Middle Platonism

The claim

There is a first God beyond being, a second divine intellect containing the Forms as his thoughts, and a world soul that orders matter. The goal of life is likeness to God so far as is possible.

What it held

After Antiochus ended the Academy's sceptical phase, Platonism had to become a set of teachings again, and Middle Platonism is the two and a half centuries of assembling them. It is less original than what came before or after, and more consequential than either for what happened next.

The decisive move is putting the Forms in the mind of God. Plato never says this; it solves a problem he left open, namely what the Forms are and where. Once made, it allows Platonism to be theology, and both Christianity and later Neoplatonism build on that footing.

The other consequence is the hierarchy. Between an utterly transcendent first principle and a material world there must be intermediaries, and Middle Platonism populates the gap — a second god, a world soul, daemons. Plutarch, better known as a biographer, was a Platonist priest at Delphi who wrote extensively on these questions.

How it argued

Commentary and handbook. Alcinous' Didaskalikos is a textbook summary of what a Platonist holds, which tells you how the school understood itself.

What it was arguing against

Stoic materialism, and Epicurean denial of providence. Also, increasingly, Gnostic accounts that made the material world the work of a malevolent maker.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether the world was created in time or is eternal, which divided readers of the Timaeus. How far Aristotle can be absorbed. Whether matter is evil or merely passive.

Common misconceptions

That it is a decline from Plato into religion. It is a genuine philosophical response to real gaps, and the alternative — leaving the Forms unlocated — was not obviously better.

How it began

Antiochus of Ascalon broke with the sceptical Academy around 80 BCE, arguing that Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics had substantially agreed and that scepticism was an aberration.

What became of it

Superseded by Plotinus, who solved the hierarchy problem more elegantly and made everything before him look preliminary.

Lasting influence

The Christian doctrine of God draws on it directly through Clement and Origen. Philo had already done the same for Judaism. Its vocabulary is why Christian theology sounds Platonic.

Why it still matters

It is the clearest case study in how a philosophy becomes a theology, which is a process rather than an event and is visible here in stages.

Put another way

A house rebuilt from the same stones with a new upper storey, and the top floor now occupied.

Where to start

The Didaskalikos, which is short and was written to be a summary.

The surprising bit

Plutarch, whose Parallel Lives shaped Shakespeare's Romans, was a serving priest of Apollo at Delphi for the last thirty years of his life and wrote philosophy the whole time.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Old Academy

Opposed by

Early Stoicism

Influenced

Neoplatonism, Patristics, Philonism

The verdict

The bridge nobody set out to build, between Plato's Academy and the Christian doctrine of God.

Sources

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy