Hello and welcome to all, this is some information about Neoplatonism, feel free to discuss anything you may all know about Neoplatonism in different beliefs and perspectives in this post, just remember to do it civilly when different beliefs may clash against one another
Note: Some of the link may come from Christianity and some Pagans perspectives too, so take the time to research everything included or not included in this post
Blessed Be,
Margaret
Before diving into Neoplatonism, we will need to know what Platonism stands for first, it is defined as “the belief that physical objects are impermanent representations of changing ideas, and that the ideas alone give true knowledge as they are known by the mind” - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/platonism
It is also the philosophy or doctrines of Plato and his followers
Meanwhile, Neoplatonism is a thought form rooted in the philosophy of Plato, but extending beyond or transforming it in many respects. Neoplatonism developed as a school of thought in the Roman Empire from the third to the fifth century of the common era [C.E.]. However, the term itself was coined only recently in the mid-nineteenth century, when German scholars used it to distinguish the ideas of later Greek and Roman Platonists from those of Plato himself. Plotinus (c. 204-270 C.E.) is considered the first main proponent of Neoplatonism, and his intent was to use Plato’s thought as an intellectual basis for a rational and humane life.
Neoplatonic philosophy is a strict form of principle-monism that strives to understand everything on the basis of a single cause that they considered divine, and indiscriminately referred to as “the First”, “the One”, or “the Good”
Neoplatonist ideas are more explicitly religious than those of Plato, and they developed largely to counter dualistic interpretations of Plato’s thought. For example, Neoplatonism sought to overcome the Platonic cleavage between thought and reality, or Ideal and Form. Platonism is characterized by its method of abstracting the finite world of Forms (humans, animals, objects) from the infinite world of the Ideal, or One. Neoplatonism, on the other hand, seeks to locate the One, or God in Christian Neoplatonism, in the finite world and human experience. This is evidenced in Plotinus’s now-famous maxim that the Absolute “has its center everywhere but its circumference nowhere.”
Neoplatonic ritualism is not the expression of any narrow religious viewpoint, but of a philosophy of pagan religion in general—a “philosophical theory of myth,” as Pierre Boyancé terms it, “that overflows the confines of this or that ritual and has a more general scope.”
Reference Link: Project MUSE - Offering to the Gods: A Neoplatonic Perspective
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20557004?seq=1
(Glossary Definition: Plato) (c. 428-347 B.C.E.
(Glossary Definition: C.E.))
Neoplatonism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/platonism
I’ve bookmarked it so I can have a proper read of the links tonight 