Plato’s works were not accessible to the medievil writers previous to the 13th century. They possessed only part of the Timaeus in the translation and commentary by Chalcidius. Nor were they acquainted with the writings of the Neo-Platonists. They had the logical texts by Porphyrius; little besides. St. Augustine, the greatest authority in these ages, was well acquainted with the teachings of the “Academy” of his time and became a source for Neo-Platonic influences. Furthermore, there were the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius of which first Alcuin had made a rather insufficient, later Scotus Eriugena a readible translation. Scotus himself was thoroughly Neo-Platonic in his philosophy, however “Christianized” his Platonism may have been. The medieval “Platoniststs” held, among some propositions of minor importance, that universals were existent substances (Realism, q.v.), that body and soul were two independent substances, united more or less accidentally; they assumed accordingly a “plurality of forms” in one substance. Some believed that Plato had been given a peculiar insight even in the mysteries of Christian faith. Thus they went so far as to identify the anima mundi, which they believed to be a Platonic notion, with the Holy Ghost (e.g. Abelard). Even after the revival of Aristotelian philosophy, against which the “Platonists” reacted violently, Platonism, or as they afterwards preferred to call it, Augustinianism persisted in many schools, especially in those depending on the Franciscans. — R.A.<\/p>\n
Platonism, medieval Plato’s works were not accessible to the medievil writers previous to the 13th century. They possessed only part of the Timaeus in the translation and commentary by Chalcidius. Nor were they acquainted with the writings of the Neo-Platonists. They had the logical texts by Porphyrius; little besides. St. Augustine, the greatest authority in … Continue reading “Platonism, medieval”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encyclopedic-dictionary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/dictionaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}