From Plato to Platonism

by Lloyd P. Gerson

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.

Genres: Philosophy

360 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2013

About the author

Lloyd Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

In reference to the debate about whether Platonists improperly imported God and afterlife elements into Plato's theory, the author argues that Plato's own philosophy was in substantial agreement with what the Platonists put forward. The author reviews the various arguments suggesting otherwise - that the dialogues are literary only, without philosophical content; that one cannot extrapolate philosophical meaning from one dialogue to another; that Plato's views changed over time; that we don't know what Plato believed versus what Socrates believed; that the various otherworldly references in the dialogues are to be regarded as mythical and not real; and that the Academy, Plotinus and others took liberties with Plato's thought. Through his own textual analysis Gerson believes that the more tenable position is "that the Socrates of the dialogues is from first to last the creation of Plato, representing Plato's philosophical position." In an analysis that extends beyond the dialogues themselves, Gerson relies initially on Aristotle's perspective whose work Gerson sees as broadly falling within the Platonic paradigm.

Gerson goes on to say that Plato's philosophy only makes sense in light of its metaphysical foundations that are, in Gerson's construction, antimaterialism, antimechanism, antinominalism, antirelativism and antiskepticism. In non-philosophical language this means Plato believed in a non-material, immortal world that explained causation in our material world; that knowledge and truth is of another world; and that eternal oneness and the many in our world exist together. Collectively, these provide an overall coherence to Plato's work. Regarding those who might cast aside Plato's problematic cosmology to focus on, say, the relevance of his moral philosophy to contemporary life, Gerson writes that "I have found not the slightest bit of evidence either in the dialogues or in the indirect tradition that Plato ever contemplated such a disassociation. Indeed, there is no evidence that Plato ever contemplated something like a firewall separating his metaphysics from any of his other philosophical concerns."

Gerson's book is a counterweight to those who have tended to separate Plato's various thoughts and theories from their other-world cosmology. On this point, and while acknowledging disagreements, "some subtle and some not so subtle," Gerson concludes that "Platonism is first and foremost a metaphysical doctrine." "The Platonic revelation is essentially correct," he writes, and he goes on to state that "Although this is a view shared by scholars of Platonism and by Platonists, too, well into the nineteenth century, it is a view that is today, especially in the English-speaking world, mostly either ridiculed or ignored." Gerson traces this shift in thinking to Friedrich Schleirmacher's (1768-1834) introductions to his translations of Plato. In a footnote, Gerson writes that "The modern separation of Plato from Platonism begins with Friedrich Schleiermacher, who argued that the literary form of the dialogues produced a kind of firewall between Plato and the theoretical constructions of later Platonists."

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this at my writing desk for a couple of years now, often revisiting various passages. I don't know how I missed it, but then again I fear I lost control of accurately cataloging things several years ago. The good news is that I think this is at least in part because my new form of cataloging is in the composition of various forthcoming books and articles, wherein works such as Gerson's has been explicated, explored, and catalogued in their own way. I very much enjoy Gerson's work, and think that a good accompaniment for this text would be that book out there on Pseudo-Dionysius entitled Theophany, as well as a peek at medieval and early modern literary interpretations of Plato. Someone should write a book wherein a character is developing a massive work of historical fiction on Plato and the Platonists. By the end the protagonist has decided to become a Plotinian? See also Thomas Taylor.

[Book Grocer · Rating 5 out of 5]

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It is oddly common in the philosophical zeitgeist for theologies to be taken out of context, and somewhere down the track, fail to resemble the original teachers of their original thinker. This is often the case with Plato, with the question “was Plato actually a Platonist?” Gerson Lloyd breaks down this train of thought in a very interesting and logical way, and provides great insights into what really makes Platonism, naturalism and metaphysics much more digestible.

Taylor - The Book Grocer

[Senjin Hajrulahovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading a couple of Platos own books I decided to read a book about Platos philosophy. This was a great book, and I got a lot of value out of it. But since I'm a philosophy novice, quite a lot of the book's content flew over my head. Will definitely re-read it after some time, when I have more philosophy books under my belt.

[Ooniemme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent articulation of the Platonic school, it's history, and it's continuity