"Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato's own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients were correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato's teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of ""anti-naturalism.""
Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato-Plato's own Platonism, so to speak-was produced out of a matrix he calls ""Ur-Platonism."" According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five ""antis"" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato's Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five ""antis."" It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics.
In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as ""the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."""
By:
Lloyd P. Gerson
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 155mm,
Spine: 21mm
Weight: 907g
ISBN: 9781501710636
ISBN 10: 150171063X
Pages: 360
Publication Date: 15 December 2017
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Preface Acknowledgments Part 1. Plato and His Readers 1. Was Plato a Platonist? Plato and Platonism Ur-Platonism From Plato to Platonism 2. Socrates and Platonism The 'Socratic Problem' Gregory Vlastos Terry Penner Christopher Rowe 3. Reading the Dialogues Platonically Plato and Developmentalism Plato the Artist, Plato the Philosopher Plato's Self-Testimony 4. Aristotle on Plato and Platonism Aristotle and Ur-Platonism Aristotle's Testimony on the Mathematization of Forms Aristotle's Criticism of the Mathematization of Forms Part 2. The Continuing Creation of Platonism 5. The Old Academy Speusippus and First Principles Speusippean Knowledge Xenocrates 6. The Academic Skeptics What Is Academic Skepticism? Skepticism, Rationalism, and Platonism 7. Platonism in the 'Middle' Antiochus of Ascalon Plutarch of Chaeronea Alcinous 8. Numenius of Apamea On the Good Part 3. Plotinus: ""Exegete of the Platonic Revelation"" 9. Platonism as a System The First Principle of All Intellect Soul Matter 10. Plotinus as Interpreter of Plato (1) Matter in the Platonic System Substance and Becoming Categories in the Intelligible World The One and the Indefinite Dyad The Good Is Eros 11. Plotinus as Interpreter of Plato (2) Human and Person Assimilation to the Divine Moral Responsibility Conclusion Bibliography"
Lloyd P. Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of many books, including Aristotle and Other Platonists and From Plato to Platonism, also from Cornell, and Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato, and editor of The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity.
Reviews for From Plato to Platonism
"""Gerson's book is a highly valuable, well-written contribution to Plato(nism) research. It persuasively makes a case for understanding Plato's philosophy as a coherent system that has an intricate and meaningful relation to later Platonistic philosophical positions. From this point, Plato appears as a Platonist indeed."" -Claas Lattman,Classical Journal(August 2015) ""...the book is an important achievement.It is full of precious observations and suggestions. Even if someone is not fullyconvinced by the application of such an ahistorical set of criteria he will findthe book a highly rewarding reading.""-Peter Lautner, The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition (2016) ""In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson formulates in a new way the basic presuppositions behind Platonism and works them out with proper attention to the Old Academy, the New Academy, and the 'Middle' Platonists in a way that has not been done before, as well as bringing Aristotle into the fold. This work enhances Gerson's considerable reputation as an interpreter of the Greek philosophical tradition.""-John Dillon, Emeritus Fellow, Trinity College, author of The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy ""This is a fascinating book-erudite yet accessible-that rejects the nineteenth-century split, widely accepted in the modern world, between a supposed originary 'Plato' and the subsequent history of Platonism. Lloyd P. Gerson argues persuasively, on the basis of the overall thought embedded in Plato's dialogues and on indirect evidence from Aristotle onward, not only that Plato was a 'Platonist' but that Plotinus's interpretation of Plato's thought deserves to be taken more seriously as exegesis (as it was so understood by Proclus and others in late Antiquity).""-Kevin Corrigan, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities and Director, the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University"
