Neoplatonist

Origins of the term

Whether Neoplatonism is a meaningful or useful historical category is itself a central question concerning the history of the interpretation of Plato. For much of the history of Platonism, it was commonly accepted that the doctrines of the Neoplatonists were essentially the same as those of Plato. The Renaissance Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino, for instance, thought that the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato was an authentic and accurate representation of Plato's philosophy. Although it is unclear precisely when scholars began to differentiate the philosophy of the historical Plato from the philosophy of his Neoplatonic interpreters, they had clearly begun to do so at least as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century. Contemporary scholars often identify the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher as an early thinker who took Plato's philosophy to be separate from that of his Neoplatonic interpreters. However, others have argued that the disassociation of Plato from Neoplatonism was the result of a protracted historical development that preceded Schleiermacher's scholarly work on Plato.