Plato and Platonism in the European Philosophical Tradition

0191014
Project Director dr. sc. Marie-Élise Zovko

Summary:
Research on this project is concerned with the significance and continuity of Platonism as a philosophical tradition, from its beginnings in the opposition of rational thought to sense experience evidenced by the fragments of Parmenides and Heraclitus, to the reception of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought in the philosophy of Schelling, Hegel and Baader. The project aims to identify elements common to Platonic thought from its origins in Socrates and the Presocratics to modern representatives of Platonism; to differentiate among variant positions developed within the tradition of Platonism, from the Academy to the Renaissance of Platonism in the philosophy of Plotinus, and the Athenian and Alexandrian schools of Neoplatonism; and to trace the conceptual evolution of Platonism as a system of thought in the philosophies of its most significant modern representatives, Nicolas Cusanus, Spinoza, Baader and Schelling. Central philosophical problems, such as the relationship of mind and body, freedom and necessity, law and justice, the finite and the infinite will be considered in the light of the Platonic philosophical tradition.