[DOWNLOAD] "From Plato to Platonism" by Lloyd P. Gerson # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details
- Title: From Plato to Platonism
- Author : Lloyd P. Gerson
- Release Date : January 15, 2013
- Genre: Philosophy,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 2045 KB
Description
Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Platoās own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients were correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Platoās teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Platoās dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of āanti-naturalism.ā
Gerson contends that the philosophical position of PlatoāPlatoās own Platonism, so to speakāwas produced out of a matrix he calls āUr-Platonism.ā According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five āantisā that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Platoās Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five āantis.ā It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as āthe great exegete of the Platonic revelation.ā