Concluding Reflections

Abstract

This concluding chapter examines the term “Neoplatonism,” which has had a mainly pejorative connotation since its invention in the middle of the eighteenth century. If one insists on giving the term some more or less neutral descriptive content, the chapter suggests that it be used to refer to the versions of Platonism born out of criticisms of Plotinus by his successors. These criticisms for the most part focus on the problem of an absolutely simple first principle of all that is causally efficacious. Plato's answer is to appeal to the metaphor of “flowing” to indicate what the Good does eternally. Plotinus's logical argument is to the effect that if the first principle is unique as well as absolutely simple, then the outcome of the flow must be other than absolutely simple; it must be at least minimally complex. And then continued flow means increasing complexity until maximal complexity is achieved. Among the so-called Neoplatonists, an increasingly more refined account of this flow was sought. This account experienced two waves of attack; the first was from Christian philosophers who wanted to identify the first principle of all with the God of scripture. The second wave is related to the first. Roughly in the middle of the seventeenth century, Platonism was so thoroughly mixed up with Christianity that it could not meet the Naturalism of the new physics on philosophical grounds.