Monist and Dualist Tendencies in Platonism before Plotinus

Abstract

An article by John Dillon (Trinity College, Dublin) argues that the Platonism that Plotinus inherits setting aside Ammonius Saccas, of whom we know all too little is by the later second century distinctly dualist in tendency, and is able, especially in the case of Plutarch, to quote Plato to its purpose. Plato himself, though, as the author maintains, is, despite appearances to the contrary, what one might term a 'modified monist'. That is to say, he fully recognizes the degree of imperfection and evil in the world, and holds it to be ineradicable, but he does not in the last resort believe in a positive countervailing force to the Good or the One. What we have is simply a negative force, whether Indefinite Dyad, disorderly World-Soul, or Receptacle, which is an inevitable condition of their being a world at all, but which, as a side-effect of introducing diversity, generates various sorts of imperfection. It is this scenario that justifies his follower Hermodorus in declaring that Plato recognizes only a single first principle, and it to this sort of monism if anything, in a more pronounced form that Plotinus returns. A Russian translation of this article is published in ΣΧΟΛΗ ΙΙ. 1 (2008) 11-20.