R. T. Wallis: Neoplatonism

Foreword and Bibliography by Lloyd P. Gerson

Hackett, 1995 (1972)     Amazon.com

Book Description:

Neoplatonism, a development of Plato’s metaphysical and religious teaching, whose best-known representatives were Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, was the dominant philosophical school of the later Roman Empire and has been a major influence of European and Near Eastern thought and culture ever since. Yet the school’s philosophy is only now coming to be studied in detail by historians of philosophy, largely because of the difficulty of the Neoplatonists’ writings and the lack of a good summary exposition. This defect Dr. Wallis sought to remedy in this, the first full-length study of the school by a single author to appear for over half a century. Lloyd Gerson’s new Foreword sets that contribution in context; he also provides an up-dated Bibliography.

Table of Contents:

1  The Aims of Neoplatonism

2  The Sources of Neoplatonism

3  Plotinus

–  Life and Writings

–  The Three Hypostases

–  Emanation, Logos, Sympathy

–  The Individual Soul

–  Return to the One

–  Plotinus and Later Neoplatonism

4  Porphyry and Iamblichus

–  Neoplatonism from Plotinus to the Death of Julian

–  Anti-Christian Polemic and the Problem of Theurgy

–  The Three Hypostases in Porphyry and the Parmenides Commentator

–  Iamblichus’ Counter-Attack; The Soul and Her Salvation

–  The Structure of Late Neoplatonic Metaphysics

–  Textual Exegesis According to Porphyry and Iamblichus

5  The Athenian School

–  Neoplatonism at Athens and Alexandria

–  Some Basic Doctrines of the Athenian School

–  Damascius and the End of the Academy

6  The Influence of Neoplatonism

About the Author:

R. T. Wallis was Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma. (Lloyd P. Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.)