(excerpted by Clifford Stetner)
SCHLEIRMACHER AND ESOTERIC PLATONISM
5
The modern ‘Esoteric’ interpretation of Plato ascribes to him a more or less secret ‘esoteric’ doctrine, consisting of a metaphysical system not to be found, at least not explicitly, in his written works, but propounded orally to his disciples in the Academy and constituting the real though hidden content of his philosophy. According to the modern Esoterists, this interpretation of Plato was the ruling one, not only in classical antiquity but for a long time afterwards, until, at the beginning of the nineteenth century... Schleirermacher succeeded ...in persuading them to confine their interpretation of Plato to the Dialogues alone...from which only the Esoterists of modern times have liberated it.
...the modern ‘esoteric interpretation of Plato cannot be found in any ancient platonist, least of all in the Neoplatonists, to whom...not in any oral tradition but in the Master’s written works, if read according to the rules of neoplatonic exegesis. Nor is the role the modern Esoterists assign to Schleiermacher more in accordance with he facts.
6
Schleiermacher was the man who discovered ‘the real Plato’ and thereby put an end to the Neoplatonic Plato.
Neuplatoniker...the only ones who really attempted to systematize Plato
[Schleir.] 1790’s
...Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato for...at least half a century,...had been rejected by most leading scholars
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the decline and fall of the neoplatonism interpretation Plato was an accomplished fact
7
MEDIEVAL PLATONISM AND NEOPLATONISM
...commonplace that medieval Platonism, whether in the East or in the West, was actually neoplatonism...depends on what we mean by neoplatonism...as meaning that form of Platonism which starts with Plotinus...
... 'neoplatonism’ we refer to the transformation of platonism into a metaphysical or theological system, occurring in the last century B.C. and the two first centuries A.D.--whether ultimately originated by Plato himself or only by his immediate successors in the Old Academy...
...’middle Platonism’ and ‘neoplatonism...now considered parts of one and the same great philosophic and religious movement, culminating in but not limited to Plotinus and his disciples.
comprehensive metaphysical and theological system...
The New Academy seemed to have disappeared without leaving a trace
Ther is, however, an interesting and important exception. In AD 386,...just been converted to Christianity...Aurelius Augustinus ... Contra Academicos...Cicero’s Academica,...first quarter and a few fragments...extant.
8
...future Father of the Church vehemently attacked the New Academy and its scepticism
After his master Socrates’ death, Plato learned many things from the Pythagoreans whose master Pythagoras had been listening to the teaching of Pherecydes of Syros...Combining Socrates with Pythagoras, Plato put together a complete system of philosophy, whose main characteristic was the dualism between the intelligible world, where truth itself resides, and this sensible world, which engenders only opinion...
...when Zeno, the founder of the Stoa, who had studied in the Academy, began to propound a philosophy of his own, his former fellow Academic, Arcesilas, who now was the leader of the Academy ‘acted in a most prudent and useful way, since the evil was spreading widely, in concealing completely the doctrine of the Academy and burying it as gold to be found at some time by posterity...conflict between Stoics and Academics continued unto the time of Cicero...'
Plato’s doctrine, which in philosophy is the purest and most clear, the clouds of error having been removed, shone forth especially in Plotinus.
9
Augustine tries hard to persuade himself, without quite succeeding, that the New Academy had a secret doctrine, consisting of Plato’s true philosophy, conceived as a metaphysical system.
Augustine deliberately shuts his eyes to the sceptical aspects of Cicero’s Platonism and Cicero’s Plato. Not for a moment does he attribute any scepticism to Plato himself
10
To Augustine, Plato is the systematic metaphysician of the Neoplatonists,...Plotinus, himself ‘another Plato’, as more than a thousand years later an admirer of Plato, Plotinus, and St. Augustine, Marsilio Ficino, was to call Plotinus.
...to Augustine, Platonism is identical with neoplatonism, and the ‘libri Platonicorum’...mentions apropos of his conversion, are Neoplatonic writings
Plato, he read it through Neoplatonic and Christian spectacles...considered ‘a preparation for the Gospels’...
In all these respects--the limited or missing direct contact with Plato, the dependence on the Middleplatonic and Neoplatonic tradition, the deliberate Christian reinterpretation--Augustine inaugurates and decisively determines many centuries of medieval Platonism.
Calcidius’ commentary on Timaeus 17A-53C...Somnium Scipionis...two main pillars of medieval Platonism...discovery...Carolingian times...’Dionysius’ (ca. AD 500)
1280...Latin translation of Proclus’ commentary on the first hypothesis of he Parmenides brought medieval philosophers into direct contact with platon himself...many other translations of Greek texts, directly or from the Arabic...