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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

... somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. The matter was Jewish, the arrangement Greek. According to the relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism, the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism and ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the papacy, which was also that of Charlemagne, and of other great Christian sovereigns, was not continued. The Norman feudalism of England and Northern France; the Caesarism of Germany and the Capetian kings; the heresies brought from the East by the Crusaders; the paganism and neo-Platonism of the revival of learning; above all, the fearful upheaval of the whole of Europe by the Protestant schism and heresy, troubled the purity of that great Japhetic stream, and has retarded to our days its momentous and ...

— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Shakespeare must be left on one side, first, because the dramatic form does not lend itself to the expression of mystical feeling, and secondly, because even in the poems there is little real mysticism, though there is much of the fashionable Platonism. Shakespeare is metaphysical rather than mystical, the difference being, roughly, that the metaphysician seeks to know the beginnings or causes of things, whereas the mystic feels he knows the end of things, that all nature ...

— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... harmless lover, and paid the tribute of chivalric deference to women. The strained politeness may have been artificial, and the forms of chivalry very likely outran the feeling, but they served at least to keep it alive, while the false platonism and ultra-refined sentiment were simply moral protests against the coarse vices of the time. The prudery which reached a satirical climax in "Les Precieuses Ridicules" was a natural reaction from the sensuality of a Marguerite and a Gabrielle. Mme. ...

— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... was a hybrid of Platonism and Pyrrhonism, while it denied the possibility of ascertaining objective truth, yet taught that on all subjects of speculative philosophy probability is attainable, and that, if the subject in hand be one which admits of being acted upon, it is the duty of the moral ...

— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

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