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Tradition

Platonism

Era · ~400 BCE — presentRegion · Greece → Mediterranean → Christian / Islamic world

Plato and his heirs — a metaphysics in which the visible world is the shadow of timeless Forms, and philosophy is the soul's ascent from appearance to the Good itself.

Core beliefs

  1. 01The Forms: eternal, perfect originals of which physical things are copies.
  2. 02The Good as the source of being and intelligibility.
  3. 03The soul is immortal and pre-existed.
  4. 04Knowledge is recollection (anamnesis).

Practices

  • Dialectic / Socratic inquiry
  • Contemplation (theoria)
  • Mathematical study as soul-purification
  • Cultivation of the four cardinal virtues

Key figures

  • · Plato
  • · Plotinus
  • · Iamblichus
  • · Proclus

Bridges to other traditions

  • The Forms ↔ Logos ↔ Plato's Good ↔ Brahman
  • Anamnesis ↔ pratyabhijna (recognition)

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