History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

HoP 081 - Jan Opsomer on Middle Platonism

24 snips
May 20, 2012
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INSIGHT

Return To Ancient Wisdom

  • Thinkers at the end of the Hellenistic period revived ancient-wisdom traditions like Pythagorean, Egyptian, and Phoenician sources.
  • Middle Platonists used these authorities to build theories of principles.
INSIGHT

Systemizing Plato Like Aristotle

  • Middle Platonists aimed to systematize Plato's thought to rival Aristotelian and Stoic systems.
  • This drive produced diverse, strongly dogmatic systems.
INSIGHT

Monad, Dyad, And Numbers

  • They posit a perfect monad and an indeterminate dyad; the monad alone is sterile.
  • By cutting the dyad the monad produces numbers as first entities.
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