Neoplatonism

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What is neoplatonism and how does it relate to Thomism or Aristotle’s beliefs? Is there no Ain in catholic mysticism like there is jewish mysticism?
 
Do you realize that question ought to be answered with a pretty long post? As in a book.

First you need to learn something about Platonism, and then Aristotle, and then you need to learn about St. Augustus and St. Thomas. You should do that too. It’s an important endeavor to understand those subjects.

Mysticism is another very complex topic. There are lots of volumes written about that question and no easy answers.

As far as the questions about the Neoplatonists and St. Thomas, I recommend you purchase Professor Kreeft’s lectures on the topics from the Modern Scholar series. They are each about eight hours long, but that’s really the short answer…

As an aside, from what I have seen of the popularized Jewish mysticism, I would recommend you avoid that. It’s more like sorcery. I suspect the real Jewish mystics are different, but I am unsure which is which, and I don’t think it is too obvious for the casual reader.
 
Rete said:
Do you realize that question ought to be answered with a pretty long post? As in a book.

First you need to learn something about Platonism, and then Aristotle, and then you need to learn about St. Augustus and St. Thomas. You should do that too. It’s an important endeavor to understand those subjects.

Mysticism is another very complex topic. There are lots of volumes written about that question and no easy answers.

As far as the questions about the Neoplatonists and St. Thomas, I recommend you purchase Professor Kreeft’s lectures on the topics from the Modern Scholar series. They are each about eight hours long, but that’s really the short answer…

As an aside, from what I have seen of the popularized Jewish mysticism, I would recommend you avoid that. It’s more like sorcery. I suspect the real Jewish mystics are different, but I am unsure which is which, and I don’t think it is too obvious for the casual reader.
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I second the recommendation in bold above. I’ve taken Dr. Kreeft’s series on Aquinas and it is fantastic. I highly recommend taking it while reading Kreeft’s A Summa of the Summa. Studying Thomas is worth the investment in time and treasure. God bless.
 
Rete said:
As an aside, from what I have seen of the popularized Jewish mysticism, I would recommend you avoid that. It’s more like sorcery. I suspect the real Jewish mystics are different, but I am unsure which is which, and I don’t think it is too obvious for the casual reader.
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Hum. I do lectio divina and was showed how to do it by my priest. It reminds me of some forms of divination I’ve seen. As for Kaballah being “sorcery” It was supposedly taught to Adam. Then you’ve got what appeared in the middle ages. I’ve talked to Rabbi’s about kabbala. Now Moses I’d call an Eqyptian Magician since his father in law was chief of the Egyptian Magicians. “Schooled in all the wisdom of Egypt” the bible says.
 
With a few brief brush strokes of something very complex…

**Pure Platonism **of the classical period in the actual Academy posited the Theory of Forms, with the highest Form known as “The Form of the Good” the cause of all other Ideas, which resided in a “third realm distinct both from the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness”. Plato implied that the soul was immortal and could ascend to the Form of Supreme, changeless Beauty and contemplate it, participate in it and share in its Eternity.

**Middle Platonism **became influenced by Stoicism in the 3rd century BC and later by Pythagoras’ theories. The Platonic Forms in this period were understood anew as being not only transcendent but also immanent in creation and thinking minds with the introduction of the idea of a “World-Soul” (the world as a single, living, ensouled being or organism). Plutarch was the greatest Middle Platonist.

**Neo-Platonism ** turned Plato’s philosophy into an entirely mystical doctrine (whereas Plato had had mystical strains). It is thought to have been influenced by Egyptian and Jewish theology.

The Neo-Platonists re-established the Academy with the new solely mystical interpretation of Platonism.

C Happold, in his 1970 opus magnus on mysticism, calls Plato “The Father of Christian Mysticism” ie
“…Few, if any, thinkers have had a deeper and more permanent influence on European thought. Much of his writing was concerned with politics; be has sometimes been called the Father of the Modern State. Behind all his writings on political issues, however, lay a profound spiritual philosophy. It was his intense sense of the world of spirit which impelled him to strive to create on earth the sort of state in which the life of the spirit would be possible. The fundamental issue with which Plato concerned himself was a dual one; what was the nature of the truly Real over against appearance, and what and how do we know about it. What was Plato’s basic theory? It has been called the Theory of Ideas, or better, Forms…That is not to say that there were no mystical strains in the Greek transition from a primitive polytheistic naturalism to rational philosophy. There is, for instance, a marked mystical element in Plato, which later developed into that Neoplatonism, which, as we have seen, profoundly influenced Christian mysticism. It was inevitable that there should be, for no rational philosophical system can alone satisfy the deep religious and psychological needs inherent in mankind…Plato may not be a mystic in the way St John of the Cross was a mystic; he was, however, the Father of Christian mysticism. The pure Platonism of Plato himself was the stem from which branched out that Neoplatonism, of which Plotinus is the greatest exponent, on which much of the later speculative mysticism of Christianity was founded…”
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St. Justin Martyr, St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen St. Augustine of Hippo, The Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius were all Christian Platonists and indeed the entire philosophical foundation of Christianity, even after St. Thomas Aquinas embraced Aristotle, is thoroughly Platonic.

His thought was also foundational to Sufi Islam.

Plato’s greatest follower was Plotinus, the founder of the sub-school of Platonism that modern scholars call “Neoplatonism”.

Plotinus’ Enneads were read by St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century AD. He started out life as a convert to Manichaeism. He then left the religion of Mani after an existential crisis, to become a bit of a pleasure-seeking playboy. Then he became a Neo-Platonist. It was during this period that he had his first stirrings of mystical awareness as recorded in his autobiography, The Confessions of St. Augustine. His lifelong mystical experiences, even as a Christian, are coloured and informed by his Neo-Platonic philosophy.

In the fifth century AD an anonymous Syrian monk who took the pen-name of “Dionysius” wrote a series of mystical Christian treatises about apophatic prayer (imageless prayer that rests beyond the reach of thought in an unknowing union with God) that were heavily coloured by Neo-Platonic concepts and imagery. He was mistakenly thought by John Eriugena, an Irish philosopher of the 9th century, to be Dionysius the Areopagite from the Bible, a disciple of St. Paul. Eriugena translated these texts into Latin. As a result The Dionysian Corpus became a crucial foundation of medieval Orthodox and Catholic mysticism - spreading Neoplatonic philosophy widely in the Christian world.

Meister Eckhart and his followers Johannes Tauler and Blessed Henry Suso often referred back to the works of Plotinus as instances of genuine mystical genius. Eckhart called him a “great priest”. They were very popular with medieval mystics and scholastics of the intellectual bent. Eckhart’s theology was heavily Neo-Platonic in flavour, to the extent that his mystical theology has been viewed as an attempt to “syncretize” Christianity with what was compatible in Neo-Platonism.

Sufi Islam was likewise highly influenced by Platonism. Plotinus’ Enneads were circulated throughout the Islamic world in the late first millennium and were attributed to Aristotle or anonymously to a “wise philosopher of the Greeks”. As a result of this mistaken identity, as with the Christian West, Islamic spirituality came to be heavily influenced by Neo-Platonic philosophy. Ibn Arabi, the great 13th century Sufi mystic and philosopher from Spain, formulated what was essentially a “school” of Islamic Neo-Platonism with a very monistic (to an extent while still being theistic) view of reality.
 
On the mystical dimensions of Plato’s thought, this passage always struck me powerfully from the Symposium:
“…This is the right way of approaching or being initiated into the mysteries of love, to begin with examples of beauty in this world, and using them as steps to ascend continually with that absolute beauty as one’s aim, from one instance of physical beauty to moral beauty, and from moral beauty to the beauty of knowledge, until from knowledge of various kinds one arrives at the supreme knowledge whose sole object is that absolute beauty, and knows at last what absolute beauty is. This above all others is the region where a man’s life should be spent, in the contemplation of absolute beauty. Once you have seen that, you will not value it in terms of gold or rich clothing or of the beauty of boys and young men, the sight of whom at present throws you and many people like you into such an ecstasy that, provided that you could always enjoy the sight and company of your darlings, you would be content to go without food and drink, if that were possible, and to pass your whole time with them in the contemplation of their beauty. What may we suppose to be the felicity of the man who sees absolute beauty in its essence, pure and unalloyed, who, instead of a beauty tainted by human flesh and colour and a mass of perishable rubbish, is able to apprehend divine beauty where it exists apart and alone? Do you think that it will be a poor life that a man leads who has his gaze fixed in that direction, who contemplates absolute beauty with the appropriate faculty and is in constant union with it ? Do you not see that in that region alone where he sees beauty with the faculty capable of seeing it, will he be able to bring forth not mere reflected images of goodness but true goodness, because he will be in contact not with a reflection but with the truth? And having brought forth and nurtured true goodness he will have the privilege of being beloved of God, and becoming, if ever a man can, immortal himself…”
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***- Plato, The Symposium, trans, by W. Hamilton {Penguin Books) ***
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Plato explains that to ascend to the Highest, Supreme Beauty that does not change and which is invisible, a person should begin with (he states this in an earlier passage and I bullet point it for ease):
  1. Physical attraction to beauty of a specific person
  2. Then to perceiving that same physical beauty in everyone
  3. Then to beauty of soul which is higher than physical beauty
  4. The person leaves attraction to specific beauty and perceives spiritual beauty everywhere
  5. Finally contemplative attraction to the Highest Beauty (God)
He describes this beauty as such:
The man who has been guided thus far in the mysteries of love, and who has directed his thoughts towards examples of beauty in due and orderly succession, will suddenly have revealed to him as he approaches the end of his initiation a beauty whose nature is marvellous indeed, the final goal, of all his previous efforts. This beauty is first of all eternal; it neither comes into being nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not beautiful in part and ugly in part, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in this relation and ugly in that, nor beautiful here and ugly there, as varying according to its beholders; nor again will this beauty appear to him like the beauty of a face or hands or anything else corporeal, or like the beauty of a thought or a science, or like beauty which has its seat in something other than itself, be it a living thing or the earth or the sky or anything else whatever; he will see it as absolute, existing alone with itself, unique, eternal, and all other beautiful things as partaking of it, yet in such a manner that, while they come into being and pass away, it neither undergoes any increase or diminution nor suffers any change
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