Quotes About Platonism

Christian spirituality had been strongly influenced by Platonism, which sought to liberate the soul from the body, but in some circles in the early fourth century, people were beginning to hope that their hitherto despised bodies could bring men and women to the divine—or at least that it was not a reality separate from the physical, as the Platonists held.25

My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!

I have a great pack of female friends, but I also have a lot of guy friends. I believe that platonic relationship is entirely possible.

Su situación, sin duda extraña, es la de un filósofo sin filosofía. Creador de un inagotable teatro de pensamientos, Platón parece estar siempre ligeramente retirado, de modo que es imposible fijarlo, y muy capaz de escapar de todo intento de inmovilizarlo. Sin embargo, tales intentos nunca faltaron. A lo largo de los siglos, nunca se ha dejado de fabricar el «platonismo» ni de combatirlo. Y sin embargo, el platonismo no es algo que podamos encontrar en Platón.

Most scientists and mathematicians operate as if Platonism is true regardless of whether they believe that it is. That is, they work as though there were an unknown realm of truth to be discovered.

Holy Scripture and Nature are both emanations from the divine Word." Like other Platonists, Galileo didn't have to see God to believe in Him. He only had to feel His perfection in His creation and stand aside in awe.

Few students or teachers were interested in Cicero or Erasmus's other literary heroes. There was, however, a new teacher at Magdalen College named John Colet, who had immersed himself in the humanism coming out of Italy and its Platonist themes. He and Erasmus found an instant harmony. In listening to Colet speak, Erasmus wrote later, he "seemed to be listening to Plato himself."14

Renaissance Platonism realized that it was this quest for spiritual perfection that bound together all the great religions and civilizations: Egypt, the Chaldeans and Babylonians, the Persians and Hebrews, the Greeks and Romans. All were suddenly revealed to be part of the same spiritual Big Push. All were revealed to be different aspects of the One.

Nietzsche did track down Platonism in its most covert form: Christianity and its secularizations are thoroughly Platonism for the people.

In Darwins post-platonische werelds is de variatie de fundamentele werkelijkheid en veranderen berekende gemiddelden in abstracties. We blijven echter de voorkeur geven aan het oudere en tegengestelde standpunt: we zien variatie nog steeds als een massa onlogische toevalligheden, die hoofdzakelijk van waarde is omdat zo'n spreiding te gebruiken is voor de berekening van een gemiddelde, hetgeen we dan beschouwen als iets wat een essentie nog het best benadert.

Nossos atuais neo-historicistas, com sua curiosa mistura de Foucault e Marx, são apenas um episódio bem menor na interminável história do platonismo. Platão esperava, banindo o poeta, banir também o tirano. Banir Shakespeare, ou antes reduzi-lo a seus contextos, não vai livrar-nos de nossos tiranos.

Moreover, it is not entirely without significance that true love was, in Platonic philosophy -- but also, as you know, in a whole sector, a whole domain of Christian spirituality and mysticism -- the form par excellence of the true life. Since Platonism, true love and the true life have traditionally belonged together, and to a large extend Christian Platonism will take up this theme.

The result of our previous discussion is that our axioms, if interpreted as meaningful statements, necessarily presuppose a kind of Platonism, which cannot satisfy any critical mind and which does not even produce the conviction that they are consistent.

Respecting infinite sets, for example, Intuitionism is rabidly anti-Cantor and Formalism staunchly pro-Cantor, even though both Formalism and Intuitionism are anti-Plato and Cantor is a diehard Platonist. Which, migrainous or not, means we're back to metaphysics: the modern wrangle over math's procedures is ultimately a dispute over the ontological status of math entities.

but let's emphasize once more here that G. Cantor is, like R. Dedekind, a mathematical Platonist; i.e., he believes that both infinite sets and transfinite numbers really exist, as in metaphysically, and that they are reflected in actual real-world infinities.....

As far as I know, only a small minority of mathematicians, even of those with Platonist views, accept the idea that there may be mathematical facts which are true but unknowable.

In their original historical context, these verses were astonishing. In the ancient world, virtually all the major "isms"—Platonism, neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Hindu pantheism—taught a low view of the material world. In these philosophies, salvation was conceived as a complete break between matter and spirit, a flight from the physical world. To make that break, adherents adopted a regimen of asceticism to suppress bodily urges and desires.

Da nicht einmal das Böse auf Erden rein ist, hat jede der drei demokratischen Wellen dem Menschen eine klarere Vorstellung gebracht: Die erste die von der Seele, die zweite die vom transzendenten Gott, die dritte die von der Geschichte: Platonismus, alexandrinische Theologie, Romantik.