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This introductory chapter addresses the question why Aristotle’s philosophy attracted so much attention by Platonists in late antiquity. The author argues that Platonic (that is, Plato’s) philosophy was subject to different reconstructions by Platonists, who often resorted to Aristotle in order to reconstruct parts of it. It then examines the main philosophical issues on which Platonists focused when discussing Aristotle’s philosophy and its relation to Platonic. Finally, it briefly reviews the evidence regarding the Peripatetic positions on how Aristotle’s philosophy compares with Plato’s.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Numenius’ Pythagoreanism and his thesis on Aristotle’s philosophy. It then analyses the question of whether Pythagoreanism is incompatible with Aristotelianism. It is argued that Numenius does not show hostility to Aristotle, and does not even display much concern for his thought. However, existing evidence suggests that Numenius did voice a warning to Platonists to the effect that Aristotle’s philosophy is substantially different from that of Plato, and that any concession to his views on the assumption that he preserves Plato’s doctrines can cause sedition and secession from Plato’s actual philosophical spirit.

David Brown identifies three main types of approaches to artistic representations of the Trinity: triadic, societal, and incarnational forms. In each case, he stresses the need to judge art in relation to the wider contemporary context. Triadic repetition is seen to have deep roots in paganism and in Neo‐Platonist assumptions at the time of the Renaissance, as well as being characteristic of today's art. Its function as an image of intensifying power is noted. Societal representations are distinguished from any automatic endorsement of a social analogy for trinitarian doctrine, and this is so in the case of Murillo's Two Trinities. Summary dismissal of incarnational types is shown to be often based on misunderstandings of what it is that the relevant artists were trying to achieve. Masaccio, for instance, deliberately placed the Father outside our spatial frame. In general, Brown appeals for art to be judged by its own distinctive criteria.

This chapter explores the role of philosophy in Plutarch's Table Talk. The emphatic presence and use of philosophical material throughout the sympotic conversations suggests that Table Talk can be read as a lesson, aimed both at beginners and the philosophically initiated. The particular format Plutarch chose for this work – namely, the hybrid between Socratic symposium and problemata literature – and the topics discussed, show that Table Talk operates as two-tier philosophical instruction. On one level, through amicable and seemingly light-hearted zētēseis into quasi-scientific questions, Plutarch teaches uninitiated readers the basic tools of philosophical inquiry. On another level, the aporetic style of the zētēseis, and the plausible, but not certain, open-ended outcomes, invite the philosophically versed to reconsider the limits of Peripatetic sciences, and to opt for a Platonist approach to natural philosophy instead.

This chapter discusses Origen's doctrine of revelation. Origen is certain that we may come to a saving knowledge of God's transcendent nature. But he distances himself from what he considers to be the positive evaluation of human reason in Greek philosophy. He employs the sceptical arguments of his Middle Platonist contemporaries to bolster his contention that the human intellect cannot apprehend truth on its own merits unaided by God's grace. Only through the mediation of the Logos, the Holy Spirit, and the Scriptures may we come to know God's nature and to know his names.

This chapter discusses the reasons and circumstances which led Plutarch to compose a detailed and systematic response to an otherwise unknown polemical book by Colotes, a relatively obscure Epicurean of the 3rd century bc. It offers a close reading of the prooemium of the Adversus Colotem in which Plutarch masterfully gives his own justification of his enterprise, both explicitly and through allusion to his Platonic pedigree. Prima facie the Adversus Colotem is presented as the written version of the oral refutation of Colotes which Plutarch was asked by his companions to give during one of the sessions in his school. At the same time, it transpires that responding to Colotes' polemic gave Plutarch the opportunity to engage in an exercise in the history of philosophy from the perspective of a Platonist teacher.

Chapter 4 addresses the negative issue of what, in Aristotle's view, natural forms should not be understood as: their essence is not like that of mathematical or Platonist forms. After comparing mathematical with natural forms, Chapter 4 asks how to differentiate between them, and how to determine the types of matter (if any) which are essential to natural forms but not essential to mathematical entities. The contrast between the objects studied by mathematical sciences and those examined by physics suggests that, while mathematical form is essentially independent of all perceptible types of matter (collectively), natural form should not be conceived in this fashion. Not only higher‐level mathematical branches but also applied/subordinate mathematical sciences deal with abstract mathematical forms which are essentially independent of matter, while physics studies forms which are essentially non‐abstract and non‐mathematical.

Chapter 9 discusses an argument advanced in the Eudemian Ethics, 1217b10–15, which claims that Platonist Forms are thought to be ontologically prior to their perceptible instances. It is shown that Aristotle understands Platonist ontological priority as asymmetric existential independence. Platonist Forms are conceived as ontologically prior to their perceptible instances in that they exist (or can exist) without their perceptible instances existing but not the other way about. If this is correct, Aristotle cannot be favouring the existential construal of ontological priority. Hence, Aristotle's own notion of ontological priority, the one which applies to his substantial forms, must be distinct from the Platonist, existential construal of this notion.

Aristotle was Plato's student for two decades before founding his own school. Aristotle is the ultimate teleological thinker of antiquity, and his teleology takes us to the very heart of his physics, his biology, his metaphysics, and his ethics. Aristotle cures the twin issues of creation and administration in strict parallel to each other. The world, along with its resident species, is not the product of an intelligent act of creation, for the simple reason that it had no beginning at all but has always existed as a thesis he defends by appeal to the essential of the heaven's circular motion. Aristotle is more Platonist than Plato. He too (Nicomachean ethics X 7–8) holds that the kind of happiness that can come from leading a virtuous civic life, although of great value, is instant, best likened to the godlike happiness of pure detached contemplation. Aristotle improves Plato to the extent that he seeks to make his own theology consistent with the same ranking of different brands of happiness.

This chapter examines how Plotinus took Ammonius Saccas's ideas to Rome and how he brought into sharp focus the role that Platonist philosophy played in the third-century public sphere. It first considers the careers of Plotinus and Porphyry of Tyre before discussing the extent to which Plotinus incorporated Ammonius's teaching into his own classroom. It argues that the exegetical practices, charismatic pedagogy, asceticism, and deep commitment to the teachings of Plato so apparent in Plotinus's circle can be attributed to the eleven years he spent as Ammonius's student in Alexandria. It also explores Plotinus's desire to found a community of philosophers in Campania and Porphyry's belief that he ought to help craft imperial legislation that would emulate divine law.

This chapter argues that the relational models are not brain states resulting from self-organization in neural activity but are, rather, abstract objects akin to numbers and sets. However, even if this turns out to be true, it would not invalidate the naturalism of earlier chapters. This chapter addresses the compatibility of biophysical approach and Platonism. It considers the empirical approach for discrete infinity of social structures. It illustrates that the relational models constitute an infinite collection of abstract objects. It also suggests that Platonist linguistics corresponds to the deepest level of necessity, with regard to the study of language. Biolinguistics corresponds to a somewhat more shallow level of necessity.

This chapter discusses erotic idealization based on Platonist and realist theories. According to the former, all attempts to describe eros as the child of earthly rather than heavenly Aphrodite can only lead to a misreading of love’s spiritual intent; the latter theory states that all love must be reducible to a basic organic condition, such as sexuality. Both theories, however, acknowledge the involvement of human desire, which points back to love as valuation through determination of how something can satisfy desire. The ultimate goal remains to be knowledge—warranted assertions regarding the nature of man, his wants, and what will satisfy those wants. This is the reason why most of Western philosophy presupposes the eros approach when theorizing about love, despite the fact that it generally seeks to be scientific.

There are strong traces of interest in Aristotle’s ten categories – and the treatise Categories – in Pythagorean circles roughly contemporary with Andronicus, beginning with Eudorus of Alexandria. This interest seems broadly similar in temperament to Andronicus’, treating the ten categories as a crucial aid in transcending the vagueness of particulars and arriving at the more precise knowledge of intelligibles, but with a new, Pythagorean emphasis on the symbolism of the number ten and the recognition of the distinction of the intelligible world from the sensible. This chapter briefly traces this interest, and contrasts its motives and outcomes with Andronicus of Rhodes, as seen in the previous chapter.

This chapter argues that Lucius, a critic of the Categories named by Simplicius, criticized the Categories as an inadequate treatment of ontology, and that his criticisms attracted a response from Boethus of Sidon. It also attempts to show that the criticisms offered by Lucius and Nicostratus – two figures often conflated by Simplicius – can be at least provisionally distinguished from one another.

This chapter explores the different ways in which Didymus employs the traditions and debates of Hellenistic philosophy to enumerate both the plurality and the unity of virtue. Although it does not control his exegesis and doctrine, Didymus goes well beyond a mere instrumental use of technical vocabulary in a quasi-scientific style, and parallels from ‘Middle Platonists’, such as Apuleius and Alcinous, reveal a direct influence which cannot simply be explained by his reading of Origen and Philo. In this case the adaptation of many philosophical concepts and terms to his own thought allows Didymus to portray individual virtues within a dynamic anthropology. According to context, this may rely upon an overarching duality, distinguishing between the practical and the intellectual, or a more unifying unity, implicit in the teleology of virtue which he articulates through the originally Stoic notion of concatenation and locates in the humanity of Christ.