Neoplatonism Across Time and Faith

Graduate / Professional

In his 2024 book on mysticism, Simon Critchley points to it as a form of human experience allowing us to “push outside the sticky self towards something larger, something vaster, something full of vibrancy and maybe a sheer, mad joy at the fact of life and the world.” The Neoplatonic tradition provides a philosophical foundation for that experience, a foundation common to mystical writings in all three Abrahamic traditions. The wellspring of Christian mysticism is the Syrian monk Pseudo-Dionysius, who was clearly an attentive student of Proclus; Neoplatonism is at the core of the Islamic tradition of falsafa and of the mystic-poet Ibn ’Arabi; such poets as Solomon ibn Gabirol reveal the currency of Neoplatonic thought in Jewish Andalusía; and the early modern period witnesses another resurgence of interest in Neoplatonism, Christian and Jewish, as in the thought of Marsilio Ficino and Judah Leon Abravanel. Exploring this vast influence allows us to engage in a profound remapping of cultural and intellectual traditions—classical, medieval, early modern, and modern—less centered on Athens and Rome and taking into its ken Alexandria, Damascus, and Baghdad. Plotinus really gets around, and following his travels can shed new light on familiar texts from late antiquity to the Modernist moment. To study the Neoplatonic tradition is to take an intellectual journey to a distant planet, only to discover upon arrival that it is the home one has always known, now seen with new eyes. The Neoplatonists are rivaled only by Aristotle in their ability to cross time and culture. And yet they are widely neglected in the Anglo-American university. While devoting significant attention to the resurgence of interest in Neoplatonism in early modernity, this course spans periods and disciplines to make visible a ubiquitous tradition hiding in plain sight. T 9:25am-11:20am