platonists's Usage Examples:

He was a thorough Aristotelian, but by preference appears to have been drawn towards the mystical writings of the Neoplatonists and the pseudo-Dionysius.

And yet it is undeniable that the very noblest and choicest minds of the 4th century are to be found in the ranks of the Neoplatonists.

41 3) and by the Neoplatonists of Alexandria and of Athens.

He had a dogma of his own - one founded, according to his German expositors, on the views of the Neoplatonists, of which a few disjointed specimens must here suffice.

The latter interpreted the myths and were done with them; the later Neoplatonists treated them as the proper material and the secure foundation of philosophy.

He owed something to Lucretius, something to the Stoic nature-pantheism, something to Anaxagoras, to Heraclitus, to the Pythagoreans, and to the Neoplatonists, who were partially known to him; above all, he was a profound student of Nicolas of Cusa, who was indeed a speculative Copernicus.

In the doctrines of the Neoplatonists, of whom Plotinus is the most important, we have the worldprocess represented after the example of Plato as a series of descending steps, each being less perfect than its predecessors, since it is further removed from the first cause.

The system culminates in a mystical act, and in the sequel, especially with Iamblichus and the Syrian Neoplatonists, mystical practice tended more and more to overshadow the theoretical groundwork.

Still, as compared with the later Neoplatonists, he is comparatively free from crass superstition and wild fanaticism.

Never before in Greek or in Roman speculation had the consciousness of man's dignity and superiority to nature found such adequate expression; never before had real science and pure knowledge been so undervalued and despised by the leaders of culture as they were by the Neoplatonists.

Of this view the part which was not Aristotle's, the state of " universalia ante rem," was due to the Neoplatonists, who interpreted the " separate forms " of Plato to be ideas in intellect, and handed down their interpretation through St Augustine to the medieval Realists like Aquinas, who thus combined Neoplatonism with Aristotelianism.

At the same time the differences are the more noteworthy from the reverent adhesion which the Neoplatonists always maintain to Plato.

Synonyms:

advocate, advocator, proponent, exponent,

Antonyms:

nonpartisan,