TY - BOOK AU - Gerson,Lloyd P. TI - From Plato to Platonism SN - 9780801469183 U1 - 184 23/eng/20230216 PY - 2013///] CY - Ithaca, NY PB - Cornell University Press KW - Platonists KW - Ancient History & Classical Studies KW - History KW - Philosophy KW - PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical KW - bisacsh KW - ancient greek history KW - ancient greek philosophers KW - ancient greek studies KW - ancient philosophy KW - aristotle and plato KW - books for classics students KW - books to understand plato KW - classical philosophy KW - greek philosophers KW - greek philosophy KW - history of philosophy KW - history of religions KW - intro of philosophy KW - middle platonism KW - philosophy of socrates KW - plato's dialouges KW - plato's philosophy KW - plato KW - platonic tradition KW - platonism KW - platonist KW - plotinus KW - reading plato KW - socrates and plato KW - socrates and platonism KW - studying classical philosophy KW - survey of philopsophy KW - understanding ancient philosophy KW - understanding platoism KW - understanding socrates KW - ur-platonism KW - what did plato believe KW - who was plato N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface --; Acknowledgments --; Part 1. Plato and His Readers --; 1. Was Plato a Platonist? --; 2. Socrates and Platonism --; 3. Reading the Dialogues Platonically --; 4. Aristotle on Plato and Platonism --; Part 2. The Continuing Creation of Platonism --; 5. The Old Academy --; 6. The Academic Skeptics --; 7. Platonism in the ‘Middle’ --; 8. Numenius of Apamea --; Part 3. Plotinus: “Exegete of the Platonic Revelation” --; 9. Platonism as a System --; 10. Plotinus as Interpreter of Plato (1) --; 11. Plotinus as Interpreter of Plato (2) --; Conclusion --; Bibliography --; General Index --; Index Locorum; restricted access N2 - "Gerson's book is a highly valuable, well-written contribution to Platonism research. It persuasively makes a case for understanding Plato's philosophy as a coherent system that has an intricate and meaningful relation to later Platonistic philosophical positions. From this point, Plato appears as a Platonist indeed."— Claas Lattman ― CLASSICAL JOURNALWas Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism."Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics.In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation." UR - https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801469183 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780801469183 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780801469183/original ER -