It seems that the later Platonists, while undoubtedly opening up new avenues to explore, were sometimes a bit more dogmatic about these things that Plato himself (likely) was.
Yes, I think that's right. From what I can tell, they were moving in the direction of a kind of Platonic Sola Scriptura, and each later thinker had his own very specific interpretation of Plato. Plato himself was far more flexible. To give one example, he discusses reincarnation in many of his dialogs, and so it is definitely a part of his philosophy, but he gives different accounts of it in Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic and Timaeus (at least).
Someone recently pointed out that after Apuleius, the later thinkers almost completely lost the Platonic sense of humor.
I haven't read more than fragments of the Philokalia, but from what I get from those Orthodox thinkers I have read, they use "nous" in almost the exact same sense that the Platonists do. There was a very good series of talks on Ancient Faith Radio here: https://www.ancientfaith.com/specials/orthodox_anthropology/the_transformation_of_the_inner_man which discuss Orthodox practices for the care of the soul, with the anatomy of the soul lifted straight from the Republic.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-08-31 12:29 pm (UTC)Yes, I think that's right. From what I can tell, they were moving in the direction of a kind of Platonic Sola Scriptura, and each later thinker had his own very specific interpretation of Plato. Plato himself was far more flexible. To give one example, he discusses reincarnation in many of his dialogs, and so it is definitely a part of his philosophy, but he gives different accounts of it in Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic and Timaeus (at least).
Someone recently pointed out that after Apuleius, the later thinkers almost completely lost the Platonic sense of humor.
I haven't read more than fragments of the Philokalia, but from what I get from those Orthodox thinkers I have read, they use "nous" in almost the exact same sense that the Platonists do. There was a very good series of talks on Ancient Faith Radio here: https://www.ancientfaith.com/specials/orthodox_anthropology/the_transformation_of_the_inner_man which discuss Orthodox practices for the care of the soul, with the anatomy of the soul lifted straight from the Republic.