What is Neoplatonism? Purpose and Structure of a Philosophical Movement to New Directions in Neoplatonism

In this paper, I wish to show how elements of Neoplatonism such as the hierarchical structure of “being” available through the dynamics of cosmological descent and soteriological ascent might revitalize contemporary philosophy in the face of its present post-deconstruction impasse.

One of the most intriguing of the new directions in Neoplatonic scholarship, and one that still needs a huge deal of research, concerns Christian Neoplatonism, and in particular Patristic Neoplatonism. I will investigate how, through which channels, and with what adaptations the trans-school philosophical doctrine of oikeiōsis was received and transformed by the two main Patristic Neoplatonists: Origen of Alexandria (end second - first half of the third century CE) and Gregory of Nyssa (second half of the fourth century).

Plotinus locates the difficulty over the derivation of all things from the One as the central problem in metaphysics:

"But [soul] desires [a solution] to the problem which is so often discussed, even by the ancient sages, as to how from the One, being such as we say the One is, anything can be constituted, either a multiplicity, a dyad, or a number; [why] it did not stay by itself, but so great a multiplicity flowed out as is seen in the real beings and which we think correct to refer back to the One." (V.1.6.38).

Infamously, Walter Bröcker entitled one of his lectures on the philosophy of Plotinus Platonismus ohne Sokrates and therein burdened the Neoplatonic tradition with an undeserving characteristic. The actual fact of the matter, however, was that many Neoplatonists, including those who were conspicuously silent with regards to the life and philosophy of the son of Sophroniscus, e.g. Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus, still inherited the methods and goals of Socratic philosophy, including the commitment to dialogic inquiry through question and answer and the search for self-knowledge.