ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 17: PLATONISM IN THE IMPERIAL AGE
31BC - 529 (Roman Empire)
- 31BC: invasion of Athens, end of Hellenistic shools, intellectuals turned Roman slaves
- 128: emperor established 4 schools (platonic, Aristotelian, stoic, epicurean)
- 529: emperor closes schools, exiles philosophers
Imperial Platonism:
Phase 1: Antiochus and Eudorus (1BC)
- new doctrine, mixture of Plato, Aristotle and Stoics
- eclectic, anti-Skeptic
- Antiochus: reconciling Plato with the Stoics and Peripatetics
- Skeptics denied truth due to the plurality of post-Platonic schools
- for him, rather, they were all developments of Plato, worse derivatives
- Stoic common conceptions seen as Platonic recollection
- further reconciliations between the schools
- in the end he produces a Platonic-Stoic mix
- Eudorus: Plato as a Pythagorean, early Academy
- showing Plato and Aristotle as pythagoreans carrying on an ancient tradition
Phase 2: Plutarch, etc. (1-2AD)
- diving Plato into fields, exegesis, integrating Aristotle
- problem of immaterial causes, the relation between God and the Forms
- the problem of God (largely missing in Plato) is taken up
- Plutarch:
- trying to fit the Skeptics in, rationalizes them as believers in the Forms
- they simply got bogged down by empirical matters
- disorderly motion of matter is due to the soul, and the soul is disorderly (evil)
- Aiumenius: Pythagorean, Plato’s Father and Demiurge are 2 entities, respectively the Good and Bad
- Taurus: literal readings of Plato