From Plato to Platonism

Gersons book is a highly valuable, wellwritten contribution to Platonism research. It persuasively makes a case for understanding Platos philosophy as a coherent system that has an intricate and meaningful relation to later Platonistic philosophical positions. From this point, Plato appears as a Platonist indeed. Claas Lattman CLASSICAL JOURNALWas Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Platos 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 are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Platos teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Platos 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 antinaturalism.Gerson contends that the philosophical position of PlatoPlatos own Platonism, so to speakwas produced out of a matrix he calls UrPlatonism. According to Gerson, UrPlatonism is the conjunction of five antis that in total arrive at antinaturalism: antinominalism, antimechanism, antimaterialism, antirelativism, and antiskepticism. Platos Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five antis. 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 the great exegete of the Platonic revelation.