Masters of Those Who Know — Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists

Abstract

‘Master of those who know’ was Dante’s tribute to Aristotle whom in the Divine Comedy he saw accorded a place of honour in the highest state to which the unbaptised could aspire.¹ It was a proper recognition of Aristotle’s pre-eminent influence on the intellectual life of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. But Plato was to be found in the next room² and had Dante been fully aware of his contribution to the medieval heritage he would doubtless have allowed of their closer association. With the benefit of a historian’s perspective, he might have extended the title not only to Aristotle’s own master but to their common disciples, the Neoplatonists, who were the principal channel of Platonism to the middle ages and who so profoundly influenced the formulation of Christian ideas in the patristic age. In a history of medieval thought the dominating contribution of these giants among ancient philosophers is a more obvious feature than the primacy of any one. They are conveniently treated together, for despite the differences between their systems they are linked in a direct line of intellectual descent.