142) and Thierry of Chartres, for instance, believed that Plato's cosmological myth adumbrated his prophetic knowledge of the Trinity, in which the Father was the efficient cause of the world, the Son the formal cause and the Holy Spirit the final cause. On the other hand, Alan of Lille attributed the same knowledge to Hermes. Especially in his Summa Quoniam Homines and his Contra Haereticos, Alan claimed that the Asclepius contained integumenta referring to the Trinitarian dogma. Thus, against the widespread anti-intellectualism and fideism of the 12th century, authors such as Thierry of Chartres and Alan of Lille saw both Plato and Hermes as paradigms of a natural, rational knowledge of God and central dogmas of Christian faith.
Given this intimate bond between Plato and Hermes, it is no surprise that the 12th century Platonic cosmological-cum-theological framework was permeated by a wealth of Hermetic elements, deriving from the Asclepius and apocrypha such as the Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum and the Liber de sex rerum principiis.
First of all, we recognize Hermetic elements in the way these authors elaborated on the three cosmological principles derived from Plato's Timaeus: God, matter (hulè) and the world soul. For instance, In his Cosmographia Bernardus Sylvestris describes matter as an unformed entity, the fecundity of which can give rise to both good and bad creations, thus paraphrasing the Asclepius. But the most significant presence of Hermes is found in discussions on the world soul. Like Pierre Abailard, Thierry of Chartres identified the Platonic world soul with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. This in turn he equated with the pneuma or spirit of the Asclepius, which guides and determines the world. After the Council of Sens (1140) had forbidden the equation of the (created!) anima mundi of the Timaeus with the Third Person of the Trinity, most authors became more cautious in the way they dealt with spirit. Bernard Sylvester, for instance, considered the world soul as Nature itself, the force that keeps the world together as an ordered whole. In this respect, the Asclepius was again a major source of inspiration, especially with its Stoic connection between spirit and fate, its insistence on the determinate sequence of causes in the universe and its equally Stoic astral determinism, in which the sublunary world is governed and determined by the stars. Another escape route was taken by Alan of Lille who continued to identify world soul and Holy Spirit, but bypassing allusions to Plato, referred to Asclepius 23 with its claim that God created eternal Gods. In this fashion, Alan attempted to avoid the fusion of the finite Platonic world soul and the eternal Third Person of the Trinity.
Another domain in which Platonic and Hermetic elements were combined concerns the relation between God's immanence in the world and His radical transcendence. 12th-century Platonism was heir to the complexities of late Neoplatonism with its tension between the ineffability of the One and its emanative immanence in the world. Again, this Neoplatonist framework was filled with Hermetic elements. Both Thierry of Chartres and Alan of Lille not only explained God's ineffability with the help of Pseudo-Dionysius' doctrine of divine names, but also on the basis of Asclepius 20 which states that God bears all names. According to these authors, God's ineffability is not rooted in His transcendence, but precisely in His radical immanence: because God is all being, He bears all names, which is the same as saying that no name can express the divine source of the totality of being. Most 12th-century Platonists made use of the Hermetic notion of Unʾomnia: the idea that all being participates in the One gives rise to the conclusion that the One is immanent in all being (God is every stone, every tree etc.). The majority of authors expressly tried to avoid simplistic pantheist conclusions, with the exception of David of Dinant (ca. 1160-1200), whose Quaternuli were condemned by the Synod of Paris in 1210. Finally, especially in Alan of Lille we find a strong usage of the definitions of the Liber XXIV Philosophorum in determining the relation between God and His creation. The image of God as the monad and the circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere were woven into a basically Neoplatonist metaphysics of unity and participation.
The relation between Platonism and Hermetism underwent substantial change in the works of → Albertus Magnus (1193-1280). The Dominican professor was one of the first to deal with the tide of translations of Aristotle in the 13th century. Hence, most of his work consisted of commentaries on Aristotle's texts. Nevertheless, Albert's Aristotelianism was certainly not uncritical and was combined with a strong Neoplatonist influence mostly derived from Arab and Jewish sources, and, especially in his later life, from the Liber de Causis, which Albertus considered to be Aristotelian. In fact, Albertus spoke of three different philosophical schools, the Epicureans, The Stoics, which comprised Plato and the Academy, and the Peripatetics. Hermes was usually grouped with the Stoics and was thus made responsible for inaugurating philosophical idealism. Nevertheless, there are also places in Albert's work, for instance in De Causis, that place the Thrice Great with the “older Peripatetics”. In the end, this classification is of small importance, because according to Albert's conciliatory programme true philosophy should reunite Aristotelianism and Platonism. In fact, Albert's “Peripateticism” is largely determined by Averroes, Avicenna, Alfarabi and other authors with a strong Neoplatonist outlook. A number of characteristic Hermetic elements have flown into Albert's mixture of Aristotelianism and Platonism.
First, Hermes is referred to in the context of Albert's metaphysics and theology. Together with Platonism, Hermes is credited by Albertus for inaugurating the idea of a divine fluxus in which all forms and all being are derived from the First Cause. Nevertheless, like the Platonists, Hermes errs with respect to the particulars of this process. According to Albertus the causal inflow should not be modelled in terms of an “infusion” of form and being into matter by a higher, intelligent cause. This kind of conception may lead to a dangerous pantheism in which the very ontological hierarchy is abolished, because all things are believed to directly emanate from the highest cause and share in its essence. As an alternative to the Platonic-Hermetic view of causal infusion, Albertus launched his “peripatetic” view of eductio formarum: forms are created by Intellects that emanate from the first cause. These Intellects draw the lingering, potential forms out of matter in the sense that they act as a paradigm which is imitated by the created thing that produces a likeness or an image of it. Contrary to what Hermes claims, the Dator Formarum, the giver of forms, is thus transcendent to the lower levels of reality and does not directly infuse them with his own being. By stating in the Asclepius that all things are full of a spirit which transmits the virtues of the gods, Hermes shows that he has some awareness of this truth, but it remained to the Aristotelians to fill in the details of this conception.
A similar combination of Aristotelian, Platonic and Hermetic elements may be witnessed in the case of Albert's doctrine of the intellect, a central doctrine within his system. Albertus mentions active and possible intellect, impressed species and other Aristotelian jargon, but again inspired by Alfarabi, Avicenna and others he gives a Platonic twist to these terms. According to Albertus the process of philosophical contemplation is a matter of the active intellect joining itself with us, hence creating the intellecta in our soul. The possible intellect receives the light of this knowledge and is thus made similar to the intelligible forms. The end result of this process is the intellectus adeptus, which he defines as the presence of the known form within the soul. Philosophical knowledge is thus a kind of contemplation and illumination by means of which the soul gradually unites itself with the One. Again, Albertus introduces Hermetic elements in this Aristotelian-Platonic mixture. First of all, he describes the process of contemplation in terms of asceticism, purification and divination and other concepts derived from the Asclepius. Moreover, in his Liber de intellectu et intelligibili he adopts the Hermetic image of man as nexus dei et mundi. On the one hand, man assimilates himself to God, but by doing so he may also act as the gubernator of the lower world. Philosophical → mysticism is thus transfigured into a kind of → magic in which man uses his divine powers in order to rule, transform and purify the lower worlds. In this connection, Albertus also cites the Hermetic trope of man as imago mundi, which he interprets in a Platonic sense: by assimilating the intelligible forms within the intellect, the human soul becomes in fact a microcosmos mirroring the macrocosmos.
Albertus was the founder of an alternative philosophical school among Dominicans in the German lands, which not only comprised philosophers such as Ulrich of Strasburg (ca. 1225-1277) and Berthold of Moosburg (= 1361), but also mystics such as Eckhart and Tauler. Insofar as Hermetism is concerned, the most interesting representative of this current is Berthold of Moosburg, who composed a commentary on Proclus, the Expositio super Elementationem Theologicam Procli (1340-1360). In contradistinction to Albertus, Berthold did not aim at reconciling Aristotelianism and Platonism, but opposed the Platonism of Proclus to the dominant Aristotelian culture of the schools. Again, however, these labels should be handled with caution: Proclus's Elementatio itself is certainly not free from Aristotelianism and also Berthold's own interpretation in no way amounts to “pure Platonism”. Nevertheless, he presents an uncompromising anti-Aristotelian programme, which is based on the distinction between the ontology of the Peripatetics, the sententia peripateticorum that only deals with the “terrestrial” doctrine of metaphysics as the science of being qua being, and the true metaphysics of the Platonists, the supersapientialis scientia platonica that is gained by the soul's mystical unitio with the divine forms. Berthold brought about a complete fusion of this Platonism with Hermetism. Unlike Albertus, Berthold dropped the reservations about the Liber XXIV Philosophorum, whose definitions of God as monas and as circle he happily quoted. Berthold also revived the ancient idea that the pagan Hermes would have intuitively grasped the attributes of God, which is proved by his words about the generation of the Logos from the Father (Asclepius 26) and his doctrine of pneuma, which Berthold identifies with the Holy Spirit. It is therefore no surprise that we find a substantial number of references to Hermes in Berthold's work. Hermes teaches God's ineffability, His omnipotence and causality, His presence within the created universe, the processes of exitus, mansio and reditus applied to the trinity and man as microcosm. In this fashion, Hermetic doctrines provide important additions to Proclus' “Platonic” philosophical system.

Neoplatonism III: Since the Renaissance

Platonism existed in many guises and at various places in the 13th and 14th centuries, especially in Italy. It was, however, mainly due to one man that Platonism became such a dominant current in the Renaissance: → Marsilio Ficino, who published the first complete translation of Plato in Latin in 1484, outdoing all earlier (partial) translations by Renaissance figures such as Bruni, Filelfo, George of Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion. Platonism had certainly not been unknown to the Latin West during the Middle Ages [→ Neoplatonism II], but the more than thirty printings of Ficino's Platonis Opera Omnia in the 16th century alone gave a new and powerful impetus to the development of the Platonic tradition. In fact, Ficino's translation continued to be read well into the 19th century. Nevertheless, the availability of Plato's complete text did not mean that Ficino and Renaissance Platonists returned to the original and pure Platonism. Byzantine scholars such as Cardinal Besssarion and George of Trebizond not only bequeathed their Greek manuscripts to Italian humanists, but also a set of hermeneutical tools that were employed in reading these texts. Following Bessarion and others, Ficino read (and translated!) Plato through profoundly Neoplatonic lenses. Plato was put into the syncretistic framework of a tradition of prisca sapientia and pia philosophia [→ Tradition] which was supposed to reach back to → Moses and pagan prophets such as → Zoroaster and → Hermes Trismegistus who had transmitted a sacred wisdom that foreshadowed the advent of Christ. In other words, attention was very much focused on those aspects of Plato's teachings that could be squared with Christianity. In fact, one of Ficino's key projects was to develop a new kind of scholasticism that would reunite Christian faith with Platonic philosophy as an alternative to what was seen as the heretical and anti-Christian “obscenities” of Averroist and Alexandrist → Aristotelianism. Moreover, since Plato was not seen as an isolated figure but as the head of a unified philosophical tradition, Ficino and others read Neoplatonist philosophy back into Plato's works.
Plotinus in particular was very dear to Ficino's heart. He produced a complete translation of the Enneads and considered Plotinus as the interpreter that came closest not only to Plato's meaning but to Christianity as well. During the Renaissance, Ficino's translation of Plato was read together with his renderings of Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus and other Neoplatonist philosophers. With the help of Proclus' and Plotinus' complex conceptual structures Plato was thus interpreted in a highly systematical manner, which left no room for the aporetic and open-ended character of many of his dialogues. The Plotinian One or God was placed at a great distance of the Many of this world, and the gap was filled with the celestial hierarchies of → Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, who became as popular in the Renaissance as he had been among Medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. Early Renaissance authors still believed in the myth according to which Dionysius was not only the Areopagite whom St. Paul had converted to Christianity, but also the one that had later become bishop of Paris. Eventually Valla's philological démasqué of this myth in his In Novum Testamentum Annotationes, printed in 1505, weakened the authority of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings, but until that time great minds such as Ficino and → Nicolas of Cusa still considered Dionysius one of the greatest theologians of all time. In fact, Dionysian negative theology was a key influence on Cusanus' doctrine of docta ignorantia. An even more interesting case of Dionysian influence is → Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, who opposes the pure Christianity of Dionysius against the debased philosophies of the Platonists who had supposedly stolen most of his ideas.
On the whole, scholars have come to emphasize the continuities with medieval Platonism, at the expense of the discontinuities that were often stressed by Renaissance thinkers themselves. For one thing, → Augustine remained as important to Ficino as a source of Christian Neoplatonism as he had been to the Middle Ages. Moreover, following 12th-century Platonists, the young Ficino was excited by the pseudo-Hermetic definitions of God as the monad and as a circle whose circumference is everywhere and centre nowhere (Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum, defs. 1-2). He used these doctrines in order to bring the Christian idea of divine creation in concordance with both Hermetism [→ Hermetic Literature] and the Platonic account of the Demiurge in the Timaeus, an endeavour which in itself clearly betrays the influence of William of Conches and other 12th-century Platonists. These continuities notwithstanding, the very fact that the entire Platonic corpus was now available did create a powerful new momentum in Renaissance culture. Still, it is important to recognize that although a few special chairs of Platonic philosophy had been created (for example that of → Francesco Patrizi in Rome) and avowed Platonists were present at regular university chairs (for example Francesco Piccolomini at Padua), Neoplatonism remained largely an extra-academic affair. The metaphysical speculations of the Platonists proved to be more attractive to a non-academic public than the strict logic of academic Aristotelianism, inspiring musicians [→ Music], poets and painters as well as statesmen such as Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici.
The link between Renaissance Neoplatonism and Hermetism was as potent as it had been in the works of medieval Platonists such as Alanus ab Insulis or Berthold of Moosburg, and this makes it difficult – indeed, artifical to some degree – to discuss Renaissance Neoplatonism separately from Renaissance Hermetism. Following Lactantius and other ancient sources, all Neoplatonists of the Renaissance subscribed to the myth of a prisca sapientia and a pia philosophia already referred to above: a current of primordial pagan wisdom, culminating in Platonism, which prior and/or parallel to the Mosaic prophesies had paved the way for Christian revelation. Together with Zoroaster, Hermes was usually seen as one of the first of these pagan sages. Thus, the Corpus Hermeticum, whose first complete translation into Latin was also produced by Ficino, was considered a source of the most ancient and most venerable wisdom on earth. Nevertheless, although most Neoplatonists shared this image of Hermes as a venerable prophet, the impact of the works attributed to him on the various protagonists of Renaissance Platonism was certainly not univocal. Recent scholarship has therefore become much more cautious than Frances Yates (1964) with her sweeping claims about a unified “Hermetic Tradition”. Just like in the case of the Renaissance's Platonisms and Aristotelianisms, we had better speak of the Hermetisms of the Renaissance.
As for the Platonisms of the Renaissance specifically, in what follows we will discuss them at the example of only a few of the most influential authors, and further restrict ourselves to those who clearly present themselves primarily as philosophers. It must be emphasized, however, that the influence of Neoplatonism was much more widespread than can be demonstrated in a short overview. To give only one example, the famous → Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa – primarily a humanist theologian, cultural critic, and author on magic – consistently attacked Aristotelian scholasticism in favour of a broadly Neoplatonic worldview. Among other things, he lectured on Plato's Symposium in 1512, and he rejected scholastic notions of the relation between reason and faith in favour of a fideism strongly inspired by Neoplatonism.
To begin with Ficino: despite his great veneration for Hermes, the impact of specific Hermetic doctrines on his Neoplatonic philosophy is somewhat limited. True, we find in Ficino the same combination of a pessimist perspective on the world as the dark abyss of materiality with the idea that the beauty and order of the natural world reveals the perfection of its Maker. Moreover, Ficino tries to bring the idea of God as the transcendent One in concordance with His immanence in the world He created. But these are rather vague parallels that can also be found in the various strands of (Christian) Neoplatonism, which moreover applied more philosophical rigour to these themes, a fact which certainly appealed to Ficino's sharp philosophical, if not scholastic, mind. On the whole, it seems that Ficino's initial enthusiasm for Hermes later gave way to a deep fascination with Neoplatonism, and with Plotinus in particular. Furthermore, although Ficino emphasizes the pre-Trinitarian character of Hermes' speculations, he never ceased to emphasize that the Egyptian sage had been granted only a glimpse of God. Ficino, himself an ordained priest, never questioned the need for Revelation. The same conclusion also applies to Plato, who just like Hermes had only glimpsed the Trinity and other basic Christian tenets, which can never be perfectly known independent of the Revelation. In the same context, Ficino sharply repudiated later Platonici, such as Numenius, Philo, Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus for having stolen most of their ideas from the Gospel of St John, St Paul's Epistles and the Areopagite. Even his great hero Plotinus did not escape this criticism. Despite his exposure to Christianity, Plotinus had failed to understand the true nature of the Trinity, even to the extent of reverting to the heresy of Arianism by subordinating the second and third hypostases of his system to the first one. Although Ficino took over many important doctrines of Plotinus and his fellow Platonici in his campaign for a Christian philosophy, he was never tempted to exalt pagan metaphysics at the expense of Christian theology.
→ Giovanni Pico della Mirandola subscribed to the concordist notion of prisca sapientia, which in his case gave rise to the grand project of his Conclusiones, that tried to reunite all pagan and Christian learning. However, during his brief life Pico actually limited himself to the less lofty task of harmonizing Aristotelianism and Platonism, with the metaphysics of De Ente et Uno (1492) as the first result. Like Ficino, Pico was a strong admirer of Plotinus – in fact, he urged Ficino to complete his translation of the great Neoplatonist. The only point on which Pico disagreed with the Neoplatonists was precisely the relation between “being” and “one” as predicates of God. He thus rejected the Neoplatonist reading of Plato's Parmenides, which was supposed to confirm the Neoplatonic idea that the hypostasis of the “One” or God is above being, superessentialis as the Latin translation of Proclus has it. According to Pico, the Parmenides was just a dialectical exercise, whereas in all of his other dialogues Plato was in basic agreement with Aristotle's thesis concerning the convertibility of being and oneness. Both predicates can be assigned to God and thus stand at the same ontological level. It is, furthermore, not insignificant that Pico's unfinished Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem unequivocally condemned Hermetism as an inferior kind of learning and opposed it unfavourably to both Platonism and Aristotelianism. The wisdom of the Egyptians, which includes Hermetism, is here portrayed as a practical discipline of worship and not as theoretical science. Hermetism provides at best a first inadequate sketch of the superior physics and metaphysics of Plato and especially Aristotle, since it lacks the defining characteristic of true science, that is to say, rational argument (Disputatio adversus astrologiam divinitatricem, in Opera Omnia, Basel 1557 [reprint Hildesheim 1969], 721-722).
The Franciscan friar → Francesco Giorgio da Veneto's (1453-1540) main work, De Harmonia Mundi (1525), is an amazing amalgam of Neoplatonism, Hermetism, kabbalah [→ Jewish Influences ] and Franciscan spirituality. The Harmonia Mundi tries to uncover the hidden unity behind the world's apparent diversity by means of “musical”, i.e. harmonical, proportions [→ Music]. Many of these proportions are conceived of in analogical fashion and pertain to → Number Symbolism rather than to mathematics in the strict sense of the word. Giorgio's key doctrine is that of God as the Hermetic Monas, who unfolds His infinite fecundity in the harmonious world He creates. In this connection, he states that both Hermes and Plato beautifully explained the creation of the world, in a way which may help destroy the heresies of Aristotle, Averroes, Epicurus and Alexander of Aphrodisias.
With → Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597) Renaissance concordism changes its character. For Patrizi, the concord is between Hermetism and Neoplatonism on the one hand, and Christianity on the other, excluding the heresies of academic Aristotelianism. Moreover, unlike Ficino, Patrizi attached little importance to Moses and the Hebrew prophets. In fact, contrary to Ficino's Christian Platonism that sees itself as the culmination of both the Mosaic prophetic current and the Greek philosophical-theological current, Patrizi elaborated a tradition of Hermetic Platonism in which Christian thought appears to play a subordinate part, rather than being its perfection or culmination. Furthermore, unlike Ficino, he did not use the figure of Hermes to legitimize magic. Patrizi was mainly interested in those elements of the Corpus Hermeticum that can be squared with Neoplatonist metaphysics, and neglected magical [→ magic] and astrological [→ astrology] doctrines. Patrizi's threefold Hermetic-Platonic project involved, firstly, a new edition of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Chaldaean Oracles and other Hermetica. Secondly, the Discussiones Peripateticae (1581) takes up Ficino's idea of a philosophical concord and the tradition of prisca sapientia in an anti-Aristotelian manner. Thirdly, Patrizi wrote the Nova de Universis Philosophia (1591), an all-encompassing philosophical system that tries to explain the Hermetic “revelation” by means of philosophical, especially Platonist, arguments. This work starts from the premise that man by the sole light of his reason can arrive at the understanding of the central “mysteries” of faith, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, at the centre of Patrizi's metaphysics we find an exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity which uses Orphic, (pseudo)Zoroastrian and Hermetic teachings as the point of departure, rationally proving the consubstantiality of the three divine persons in a Neoplatonist vein. In this context, Patrizi gave a quite daring interpretation of the term “fides” (faith). Faith is not the irrational or pre-rational acceptance of certain doctrines on the basis of the authority of the Church; rather, it is the “post-rational”, final “assensio” to divine truth which is bred by rational cognition (“cognitio”). These doctrines make clear that Patrizi's Hermetic Neoplatonism substantially differed from the Christian Neoplatonism of Ficino and Pico. Patrizi liberated Hermetism from its subordinate role and placed it on the same level as both Christian Revelation and Neoplatonist metaphysics. Hermes is not just used to adorn or legitimize an otherwise Neoplatonist philosophy; instead, Hermetic tenets almost receive the status of articles of faith, that are rationally explained by means of the conceptual apparatus of Neoplatonist metaphysics.
→ Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) gave yet another twist to the concordist tradition. Like Patrizi, he combined a deep mistrust of Aristotelianism with a profound admiration for the pre-Platonic tradition; but unlike his predecessors, he was not in the least interested in the synthesis between old pagan teachings and Christian doctrine. The dignity of prisca sapientia does not consist in its having glimpsed the Trinity. The figure of Hermes was far less central to Bruno than has been claimed by Frances Yates in her influential study on Bruno (1964); rather, he put emphasis on the ancient philosophers of his native southern Italy, Pythagoras in particular. (Pseudo-)Pythagorean numerological speculation about the Unity that gives birth to the many is at the heart not only of Bruno's metaphysics but also of his atomism. He combined this with the typically Neoplatonic dialectics of transcendence and immanence, as found in Plotinus and Proclus. Very importantly, however, he criticized the Neoplatonists for locating the transcendent Monas in “another place” beyond this world. Since this world is infinite, there is no spatial “other” to this cosmos. Rather, the One should be sought for in another dimension of reality, in a higher metaphysical rather than physical realm. Similarly, Bruno grounded the infinity of the world in the Neoplatonist principle of plenitude: the infinite fecundity of the Cause should be reflected in an infinity of effects. But here again, he rejected the idea, found in Patrizi and other Neoplatonists, that infinite space is filled with incorporeal light or ether. Rather, he stressed the physical continuity of this infinite world. In his epistemology, on the other hand, Bruno adopted Neoplatonist speculations concerning the soul's ascent through the different grades of reality, ending in adumbrations of the divine intelligence.
The last great representatives of Renaissance Platonism were the so-called Cambridge Platonists, especially → Ralph Cudworth and → Henry More. These philosophers continued to uphold the typical Renaissance idea of philosophia perennis and prisca sapientia. In this context, they were not too worried about Isaac Casaubon's dating of the Hermetic writings in 1614, either contesting the conclusions he drew from his arguments (Cudworth) or happily ignoring them (More). These authors again defended a very eclectic mix of Neoplatonism, but tried to distance themselves from an esoteric reading of Plato such as practised by the English hermetic author → Thomas Vaughan. This did not prevent Henry More from defending beliefs in → witchcraft and ghosts. Inspired by Ficino and likeminded Renaissance predecessors, More, Cudworth and the other Cambridge Neoplatonists tried to restore the bond between Christianity on the one hand and philosophy and science on the other, so as to repair the damage done by the materialism and atheism of the modern mechanical philosophy represented by Thomas Hobbes and others. Of crucial importance was their defense of spiritual entities in nature, most notably the “Plastic Nature”, a late descendant of the Platonic anima mundi. Thanks to translations of their works, More and Cudworth were especially popular in 18th-century Germany, where Leibniz was one of their most famous admirers. They also influenced Coleridge and, through Thomas Taylor, the English Romantics [→ Romanticism] and American Transcendentalists.
Up to the 18th century, the term “Platonism” generally stood for what was in fact an eclectic mix of Neoplatonism, Hermetism, Christianity and other elements. With a few notable exceptions such as Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, most philosophers and theologians did not make a clearcut distinction between Plato and the Platonici. This picture started to change in the beginning of the 18th century, with German Lutheran theologians such as Gottfried Olearius and Johann Lorenz von Mosheim. Both authors describe Neoplatonism as an eclectic mix that has little in common with the philosophy of the original founder of the Academy. This did not mean that these theologians had much sympathy for Plato himself. Especially Mosheim repeated the well-known Protestant invective against the pernicious influence of all pagan learning, and Platonism in particular, on Christianity. In so doing they continued Luther's campaign for a return to the pure and unspoiled evangelical truth. In this sense, both Olearius and Mosheim reiterated the criticism voiced by the anonymous Le Platonisme dévoilé of 1700, which stated that all Fathers of the Church had succumbed to Platonism, thus corrupting the true faith. Although Olearius and Mosheim no longer accepted the identification of Platonism and Neoplatonism found in this book, they largely agreed with most of its conclusions. Their attack against Neoplatonism also had a confessional character. Many Protestant authors claimed that the introduction of papal bizarreries such as the Transubstantiation had largely resulted from the acceptance by theologians of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics. In many cases the onslaught by such Protestant authors on Neoplatonism included an overall rejection of the entire domain nowadays referred to as Western → esotericism: including → alchemy, Paracelsian medicine [→ Paracelsianism], and → magic. The distinction between Plato and Neoplatonism that had been operated by Olearius and Mosheim for theological reasons was adopted by Jacob Brucker in his highly influential Critical History of Philosophy (first edition 1742-1744), one of the first modern histories of philosophy. Just like his predecessors, Brucker considered the Neoplatonists as ravingly mad impostors. However, as a historian of philosophy, he not only faithfully described the Neoplatonists' main opinions but also tried to explain their origins, which according to him could be found in Oriental philosophy. Neoplatonist monism, the thesis that all being, including matter, emanates from God, stands in stark contrast to Platonic and Christian dualism. Brucker's epoch-making innovation was to reconstruct Plato's “system” on the basis of his dialogues alone, which he found a difficult task given Plato's notorious obscurity and his poetic style. Although Brucker's reconstruction fails to impress the modern scholar, the very fact that he developed a critical interpretation of Plato independent of Neoplatonist sources is significant in itself. The same project was taken up by Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann in his System der Platonischen Philosophie (1792-1795), which can be considered the first modern monograph on Plato. Just like Brucker, Tennemann claimed that Plato had elaborated a philosophical system that could be reconstructed on the basis of the Dialogues. He did not, however, agree with Brucker's particular reconstruction of that system; instead, Tennemann's alternative account is heavily influenced by Kant's crititical philosophy, which he strongly favoured. Furthermore, Tennemann subscribed to the ancient idea that Plato had had a secret, esoteric doctrine that had only been transmitted orally to his pupils. Fragments of this Ungeschriebene Lehre could supposedly be found in Aristotle and in the (fragmentary) writings of the members of the first Academy. Traditionally, the religious and mystical elements of Plato's esoteric doctrine had been seen as the very core of his teaching, of which the Dialogues were but a faint, popularizing echo. In the Introduction to his groundbreaking translation of Plato published in 1804, Friedrich Schleiermacher strongly repudiated this kind of esoteric reading, urging his readers to interpret Plato solely on the basis of his Dialogues. Schleiermacher thus confirmed the decline of the Neoplatonic reading of Plato that had begun almost a century earlier.
From the period of the early 19th century on, it becomes particularly difficult, if not impossible, to trace the continuation of Neoplatonism as a tradition in its own right. Important is the role that was played by Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), nicknamed “the English Platonist”, whose translations of Iamblichus, Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus brought the works of these philosophers to the attention of English readers. Taylor has been held in great esteem by authors associated with esoteric traditions since the 18th century, from the painter and poet → William Blake to the theosophist scholar → G.R.S. Mead and to 20th-century admirers of Neoplatonic philosophy such as – to give one example – the authors contributing to David Fideler's journal Alexandria: The Journal of the Western Cosmological Traditions. In the latter context, Neoplatonism tends to be closely associated with Orphic and Pythagorean traditions, and perceived first and foremost as a “sacred cosmology”; it is admired for its harmonious beauty and is seen as a source of inspiration for those who seek alternatives to the worldviews dominant in contemporary Western culture. Not much research has been done so far on the discreet presence since Taylor's times, and independent of academic philosophy, of such spiritually-inclined enthusiasts of Neoplatonism, or on the influence of their networks and publications.
That Neoplatonism is of central importance for understanding → Romanticism has been recognized by historians for a long time, but only more recently has the recognition gained ground that what was covered under that label actually included much that would nowadays be associated with hermetic philosophy, the occult sciences, and Western esotericism in general (Abrams 1971; Hanegraaff 1998). The broad cultural influence that Romanticism has exerted in many domains outside philosophy proper – art and literature, but esotericism as well – means that, ever since the early 19th century, one may encounter “neoplatonic” motives and associated modes of thinking in so many places that a synthetic overview becomes a practical impossibility. For example, while Neoplatonism is clearly of the greatest importance for understanding a theosophical worldview [→ Theosophical Society] as presented by → H.P. Blavatsky (see e.g. Ellwood 1983), it is mixed up there in a highly complex manner with so many other elements that the result is, rather, something new. The continuing attraction and relevance of “neoplatonism”, but also its increasing elusiveness, is clearly demonstrated by the publications of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies and the series of collective volumes it has published since 1976: here one finds discussions of Neoplatonism in relation to religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and → Gnosticism, but also applied to subjects as varied as biology, ecology, democracy, psychology, and aesthetics. Finally, “neoplatonic” frameworks are clearly present in various worldviews associated with the → New Age movement, from channeled books such as A Course in Miracles and the “Seth Messages” published by → Jane Roberts, to the transpersonal psychology of Ken Wilber (see e.g. Hanegraaff 1996/1998, 120-127, 246-252).