A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM

BY

THOMAS WHITTAKER

I.- GRAECO-ROMAN CIVILISATION IN ITS POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

II.- THE STAGES OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

III.- RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS IN LATER ANTIQUITY

IV.- PLOTINUS AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 

V.- THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM OF PLOTINUS 

1. PSYCHOLOGY 

2. METAPHYSICS 

3. COSMOLOGY AND THEODICY 

4. AESTHETICS

5. ETHICS

VI.- THE MYSTICISM OF PLOTINUS

VII .-THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM

1. PORPHYRY

2. IAMBLICHUS

3. THE SCHOOL OF IAMBLICHUS

VIII.- THE POLEMIC AGAINST CHRISTIANITY

IX.-THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL

X.-THE INFLUENCE OF NEO-PLATONISM

XI.- CONCLUSION

 

INTRODUCTION

THAT the history of ancient culture effectively ends with the second century of the Christian era is an impression not infrequently derived from histories of literature and even of philosophy. The period that still remains of antiquity is obviously on its practical side a period of dissolution, in which every effort is required to maintain the fabric of the Roman State against its external enemies. And, spiritually, a new religious current is evidently beginning to gain the mastery; so that, with the knowledge we have of what followed, we can already see in the third century the break-up of the older form of inner as well as of outer life. In the second century too appeared the last writers who are usually thought of as classical. The end of the Stoical philosophy as a living system coincides with the death of Marcus Aurelius. And with Stoicism, it is often thought, philosophy ceased to have an independent life. It definitely entered the service of polytheism. In its struggle with Christianity it appropriated Oriental superstitions. It lost its scientific character in devotion to the practice of magic. It became a mystical theology instead of a pursuit of reasoned truth. The structure of ancient culture, like the fabric of the Empire, was in process of decay at once in form and content. In its permeation by foreign elements, it already manifests a transition to the new type that was to supersede it.

An argument for this view might be found in a certain "modernness" which has often been noted in the later classical literature. Since the ancient type was dissolved in the end to make way for the modern, we might attribute the early appearance of modern characteristics to the new growth accompanying incipient dissolution. The general falling-off in literary quality during the late period we should ascribe to decay; the wider and more consciously critical outlook on life, which we call modern, to the movement of the world into its changed path. Thus there would be a perfectly continuous process from the old civilization to the new. On the other hand, we may hold that the "modernness" of the late classical period does not indicate the beginning of the intermediate phase of culture, but is a direct approximation to the modern type, due to the existence of a long intellectual tradition of a similar kind. If the latter view be taken, then we must regard the dissolution of the ancient world as proceeding, not by a penetration of new elements into the older form of culture so as to change the type, but indirectly through the conquest of the practical world by a new power; so that, while ancient culture was organically continuous as long as it lasted, it finally came to an end as an organism. The new way into which the world had passed was directed by a new religion, and this appropriated in its own manner the old form of culture, bringing it under the law of its peculiar type. Thus one form was substituted for another, but the first did not spontaneously pass into the second. There was no absolute break in history; for the ancient system of education remained, though in a reduced form, and passed by continuous transition into another; but the directing power was changed. The kind of "modern" character which the ancient culture assumed in the end was thus an anticipation of a much later period, not a genuine phase of transition. In confirmation of the latter view, it might be pointed out that the culture of the intermediate period, when it assumed at length its appropriate form, had decidedly less of the specifically modern character than even that of early antiquity with all its remoteness.

Be this as it may in pure literature, it is certain that the latest phase of ancient philosophy had all the marks of an intrinsic development. All its characteristic positions can be traced to their origin in earlier Greek systems. Affinities can undoubtedly be found in it with Oriental thought, more particularly with that of India; but with this no direct contact can be shown. In its distinctive modes of thought, it was wholly Hellenic. So far as it was "syncretistic," it was as philosophy of religion, not as pure philosophy. On this side, it was an attempt to bring the various national cults of the Roman Empire into union under the hegemony of a philosophical conception. As philosophy, it was indeed "eclectic," but the eclecticism was under the direction of an original effort of speculative thought, and was exercised entirely within the Hellenic tradition. And, in distinction from pure literature, philosophy made its decisive advance after practical dissolution had set in. It was not until the middle of the third century that the metaphysical genius of Plotinus brought to a common point the Platonizing movement of revival which was already going on before the Christian era. The system founded by Plotinus, and known distinctively as "Neo-Platonism," was that which alone gave unity to all that remained of Greek culture during the period of its survival as such. Neo-Platonism became, for three centuries, the one philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world. It preserved the ancient type of thought from admixture with alien elements; and, though defeated in the struggle to give direction to the next great period of human history, it had a powerful influence on the antagonist system, which, growing up in an intellectual atmosphere pervaded by its modes of thought, incorporated much of its distinctive teaching.

The persistence of philosophy as the last living force of the ancient world might have been predicted. Philosophic thought in antiquity was the vital centre of liberal education as it has never been for the modern world. There were of course those who disparaged it in contrast with empirical practice or with rhetorical ability, but, for all that, it had the direction of practical thought so far as there was general direction at all. The dissolution by which the ancient type was broken down did not begin at the centre but at the extremities. The free development of the civic life both of Greece and of Rome had been checked by the pressure of a mass of alien elements imperfectly assimilated. These first imposed a political prin­ciple belonging to a different phase of culture. To the new movement thus necessitated, the culture of the ancient world, whatever superficial changes it might undergo, did not inwardly respond. Literature still looked to the past for its models. Philosophy least of all cared to adapt itself. It became instead the centre of resistance to the predominant movement,—to overweening despotism under the earlier Caesars, to the oncoming theocracy when the republican tradition was completely in the past. The latest philosophers of antiquity were preeminently

The kings of thought

Who waged contention with their time's decay.

And their resistance was not the result of pessimism, of a disposition to see nothing but evil in the actual movement of things. The Neo-Platonists in particular were the most convinced of optimists, at the very time when, as they well knew, the whole movement of the world was against them. They held it for their task to maintain as far as might be the type of life which they had themselves chosen as the best; knowing that there was an indefinite future, and that the alternating rhythms in which, with Heraclitus and the Stoics, they saw the cosmic harmony, and the expression of providential reason, would not cease with one period. If they did not actually predict the revival of their thought after a thousand years, they would not have been in the least surprised to see it.

More than once has that thought been revived, and with various aims; nor is its interest even yet exhausted. The first revival the philosophers themselves would have cared for was that of the fifteenth century, when, along with their master Plato, they became the inspirers of revolt against the system of mediaeval theology that had established itself long after their defeat. Another movement quite in their spirit, but this time not an insurgent movement, was that of the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century, which went back to Neo-Platonism for the principles of its resistance to the exclusive dominance of the new "mechanical philosophy." As the humanist academies of Italy had appealed against Scholastic dogmatism to the latest representatives in antiquity of free philosophic inquiry, so the opponents in England of "Hobbism" went for support to those who in their own day had intellectually refuted the materialism of the Stoics and Epicureans. Since then, many schools and thinkers have shown affinity with Neo-Platonic thought; and, apart from direct historic attachment or spontaneous return to similar metaphysical ideas, there has been a deeper continuous influence of which something will have to be said.

From about the middle of the nineteenth century, the Neo-Platonists, though somewhat neglected in comparison with the other schools of antiquity, have been made the subject of important historical work. To French philosophers who began as disciples of Cousin, a philosophy that could be described as at once "eclectic" and "spiritualist" naturally became an object of interest. The result of that interest was seen in the brilliant works of Vacherot and Jules Simon. For definite and positive information on the doctrines of the school, the portion of Zeller's Philosophic der Griechen that deals with the period is of the highest value. In English, Mr. Benn's chapter on "The Spiritualism of Plotinus," in his Greek Philosophers, brings out well the advance in subjective thought made by the latest on the earlier philosophies of Greece. Of special importance in relation to this point are the chapters on Plotinus and his successors in Siebeck's Geschichte der Psychologie. An extensive work on the psychology of the school has appeared since in the last two volumes of M. Chaignet's Psychologie des Grecs. Recent English contributions to the general exposition of the Neo-Platonist philosophy are Dr C. Bigg's volume in the "Chief Ancient Philosophies" Series (Christian Knowledge Society), and Dr F. IV. Bussell's stimulating book on The School of Plato, which, however, deals more with preliminaries than with the school itself.

In the later historical treatment of Neo-Platonism a marked tendency is visible to make less of the supposed "Oriental" character of the school and more of its real dependence on the preceding philosophies of Greece. This may be seen in Zeller as compared with Vacherot, and in Mr Benn as compared with Zeller. Of the most recent writers, M. Chaignet and Dr Bigg, approaching the subject from different sides, conclude in almost the same terms that the system of Plotinus was through and through Hellenic. And, as M. Chaignet points out, Plotinus, in all essentials, fixed the doctrine of the school. Whatever attractions the thought of the East as vaguely surmised may have had for its adherents, their actual contact with it was slight. When the school took up a relation to the practical world, it was as the champion of "Hellenism" against the "barbarian audacity" of its foes. On the whole; however, it did not seek to interfere directly with practice, but recognized the impossibility of modifying the course which the world at large was taking, and devoted itself to the task of carrying forward thought and preserving culture. Hence a history of Neo-Platonism must be in the main a history of doctrines internally developed, not of polemic with extraneous systems of belief. At the same time the causes must be indicated of its failure, and of the failure of philosophy, to hold for the next age the intellectual direction of the world,—a failure not unqualified. To bring those causes into view, it will be necessary to give a brief sketch of the political, as well as of the philosophical and religious, movement to the time of Plotinus. For the ultimate causes of the triumph of another system were social more than they were intellectual, and go far back into the past. Of the preceding philosophical develop­ment, no detailed history can be attempted. As in the case of the political and religious history, all that can be done is to put the course of events in a light by which its general bearing may be made clear. In relation to the inner movement, the aim will be to show precisely at what point the way was open for an advance on previous philosophies,—an advance which, it may be said by anticipation, Neo-Platonism did really succeed in making secure even for the time when the fortunes of independent philosophy were at their lowest. Then, when the history of the school itself has been set forth in some detail, a sketch, again reduced to as brief compass as possible, must be given of the return of the modern world to the exact point where the thought of the ancient world had ceased, and of the continued influence of the Neo-Platonic conceptions on modern thought. Lastly, an attempt will be made to state the law of the development; and, in relation to this, something will be said of the possibilities that still remain open for the type of thought which has never been systematized with more perfection than in the school of Plotinus.