PLATONISM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Platonism

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noun

Platonism n.

The doctrines or philosophy by Plato or of his followers. Note: Plato believed God to be an infinitely wise, just, and powerful Spirit; and also that he formed the visible universe out of preexistent amorphous matter, according to perfect patterns of ideas eternally existent in his own mind. Philosophy he considered as being a knowledge of the true nature of things, as discoverable in those eternal ideas after which all things were fashioned. In other words, it is the knowledge of what is eternal, exists necessarily, and is unchangeable; not of the temporary, the dependent, and changeable; and of course it is not obtained through the senses; neither is it the product of the understanding, which concerns itself only with the variable and transitory; nor is it the result of experience and observation; but it is the product of our reason, which, as partaking of the divine nature, has innate ideas resembling the eternal ideas of God. By contemplating these innate ideas, reasoning about them, and comparing them with their copies in the visible universe, reason can attain that true knowledge of things which is called philosophy. Plato's professed followers, the Academics, and the New Platonists, differed considerably from him, yet are called Platonists.

An elevated rational and ethical conception of the laws and forces of the universe; sometimes, imaginative or fantastic philosophical notions.

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Etymology of 'Platonism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Platonism" Quotes from Famous Books

... contrary extreme; and the most orthodox doctors allowed themselves the use of the terms and definitions which had been censured in the mouth of the sectaries. After the edict of toleration had restored peace and leisure to the Christians, the Trinitarian controversy was revived in the ancient seat of Platonism, the learned, the opulent, the tumultuous city of Alexandria; and the flame of religious discord was rapidly communicated from the schools to the clergy, the people, the province, and the East. The abstruse ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... "Transcendentalism" by Kant's followers, because it included ideas which were beyond the range of experience. It became popular in Germany, as Platonism, to which it is closely related, became popular in ancient Greece. It has never been accepted in France, where scepticism still predominates, though we hear of it in Taine and a few other writers; but in Great Britain, although the English ...

— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... I have tried to make clear, only one of the influences which produced this new intellectual climate. The rediscovered "Hermes Trismegistus," the mystically coloured Platonism, as it came from Italy, the awakened interest in Nature and in man, and the powerful message of the German Mystics all played an important part toward the formation ...

— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... again lay a fine and delicate-looking youth, felled by the heavy fist of a recluse. A hermit wrestled hand to hand with a young philosopher who, only yesterday had delivered his first lecture on the Neo-Platonism of ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the time of Aeschylus, for example—Plato would have been a poet; and then perhaps we should have had to invent another class of poets, one above the present highest; and reserve it solely for the splendor of Plato. Because Platonism is the very Theosophic Soul of Poetry. But he came, living when he did, to loathe the very name of poetry: as who should say: "God pity you! I give you the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and you make answer, 'Charming Plato, how exquisitely poetic is your prose!'" So his ...

— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

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