Quote: (11-13-2015 12:35 PM)H1N1 Wrote:
(11-13-2015, 03:18 PM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote: [quote]Quote:
Platonism never had widespread appeal and its mystical aspects ended up being absorbed into Christian thought.
This is an interesting idea, but one I believe actually has relatively little merit. It is a part of the subject I am looking into more closely at the moment, and would like to come back on with more ordered thoughts. I have read some very interesting things that suggest Christianity is actually a very dilute version of the purer Perennial Tradition that Plato was espousing.
Nietzsche once said that Christianity was "Platonism for the masses".
Apparently neo-Platonism (associated with thinkers like Plotinus) was very influential on the development of Christianity. I'm actually getting this idea the introduction to this book (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19510...phorisms). I haven't done independent research on this myself and I haven't read the works of Plotinus so I can't say if it's true or not.
As for the Aristotle vs. Plato thing, that's a trope that's been around philosophy and people who are interested in the history of though for a while now. The trope involves a contrast between Plato who is seen as this romantic, esoteric almost artist like philosopher who places emphasis on depths of human imagination and creativity versus Aristotle who is more somber and dry and places his emphasis on empirical experience, basically like a proto-scientist.
As for why the Apology is the least "Platonic" of all of Plato's writing, the explanation I read (from the book 'Confessions of a Philosopher' by Bryan Magee) was that in the early Platonic dialogues, the Socrates character is supposed to be closely based on the actual historical Socrates. The ideas expressed by Socrates in these dialogues is supposed to mirror what the historical Socrates taught to his disciples. With the later dialogues the Socrates character starts to become a mouthpiece for Plato rather then the actual Socrates.