Platonism

Platoism is the philosophy of the Athenian Classical philosopher Plato. In the context of political philosophy, Platoism is a culturally far-right and economically variable ideology inspired by Plato's classic book The Republic, as well as his other works, and some of those who came after him.

The Academy
Platonism was originally expressed in the dialogues of Plato, in which the figure of Socrates is used to expound certain doctrines, that may or may not be similar to the thought of the historical Socrates, Plato's master. Plato delivered his lectures at the Platonic Academy, a precinct containing a sacred grove outside the walls of Athens. The school continued there long after Plato's death. There were three periods: the Old, Middle, and New Academy. The chief figures in the Old Academy were Speusippus (Plato's nephew), who succeeded him as the head of the school (until 339 BC), and Xenocrates (until 313 BC). Both of them sought to fuse Pythagorean speculations on number with Plato's theory of forms.

The Skeptical Academy
Around 266 BC, Arcesilaus became head of the academy. This phase, known as the Middle Academy, strongly emphasized philosophical skepticism. It was characterized by its attacks on the Stoics and their assertion of the certainty of truth and our knowledge of it. The New Academy began with Carneades in 155 BC, the fourth head in succession from Arcesilaus. It was still largely skeptical, denying the possibility of knowing an absolute truth; both Arcesilaus and Carneades argued that they were maintaining a genuine tenet of Plato.

Middle Platonism
Around 90 BC, Antiochus of Ascalon rejected skepticism, making way for the period known as Middle Platonism, in which Platonism was fused with certain Peripatetic and many Stoic dogmas. In Middle Platonism, the Platonic Forms were not transcendent but immanent to rational minds, and the physical world was a living, ensouled being, the World-Soul. Pre-eminence in this period belongs to Plutarch. The eclectic nature of Platonism during this time is shown by its incorporation into Pythagoreanism (Numenius of Apamea) and into Jewish philosophy (Philo of Alexandria).

Neoplatonism
In the third century, Plotinus recast Plato's system, establishing Neoplatonism, in which Middle Platonism was fused with mysticism. At the summit of existence stands the One or the Good, as the source of all things. It generates from itself, as if from the reflection of its own being, reason, the nous, wherein is contained the infinite store of ideas. The world-soul, the copy of the nous, is generated by and contained in it, as the nous is in the One, and, by informing matter in itself nonexistent, constitutes bodies whose existence is contained in the world-soul. Nature therefore is a whole, endowed with life and soul. Soul, being chained to matter, longs to escape from the bondage of the body and return to its original source. In virtue and philosophical thought it has the power to elevate itself above the reason into a state of ecstasy, where it can behold, or ascend to, that one good primary Being whom reason cannot know. To attain this union with the Good, or God, is the true function of human beings.

Plotinus' disciple, Porphyry, followed by Iamblichus, developed the system in conscious opposition to Christianity. The Platonic Academy was re-established during this period; its most renowned head was Proclus (died 485), a celebrated commentator on Plato's writings. The academy persisted until Roman emperor Justinian closed it in 529.

Christianity and Platonism
Platonism has had some influence on Christianity through Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and the Cappadocian Fathers. St. Augustine was heavily influenced by Platonism as well, which he encountered through the Latin translations of Marius Victorinus of the works of Porphyry and/or Plotinus.

Platonism was considered authoritative in the Middle Ages. Platonism also influenced both Eastern and Western mysticism. Meanwhile, Platonism influenced various philosophers. While Aristotle became more influential than Plato in the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas's philosophy was still in certain respects fundamentally Platonic.

Renaissance
The Renaissance also saw a renewed interest in Platonic thought, including more interest in Plato himself. In 16th-, 17th-, and 19th-century England, Plato's ideas influenced many religious thinkers including the Cambridge Platonists. Orthodox Protestantism in continental Europe, however, distrusts natural reason and has often been critical of Platonism. An issue in the reception of Plato in early modern Europe was how to deal with the same-sex elements of his corpus.

Christoplatonism is a term used to refer to a dualism opined by Plato, which holds spirit is good but matter is evil, which influenced some christian churches, though the Bible's teaching directly contradicts this philosophy and thus it receives constant criticism from many teachers in the Christian Church today. According to the Methodist Church, Christoplatonism directly "contradicts the Biblical record of God calling everything He created good."

Modern Platonism
Apart from historical Platonism originating from thinkers such as Plato and Plotinus, we also encounter the theory of abstract objects in the modern sense.

"Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view." This modern Platonism has been endorsed in one way or another at one time or another by numerous philosophers, such as Bernard Bolzano, who argue for anti-psychologism. Plato's works have been decisively influential for 20th century philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and his Process Philosophy; and for the critical realism and metaphysics of Nicolai Hartmann.

Analytic
In contemporary philosophy, most Platonists trace their ideas to Gottlob Frege's influential paper "Thought", which argues for Platonism with respect to propositions, and his influential book, The Foundations of Arithmetic, which argues for Platonism with respect to numbers and is a seminal text of the logicist project. Contemporary analytic philosophers who espoused Platonism in metaphysics include Bertrand Russell, Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, W. V. O. Quine, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke, Edward Zalta and Peter van Inwagen. Iris Murdoch espoused Platonism in moral philosophy in her 1970 book The Sovereignty of Good.

Paul Benacerraf's epistemological challenge to contemporary Platonism has proved its most influential criticism.

Continental
In contemporary Continental philosophy, Edmund Husserl's arguments against psychologism are believed to derive from a Platonist conception of logic, influenced by Frege and his mentor Bolzano. —Husserl explicitly mentioned Bolzano, G. W. Leibniz and Hermann Lotze as inspirations for his position in his Logical Investigations (1900–1). Other prominent contemporary Continental philosophers interested in Platonism in a general sense include Leo Strauss, Simone Weil, and Alain Badiou.

The Forms
One of the most important ideas in Platoism was the concept of the Forms. Plato thought that everything we experience was the imitation of another realm, the realm of the forms. So for example, while we with our eye's might so multiple different individual trees, all of different species, these are all different imitations of the form of the tree, which isn't any one particular tree, but rather, a perfect, ideal tree, that has all the qualities that could ever make something identifiable to us as "treeish." This applies not only to physical objects like tree's, but also to things like humans, and even abstract concepts like justice and beauty.

The Republic
Plato believed that the ideal city-state would function by means of virtue and moral philosophy. In this utopia, to achieve a thoroughly just society, Plato advocates the rule of philosopher-kings, claiming such a society unimaginable unless philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers. Here, the term “philosopher-king” does not impose rule by a monarch but of a ruler who has completed his education in philosophy and mathematics. The rulers would be selected from the guardian class, who would serve as soldiers and law enforcement in the city, and who would enforce the rules of the philosopher kings onto the ordinary people.

Enemies

 * [[file:Athdem.png]] - "Democracy leads to dictatorship".

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