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NEOPLATONISM

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Originally appearing in Volume V19, Page 372 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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NEOPLATONISM , the name given specially to the last school of See also:

pagan See also:philosophy, which See also:grew up mainly among the Greeks of See also:Alexandria from the 3rd See also:century onwards. The See also:term has also been applied to the See also:Italian humanists of the See also:Renaissance, and in See also:modern times, somewhat vaguely, to thinkers who have based their speculations on the Platonic See also:metaphysics or on See also:Plotinus, and incorporated with it a tendency towards a mystical explanation of ultimate phenomena. See also:Historical Position and Significance.—The See also:political See also:history of the See also:ancient See also:world ends with the formation, under See also:Diocletian and See also:Constantine, of a universal See also:state bearing the See also:cast of See also:Oriental as well as Graeco-See also:Roman See also:civilization. The history of ancient philosophy ends in like manner with a universal philosophy which assimilated elements of almost all the earlier systems, and worked up the results of Eastern and Western culture. Just as the Later Roman See also:empire was at once the supreme' effort of the old world and the outcome of its exhaustion, so Neoplatonism is in one aspect the consummation, in another the collapse, of ancient philosophy. Never before in See also:Greek or in Roman See also:speculation had the consciousness of See also:man's dignity and superiority to nature found such adequate expression; never before had real See also:science and pure knowledge been so under-valued and despised by the leaders of culture as they were by the Neoplatonists. Judged from the standpoint of empirical science, philosophy passed its See also:meridian in See also:Plato and See also:Aristotle, declined in the See also:post-Aristotelian systems, and set in the darkness of Neoplatonism. But, from the religious and moral point of view, it must be admitted that the ethical " See also:mood " which Neoplatonism endeavoured to create and maintain is the highest and purest ever reached by antiquity. It is a See also:proof of the strength of the moral instincts of mankind that the only phase of culture which we can survey in all its stages from beginning to end culminated not in See also:materialism, but in the boldest See also:idealism. This idealism, however, is also in its way a See also:mark of intellectual See also:bankruptcy., Contempt for See also:reason and science leads in the end to barbarism—its necessary consequence being the rudest superstition. As a See also:matter of fact, barbarism did break out after the See also:flower had fallen from Neoplatonism.

End of Article: NEOPLATONISM

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