Platonism summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Platonism.

Raphael: School of Athens — Raphael: *School of Athens*
Plato and Aristotle surrounded by philosophers, detail from *School of Athens*, fresco by Raphael, 1508–11; in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.

Platonism , Any philosophy that embodies some major idea of Plato’s, especially in taking abstract forms as metaphysically more basic than material things. Though there was in antiquity a tradition about Plato’s “unwritten doctrines,” Platonism then and later was based primarily on a reading of the dialogues. It is characterized by an intense concern for the quality of human life—always ethical, often religious, and sometimes political, based on a belief in unchanging and eternal realities (the Platonic forms), independent of the changing things of the physical world perceived by the senses. This belief in absolute values rooted in an eternal world distinguishes Platonism from the philosophies of Plato’s immediate predecessors and successors and from later philosophies inspired by them. See also Neoplatonism.

Marsilio Ficino Summary

Marsilio Ficino was an Italian philosopher, theologian, and linguist whose translations and commentaries on the writings of Plato and other classical Greek authors generated the Florentine Platonist Renaissance that influenced European thought for two centuries. Ficino was the son of a physician

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, woodcut, 1537.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius Summary

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius Roman scholar, Christian philosopher, and statesman, author of the celebrated De consolatione philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), a largely Neoplatonic work in which the pursuit of wisdom and the love of God are described as the true sources of human

Plato Summary

Plato ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. He is one of the major figures of Classical antiquity. Building on the demonstration by

Saint Gregory of Nyssa Summary

Saint Gregory of Nyssa ; feast day March 9) was a philosophical theologian and mystic, leader of the orthodox party in the 4th-century Christian controversies over the doctrine of the Trinity. Primarily a scholar, he wrote many theological, mystical, and monastic works in which he balanced Platonic