Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism is the philosophical tradition that begins with Plotinus (205–270 CE) — a philosopher so original that first contact with his work tends to reorient how reality itself appears — and extends through his successors Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus into late antiquity, where it profoundly shaped early Christian theology (through Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and, later, Meister Eckhart), Islamic philosophy and mysticism (the tradition that Henry Corbin spent his life studying), and Renaissance Hermeticism. In the contemporary intellectual scene, Neoplatonism has been given new life by John Vervaeke’s account of the meaning crisis (which traces modern meaninglessness to the loss of the Neoplatonic sense of participation in reality) and James Filler’s work on relation as ontological ground. It is not a historical curiosity; it is a living resource for understanding what we have lost and what we need to recover.

Core Ideas

Plotinus’s fundamental metaphysical insight is what he called the “procession” of reality from the One. The One is not a being — it is not one being among others, not even the highest being, not a person or a mind. It is the principle of unity and goodness that underlies and makes possible all existence: the inexhaustible source from which being flows, not through an act of will or creation but through a natural overflow of superabundance, the way light radiates from the sun without the sun diminishing. From the One proceeds Nous (the divine intellect, the realm of the Platonic forms, pure intelligence thinking itself), from Nous proceeds the World-Soul, and from the World-Soul proceeds the material world. This is not a spatial hierarchy but an ontological one: each level is less unified, less perfect, more plural than the one above it, but each level participates in what is above it.

The concept of participation (methexis) is the heart of the Neoplatonic vision and the key to understanding what has been lost in modernity. To participate is not to be an instance of a type or a member of a class; it is to share in the life of something that transcends you and that constitutes what you are. The human soul participates in the World-Soul; the World-Soul participates in Nous; Nous participates in the One. This participation is not a relation between fully formed, independent things — it is the structure through which things have whatever reality and goodness they possess. Nothing exists in isolation; everything exists in and through a web of participatory relations that is not accidental to what things are but ontologically fundamental.

The Neoplatonic account of the soul’s journey is the other dimension of the tradition’s importance for this garden. The soul has descended from the One through the levels of the hierarchy into embodied, material existence; it has forgotten its origin; and philosophy (in the full Neoplatonic sense: not just argument but contemplative practice, aesthetic cultivation, ethical purification) is the path by which the soul can ascend, through Nous, toward union with the One. This is not escapism from the material world but its transfiguration: the soul that has ascended sees the world differently — not as a collection of dead objects but as participating in the divine light that flows through all things.

For Vervaeke, the meaning crisis is significantly a crisis of participation: the loss of the sense that the world is genuinely responding to you, that you are genuinely in contact with something real that matters, that your existence is part of a larger order of significance. The Neoplatonic framework helps explain both what was lost and why: the scientific revolution’s removal of Aristotelian natures and final causes (purposes in things) was necessary and productive, but it had the unintended consequence of removing the participatory dimension from the modern worldview. The world became a collection of matter in motion, related only mechanically, and the human soul found itself homeless in it.

Filler’s philosophical contribution is to show that the Neoplatonic tradition provides resources for understanding relation as ontological ground — the claim that relation is not a property of substances that already exist in isolation, but the very structure through which anything is at all. This is a metaphysical claim with immediate implications for how we understand love, encounter, and the depth of genuine relationship. If relation is fundamental, then isolation is the abstraction and connection is the reality.

Key Figures

• Plotinus (205–270 CE) — The founder; his Enneads are the foundational text of the tradition.
• Porphyry (234–305 CE) — Plotinus’s student and biographer; systematized and transmitted his teacher’s work.
• Iamblichus (245–325 CE) — Shifted the tradition toward theurgy (ritual practice as a means of ascent); foundational for later magical and theurgical Neoplatonism.
• Proclus (412–485 CE) — The great systematizer; his Elements of Theology is the most precise Neoplatonic metaphysics.
• Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500 CE) — Brought Neoplatonism into Christian theology; enormously influential on the mystical tradition.
• Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) — The greatest Christian Neoplatonist; his sermons on the ground of the soul and the birth of God in the soul are among the most radical texts in Western mysticism.

Connections

John Vervaeke — Vervaeke’s account of the meaning crisis draws significantly on the Neoplatonic tradition and what was lost when participation ceased to be a live concept.

James Filler — Filler’s philosophical work shows how Neoplatonism illuminates Heidegger’s question of Being and provides a metaphysical grounding for relation as ontological ground.

Henry Corbin — Corbin’s engagement with Islamic philosophy — itself deeply shaped by Neoplatonism through Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Suhrawardi — provides the imaginal dimension of the tradition.

The Imaginal Tradition — The Neoplatonic metaphysics of the intermediate realm provides the philosophical backbone for the imaginal tradition.

Relational Ground — Neoplatonism’s participatory ontology is the metaphysical ground for understanding relation as fundamental.

Meaning Crisis — The loss of the Neoplatonic sense of participation in reality is one of Vervaeke’s central diagnoses of the meaning crisis.

Quotes

“The One is perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, needs nothing; and being perfect, it overflows, and its superabundance makes something other than itself.” — Plotinus, Enneads VI.9

“Everything there is radiant, and each thing is lit by the next; in this way each part, in separation, is still connected to the rest.” — Plotinus, Enneads V.8

“The soul is not in the world; the world is in the soul.” — Plotinus (attributed)

“To know the Good is to turn toward it; to turn toward it is to become like it; to become like it is to be one with it.” — Plotinus (paraphrase of Enneads I.6)