PLATONISM • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Platonism

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Platonism n.

The doctrines or philosophy by Plato or of his followers. Note: Plato believed God to be an infinitely wise, just, and powerful Spirit; and also that he formed the visible universe out of preexistent amorphous matter, according to perfect patterns of ideas eternally existent in his own mind. Philosophy he considered as being a knowledge of the true nature of things, as discoverable in those eternal ideas after which all things were fashioned. In other words, it is the knowledge of what is eternal, exists necessarily, and is unchangeable; not of the temporary, the dependent, and changeable; and of course it is not obtained through the senses; neither is it the product of the understanding, which concerns itself only with the variable and transitory; nor is it the result of experience and observation; but it is the product of our reason, which, as partaking of the divine nature, has innate ideas resembling the eternal ideas of God. By contemplating these innate ideas, reasoning about them, and comparing them with their copies in the visible universe, reason can attain that true knowledge of things which is called philosophy. Plato's professed followers, the Academics, and the New Platonists, differed considerably from him, yet are called Platonists.

An elevated rational and ethical conception of the laws and forces of the universe; sometimes, imaginative or fantastic philosophical notions.

See images of 'Platonism'

Etymology of 'Platonism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Platonism" Quotes from Famous Books

... fall into a puerility which may be innocent or vicious, I cannot decide. I only know that it is a purely contemplative act, a disinterested admiration of beauty. It is not coarse sensuality, but aesthetic platonism. I imitate Narcissus; and I apply my lips to the cold surface of the mirror and kiss my image. It is the love of beauty, the expression of tenderness and affection for what God has made manifest, in an ingenuous kiss imprinted on the empty and incorporeal reflection." In the same ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr. Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism in his Ode on the Progress of Life. He has very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how 'they fade by degrees into the light of common day', and he ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent state, as ...

— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... find ourselves enmeshed as soon as we begin to have any perception at all, and which, slight and almost invisible as it may seem, it is so hard to struggle with and so impossible to break through. It may be true, according to the poetical Platonism of Wordsworth, that "heaven lies about us in our infancy"; but we very soon leave it far behind us, and, as we approach manhood, sadly discover that we have grown up into a jurisdiction of a very ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... the eyes of a Christian the grace of the Holy Spirit is shown in the power and explicitness, and above all in the simplicity of the assertions which identify the human conception, if such it can be called, of Platonism, or Judaism, with ...

— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... to himself to find in the sacred books of his nation that which agreed with the deepest discoveries of Greek philosophy; which explained and corroborated them. And his announcement of this fact, weak and defective as it was, had the most enormous and unexpected results. The father of New Platonism was Philo the Jew. ...

— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... History, and Practice of the Primitive Christians; to the innumerable Monasteries of Europe, and Asia; to the immense multitudes who have lived, and died hermits; and, finally, (because I know very well, the Protestant divines attribute these follies to the influence of Platonism, Pythagoranism, and several other isms upon pure Christianity) I appeal to living evidence now in the world, to the only thoroughgoing Christians in it, viz., to the Society of the Shakers, who I maintain, ...

— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

Words linked to "Platonism" : philosophical doctrine, realism, philosophy