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CHAPTER 28
PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 1
anne sheppard
i. introduction
The dominant pagan philosophy of the fifth and sixth century a.d. was
Neoplatonism. By this period Platonism had absorbed the other philosophical
traditions of antiquity. Aristotle was extensively studied but in a
Platonist context, and usually as a preparation for the study of Plato himself.
Epicureanism and Scepticism had faded away. Many elements of Stoicism
do reappear in Neoplatonist logic and metaphysics but altered and transposed
so as to fit into a very different philosophical system: the Stoics were
materialists, whereas for the Neoplatonists the intelligible world is not only
distinct from the material one but superior to it in reality and power.
Neoplatonism was initiated by Plotinus in the third century and continued
into the fourth by Porphyry, Iamblichus and their followers; by 425 it had
spread all over the Mediterranean world. There were several different
schools, in the physical sense, and this chapter will consider those in order.
I shall begin with the school of Athens, proceed to Alexandria and then
conclude with a brief account of philosophy elsewhere in the empire. The
two principal schools were in Athens and Alexandria. These schools have
often been seen as differing in doctrines and attitudes as well as in their geographical
location. However, recent research has undermined this conventional
picture. 2 I shall argue later in the chapter that there were some genuine
differences in emphasis and attitude between the two schools. However,
they both derived from the Iamblichean tradition of Neoplatonism, and I
shall begin by summarizing the main features of that tradition.
The contrast between an intelligible world, accessible only to the mind,
1 Several biographical works are important sources for the history of philosophy in this period:
Marinus, Life of Proclus (English translation in Rosán (1949); discussion in Blumenthal (1984));
Damascius, Life of Isidorus (discussion of the period heavily based on Damascius in Athanassiadi (1993),
and see now P. Athanassiadi, Damascius, The Philosophical History (Athens, 1999)); Zacharias, Life of
Severus. For bibliography on individual philosophers see Sorabji (1990) 485ff., with the addition of
Hoffmann (1994) on Damascius. For the archaeological evidence see Frantz (1988), Roueché,
Aphrodisias 85–6, Fowden (1990a), Smith (1990).
2 The Athenian and Alexandrian schools were sharply distinguished in Praechter (1910). For the case
against Praechter see, in the first instance, Hadot (1978). For a recent, balanced discussion see
Blumenthal (1993).
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