 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
God (or shedding the illusion of separateness) and thereafter no longer reenters the
process of reincarnation. Instead, one selflessly participates eternally in the
contemplation of God. All human memories are lost: “There will not even be
memory of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self—
Socrates, for example—or that it is Intellect or Soul.”
13
In such theoretical interpretations of his mystical visions of the afterlife, Plotinus
not only elaborated on Plato’s views, but created a new conception of unity with
God—one that would transform late Greek Platonism. Through such Christian
authors as Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and John Eriugena, as well as indirectly
through Islamic and Jewish mysticism, his version of Neoplatonism would deeply
influence Christianity, eastern and western, throughout the Middle Ages and into
the Renaissance.
As a consequence of the Christian church fathers’ eventually selecting the
views of Plato and Plotinus as the models for their own theology, they reversed
the trend that had been in progress before Plotinus from an otherworldly to a
this-worldly orientation. How and why they did this is the next part of our
story. In appreciating this story, it is crucial to remember that much of Greek
thought was not available generally to Romans, and much of
Roman thought
was not available to the Latin West until very late in the tradition. For instance,
very little of what today we think of as the Aristotelian corpus was available to
Romans until about 100 c.e. Before that time, the only Aristotelian works avail-
able to those who were not members of Aristotle’s school were some of his dia-
logues, which are now lost. Although Cicero famously called Aristotle “golden
throated,” he hardly knew Aristotle, whose De anima was not generally avail-
able until Alexander of Aphrodisias’s time. After the fourth century, except for
one or two logical works, Aristotle was virtually unknown in the Latin West
until the end of the twelfth century. The story of the transmission of Platonic
ideas is similar. He survived in only a few works, including the Phaedo and the
Timaeus, and, prior to the Renaissance, hardly any of Plotinus’s works survived
in the Latin West. Throughout this period, Augustine was the main source of
Neoplatonism.