Plotinus, Neoplatonism, & the Transcendence of the One

Book excerpt: Theandrites: Studies on Byzantine Philosophy and Christian Platonism is the first book series to focus solely on philosophy in Byzantium and Christian Platonism (284-1453). This series encourages one to trace Platonic ideas and terminology as they move throughout the Eastern Roman Empire and the Byzantine Orthodox world. This tradition is an essential part of the history of ideas since the Greek texts studied in the Syriac and Arabic worlds originated in the Greek-speaking world during this time frame. Thus Syriac Christians and Arabic Muslims translated texts offered to them by Byzantine scholars and philosophers from the fourth century onward. The same is true during the Renaissance in Italy (fifteenth century), when for the first time since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Latin-speaking world was given proper access to Greek philosophy in the original language by Byzantine thinkers such as Bessarion (1403-72) and George Gemistos Plethon (ca. 1355-1452/54). Book jacket.