Neoplatonism
231
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145
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126
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Search complete. 231 mentions across 145 episodes found for "Neoplatonism".
Nov 6, 2026
Jimmy AkinHOST
So it is not the original use of the term, but it does sound a good bit like the modern idea of a demon.
Jimmy AkinHOST
This conception is found in the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry.
Jimmy AkinHOST
He lived in the 3rd century AD, and he was a vegetarian.
Jimmy AkinHOST
He didn't like the idea of killing and eating animals.
speaker_2NARRATOR
It is only by an effort that the modern thinker can breathe the atmosphere of the ancient philosopher, or understand how, under such unequal conditions, he seems, in many instances, by a sort of inspiration, to have anticipated the truth.
speaker_2NARRATOR
The influence which the Timaeus has exercised upon posterity is due partly to a misunderstanding.
speaker_2NARRATOR
In the supposed depths of this dialogue, the Neoplatonists found hidden meanings in connections with the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and out of them they elicited doctrines quite at variance with the spirit of Plato.
speaker_2NARRATOR
believing that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, or had received his wisdom from Moses, they seemed to find in his writings the Christian trinity, the Word, the Church, the creation of the world in a Jewish sense, as they really found the personality of God or of mind, and the immortality of the soul.
speaker_2NARRATOR
All religions and philosophies met and mingled in the schools of Alexandria, and the Neoplatonists had a method of interpretation which could elicit any meaning out of any words.
speaker_2NARRATOR
They were really incapable of distinguishing between the opinions of one philosopher and another, between Aristotle and Plato, or between the serious thoughts of Plato and his passing fancies.
speaker_2NARRATOR
They were absorbed in his theology and were under the dominion of his name, while that which was truly great and truly characteristic in him, his effort to realize and connect abstractions, was not understood by them at all.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Yet the genius of Plato and Greek philosophy reacted upon the East, and the Greek element of thought and language overlaid, and partly reduced to order the chaos of Orientalism.
Jordan GrantGUEST
Read the various early church fathers' opinions on things.
Jordan GrantGUEST
They're incorporating so much Neoplatonism and Greek stuff.
Jordan GrantGUEST
And then the church basically co-ops it and goes, well, we were doing the cult of the emperor.
Jordan GrantGUEST
Now we're just going to do this new cult that we're going to call it Christianity.
David Patrick HarryHOST
But he did fund a lot of that.
David Patrick HarryHOST
I mean, John Scotus E. Regina, the Neoplatonist, he was the court philosopher during the Carolingian dynasty.
David Patrick HarryHOST
So they definitely put money towards education, but that's kind of a cheap shot on my end, hitting Charlemagne with his... his illiteracy and inability to read.
David Patrick HarryHOST
But anyways, he kind of deserved it.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
Besides, they made contributions of their own to speculation, which Christian thinkers found their advantage in borrowing.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
In view of all that has been said about the theurgy of the school, it is necessary to point out that Neoplatonism remained essentially a philosophy.
5 MINS LATER
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
We owe, for example, to William of Morbecca, the Dominican Archbishop of Corinth in the latter part of the 13th century, the preservation in a Latin version of three treatises of Proclus containing the exposition of his theodicy.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
And these, in the half-unintelligible translation, may still be read with interest, while Leibniz's corresponding treatise, through its official acceptance of elements common to the Protestant and Catholic creeds of the 17th century, is already obsolete.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
The radical question between the Neoplatonists and the Christians was whether philosophy should be formally above popular religion or popular religion above philosophy.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
A system of thought summing up for its time the tradition of the highest civilization attained could not submit to become the handmaid of a faith it regarded as barbarian.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
And this was to be the position assigned to philosophy during the lowered civilization into which Europe was now sinking.
Nicholas James BridgewaterNARRATOR
Conclusion A short writing entitled Derision of the Gentile Philosophers, by a certain Hermeus, otherwise unknown, throws interesting light on the attitude of the victorious faith about the 5th or 6th century.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
In the same proportion, church discipline was relaxed, and the old evils from which the Decian persecution had done much to purify the church returned in full tide.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
Reference may be made here to a new form of opposition which had sprung up on the philosophical and literary side, namely Neoplatonism.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
This philosophical form of faith, while bitterly hostile to Christianity, is the strongest testimony to its influence.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
It no longer poured unqualified ridicule on Christianity, as Celsus had done, but dealt with it in an eclectic spirit, condemning only its exclusive claims.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
and indeed for a time himself professed Christianity.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
A trace of Christian influence may be seen in the Neoplatonic doctrine of the Trinity, which, however, has little in common with the Christian, but is wrought up from Platonic elements.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
The problem which Neoplatonism set itself to solve was the union of the finite and infinite, and its means of bridging the opposition of the two, was ecstasy.
Eric HansenNARRATOR
The most illustrious teachers of the school after Ammonius were Plotinus, died about A.D. 270, and Porphyry, died A.D. 304.
Dan DorianiGUEST
I wasn't a deep theologian, but that was my feeling.
Dan DorianiGUEST
So why do Christians act as if the body's unimportant? Well, maybe it's Platonism or Neoplatonism.
Dan DorianiGUEST
The body is the prison house of the soul, Plato.
Dan DorianiGUEST
The body is the house of the soul, of the Neoplatonists.
Adam ElenbaasGUEST
And here's what I've understood through study of the ancient mystical schools that practice astrology.
Adam ElenbaasGUEST
For example, yogis or Platonists or Neoplatonists, Orphics, Hermeticists, etc.
Adam ElenbaasGUEST
Right.
Adam ElenbaasGUEST
Have you ever seen one of those, remember the iTunes visualizers? You played music and they would, all sorts of patterns like mandalas, sort of psychedelic looking would appear.
speaker_4NARRATOR
2.
speaker_4NARRATOR
Neoplatonism.
speaker_4NARRATOR
Aristotle, not Plato, is the dominant figure in Muslim philosophy, and few Mohammedans are familiar with the name of Plotinus, who was more commonly called the greek master al sheik al yonani but since the arabs gained their first knowledge of aristotle from his neoplatonist commentators the system with which they became imbued was that of porphyry and proclus thus the so-called theology of aristotle of which an arabic version appeared in the ninth century is actually a manual of Neoplatonism.
speaker_4NARRATOR
Another work of this school deserves particular notice.
speaker_4NARRATOR
I mean the writings falsely attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of St. Paul.
speaker_4NARRATOR
They were translated from Greek into Syriac almost immediately on their appearance, and their doctrine was vigorously propagated by commentaries in the same tongue.
speaker_4NARRATOR
About 850 A.D., Dionysius was known from the Tigris to the Atlantic.
speaker_4NARRATOR
Besides literary tradition, there were other channels by which the doctrines of emanation, illumination, gnosis, and ecstasy were transmitted, but enough has been said to convince the reader that greek mystical ideas were in the air and easily accessible to the moslem inhabitants of western asia and egypt where the sufi theosophy first took shape one of those who bore the chief part in its development du lenun the egyptian is described as a philosopher and alchemist in other words a student of hellenistic science When it is added that much of his speculation agrees with what we find, for example, in the writings of Dionysius, we are drawn irresistibly to the conclusion, which, as I have pointed out, is highly probable on general grounds, that Neoplatonism poured into Islam a large tincture of the same mystical element in which Christianity was already steeped.
Carl LeibowitzHOST
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Neal SendlakGUEST
Christian? I would call myself, I would probably call myself something like an, uh, an, Maybe a Neoplatonist, but the Gnostics were pretty much Neoplatonist already or Middle Platonist.
Neal SendlakGUEST
So I agree with the Gnostic philosophical leanings of the ideas of attaining gnosis and using logic and reason and attaining your own salvation through self-discovery.
Neal SendlakGUEST
I totally agree with those guys.
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