Aristotle and Neoplatonism

The thousand-year history of Greek Philosophy ends with Neoplatonism, which in turn makes possible a transition to Christianity as the intellectual carrier of Western thought and culture. One of the most fascinating aspects of Neoplatonism is its enormous debt to Aristotle and his followers. At the same time, Neoplatonists consciously rejected Aristotelian claims of supplanting Plato and Platonism. Yet we may say in retrospect that Neoplatonism is in some ways “neo-Aristotelianism”. This seminar will take as its objective to understand Aristotle’s great but little understood influence on Neoplatonism and through it on Christian intellectualism.