neoplatonism essays

neoplatonism expositions As characterized by Funk and Wagnals, Neoplatonism is a kind of optimistic monism wherein a definitive truth of the universe is held to be an interminable, mysterious, impeccable One. From this one exudes nous (unadulterated knowledge), whence thus is inferred the world soul, the imaginative action of which causes the lesser spirits of people. The world soul is considered as a picture of the nous, even as the nous is a picture of the One; both the nous and the world soul, notwithstanding their separation, are along these lines consubstantial with the One. The world soul, in any case, since it is middle between the nous and the material world, has the choice both of saving its uprightness and imaged flawlessness or of getting out and out arousing and degenerate. A similar decision is available to every one of the lesser spirits. When, through obliviousness of its actual nature and personality, the human spirit encounters a misguided feeling of separateness and freedom, it turns out to be pompously self-emphatic and falls into exotic and debased propensities. Salvation for such a spirit is as yet conceivable, the Neoplatonist keeps up, by righteousness of the very opportunity of will that empowered it to pick its corrupt course. The spirit must converse that course, following the other way the progressive strides of its degeneration, until it is again joined with the source of its being. The real gathering is cultivated through an enchanted involvement with which the spirit knows an all-swarming joy. Doctrinally, Neoplatonism is portrayed by an all out resistance between the profound and the animalistic, explained from Platos dualism of Idea and Matter; by the otherworldly theory of interceding organizations, the nous and the world soul, which transmit the heavenly force from the One to the many; by an antipathy for the universe of sense; and by the need of freedom from an existence of sense through a thorough parsimonious order. (Funk and Wagnalls) ... <!