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Neoplatonism is a modern term〔(The term first appeared in 1827 )〕 used to designate a tradition of philosophy that arose in the 3rd century AD and persisted until shortly after the closing of the Platonic Academy in Athens in AD 529 by Justinian I. Neoplatonists were heavily influenced by Plato, but also by the Platonic tradition that thrived during the six centuries which separated the first of the Neoplatonists from Plato. In defining the term "Neoplatonism", it is difficult to reduce the school of thought to a concise set of ideas that all Neoplatonic philosophers shared in common. The work of Neoplatonic philosophy involved describing the derivation of the whole of reality from a single principle, "the One". While the Neoplatonists generally shared some basic assumptions about the nature of reality, there were also considerable differences in their views and approaches. The variations of these views between thinkers within the school of thought thus make it difficult to summarize its philosophical content briefly. Thus, the most concise definition of Neoplatonism casts it as an historical term.〔http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/. "The term ‘Neoplatonism’ is an invention of early 19th century European scholarship and indicates the penchant of historians for dividing ‘periods’ in history. In this case, the term was intended to indicate that Plotinus initiated a new phase in the development of the Platonic tradition."〕 It refers to the tradition itself: to the work of Plotinus, who is traditionally identified as the founder of Neoplatonism,〔http://www.iep.utm.edu/neoplato/〕 and to the thinkers after him, who developed, responded to and criticized his ideas.〔See also Remes, Paulina, 2008, “Neoplatonism”. Acumen publishing, page 1. “What is Neoplatonism? ‘Neoplatonism’ refers to a school of thought that began in approximately 245 CE, when a man called Plotinus moved… () the capital of the Roman Empire… () began teaching his interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. Out of the association of people in Rome… emerged a school of philosophy that displays enough originality to be considered a new phase of Platonism”.〕 There are multiple ways to categorize the differences between the Neoplatonists according to their differing views, but one way 〔http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0201.xml〕 counts three distinct phases in Neoplatonism after Plotinus: the work of his student Porphyry, that of Iamblichus and his school in Calchis, and the period in the fifth and sixth centuries, when the Academies in Alexandria and Athens flourished. Thinkers of this final period include Syrianus, Olympiodorus the Younger, Proclus and Damascius. Later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus embraced a certain kind of spiritual exercise, called theurgy, as a means of developing the soul through a process called henosis. Neoplatonism has been very influential throughout history. In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonic ideas were integrated into the philosophical and theological works of many of the most important mediaeval Islamic, Christian, and Jewish thinkers. In Muslim lands, Neoplatonic texts were available in Persian and Arabic translations, and notable thinkers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna and Moses Maimonides incorporated Neoplatonic elements into their own thinking. Although the revitalisation of Neoplatonism amongst Italian Renaissance thinkers such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola is perhaps more famous, Latin translations of Late Ancient Neoplatonic texts were first available in the Christian West much earlier, in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, had direct access to works by Proclus, Simplicius and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and he knew about other Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus and Porphyry, through secondhand sources.〔(Wayne Hankey, "Aquinas, Plato, and Neo-Platonism" )〕 The influence of Neoplatonism also extends into forms of culture beyond philosophy, and well into the modern era, for instance, in Renaissance Aesthetics, and in the work of modernist poets such as W. B. Yeats〔Peter J. Hansen, (''Yeats, Neoplatonism and the Aesthetic of Exile'' ), Arizona State University, 1994〕 and T.S. Eliot, among many more. == Origins of the term Neoplatonism == The term "Neoplatonism" has a double function as a historical category. On the one hand, it differentiates the philosophical doctrines of Plotinus and his successors from those of the historical Plato. On the other, the term makes an assumption about the novelty of Plotinus' interpretation of Plato. In the nearly six centuries from Plato's time to Plotinus', there had been an uninterrupted tradition of interpreting Plato which had begun with Aristotle and with the immediate successors of Plato's academy and continued on through a period of Platonism which is now referred to as Middle Platonism. The term "Neoplatonism" implies that Plotinus' interpretation of Plato was so distinct from those of his predecessors that it should be thought to introduce a new period in the history of Platonism. Some contemporary scholars, however, have taken issue with this assumption and have doubted that Neoplatonism constitutes a useful label. They claim that merely marginal differences separate Plotinus' teachings from those of his immediate predecessors. Whether Neoplatonism is a meaningful or useful historical category is itself a central question concerning the history of the interpretation of Plato. For much of the history of Platonism, it was commonly accepted that the doctrines of the Neoplatonists were essentially the same as those of Plato. The Renaissance Platonist Marsilio Ficino, for instance, thought that that the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato was an authentic and accurate representation of Plato's philosophy. Although it is unclear precisely when scholars began to disassociate the philosophy of the historical Plato from the philosophy of his Neoplatonic interpreters, they had clearly begun to do so at least as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century. Contemporary scholars often identify the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher as an early thinker who took Plato's philosophy to be separate from that of his Neoplatonic interpreters. However, others have argued that the differentiation of Plato from Neoplatonism was the result of a protracted historical development that preceded Schleiermacher's scholarly work on Plato.〔Tigerstedt, E.N. The Decline and Fall of the Neoplatonic Interpretation of Plato. 1974〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Neoplatonism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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